> >Wow. I can't see this. It is contrary to human
> >psychology (let alone Aldryami) to recognize any
> >person's culture as better than your own, absent
> >forcible proof.
> I didn't say culture, I specified _a_ god and the
> sense of inferiority was in the sense of being
> weaker than another god in a particular area, not
> an overall inferiority in gods (and certainly not
> culture!).
Well, OK. So I can't see most people being willing to admit that some other culture's god of whatever (if it is important, like the sun usually is) is superior to their own culture's. I think you would have to beat it into them, repeatedly. I'd agree on gods that, even in their own culture, are relatively unimportant (hunter gods, say). But these are not likely to be Great Gods anyway, which is what we were talking about.
I'm searching for good examples. There are not that many where two theistic cultures worship different gods of a single rune and one is great god where the other is not. I can't remember who the Dara Happans worship as their Earth Great Goddess. Is it an Ernalda cognate?
> >As an alternative example (one that helps prove my
> >point, of course), consider Orlanth and Storm Bull
> >for a Praxian.
>
> A bad example to use. We have been talking about
> theistic cultures yet the Praxians are animist and
> play by different rules.
I don't buy this explanation. You used the yellow elves as an example, and the elves play by extremely different rules, since they can mix and match theism and animism without even identifying them as such.
> >(And yes, I do recognize that you are
> >arguing that the great gods are the ultimate
> >_theistic_ expression of the runes they hold and
> >the Praxians are _animists_, but I do not (yet?)
> >see how that makes a difference.)
>
> There can only be one great god of a given rune and
> any theist that investigates the cosmos will
> recognize the great god behind a given
> manifestation.
I doubt the second half of this statement. How does a theist recognize that a particular god is a Great God? None of the descriptions of Orlanth in his hall on the God Plane seem to imply this to me. In fact, aspects (with which our heroes on the god plane seem to interact) seem to exist precisely to bring the unknowable down to comprehensible levels. Do you recognize a Great gods because he shifts aspects?
> However animists, because they use
> different magics, will not make this recognition.
So the elves would recognize Somash as the greatest of whatever rune that can be worshipped by sacrifice [i.e., theistically] but not by dance [i.e., animistically]?
> Hence Praxians won't recognize Orlanth as the source
> of Storm and thus they won't recognize Storm Bull as
> being weaker in storm than Orlanth.
Bull. (Heh. Sorry.) They don't recognize Storm Bull's Little Brother as being stronger because he isn't. All Praxians know that Rain Man is weaker than Storm Bull. Rain Man does not even show up every year.
I think a better argument is that a theistic Great God's power does not fully emanate into the Spirit Plane. The implication of this, though, is that the Great Gods are not universal. You could have a Great Spirit that is the animistic "rune holder" from a GL standpoint that is not the equivalent of the theistic one.
Since I don't buy this argument either (I only said it
was a better argument, not a true one), I think the
real answer is that ordinary Gloranthans are not able
to rate the gods of their own cultures compared to
those of other cultures. They will use the exact same
sort of evidence (and be subject to the same sorts of
physchology) as people in the real world. The
greatest gods of their culture will be, from their
perspective, the greatest gods around. If you can
show them any sort of proof that your god is somehow
more powerful than their god of that type, they will
do one of the following
(a) deny it (and maybe try to kill you for blasphemy)
(b) explain it (well, sure, your god can blast me into
a million smithereens, but can he light my garden?)
(c) die trying to disprove it (d) engage in some form of syncretic worship (e) go crazy
Chris
Powered by hypermail