> > Theists do not 'channel' divine power. They're not sorcerors.
>
> You're implying that sorcerors _do_ channel divine power?
I'm implying that possibility, yes, but not categorically.
Malkioni sorcerors do certainly 'channel' energies provided by God.
Evil sorcerors and witches of the hooked-nose and pointed, dirty fingernail variety may channel energy from other sources (viz. HPG posts passim), although ultimately all of Creation is made of Divine energies from God (4 Worlds objections to that statement duly noted, but blithely ignored by all Good Malkioni).
> > By duplicating the actions of their deity in the Myth Time of Sacrifice
> > and theistic Worship, they gain the ability to incarnate that part of the
> > god that performs the Feats in question. Crucially, those portions of
> > the god are transcendentally "swapped" (if you like) for the Initiate's
> > Free Will and Sacrifices. The god gains Free Will to the exact measure
> > of the Initiate's use of the Feats in question, which are exactly equal
> > to the amount of divinity that is manifest as the Initiate's magic.
>
> This sounds like Heortling-style theism to me.
Right. GDiD is getting old, Graham. Any chance for speedier, more regular GDs ? It's difficult to remember what these threads were about, sometimes, and how they started etc. ...
> AFAICS, in for example
> "old time" Dara Happa, this would not have been the method used:
> emulation of or identification with the deity would have been seen
> as presumptuous and heretical
Careful : I made a deliberate distinction between "the god" and "that part of the god that performs the Feats in question".
This is deliberately vague, and I wouldn't want to make more precise statements about my blanket understanding of theism.
> (Greg has commented that Yelmgatha's
> schtick was actually "very un-Yelmic" by the contemporary standard).
> Their method would rather be dominated by ritual, manifest sacrifice,
> and morality of a "top down" nature. (Do what Yelm says, as opposed
> to do what yelm did.)
All of these things, Yelmgatha's schtick, manifest sacrifice, what Yelm says, what yelm did, and a jillion others are "parts of Yelm" in my understanding.
> > Not quite : the Initiate actually * doesn't * know how to do the magic
> > (except in some forms of weird Lunar sorcery etc, and other rare
> exceptions).
> >
> > Only the god has the knowledge. The gnosis.
>
> Sounds to me that you're citing (an alleged) cosmology here
Correct. NDA & HPGisms. And IIRC RQ Dailies passim.
> > > 1) The feat imparts transient knowledge of the Vingan feat/myth to the
> > > recipient, allowing them to re-enact it like the Vingan.
> >
> > No. The Feat is itself a transcendental portion of Vinga.
>
> You're speaking of a feat as if it were an otherworldly entity, which
> doesn't even seem "well-typed". Say rather that a Feat is _the act
> of_ manifesting a portion of Vinga. (I'll skip "transcendental", if
> it's all the same...)
It's the same statement taken from a different direction.
You can skip "transcendental" all you like (U don't like the taste, IIRC), but an act of transcendence is implicit in your statement, explicit in mine.
Julian Lord
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