Right. Some people, because of the ordering of events imposed by time, assume that things that happen later than another thing occurs because of the other thing. That's not generally true, of course. Time orders things that are totally unrelated just as much as it orders things that are related by causation.
The ordering of causation is where my conception of time on Glorantha usually gets rubbished. I say that causation did occur before time began (tehcnically, in the absence of time, since "before" is a concept requiring time to measure). But there was no sequence to cause and effect because there was no before and after. It's all simultaneous, but some things are happening only if other things are happening.
Going back to my marbles example, I can't say how far the marbles are travelling because I don't have a ruler to measure it with. But I can still say that the white marble is moving because the blue one is hitting it.
Time gives us the ruler. It also systematically orders cause to occur before effect. I suppose it could have been the other way around. It's what physicists call the arrow of time in the real world, where it is defined as increasing entropy.
>From a HeroQuester's perspective, you can go to events in the HeroPlane
in lots of different orders. Some of those orders are hard for people
with a sense of time to come to grips with. It can appear that you are
going back in time if you assume that cause has to precede effect.
One of my favorite possibilities is to have two spots on the HeroPlane that cannot be solved for by someone using time to order cause and effect. In myth A, a stranger comes to the mountain spirit's home and takes the snow blanket; the mountain spirit goes to the stranger's home, beats him up and takes the snow blanket home; that's why mountain tops are snow-covered. In myth B, a thug beats up the ice princess and takes her snow blanket; she goes up to the thug's mountain hideout and steals back her snow blanket; that's why it snow sometimes covers the land. These are two sides of the same myth. Each one is self-consistent in causality, but it defies being ordered in time because cause need not precede effect. It's a brain twister for those of us used to the presence of time.
Now, you're thinking that my example is strained, right? Think about the Hill of Gold and all the stories about Death being stolen and traded and whatnot. I think it explains a lot.
I think this is only true In My Glorantha. But it's MGF to me.
Chris Lemens
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