Re: Confusion over Zola Fel...

From: bethexton_at_...
Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2004 21:25:10 -0000

>
> I look in River of Cradles and the RQ3 Prosepedia, and Zola Fel
> is listed as a (male) God of the River.
>
> In the Pavis tribe section of the website, I see the 'Zola Fel
> Tradition', where she (sic) is described as the spirit of the
> River.
>
Prax is mostly anamist, and there is no particular reason to think that the Zola Fel doesn't fit into this. Old sources weren't all that clear on the difference between gods and great/majestic spirits (didn't the hsunchen worship a "god" too?). Or to put it another way, a RQ 'god' was a great and powerful being that received worship, be it god or spirit. A spirit was a small thing which gave magic, be it spirit or daimone.

So unless it amuses you, I'd go with ZF being a spirit.

>
> * How do the Pavic Sartarites who live on or along the River of
> Cradles worship Zola Fel?
>
> It would seem foolish for a Sartarite boatman or farmer to
> ignore propitiating Zola Fel, but it would also seem more
> natural for them to make sacrifices to Zola Fel the God then to
> engage in ecstatic rites to converse with Zola Fel the Spirit.

As someone else said, I suspect they treat it the same way that sartarites living along the Creek treat that river. Which is to say, there may be a few anamists among them who belong to the Zola Fel practice, but most would treat it like a landscape guardian. They make sacrifices to it, it gives them three blessings...and as long as they keep it up, it keeps up with the blessings.

Mind you, some may also give it misapplied worship as a god. There are probably no or at least few and weak natural holy places to the storm pantheon available to them. This means that they may have a real problem supporting the less popular gods...the whole clan will still manage decent orlanth worship even if the best they have is a miscellaneous hill for a temple, but the dozen Odaylans are going to have real problems. So very likely you still have Orlanth and ernalda worship, but many of the supporting gods may no longer be there, so people may turn to mis-applied worship of being who are stronger locally (ZF being a prime example).

Have fun!

--Bryan
>