> >What I am
> >pointing out that its practice (Soul Perfection, Mystical States)
> >does not involve _rational thought_ which is what the Zzaburi do.
>You must have missed a number of Kabbalistic practices that,
>in contrast to Ompalam or the Lunar religion, seem to involve pretty
>much exactly the sort of rational practices I would expect from some
>Western sorcerers - dedicated study of correspondences, mathematical
>explication of hidden connections and meanings, analysis of a variety
>of things via a single system, all that sort of stuff.
Repetitious numerological analysis of the holy book (a la the Bible Code) does not come close to the model of the Zzaburi as given in:
Sorcerers are followers of Zzabur's model of an impersonal
God. Sorcerers are scholars, as opposed to the more religious
wizards. They spend their time researching the nature of
the world, either through reading dusty tomes and performing
experiments, or out in the field investigating God's
creation first-hand.
HW:RiG p191
There's other practices that I could add as being IMO unlike the Zzaburite model but I don't know if David is including the Cabalism of Isaac Luria or not.
>Very 'rational', if based on premises that seem a bit absurd to us.
It's not whether the premises are absurd to us, it's whether the premises are appropriate for the Zzaburi to hold. I simply don't see Zzabur in the Land of Logic behaving like a Kaballist.
> But that is almost the side issue - what little we DO know of
>Zzaburism is that it is a mystic Western system, yet your primary
>objection to the Kabbala as a model appears to be that it is a mystic
>Western system*. Obviously there is a problem here.
Yes and the problem lies with Greg who freely admits that he happens to be sloppy in the usage of mysticism to refer to transcendent concepts and vice versa. Just because Zzaburism is capable of realizing transcendent concepts (be it the RW equivalents of discovering the irrationality of two, Cantor's transfinite numbers, Russell's paradox or Godel's paradox) does not mean they have to use mystical practices (ascetic withdrawal from the Cosmos, tantric engagement with the same, or worship of enlightened deities to do so) to discover them.
> I am going to go out on a limb here, and say that the problem
>is that Peter is working from the definition of Zzaburism in
>GloranthaIttHW (which he co-authored, so that seems a safe
>assumption),
The section "The Atheist Sorcerers" (Glorantha: Intro p50) is actually written by Greg, not me (thus you are really using Greg to argue against Greg).
>while I (in assuming that Zzaburism is an explicitly
>mystic philosophy) am working from the reference on pg 218 of the
>HeroWars players book (which clearly describes Zzaburites as mystics).
That is not the only mention of Zzaburism. Sorcerors are stated as following Zzabur's model of the Cosmos on HW:RiG p191. We know that Zzabur is synonymous for sorcerer as can be seen in the Genertela Book p82 ("The magic-using class of sorcerers are called Zzaburs") and the Player's Book: Genertela p25. So I don't think that your argument for two types of Zzaburites is correct (especially in light of Zzabur's character).
> So that just leaves us with the question of whether a
>Kabbalist system/ conception of the otherworld (which obviously has
>roots in mystic Kabbalist practice) is appropriate as an inspiration
>for non-mystic Western Sorcerous practice. I think it pretty clearly
>is - after all, it is the basis for much (if not most) of RW Western
>magical theory, and is used quite a bit by modern magicians who are
>not in the least mystics.
And again I must point out that it relies on a personal conception of God and the Cosmos where we already have the Zzaburite mythology (cf Anaxial's Roster p209) and the fact that Zzaburism is based on western philosophy rather than RW occultism. Hence I don't think that the sorcerous otherworld should have kaballistic elements.
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