I think "connected somehow" is not a fumbled attempt to express the thought "identical". I think this is sufficiently clear, in fact, from the entire passage that I'm happy to rest on the evidence produced thus far, and invite you, the members of the jury, to retire and consider said passage in full, rather than trouble to trundle out larger and larger quotes from it.
> > > How so? I've already admitted that it requires the existence
> > > of a "fused aspect", something not covered in HW.
>
> >Well, that'd be an example of the sort of problem it'd cause, yep.
>
> Why is this a "problem"?
Because it's an invention of of whole cloth; because it _assumes_ that they're the same goddess, and then gives her/them a set of overlapping aspects to explain why they appear different; because it assumes her/they _have_ aspects in HW sense (i.e. are "Great Goddesses", which is where we came in, again...); because it results in exactly the same question re-arising at the "aspect" level, despite these assumptions.
> > > [Tolat/Shargash are the s]ame deity, even their runes are the same.
>
> >Well, I certainly don't think that there's some theistic Pauli
> >exclusion principle at work, which says that if two entities have
> >the same runes, they must be absolutely identical...
>
> I do not believe that they are "absolutely identical".
Well, identity was specifically the point at hand -- hence my on-going subject line. (As specifically opposed to relatedness, similarity, or non-pointwise equivalence.)
> What I believe is that cults to the same god will vary in some
> places quite markedly (i.e. Somash and Yelm being both cults to
> the same Great God of Fire).
i.e., you _are_ asserting that there's an "entity" whose identity in a crisp sense can be proved or disproved, and that while the cults may vary, it's simply something that happens at a "lower level" in some way. (Such as aspect or subcult variation.)
> As for the Theistic Pauli Principle, the godplane can be
> characterized as erasing individual differences.
Certainly. But not all differences beyond runic associations, which are themselves simply necessarily imperfect human descriptions.
> > > In any case,
> > > the lack of certainty about Oria is solely caused by published
> > > evidence to date - it is not a sign that gloranthans are
> > > confused about whether Oria is the same goddess as Ernalda
> > > or not.
>
> >The key question isn't one of confusion on the part of Gloranthans,
> >but of disagreement between them. And magically effective differences
> >of opinion, at that.
>
> There's nothing indicating any sign of disagreement about whether
> Oria is Ernalda or not. We just simply don't have any published
> information to state with certainty whether such a dispute exists
> or not.
I agree there's a lack of info (upon which to theorise, or indeed to do anything useful with); my point is that I wish to dispute that the appearance of this info will (necessarily, at least) make this question crystal clear. Such matters are subject to doubt and argument in Glorantha; respect for the subject matters says to me that we should leave some room for doubt in our descriptions of it.
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