>So, I guess everything in the inner world is a mixture, except when its not.
>I think he might have meant that the _entirety_ of a thing must be a
>mixture, but _portions_ of things may be purely one or the other. Here, of
>course, the Forest (the entirety) is a mixture, but the tree (just a
>portion) may be purely spiritual. I have trouble applying that concept to,
>say, Orlanthi.
I'll take a stab at this.... An Orlanthi clan is a mixture (mostly Theist, but with some animists:Kolati, (what's the Earth Witch's name?), Odayla (animist now?)), but each member of the clan is either a theist or an animist. Orlanth himself is a mixture -- he is a god who knows some dragon magic, rules over spirits (Kolat, again), etc. -- I don't think that universality extends to his worshippers, though. (Orlanth is a Great God; his facets don't stop with subcults.)
The Red Goddess is even more of a mix -- she has sorcerous parts, theistic parts, mystic parts, and presumably animist parts, as well as a touch of chaos and maybe some draconic power somewhere. Her worshippers are theists, mystics, etc.: they can only comprehend one face of the Goddess at a time. The really devout, who pursue all her faces and see the whole Goddess, are either blasted into dust, driven mad, or ascend to the Moon. The Goddess Is All, We Are Merely Us.
Similarly, the landscape around an Orlanthi Tula will be a mix of things, mostly animist and theist. Your god-talkers can deal with the daimon in the hill to get the rockslides to stop, but the forest spirits will require a visit to the Earth Witch. On the one person/one spirit/one rock/one river scale, the differences are clear; as you take a longer and longer view, things begin to blur; Glorantha herself, the World-Wyter, is no doubt all things -- god, spirit, essence, mystic, dragon, giant, maybe even chaos. She is also too big to be seen, even by the Great Gods and Spirits. Even Zzabur, who can calculate the circumfrence of the Universe, cannot define its center, the Invisible God.
Or that's my quick take on it, anyway.
Peter Larsen
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