From: "Michi Kossowsky" <michi_at_isdn.net.il>
>Ok, but the gods aren't stupid... they must know there are other deities
>around. Nonetheless, what I am hearing is that the gods each live in
>their own plane of existence and don't really have a mechanism for
>communicating across those planes, yes?
They aren't stupid but in some ways they are ignorant. Malkion just doesn't recognise any other deities as being deities therefore why should he/she/it bother to communicate with such inferior beings. Gods like Orlanth and Yelm do communicate but do so in ritualised ways. They are bound to do this by their natures and the compromise. Orlanth is disruptive to order while Yelm is obsessed with it, so their relationship is defined by that conflict.
>> The relationship of the gods with the Inner World
>> is a highly complex process (NOT static) that cannot be
>> accurately described using the binary functions of normal
>> Western logic.
>>
>> Although Greg has on occasion given it a pretty good shot ... ;-)
>
>Well, forgive me for being OOC for a sec, but given we are talking about
>an invented mythology here, and everyone involved in the creation is
>still alive, there should be some clear answers available. Unless no one
>knows and it is all just a bunch of technobable (or in this case
>mythobable)
Not necessarily, I think Greg has a pretty clear idea but can't explain it in english very well because the language doesn't have the concepts. None of the western languages are very good at describing things which don't fit into their cultural assumptions and an intimate relationship between the material and spiritual is definitely one of those things.
>As many point out, time doesn't happen for them, and 'all day' has
>little meaning - yes, I realize, I was just being anthropomorphistic,
>which is reasonable given how 'human' these gods are.
The gods appear 'human' because all the official material on the theistic religions is written from the point of view of cultures which anthropromorphise their gods. It's pretty clear to me that there is something more to these beings which is superhuman, and probably subhuman. How much the worshippers understand this I'm not sure but they must have some inkling because they know that the gods exist outside time.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/ --__--__--
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