Re: Divine identities

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_cs.ucc.ie>
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 20:52:41 +0100 (BST)


simonh_at_msi-uk.com:
> I think your reference to panentheist theories (I think you
> specificaly
> mentioned Hinduism) is apt. They would probably say that clearly
> Orlanth
> has destructive aspects. Shargas is a god of destruction, so therefore
> there is a conection. They would not afaik therefore identify Orlanth
> with Shargash. They would simplky say that they share a part of their
> natures at some transcendent level.

I think this is what the "sophisticated" Dara Happan view would say, yes. The GRAY (I think it was) comment is perhaps expressing a somewhat similar sentiment, "with knobs on". (A slur, as Mr. Metcalfe says, but I'd add myself, not one without an element of truth.)

> To panentheists, gods are not discrete entities in the way that we
> believe that people are discrete entities. Rather, there is a cosmic
> divine essence that is all pervasive. Our eyes are designed to detect
> particular wavelengths of light, within certainranges of wavelength.
> In reality, light exists at (effectively) a continuous range of
> wavelengths that is not meaningfully decribed by the way our eyes
> detect it.

Yes. One of my favourite complaints (as it were) is to tell people they're (wrongly, in some given context) that they're "discretising a continuum". (A favourite retort at this point is to tell me there's no such verb as "to discretise".) It's a natural way for humans to understand the world (perhaps a necessary one, contra the "fuzzy logicians"), but it's not necessarily always accurate.

It's worth pointing out that this is both an understanding internal to Glorantha (the above Pelorian "sophisticates" might express something similar, esp. in the "gods as masks" metaphor), as well as being a sometimes handy meta-account. An Orlanthi would look at you as if you were barking mad if you tried to explain the nature of the gods in such terms, and he'd be right to, since for her, the internal understanding, as it applies to _her_ gods, is indeed superior. But these external accounts can be useful when making cross-cultural comparisons. (In other words, in such contexts, it's just a "kinder, gentler" exercise in God Learning, really.)


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