Re: Idols

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_cs.ucc.ie>
Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2001 20:14:30 +0100 (BST)


Jerome Blondel:
> I think at the Dawn their practices had changed. The Artmali made them into
> an urban culture. IMO idolatry was started by the Artmali, whose sacrifices
> to giant golden statues made a strong impression on the natives. [...]

> OTOH, the entities they contacted, well, who could that be if not their own
> spirit friends of old?

So in summary, you think their new gods/idols are their old spirits (or the same part of the other side "at some level"), worshipped by a (somewhat) different method. (Personally I suspect this is not an entirely uncommon pattern, but it does require taking the HW misapplied worship rules with a pinch of salt. (Pinch of chili powder might be more like the thing.))

> Thus, the core practice is the sacrifice, which feeds the daimon so that it
> doesn't sleep. But the daimons are still somehow dealt with as if they were
> spirits. In order to attract the entity into the idol, the worshippers must
> summon it from the Otherworld.

I'm curious, though, as I alluded to before, if this amounts to the sorts of "sacrifice of the self" to the deity characteristic of theism. Does it serve as an entity to be emulated, as the Heortling gods do? Or as the source of moral structures, as with the Dara Happans?

As described, it doesn't sound especially different from the sorts of "totemic" stuff that the Praxians, say, do.

> In some cases, extatic cult would be performed as part of the ritual (just
> as sacrifices are part of some extatic cult rituals)

Indeedy to both.

[evisceration for all the family snipped]

> I like the way you describe the relationship with the guardian being, so
> it's noted.

You're most kind...


End of The Glorantha Digest V8 #591


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