> At the most, there is one Great God per Core Rune would be
> a far better statement of my belief and this is in line with
> what various gloranthan publications say.
And (at least?) one Core Rune per Great God, no? These are problematic enough to be getting along with.
> >Better, I think, to take the approach that Great Gods are as much
> >cultural conceptions as the gods are themselves;
>
> Yuck. The gods are _not_ "cultural conceptions" but real beings.
The gods are not "beings" in for example the sorcerous or mystical understandings of Gloranthan; different theistic religions conceive the same "portions of the divine world" as _different_ beings (cf the Dendara/Entekos example again); and even some divine pantheons recognise the gods are not being "discrete commodities" (see the "masks" conception extant in Peloria).
> I do not see why we have to treat gods as intrinsically unreal
> (as labelling them conceptions implies) just so to get cultic
> variation across glorantha.
That is not what "labelling them conceptions" implies. Rather the point is that there's "something real" which is some cases effectively impossible to describe in a single finite sense. (Michael Cule's favourite parable is applicable here.) Thus we get (potentially) several different finite, incomplete descriptions (different theistic conceptions), or a single complete non-finite one that requires stepping outside of a theistic conception (to mysticism, or God Learnerism, for example).
> >there are clearly
> >"real" forces of high divinity (or accessible transcendence, if
> >Julian will forgive me...), but they are not, or at the very least
> >not necessarily, conceptualised in the same "discrete lumps" by
> >each religion.
>
> So is there a culture that blurs the "discrete lumps" of, say,
> Storm and Sun? If cultures can tell differences in forces of
> high divinity apart, then surely those differences are _real_
> and not merely due to "cultural conceptions"?
I am quite clearly not saying they're entirely mutable. Storm and Sun and probably are as near universal as makes no difference, and aren't exactly in much danger of overt "overlap". But you wouldn't get an entire set of "core runes" that _any_ two major cultures would agree to entirely, much less that any would. (The HW:RiG core rune set is explicitly caveated as to say as much.)
> You could point out that the difference in Death and Destruction
> are not well-defined and this is true. However I am not grounding
> the identities of the high divinities on lexical labels but the
> forces themselves. Since Humakt and Shargash are distinct entities,
> there is a real difference between those forces.
This is wholly circular. Death and Destruction are completely distinct because they correspond to different Gods, whom we assert to be Great in the particular sense of corresponding to Core Runes; the Core Runes must be wholly distinct because the gods are.
If we were to try and achieve an entirely objective, external description of Gloranthan divine mechanics (the Glor-Sim approach), I'd say the best description of, for example, Orlanth, Shargash, and Humakt certainly wouldn't equate any pair of them, but would recognise certain fundamental similarities and correspondances (whether on the "core rune" level or some deeper one). Mayhem inflicted in the name of either Sh. or H. to some degree (and I'm not even going to try and guess how much) gives "collateral" affirmation of the other, regardless of their many differences, for example. Orlanth and Shargash both stem from some cosmic principle of order-breaking, if you will. But such descriptions are too wooly to be any use to anyone (at least for most purposes) -- much better to ignore such questions of "cosmic identity", except as they actually matter from a particular world-view.
> So what meaningful improvement do we get by abandoning Great Gods
> and adopting High Divinities?
In what sense am I suggesting "abandoning" Great Gods? Rather I'm suggesting we be less free with the assumptions about them.
> so I fail to see where Alex gets the idea that I think my
> definition is entirely consistent with all senses of Great
> Gods.
I didn't say what I thought you thought it was; what I said was, _I_ didn't think it was completely consistent with _any_ of them. (Which is fair enough to a point, since they don't entirely agree with each other, either.) I think this is worth pointing out, as these definitions are slippery enough as it is without adding more grease in the name of "fixing" them.
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