> > Hardly. The comments about Tolat are fairly sparse and in
> > the only one-line description of his cult (Player's Book:
> > Genertela p34), his "cult somewhat resembles a combination
> > of the Humakt and Uleria cults".
>I'm happy to stipulate to the sparseness of the evidence (though
>what you've cited _precisely_ supports what I just said, in fact).
I do think there's a big difference between saying that X is fairly consistently described as Y and noting that there's only a single mention of X's cult somewhat resembling Z (which could be validly construed as Y but also could not be). Although weak reeds can be precise supports, it is still unwise to rest your argument upon them.
> > Since Tolat has his origins as the War God of the invading
> > Zaranistangi and was only later adopted as the lover of the
> > Marazi Amazons, I really see the Love in their cult as being
> > Lovers of the Lord of Destruction, rather than Tolat's core
> > nature having equal amounts of Death and Fertility.
>Since he has a specific "husband" role, including both sexual
>pleasure and procreation, his Fertility aspect seems to me to
>be fairly considerable. ("Equal amounts" was not part of my
>proposition.)
Since most gods can be said to have similar roles, I do find it very dubious to point to those roles as being evidence of a Fertility aspect and thus Tolat is a fertility deity. I prefer to reserve the label for deities with a far stronger fertility association than "sleeps with the missus".
In any case, Tolat only does this once a year and considering the full importance of his destructive nature, I'll hazard the guess that the night of Uxorial Ecstasy is the _only_ time that he's capable of doing so. Hence I'll have to disagree with the "fairly considerable" fertility aspect.
> > I really don't give a damn about whether the classification
> > of the divine world is objective or subjective. [...]
>What do you mean by "the" classification of the divine world?
>The point is that there are many such.
"the" refers to the system that you were objecting to, being based on gloranthan publications, past and present.
>You're clearly appealing to an objective one,
I am? It is?
>and either "not giving a damn" about the subjective
>cosmologies of cultures where they differ from this, or assuming
>that _they do not differ_, which I would certainly dispute.
I said nothing of the sort. I said I didn't give a damn about the philosophical basis of the classification and simply used it for its utility value. The issue of whether cultural cosmologies differ from it is a completely different question from whether the classification system is objective or subjective.
> > This really has no relevance. The problem with Dendara/Entekos
> > has one deity being two, but a goddess having two aspects in
> > one land while apparently having a fused aspect in another land
> > (a circumstance so far not covered in the Hero Wars line).
>On the contrary, it's specifically relevant. You're implying that
>the "identity problem" can in all cases be unambiguously solved (this
>god is strictly "the same as" that one; this one is strictly not),
>and the above account notwithstanding,
In the case of Dendara/Entekos, it is unambiguously recognized that Dendara is the same as Entekos, so how is this specifically relevant?
>this is a pretty clear indication
>that this is not the case, at least for the Gloranthans concerned.
>The proposed identity _is for them_ uncertain.
I really need examples before I could either affirm or demolish this. I don't know for which gloranthans is the identification of God X with God Y is uncertain and for the known case of the Dara Happans/Orlanthi, the identities [Orlanth/Terminatus, Shargash/Jagrekriand, Yelm/Evil Emperor etc] are certain.
> > Shargash is mentioned in Heortling mythos as
> > Jagrekriand and there is no indication in TR that he is
> > chaotic. Evil, yes...
>That seems to me to be highly problematic. If Shargash is universally
>recognised as being "the owner of" the Annihilation/Void rune, then
>I can't see how the Heortlings could perceive him as anything other
>than chaotic.
You are assuming that the Heortlings look at Shargash and see the Annihilation/Void rune. They don't but see the Shargash rune which does not have chaotic connotations and is somewhat present in their own runic system (its inverse, "V" is present in the individual runes of Arroin, Vorela and Votenerva, all healing deities).
>That they don't suggests to me that either he isn't,
>in any usefully universalist sense, or that the Orlanthi have some
>quite different perception of said Core Rune (which would rather
>negate the point of it being a Core Rune).
They have a different perception of the Core Rune but its power is still the same.
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