>I'd like to suggest some thought and debate be given to the idea
that many
>heroquests are instinctive, known to everyone, and that the human
cultures
>are ways to limit them to be within acceptable norms.
I suppose I feel a certain responsibility to defend the suggestion.
Firstly it seems reasonable to suggest that childberth has resonances
with myth
and is evidently magical, therefore suggesting it's a heroquest isn't
completely
daft. Nevertheless it equaly obviously can't be a conciously learned
heroquest,
since children are concieved 'by accident' all the time (as my wife
and I
recently discovered ;)
I can't believe that casual sex, 'the R word that shall not be spoke
on
this list', and various other unplanned or unpremeditated sexual
encounters are
immune from the chance of leading to conception in Glorantha. This
naturaly
leads to the conclusion that perhaps the ritual/magical behaviours
associated
with conception and childbirth are instinctive.
Are there any other candidates for instinctive heroquests?
Well, there are many behaviours that human beings all over glorantha share, but which appear to have been developed independently. It's already been established that many human populations have different orrigins. Hsunchen are descended from beast ancestors; Praxians were once equal with animals, but were seperated from them in a completely different way to hsunchen; etc. Yet all human csocieties have rites of adulthood, mariage rituals, and so on. Perhaps these heroquests, while they have developed into more sophisticated local versions, are based on an essentialy instinctive basic behaviour?
Simon Hibbs
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