Great discussions. Keep it up!
>>> Are there any other candidates for instinctive heroquests?
>That still doesn't explain why so many human societies in
>Glorantha have so many rituals in common. Why do they parallel
>each other so much? Either these rites were communicated in some way
>across all Glorantha (contrary to mythic history), or they emerge
>naturaly from instinctive behaviour.
I'd like to expand upon the idea that some human actions are instinctive, and thus create automatic (instinctive) HeroQuests. These activities provide to human beings a confrontation with the Great Mystery, whether such confrontation is sought or not. The universal heroquests concerning these events are then the response to those intrusions, rather than these heroquests being the source of those events.
Let's look at sex. I will propose that orgasm, the petite mort that is a universal biological reaction to this blessed event, is an intrusion of the Great Mystery into the everyday lives of human beings. As a result of this various human societies have evolved, discovered or constructed ways to frame or contain the power. These containers are the rituals and rites of heroquesting.
Note that I am using HQ in its broadest sense here. This is not just the conscious repetition of a mythic story such as Arkat or the LBQ. This includes the entire range of actions that leads to an interface with the Other Side(s). It includes the regular seasonal rites and the personal magic as well.
Not just sex, but a variety of human actions are provocations of this nature. Anything that causes a confrontation with the Mystery, or that allows a leak of the Mystery into the everyday world, is an instinctive source for HeroQuesting. Thus as previously suggested, childbirth surely is one. I would propose that dying and killing are too, as well as the type of awe that can leave you speechless, biological changes such as puberty or impotence, intense nonsexual love, abject terror, and some others as well.
The Mysterious Acts are real and undeniable, and so is the reaction to contain and understand them within the mythic consequences of the subsequent heroquest. As a result, some of these Great Mysteries are brought within the understanding, or at least the controllable experience, of the participants.
Most of these deep instinctive actions occurred a long time ago, and the acceptable reactions are pretty well integrated into peoples' lives through their cultural practices. Using sex as an example again, people's attitudes towards this are framed and hemmed in by their cultural mores so that it is approached as something that might be primarily pleasurable, dangerous or even forbidden. The emotional attitude inevitably colors the way it is done, and this attitude is the equivalent of the ritual. Thus a Yelmite says "This is dangerous," and prepares himself appropriately to preserve his Precious Bodily Fluids. An Orlanthi, prepared for pleasure, acts differently.
So Harmast was confronted with the Mystery of the Death of the Universe. He sought to understand this, learned (with his collective) a number of ways that people contained the awesome experience, and consciously reconstructed those parts to create a way to deal with it.
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End of Glorantha Digest
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