>First, I'm trying to get a handle on exactly what utuma is. Our
>storyteller introduced it as the basis for all dragonewt mysticism and has
>described it as different way of viewing the world
Well, I'm not a dragon and I've not divided my brain in half like the EWF draconic mystics had to, so I doubtless only have a partial and incomplete view of this, but... utuma seems to be the name for a form of ritual suicide, by dismembering your own body. This has two effects: it can release your soul to the next level of consciousness, and it (alternatively? also?) allows the discarded parts of your body to re-integrate with the world and change it in some way. In fact, the first utuma was performed by the Grand Ancestral Dragon, and its dismembered body *is* the world.
Human scholars have observed dragonewts killing themselves in this way, but most believed that it was simply to prevent their skin being used to make dragonewt-skin armour...
>At the moment I've come to see utuma as being very akin to certain types of
>Eastern mysticism. By our storyteller's interpretation, it allows you a
>glimpse of the hidden world that exists side by side with the real world --
>perhaps the dream world of the dragons?
The dragons' world is the real one: it is *this* world that is the dream.
Existence is illusion; a follower of draconic philosophy who pursues Right Action can (over the lifetimes) learn to perceive these illusions for what they are and rid him/her/itself of such entanglements. Taking any action runs the risk of binding you closer to the web of illusion - but (paradoxically) it is only when you have met all your obligations here that you will be free to transcend.
(In other words, yes, it's got a lot in common with certain forms of Eastern mysticism. My main sources for this were the storytellers' and Glorantha books from HW, KoS, and Wyrm's Footnotes 14)
Stephen
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