There is a mystic otherworld, its just the mystics dislike it, so its not 'home ground' for them either. The 'Garden of Temptation' exists, they just don't think you should spend time there if you can avoid it. Because of the mystics refusal to interact with it, it has different properties to other otherworlds.
To be completely honest, I think this abscence of a mystic otherworld is very overstated, anyway. For something that doesn't exist, we seem to know a fair bit about it (Summer Land Heaven, Yothbedta's Stream, etc).
For a RW example, the Tibettans certainly spent a lot of effort on describing the details of the otherworld. They essentially believe much of it is illusionary or unimportant, but they still have one.
Nils wrote:
> A major point is that the whole
>setup with mundane world and otherworlds is a big lie
>according to the mystics. The trouble is that once you
>reach the "mystic world", you disappear from the others
>and they disappear from your view.
Thats not really a mystic world, but a mystic state. Conceiving it as a separate world is not entirely wrong - but as long as you understand that its a world in which the concepts of time and space are meaningless (instead of just extremely rubbery as they are in the otherworld generally).
I think the mystics believe that those who are not of sufficient mystical development definately do interact with the otherworld
>Then there is the draconic otherworld...
I suspect that the draconic way doesn't really distinguish the way other cultures do - if you put enough dragons in it, the material world starts to become the otherworld.
Nils wrote:
> > > > Also I feel obliged to point out that the Lunars _do_ have a mystical
>> > > otherworld, of a sort at least.
>> >
>> > They do?
>>
>> Lunar Hells, most notoriously.
>
>In what way are lunar hells mystical, apart from the fact
>that the odd mystic (Sheng) gets stuck there?
The worst Lunar Hell of all, the one where the very air is pain, the one where they stuck Sheng, is where Gerra's (and thus Sedenya's) Illumination took place.
On the One True Glorantha, Alex wrote:
>Greg is for the most part keeping us guessing because he's guessing
>himself, I believe.
Or possibly because on many of these really big issues (like whether the mystics, animists or whatever are 'correct) he doesn't want to explicitly truth. I don't think Greg believes that there is one true path to the gnosis - so why should it be so in Glorantha?
Cheers David ------------------------------
End of The Glorantha Digest V8 #64
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