One can certainly worship idols in an ecstatic manner -- just add sex, drugs, light blue touchpaper, and retire. Equally you can equally sacrifice to idols, at least in the "material" sense. This is where untold muddle between these supposedly crisply separated systems comes into play... The core test though, if there is one, is that theist practice has a moral element to it that's much stronger than other systems, as expressed in the stock phrase "core sacrifice is the self". This more or less means "I must do what Orlanth would do in such a situation", or "We must all do as Yelm has commanded". (I'm not saying other systems lack morals, but it's not as directly bound up in the worship act itself.)
If I were to generalise, then, my guess would be that most (Orlanthi most?) idol worship likely _was_ animist, in that one doesn't see oneself as obeying moral strictures that come directly from the idol. (But then again, maybe one does...)
> That's why i'd like to singularize her as much as possible.
> Her having a cult that gives no magic looks like a good way
> to do so. A very different cult from the Elamli norm is good
> too (maybe no idols for her devotees in that case).
Well, these days having a cult with no magic, or seriously rubbish magic, will just raise suspicions that they're mystics... ;-)
Peter Metcalfe:
> The explicit distinction in the myth between gods and spirits is
> heavyhanded IMO [...]
I'm glad I'm not the only one that thinks this; there's been something of a proliferation of these lately, and they pretty much invariably leave me cold (or at least cooler than I'd have been if the myth had found sound subtler, more endogenous means of expressing this truth).
Powered by hypermail