Re: Bashing Runequest - why bother

From: parental_unit_2 <parental_unit_2_at_...>
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 19:02:42 -0000

> Although I agree fully with this paragraph, it raises an initial
> question - what is a Heortling "temple"?...
> None of this is really answered in Thunder Rebels

>From TR I got the impression that a temple is a site, not a building,
but there wasn't much explanation of how the temple institutions worked.

Somewhere (maybe not TR) I remember reading that the temple of warrior gods like Helemakt was the worshipper's warband, which makes eminent good sense. The worshippers "priests" in such a "temple" would probably just be the warband leaders who worship in the same subcult.

There might be other cults (e.g. Eurmal) that don't have any fixed "temples" in the sense of places of worship, just an organization, or maybe not even that.

> Agreed. I think that the Orlanthi (and most other people) have a
> confusing mess of overlapping "temples". Things will tend to be
> organized on a clan and tribal level (since that's how the
> Heortlings organize their communities), but there will be all sorts
> of exceptions, intratribal "temples" (Chalana Arroy, Storm Bull,
> etc.) and holy places (Clearwine Earth Temple, Hill of Orlanth
> Victorious, etc.).

This makes sense -- if the temple is a site, then the temple institution might just be the social group that has the legal right to worship in that site. Several clans or tribes might have rights to a given site. Presumably there's some form of committee of worshippers or the like to manage access to a site in this case. The representatives to the committee of an inter-tribal site would probably be priests from various tribes.

> No, I think that there are "temples" that serve the tribe and not
> just a clan....
> Priests for these "temples" are appointed by the tribe,
> not a given clan. Same thing might be true for certain holy places
> that the tribe collectively controls. Does that make any sense?

I think so. And for "weird" cults like those covered in _Storm Tribe_, all temples are probably inter-tribal, simply because there aren't enough worshippers for any of those cults to justify having a dedicated site for a tribe.

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