Veneration is the means of connecting to the Otherworld during worship. Doing so improves your understanding of the Saints, along with sermons and other education by your church (assuming you are not Rokari, I guess). This also has the benefit of teaching non-wizards/sorcerers spells that are associated with that Saint. But not directly through the process of veneration, but rather through the sum of understanding that comes from religious instruction. You both read about the magic formula and see examples in which it was used. (Think about learning trigonometry, in which the formulas make more sense when you see some real world applications and witness your instructor working out some story problems. It is too bad that the real world education cannot benefit from experiencing the Otherworld, perhaps.)
As for what exactly constitutes a "blessing" from the Saint, that one has me a little baffled. Is this just a synonym for "spell"? Or is it an ongoing magical effect, perhaps with a duration? A spell that was cast on me and/or the congregation during the veneration worship?
The reasons WHY the people engage in veneration instead of just going straight for the book learning, like a sorcerer are abundant. Beyond obvious cultural points of view, some people are just not cut out for the book learning process. Nor would many of the Gloranthan western cultures want to do that level of focused education, let alone how it would impact a farmer-based economy. And there are mythical reasons: either you have been taught that the creative force is impersonal and you must treat it that way (lame summary of Zzaburism) or you believe that God shared magic with those that act correctly and that studying the Saints is an effective way to learn spells that are just right for your needs.
Some of the confusion about veneration may come from the switch from HQ1 to HQ2, where cults and churches were very specific about how they contacted the otherworld to get power and the process was described to some degree (Storm Brothers, I think), and now these terms still exist but it is only a story telling element on whether a group performs sacrifices, does ecstatic dancing, prays in church, or does weird mystic actions. Of course this stuff is still there for deep background, but no longer performs a mechanical function for acquiring magic.
--Todd
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 12:19 PM, Olli Kantola <olli.kantola_at_mLblPqAO7rWEtgypB6AWAWK2JJ5TouH_5iutNX-v7flu9th8ZT5eCi-JJoBxfw56V39G74S916v-_e1dzNiPQps.yahoo.invalid>wrote:
>
>
> Hello all,
>
> I've been involved in a conversation about Gloranthan magic in the
> context of a particular campaign. My friend is running it with Solar
> System and the campaign focuses a bid deal of attention on the
> different otherworlds and choosing with which to interact with and
> how. It's really about choosing your identity and stuff.
>
> Anyway, I've been able to explain pretty much everything about
> everthing else, but explaining veneration and saintly magic seems to
> be beyond me. My friend is now convinced that anything that has to do
> with saints is actually theistic worship. . .
>
> This is what the Glorantha wiki has to say about the subject:
>
> "Veneration: Right method to interact with Essence Plane entities.
> Zzaburi don't "worship" anything in literal meaning, but they interact
> with otlerworlds with abstracted images of scripted book magic."
>
> "Sophism: Sophism is the logical worldview. There are two main schools
> of thought - Zzaburism the philosophy that the creative force is
> impersonal and Malkionism the philosophy that God made the world."
>
> "Sophistic Magic: Magic as practiced by Sophists largely takes the
> form of spells. Venerators can also seek aid from Saints resulting in
> Blessings."
>
> . . .
>
> We also know that sorcery is something you know. I can grok how the
> sorcery that the sorcerers use works, but saints, veneration and
> blessings are beyond me. I get how you can decode scripture to learn
> wizardly magic, but how is worshiping a saint something you know? How
> are the blessings something you know as opposed to something you are
> or have?
>
> Olli Kantola
>
>
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