Julian Lord:
> > > 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.
I don't follow this at all. Channeling _of what_? As the process is fundamentally the same for atheists and liturgical wizards, I don't see how your description about is appropriate or helpful. (If it essentially collapses to "channeling energies, their provision or not by God being a matter of opinion", then we really are none the wiser at all.)
Isn't _manipulating_ said energies a more apt description, however? 'Channeling' conjures up (as it were) images of the sorceror incarnating or haggling with some manifest entity, which isn't correct at all.
> > Come to that,
> > how meaningful is the latter conception, entirely?
["that part of the god that performs the Feats in question"]
> 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.
No, the air, the warmth of a summer day, are the manifest portions of those gods (among other things). The _magic_, the Feat, is the act that evokes those in a particular manner. I realize this may be a small point, but if there's a larger one to be had in this thread it's eluding me. ;-)
> 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.
At least in intention... (Dice, stats and GM veto permitting.) Then again, nowhere is it written that the player's responsibility in co-creation of the experienced game world begins and ends at the physical or cosmological boundary of his or her character's person. (i.e., "So what?").
> 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).
Yes, the theist would say that that their magic acts to "open" the liminal portal (which is probably a triple tautology...) and the god manifests through it. An atheistic sorceror or a hard-core mystic would have a different take, certainly. (The 'god' is an inappropriately anthropomorphised natural force/a product of your internal conflicts and misunderstanding, and the magic a by-product of that/those Grave Error(s).) Animism and theism are blurring together at the edges too much for me to come up with a stereotyped dismissal from that POV, off the top of my head. ('That entity doesn't play for Team Spirit' would be about the best I could do at short notice.)
--__--__--
Powered by hypermail