> robert darvall:
>
> >So in a sense all heroquests are grounded in the mundane world as
> this
> >IS where they took place. When is more questionable as historical
> >events can also be mythical & therefore part of the Godtime as other
> >posters so ably argue.
>
> 'Where they took place'. You see, temporal based thinking keeps
> creeping in. Heroquests and the 'mythic age' did not, of course,
> happen in the
> past at all. They happened outside time, and so are in fact happening
> all around us right now. In fact in some sense _now_ is the _only_
> time in which they are ever happening.
There is a big difference, in my opinion, between HeroQuests in the mundane world and HeroQuests that cha nge myths.
Anyone can perform a HeroQuest in the mundane world and it will make not ajot of difference to the myths. These are the normal, commonplace HeroQuests that most people do.
The other kind of HeroQuest is the type that changes or creates myths. This kind of HeroQuest is only carried ut by Heroes, Demigods and Deities. Such a HeroQuest will allow others to coy the HeroQuest and gain benefits from doing so.
HeroQuests that were performed within History but have changed Myths include The Creation of Nysalor, Lightbringers Quest, much of the Arkat HeroQuesting, Creation of the Red Goddess, Castle Blue and First Battle of Chaos, although there are many, many more. These all took place during Time but had a substantial part outside of Time.
Many of the actions of Arkat, Nysalor, Red Goddess, Red Emperor, Sheng Seleris and The Pharoah also involved Quests that changed myths, these can be accessed by other people who can visit those times and places within what we used to call GodTime. So, trolls can visit where Gbaji wounded Korasting, Lunars can take part in the Red Goddess' GodQuest, Orlanthi can go to Castle Blue and so on. There is no difference between these Mythic Events and the Mythic Events before Time.
> Any discussion predicated on the proposition that "Heroquests
> happened _before_ history" is doomed because how can you have
> anything 'before' time? This is why you can only do a major quest
> once - there's not such thing as the first time, second time or last
> time you perform a myth, they are all the same event. When you appear
> to do a quest multiple times they're realy just different views of
> the same thing from different perspectives.
You can do a HeroQuest as many ties as you like. However, you can only make a myth once. Any further attempts at the same HeroQuest are copies of the first one, unless you are planning to change the myth.
> Yet we can see that the world around us appears to the the product of
> mythic events that shaped them in the past. That's because we're not
> percieving reality as it truly is, we're only seeing one slice of it.
> All the myriad aspects of the true world - the material world,
> underworld, hero planes, otherworlds, god world and ultimate
> transcendent reality are normaly impercievable to us except in
> fleeting glimpses. Our experience of the world is as an ongoing
> process of discovery, but the process and state of conciousness
> imposes a certain structure on that which we discover. The fact that
> there seems to be a histrical development of myth is because we
> explore and discover myth through history, not because the mythic
> world itself has any historical component.
I disagree with this, to some extent. Things that happened in GodTime are historical in that they have happened. They are not part of Time, but that doesn't make them any less historical. Perhaps the myths are cylical, non-linear or otherwise outside of Time, but they have had an impact on the world.
> I suppose what I'm saying is that so long as you talk about myth in
> terms of it happening 'before' time or in any way in the past, you
> will always confuse myth with history. It's inevitable because it's
> implicit in your choice of language. The problem is, we're trapped by
> the fact that our languages impose this structure on the debate in a
> way that is almost impossible to avoid. We just need to be aware of
> that and keep it in mind.
But, in Glorantha, there were events that happened and were recorded as having happened, before Time started. Time is only 1600-odd years old, allowing for the Sunstop event, but things happeed before that. I's ust that before Time, things could not be measured in terms of how many years BST as manyof the events did not follow in any particular sequence.
We can try to sequence some of the events and some have a definite cause and effect, but some events can't be put into sequence. This is where the language of Time falls down as these are non-Temporal. They are, however, historical as they form part of History, whether it be Mythical History or whatever. No Orlanti would dout that Orlanth compleed the Lightbringers Quest, for instance, and they would know that this happened in the past. The fact that you can HeroQuest to that place and take part in it doesn't change the fact that it happened.
See Ya
Simon (Phipp not Hibbs)
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