janewilliams20_at_GIEehUiNQotiEIpw82nseJXXkNTZeEwYejk2ikaRBKEJRUmtqpXWt9vd4ywAIkHHdtl2Pm_ukh26Ws0qk89nQpQRa4VV.yahoo.invalid:
>--- Greg Stafford <Greg_at_1Ca5-mstCF2S1gSNISd-DPX8iuBqqjuN083VWf0Sy65YBjZBvNN6Y2DCDLUs4LZWDHnnoSQXlXdA.yahoo.invalid> wrote:
>
>> "Sorcery is something you DO, Animism is something
>> you HAVE, and Theism is something you ARE."
>>
>> One of the ways to understand what the GL did was to
>> understand that
>> the GL went to the Gods War to learn magic that they
>> could bring back
>> with them and reproduce through spells kept in
>> grimoires or other
>> magical items. So many of their secrets revolved
>> around being in a
>> theist myth and capturing a method of doing magic
>> hat was external to
>> themselves, rather than internal as it would have
>> been for theists.
>
>And this sounds like a real difference. Treating the
>magic of one Otherworld as if it was the magic of
>another. Looking around for parallels, I can think of
>two other groups who do this sort of thing:
>
>1) Lunars. They've invented their own Otherworld, and
>mix the existing ones.
>
>2) Tricksters. Which is an intriguing thought, when
>you consider that this trick, too, backfired, and on a
>huge scale.
And IIRC, "Storm Tribe" says that Eurmal was the founder of the Godlearners.
That's what Heortlings believe, anyway.
There's a much more common example of this, too--Misapplied Worship.
Humakt is a god, but ornery nomadic savage that I am, I can't make the
changes in myself to become more like Humakt and get his (theistic)
magic. So I treat his feats as being something outside myself,
something I can bargain with, like spirits.
I think Sword Man is supposed to go back to the first age, right? So
misapplied worship goes back before the God-Learners, and might have
been an inspiration for them, once they figured out what was going on.
Unless our current take on the First Age is the result of GL
meddling...