Re: Animism\t rituals

From: L C <lightcastle_at_una8LOf0qdGaSe2F05suQhv2oLP1RQw0Lb39D-99mGFHX19vCcVrLLrcS9IlYOoe>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:20:16 -0500


julianlord wrote:
>
>
> I'm hardly an expert in animism, but FWIW ---
>

I'm not sure anyone here is. ^_^

>
> > There has been a lot of focus on distinguishing theism, animism, and
> sorcery. I can't imagine that, despite those differences, they do
> their rituals the same way. For example, we know that theist ritual
> tend to involve sacrificial worship, where animist rituals tend to
> involve ecstatic worship.
>
> Well, I've no idea if this will be any help at all, but theist rituals
> basically involve the worshipper sacrificing some form of
> individuality in return for power, whereas I think that an animist
> worshipper would instead try to positively *affirm* his/her own
> personality in order to gain a spirit's (hopefully beneficial) attention.
>

I'd agree with that.

> This would suggest (to me anyway) that theist rituals are focused on
> the (mythic) past, whereas animist ones would instead be focused on
> the present.
>

I've always thought that, too. While the animist rituals are drawn from the past and the knowledge gained that way, they involve the present situation far more than most other cases.

> Symbolically, the energies would be flowing in opposite directions --
> theists attempt to bring part of the otherworld into themselves,
> whereas animists try and manifest themselves to the otherworld.
>
> The banging of drums, the chants and the dancing, all have the purpose
> of grabbing the attention of some part of the otherworld and trying to
> make some new trade with it, instead of the theistic method of
> attempting to reiterate the exchanges of the mythic past.
>

*nod* This seems right to me.

>
> I think this would mean that animist mythology and tradition would be
> different in nature to theist mythology and tradition ; as an
> opposition between who we are as an identification with the gods, and
> the spirits that we know as a living relationship based on a bunch of
> stories concerning meetings and exchanges and promises between these
> spirits and our ancestors in the past.
>
> In game terms I'd agree with your idea about X beats Y, because these
> things will be inevitably resolved by d20 and a contest ; but I've
> said this before, the nature of the exchange will depend on the
> relative social/magical power of the participants -- weaker spirits
> will be told what to do, those of equal power will trade stuff between
> themselves, stronger spirits will have to be obeyed in exchange for
> powerful favours. The Masteries system makes this sort of hierarchy
> very easy to describe, those with 2 Masteries must offer some form of
> acceptable obedience to those with 3 Masteries or more for example.
>
> The only animist rituals I've ever written professionally (for a
> French Hero Wars supplement) were 60% the players trying to rally
> social/magical support for their requests to the spirits, 5% D20s to
> see if the spirits agreed with this request, 35% searching in the
> Other Side for whichever story-related purposes. But of course, simple
> summonings of weaker spirits would be resolved by simple contest, or :
> does X beat Y ? :-)
>
> I can't see any reason why the weaker spirit shouldn't be manifest as
> a lingering benefit (the benefit *is* the spirit), but I'd see spirits
> of similar or stronger power than the player characters as providing
> some sort of exhaustible resource, having its own independent target
> number, and numbers of times it can be used according to the specific
> conditions reached after negociation/agreement with the spirit, or
> imposition of authority, or whatever.
>

Well, I can see lots of ways it would work. A larger spirit could end up like a relationship, a Patron or ally or some such. Or it could provide a limited-use power. But none of those are mechanical effects I can't see you gaining in the other systems.

>
> A related question is what sorts of limitations are imposed by the
> Compromise : I'd guess that they would require that relationships
> between the worlds must be initiated by the mortals, except for some
> evil spirits doing otherwise.
>

I've always been curious about that, actually. The Compromise story seems very limited to Theism, so I've never been sure how it applies to spirits. The Invisible God is... well... invisible, so that settles that in terms of interactions. But Zzabbur was active well into the second age if I recall, and he's basically an eranschula (I forget the term) so I really don't know if the Compromise applys to non-gods.

LC            

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