Re: Exclusive Worship

From: donald_at_zFbyTf8Od3Z4pvv0XHGcrm7PLSILMKxkedI13Mwj43d4hLnRaTmussFiKc_CRSKhrxvC_
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:39:54 GMT


In message <g4em5d+cf80_at_eGroups.com> "Roderick Robertson " writes:

>> But does infiltrating a cult necessarily involve lying to the god?
>
>Remember that you visit the God's house during worship ceremonies and
>Holy Days. Every time you try to learn magic, you go on a heroquest
>in the god's place. Each advance in worship level (Initiate,
>Dedvotee, Rune Lord, whatever) requires a closer personal bond to the
>god. So yes, "infiltrating" a cult requires lying to the god,
>especially if you're going to become priest or (shudder) High-priest
>of the cult, as the original question asked.

What is the lie here?

I can see devotion implying sole committment to a single god and there being deception involved in worshipping another as well. But that could be done without actually lying.

Initiates can easily follow more than one god although they may have problems with incompatible requirements.

>> Both are
>> healers with a practical approach to who gets help. Same with
>> Lhankor Mhy and Irripi Ontor. They are a god and immortal of
>> learning.
>
>Err, so what? They are still not the same immortal being. Just
>because they share the same interests/areas of expertise does not
>mean that they will somehow "overlook" fake worship from someone
>from the other cult.

We already know that an initiate is expected to spend only about 30% of their time on appropiate activities. Pure worship is only a fraction of that. The rest, in this case gathering and recording knowledge, is applicable to both. So there's plenty of time for following both. I'll agree it becomes far more difficult if not impossible at devotee level.

>All gods have their own rituals, blessings and way of
>doing things. LM worshippers use yellow Hi-Lighter pens on the Sacred
>Texts while IO worshippers use pink Post-it notes. This is because LM
>owns the Hi-Lighter(tm) corporation and gets money each time someone
>buys a Hi-Lighter, while IO owns stock in Post-Its (The Red Moon owns
>Majority share in Post-Its, of course). So the LM uses his Hi-Lighter
>while pretending to be an IO worshipper. IO gets nothing from
>the "worship". And the rest of the cult start asking questions...

>> We also know that the God Learners managed to infiltrate many
>> cults and they didn't even believe in the gods. So it is possible.
>
>Sure, and look what happened to *them*.

Yes after a significant period of following a variety of dodgy practices. Most of them far more extreme than this.

>Reliably? Never. But remember that the God has some say in who
>becomes their priest, especially High Priest. (Not that gods in
>Glorantha are invalible, but they can, at least, tell if their
>primary worshipper is faithful or not).

This is the basic disagreement - to what extent the gods can understand what humans are thinking. From previous discussions I came to the conclusion that they generally can't. Perhaps I'm wrong but it seems an inevitable to avoid the god smiting every follower who even thinks of doing something wrong.

-- 
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/

           

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