Re: Glorantha Digest, Vol 11, Issue 100

From: Light Castle <light_castle_at_sympatico.ca>
Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2005 03:23:23 -0400


On 5 Apr 2005 at 22:00, Simon Hibbs wrote:

> Light Castle is having problems with Humakt appearing as a god, and
> also as a weapon wielded by other gods, and how that works:

Not so much that, I don't mind the metaphor central to myth. It's just that as this
discussion has gone on, the fact that we don't really have any other death stories of
note except the monomyth has begun to bother me.

> Certainly the Malkioni don't believe Death is limited to being a god,
> and animists would have no problem with spirits of death, but
> presumably you're talking in a purely theist contex.

Not really. I'm wondering about how those systems are going to view Death. The West
seems it could have Death without any god of death or someone controlling death, even
an Angel of Death. God kills when God kills, that's what it is. Or Death maybe entered
the world when it broke the first time, and before that there was no death. As for the
Animists, I'm not sure. There are spirits of the dead, but is there a Spirit that is Death?
  Lots of spirits can kill, but I'm not sure that's the same thing.

  > The other death gods come from different cultures. They will differ
> from Humakt due to the different way each culture interprets and deals
> with death. I think the theyalan Humakt is particularly potent because
> he embodies death is a relatively neutral way. Even Humakt's other
> association with truth is mainly seen as emphasizing the indepentence
> and impartiality of death.

And I think you are right here. And this is why Humakt almost seems to be an impartial
an pervasive version of Death. But while we've accepted this default position, we really
have nothing to compare it with. And that is making me think accepting Humakt as
Death: impartial and unchanging and pervasive is just laziness caused by not hearing
the other myths.

> A culture that saw death as being a partisan figure, perhaps seducing
> the living in order to further some world-destroying agenda, might be
> a potent god as such, but not as powerfull an embodiment of death per
> se because that is only one possible form death can take. Such a god
> is manifesting a particular form or interpretation of death, rather
> than death in all it's forms, which Humakt does to such an extent that
> the members of his cult stand apart from their own culture in a number
> of important ways.

True. But Humakt as he has been presented is partial. He is only honorably death. He
eschews poison. Disease appears to be not his provnance, and yet all these things
bring Death. So he is not all forms of death, even in his quasi-impartial form we know.

LC


End of Glorantha Digest, Vol 11, Issue 103


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