> Could someone please point me to the sources of information on
> initiation in Heortling society?
Anything about Heortling society is concentrated in Thunder Rebels. There are a few extra tidbits like the myth of Orlanth's initiation in King of Sartar.
Other than that, there is yet unpublished info in Greg's novel Harmast Saga (and no, I haven't read that), a rudimentary RuneQuesty description in the RQ-Scenario Apple Lane (which has been redone for Hero Wars and is/was on the Issaries website), and lots of discussion on the digest available via http://glorantha.temppeli.org.
> (Also, is there an overall index for the Gloranthan literature?
Under construction, but has been so for the last ten years, really. I'm working on a database which gives page references for all Gloranthan sources. If you have a specific question, drop me a mail, and I'll see what I have so far.
> Are there supplementary indexes available
> for the books or boxed sets that don't have their own indices? Is this
> a niche waiting for someone to claim it?)
You could always volunteer to produce an index for Issaries, or help me with my project.
> I'm particularly interested in when initiation happens and how the
> initiands' lives change from before to after.
> From his timeline of life events, Minaryth Purple
Read again: that's Minaryth Blue of the Hiording Clan of the Colymar, not our esteemed Wild Sage of Jonstown.
> seems to have been
> initiated at about 14. Was this early, or just part of a "16 +- 2yrs"
> curve?
There are two stages of initiation. First is the general adulthood rite, second is the cultic initiation. They are usually a year or more apart.
> I've seen some comments about second initiation -- as in Bryan's
> response to one of our questions on the Heroquest-RPG list about the
> education of women -- but I haven't managed to track down any more
> information about first and second initiations. If there are two,
> what's the difference between them and what's the status of people
> between first and second initiation?
Adult communal worshipper is what you become with the adulthood rites. That's access to common magic.
> I also remember a comment somewhere -- maybe in John Hughes' writings --
> about the wrongness of boys who hadn't been iniitated bearing weapons.
> If I extrapolate this to women I find myself with either a conundrum or
> a cultural difference. I find it difficult to imagine that a normal
> Heortling 8-year-old girl can't use a drop-spindle or help her aunts
> weave the starting bands for warping the loom. Is weaving instead a
> "woman's mystery", not taught until after initiation?
There is a biological difference to tell when females need to undergo adulthood initiation. The female Orlanthi religion is somewhat different from the male religion, too, in accepting a sequence of initiatory stages depending on age and fertility. There is no old men's cult in the Orlanthi religion.
Weaving is much like plowing - it takes some experience to do it right. Boys' acquaintance with weapons (tools of death) is balanced by girls' personal experiences with fertility (or rather its by-effects).
> Do children under
> the protection of Voria and Voriof have distinct gender roles? Children
> in this society are likely to be economically useful from an early age,
> and they won't all be shepherding or picking flowers: what restrictions
> do you think there should be on what they can do?
I suppose there is the usual sociological pressure to fit into the role models, and no great grief when the child develops contrary to the role models.
Cheers,
Joerg
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