>At 11:45 AM -0800 6/11/00, The Glorantha Digest wrote:
Geez, I don't get any credit....
>> I don't think the Golden Dawn/Crowley/Modern Hermeticism is a very good
>>model for Gloranthan Sorcery,...[cut for brevity]
>
> Well, sure. (probably a good model for some God Learner
>sorcery by the same token, though). I was really saying that their
>developed concept of the Otherworld, and their combination of this
>with a worldview that is concerned primarily with the self and ones
>own will (rather than being a conduit for the divine will, like the
>Jewish Kabbalists), is fairly close. Strike the syncretism, by all
>means - all their grab bag of egyptian, greek, roman, hindu myth has
>very little to do with the parts I was suggesting as appropriate.
And of course, Kabbalism is a tradition onto itself (well, within Judaism), not particularly syncratic (allowing, of course, for all those streams that dump into every Western tradition). (How's that for a qualified statement?) At any rate, it's a set course meal, not the buffet of modern Western magic(k).
> Yes. As I said above, Kabbalist practice is a very literate,
>scholarly, traditional, which seems a good fit for the West. Sure,
>some of their traditions seem irrational to us, but many of these
>seem actually more appropriate for the West, where words manifestly
>DO have power, and the holy book was actually, verifiably, written by
>God (thus making the search for hidden clues within it by
>linguistic/numerological means not that unreasonable).
For what it's worth, the Renaissance and early Modern Hermetic thinkers were pretty rigorous; it's a pity they were working from flawed starting points. Of course, in Glorantha, they don't have to....
Julian Lord writes:
>I also mean that the uneducated are unlikely to want anything to do with
>such an
>elitist theology ; especially not when they can get together for a little
>prayer, and
>ask
>God to send an Angel, Hero, Knight, Plague, etc. to smite the Evil Sorcery
>of their
>temporal masters ...
I hadn't thought about this. I can see being an immortal Brithini Lord or Sorceror would be cool, but what do the Farmers get out of it? I suppose they could really, really like farming, but that kind of makes them tall Mostali....
Peter Larsen
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