>My opinion is that gods gain strength simply from their prominence
in myth,
>even the myths of those who don't worship them. A good example is
Zorak
>Zoran [snip]
But why and how do gods become prominent in myth in the first place?
Peter Larsen says :
> Greg said in a post "The sun is the Sun" on the Digest on 3
April 2001:
>
>Shargash is not Orlanth and Orlanth is not Shargash.
>However, both share many traits (violence, presence in all the
worlds of
>Above, Middle and Below worlds) and, if you listen to the stories,
both
>also share some stories (who was it that killed Yelm? Who is Rebellus
>Terminus?)
It's easy to get confused and think of gods as being 'people' in some sense. They aren't. Humakt is death works the other way around too, Death is Humakt. Whenever you read a myth from another culture where Death is personified as a god, you have to remember that it's in some way directly related to the Death the Heortlings know as Humakt.
and also says :
>Now, I have a problem with the earlier definition -- are any gods
>"cosmoogically necessary" anymore? Orlanth is no longer really Air,
>he is the greatest Air god, sure, but there are wide sections of
>Glorantha that get by without Him.
The Heortlings are the greatest storm worshiping people in the world. They know more secrets and powers of the storm than any other people and worship it as Orlanth. Therefore Orlanth is the Great God of Storm. The Heortlings also have a god of the sun, but they only know a few limited sun powers. The Dara Happans also worship the sun, but they know far more secrets and powers of the sun than any other culture, so their sun god is the Great God of the Sun. Yet Elmal is not a pure subset of Yelm, he has foibles and limitations that Yelm does not have, and fulfils a place in Heortling culture that Yelm cannot. Therefore Elmal is not Yelm, even though the sun is still the sun for both cultures.
>Even if Alkor is the only fertile part of Shargash worship, he's
still part
>of the great god, in the same way that Harst, Yavor, and Matakos are
part
>of Orlanth the great god. If Alkor has fertility aspects, large or
small,
>Shargash has them as well. You wouldn't say that Ernalda does not
have
>birthing powers because her midwife functions are accessed through
worship
>of Eninta.
Alkor gets his fertility powers from his mother Alk, not his father Shargash. Eninta gets her birthing powers from Ernalda, but expresses them in a more specialised way. You are not comparing like with like.
>Humakt, on the other hand, is cosmologically
>necessary, but you'd be hard pressed to build a society on Him.
I call for exhibit number one, the Kingdom of War.
I think Peter Metcalfe and I see eye to eye on this :
>Now by acknowledging Orlanth, I do not mean that they must have
>some sort of entity called Orlanth in their pantheon who dresses
>up like the Heortlings do. Instead they have some sort of entity
>whom the Orlanthi can recognize as their god.
Indeed. Non-heortlings still need to breathe. Their world still contains storms, wind and rain even though they do not worship Orlanth. Even if they worship lesser gods of the rain, wind and storms, the Heortlings know more of these things and have a more complete mythology describing their relationship with them. Therefore these other cultures cannot easily deny the power and truth of the Orlanthi religion. This is why the Lunar Empire has such a hard time in Dragon Pass.
Simon Hibbs
End of The Glorantha Digest V8 #500
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