RE: Re: Winter Animist Practice or Tradition

From: Jane Williams <janewilliams20_at_...>
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 08:01:16 +0100

> > > But given that virtually every major natural phenomenon
> (the sun, the
> > > winter, the dark, the mountain, the river) is going to
> have at least a
> > > God and a Spirit associated with it,
> >
> > That, I think, may be going too far. In this case we know
> of a being treated
> > as a god, and a being treated as a spirit, with a question
> as to whether
> > they're the same. I doubt if that applies to *everything* else.
> > Generalisations rarely work in Glorantha.
 

> Really? Name one of the things I mentioned that doesn't have
> both a god and a spirit associated with it.

Come off it - that would be sinking to the level of "I can't find documentary already-written evidence for it therefore it doesn't exist". I don't deal in that sort of rubbish. I'm quite sure there is at least one mountain that does not have a god associated with it, somewhere. In fact, I suspect it's the norm. But I'm not going to go to the effort of writing it up just to prove it.

> While a *given* river or mountain might
> not, there are ones with each.

Of course, but you said "the" mountain, not "a" mountain. There will be mountains with spirits, mountains with gods, mountains with both, and possibly even mountains with neither, though that sounds pretty scarey and unnatural to me.

> If it is basic enough to affect all people on a day to day level, then
> all peoples are going to have a myth for it. Since some are
> animist and some are theistic, you're going to find redundancy.

Yep.

But the next question is "are the god and the spirit the same entity"? And the only logical question after that is "how would you find out, in-game?" The answer to which is (usually) either "you can't", or "you can HQ for the answer, and then you as a player end up defining what it is". What the answer may be in meta-game terms is irrelevant and useless.