History of the mythic periods

From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_quicksilver.net.nz>
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2005 00:44:42 +1200

Malk

>I
>thought that a fundamental aspect of God Time was that events are
>non-linear, perhaps even simultaneous, because there was/is no time in
>God Time. Events falling in apparently impossible sequences of cause
>and effect during the God Wars are a feature of that, aren't they?

Partly true. However there is a basic sequence in mythic eras ranging from creation through to the great darkness. Moreover many cultures describe the mythic eras in terms of history. For example, the Kralori believe that it lasted five million generations, the Dara Happans believe that it lasted 111,000 years, the Vithelans describe it terms of five cycles of ten billion years, the Malkioni know that between the Sun's disappearance and return, there were 14,825 turnings of the Red Sands of Time and so forth. Even the Orlanthi reckon much of mythic time in terms of genealogies. Don't bother trying to fit the different chronologies up into an united version - it doesn't work and gloranthan historians are well aware of the fact and blame the foreign mythologies.

So it is possible to understand gloranthan myth sequentially.

That's not to deny that events can take place out of historical sequence - they do - but that most events are understandable historically. The origin of the apparent discrepancies are manifold:

• the original myth might have been distorted for political or dramatical reasons
• An original entity in the myth has been replaced by another entity, thus screwing up the chronology.
• There actually was a chronological discontinuity
• The cause is magical or mystical in origin and understanding it non-historically brings you closer to enlightenment.

--Peter Metcalfe

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