Re: The myth of Eternal Return

From: hcarteau_at_OeiQ-YDmHlXY1I3ZAHF3beQROPwFjOLTq5Ybyww-adlMNDmHolqm7VmwTdb0ItvCXgF
Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2010 15:50:12 +0100


Selon Greg Stafford <glorantha1_at_kCsLMTYnXGnouOddLRVfJflBjflKrAQlkdCVRa3VsgaNmJUZv7Cnzsib94508hdDJvy87_GvS5OKsWI.yahoo.invalid>:

> Herve strikes gold here
>
> The Eliade books will all find significant resonances in Glorantha.
> I first read all of these Eliade books back in the mid 60's, when I was
> starting to discover Glorantha. They helped me to shape what was going on, to
understand the immaterial view of things.
>
> Jeez, I thought you'd all read those by now. Thanks for bringing it up Herve!

/// A pleasure. It goes the other way round for me : RPGs did bring me to read mythology books, look things up in dictionaries and the internet. Talk about Eternal Return.

A part of this book I like a lot is when the author narrates an anecdote about how historical events so easily become myths.

In some serbian village in the '30s, a folkorist discovers the sung story of a young man seduced by a vila (fairy) and fallen from a cliff the day before his marriage to a local girl forty years ago. The folkorist realizes the bride to be is still alive and goes to interview her. She explains her fiancee simply got drunk and fell to his death : a plain, blunt explanation. The folklorist goes back to the singers and tell them that this woman, first-hand witness if there ever was one, tells a different story ! And they all answer the old hag has lost her mind because of her chagrin, and that the Legend is true.

Case in point : a perfectly mundane story, 40 years old, with still-living witnesses has become a sung legend in the thirties !

Imagine how easy it must be in a world where Magics actually work and we could all really meet a vila...            

Powered by hypermail