Matthew Cole:
>Theism - Godworld
>Animism - Spirit World
>Sorcery - Essence World
>
>I've a question...
>
>What about dragon magic? Has anyone discovered a draconic plane?
Rather than analyse this on the basis of worlds, I'll look at it from the point of view of world views. This is highly speculative.
In the classical Hero Wars model we had four magical world views:
The Materialist View: The Malkioni world view. The world is made of matter which has knowable properties and can be analysed rationaly and obeys logical laws.
The Theistic view: The world is ruled by authoritative personalised entities that are worthy of worship and embody moral principles.
Personal: The Animist view. The world is inhabited by spirits that have no individual authority, but can be dealt with on an equal basis.
Mystical: The world is a magical illusion that distractsus from the true goal of enlightenment, transcending individual personality.
These are all attitudes about the world we live in, and strategies for coping with it. However these strategies are trapped between two poles - those of the Knowable and the Unknowable world.
The knowable world is the world we can understand and interact with meaningfuly. The unknowable world is the apparently arbitrary world of events and forces that are capricious and can create or destroy without apparent sense or meaning. The knowable world is most commonly manifest in the Giants, implacable forces of nature that we can understand and relate to personaly. The unknowable world is manifested by the dragons, who operate according to an alien agenda yet are clearly part of the natural order of things. Both are entirely neutral though, and can be forces for good or evil, even though they are not themselves either of these by nature.
Imagine a square with Materialism, Theism, Animism and Mysticism at the corners. Now imagine an axis through the centre of the square, perpendicular to it's surface. The Knowable world of the Giants and the Unknowable world of the Dragons can be imagined to exist at opposite ends of this axis.
Bryan's answer on the YahooGroup is very close to my view, but I would say that the dragons represent the unknowable middle world, while the giats represent the knowable.
Simon Hibbs
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