> > Malkioni sorcerors do certainly 'channel' energies provided by God.
>
> I don't think that's their understanding, and I don't think it's true
> in the "standard cosmology".
'tis. IMHO. The Nodes and Sorcery Plane rules, the presence of spells as ultra-matter (in the neo-platonist sense) in those places, seem to imply that channelling * per se * _does_ occur.
Vae Newbies BTW. ;-)
> (Not in any direct sense: obviously
> in some sense, all magic has been "provided" by the Creator.)
Obviously.
> > > 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".
>
> And how meaningful is such a distinction to theists?
Not at all.
Well, not unless they are theist GLs, that is.
> Come to that,
> how meaningful is the latter conception, entirely?
It draws from Greg's entirely correct statements that a god _IS_ the thing that it's the god _of_. Orlanth IS the Storm, Yelm IS the Sun.
Hence Storm and Sun magics are (usually) manifest portions of those gods. And yes, there is some more Dreaded Great Gods Thread & HPG funkiness along that line of reasoning.
It's meaningful, anyway, to _some_ Gloranthan HQers and other powerful magicians.
> > > 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.
>
> They're quite different in the terms of the original point, it seems to
> me.
I can see your point, if that's any help.
> The Feat per se is something that the celebrant _does_, not some
> otherworldly "thing".
I think that it's both, except that it's not "otherworldly" per se, but "transcendental" : in the technical sense of existing in the Otherworld and the Inner World at the same time (during the manifestation).
There's an endless debate possible here, BTW, about whether from an internally Gloranthan POV the magician does the Feat or whether the god does. From a gaming POV the answer is (usually, but _not_ always and for every gaming group) that the magic is controlled (more or less) by the player. From the internally Gloranthan POV, gods are beings existing outside time and having no Free Will nor Power to Act Within Time except through a mortal agency (viz. RQDs & TotRMs passim).
Is that enough acronyms ?
Julian Lord
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