> I strongly doubt that illumination is chaotic per se, but I agree that moral
> corruption is a common outcome
My current belief is that illumination is essentially misapplied mysticism. Specifically, certain understandings of mysticism applied to theist practice. It's sort of like "Nothing is true; all is permissable" -- a useful point of view but a potential disaster in the wrong hands. Especially in Glorantha, where intention counts for a lot.
> Finally, let me say that I belive that the secrets of
> illumination (as is the secrets of the godlearners,
> and a bunch of other gloranthan secrets) is very much
> a dead end, and something that we will never really
> know. If we knew what they were, they wouldn't be
> secrets anymore, would they? ;-)
I agree to a point. The big difference between the Secret of the Godlearners(tm) (and perhaps the inner secrets of the EWF as well) and Illumination (pat. pending) is that illumination is still very much an issue. The Godlearners are gone, erased, and, from what I understand, even if you survived learning their Secret, it doesn't work anymore. It is worthwhile understanding some of the philosophy of illumination because PCs and GMs may need to deal with it. I think the days of Illuminated PCs unifying Humakt and Chalan Arroy are long gone (I hope so, at least), and Heortling-oriented campaigns can get by with "She's Illumitated; she's special; she's evil; why haven't you killed her yet?" Anyone who wants to set a campaign inside the Empire will need to know a little more, especially how the debased form of Nysaloran teachings found in the Riddlers interfaces with the more developed philosophies at the heart of Lunar belief. I'm not sure we really need rules for illumination, but a better sense of what it is (or what the Lunars/Pelorians think it is) would be nice.
Reading the little bits of information about the Predark, I'm not sure that the idea Predark=Chaos is entirely correct. Cosmos vs Chaos may reflect Celestial Court vs Predark, but I think there's more to it than that. There's something so Demiurge-like in the Celestial Court, that I wonder if the rejection of the world found in Mystics isn't really a rejection of the World of the Celestial Court for the liberation of the Predark (pre-consciousness). When the Unholy Trio dragged chaos into the world, they did it after learning from and killing Rashoran(a). Perhaps chaos is the result of bringing the pure Spiritual (not animist) matter of the Predark into the gross phisical world of the Celestial Court. So the Lunar experiments with chaos mimic the Bright Empire's similar experiments -- instead of pursuing liberation from the Cosmos, half-enlightened people err and try to bring the Predark into the World to (get power? liberate the world? just for kicks?) Horror is the result; there's an essay in TotRM #7(?) about chaos being destructive because it hates/is hated by the world, and that ties in pretty well with what I'm saying here. "Curing chaos" is a process of pushing "Predarkness" back to the Predark, where it belongs (not an easy conceptual formulation, and not something that non-illuminated chaos creatures (having no other option "to be") would accept as a good thing. Anyway, that's my idea. Now, I sincerely doubt any Gloranthan, except perhaps some mystics (and maybe those Western Cathar-like Perfectii) would have a philosophy anything like this.
Peter Larsen
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