A few further rambling thoughts...
Yes, although if your clan has permanent hunting lodges/camps where the Ormalayons live, then a true Odaylan has an intermediatory in his mediations with wider systems.
wilderness : camp : stead :: Odaylan : Ormalayon : Barntari
you can extend this in a couple of directions, one of the most important being
individual : nuclear family : bloodline :: Odaylan : Ormalayon : Barntari
using Barntar as shorthand for the settled farming/herding way of life.
The aspects of extreme individuality, solitude and the liminality of the wilderness puts an Odaylan in a unique position within the communal, gregarious and stead-centred cosmology of the Heortlings. They'd be feared and distrusted by many because of what they represent. They'd also have a special place as mediator with unknown powers. (IMG Odaylans are the keepers of the Twelve Treasures of the Far Place. But in each case, they've taken these treasures - called the Twelve Shields of Odayla - into the gors and promptly forgotten where they put them, working on a trust that they will be found when they're needed again.)
Getting inside this rather unique mindset is the challenge. "Thinking like a mountain' is one term I've previously used in exploring the dimensions of the Odaylan way. It would involve a particular relationship to nature and landscape. It would involve a rare sort of patience at odds with the usual restless pragmaticism of the stead. It would involve special perspectives on life and on death. It would *not* involve the greed for cattle and status that drives wider Heortling society.
Religious and sacrificial impulses would be mainly personal. Individual experience - trance and vision and private ritual - largely replace the public sacrifice and communal ritual. Totemic identification replaces communal sacrifice as the dominant religious metaphor. In one sense, Odaylans can be seen as the contemplatives and mystics [not in the game sense], the desert fathers and hermits of Heortling society. The writeup mentions the shamanic parallels.
The Amerindian hunter vision quest analogy suggests itself, though this is in part, as Nils mentioned, because of our own culture's romanticisation of hunting and the potency of 'wilderness' for us as an organising symbol. Actual hunting cultures *can* celebrate the power of wilderness, but can also be remarkably blase.
Everything can be found in the wilderness; you only have to seek it. Hence the Gifting Way, the Walking Journey to seek a vision of the Sacred Mountains. Walking is worship. Pilgrimage is Power. Hunting is heroquest. Odaylans listen and talk to the land. They thoroughly explore the seven directions.
For me the question is, what exactly is this unique power put to? What are the mysteries of the Bear? What do his myths explore and celebrate? And what sort of hero does this cult and lifestyle produce? What is the balance between supporting/being part of the cycles of stead and community and opposition to it?
Odaylans also stand in opposition to communal stead life. As the writeup stresses, they recede as the wilderness recedes. Steads will be alien to them, or powerfully seductive, as permanent places have been to nomadic hunters throughout history.
Odayla : wilderness :: Barntar : stead.
Historically, hunting bands have never existed in isolation, they're always part of a larger network linking even the most isolated communities with wider entities. The solitude of the Odaylan puts him at an extreme.
Odayla has lots to offer. I suspect we've barely begun the exploration. Luckily, when the Goddess made time, she made plenty of it.
Cheers
John
nysalor_at_... John Hughes
Hindu thought is without dogma, and dogged by Dharma. Dharma means no distinction between chaos and order, accepting good and evil as indivisible, witnessing continuity as the moral order, being as a process of endless becoming. And yet to act. it means you cannot follow the Law. You are the Law.
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