Heort's Laws euphemistically call Chaos "the Predark" without in any way being in favour of it. So if orthodox Orlanth/Ernalda cosmology identifies Darkness is the first element to come into being and Chaos predates Darkness, it is not heretical to describe Chaos as the Source of All Things.
Praising Chaos needs a bit more explanation though. I have a few stream-of-consciousness thoughts about it, but I don't pretend that they are a complete or convincing explanation.
Celebrating Creation is not a surprising thing for an Earth/Life cult to do. If Chaos was essential to this, maybe celebrating Chaos's role in Creation (though not its later role in Destruction) would be okay?
I don't have the passage to hand, but I believe there is something (probably in the passage which explains about the dark side of Illumination, and how falling to the dark side is more a matter of personal hubris than alignment with Chaos) in the Nysalor write-up in Cults Compendium (reproduced from Cults of Terror), which explains that the Illuminate should not see Chaos and its opposite (Order? Law? The cosmos itself) as interchangeable because they create in different ways. Not sure whast it means or even if I have remembered it correctly though
A degree of entropy is necessary for life itself, and Earth cults (which are big on birth, death and rebirth, even if an indivdual cult's role is more specialist) would know this better than anyone. Kajabor (Entropy personified) had to be contained by the Ritual of the Net (and devouered by Arachne Solara) so it did not devour everything, but the advent of Time meant that entropy was very much written back into Glorantha afterwards, in a more controlled way.
Does the corruption of Chaos date from the Unholy Trio's ritual to create Wakboth, who was a force for Corruption rather than Entropy? Or is there another point at which Chaos went horribly wrong, or was Chaos always wrong but also somehow always necessary?
There is also something about the Earth rune which hints at associations with Life and Balance (and in the Third Age Balance is very closely associated with the Red Moon and its inclusive approach to Chaos), just as there is something about Fire (formerly Fire/Sky, and it is more true of the Sky bit than the Fire bit), which echoes Stasis (and maybe Truth), and something about the Air rune which echoes Mobility and maybe even a bit of Disorder. Is it this possibility of Balance which alowsz some Ernaldans ot praise Chaos for its role in Creation, or was this prayer simply the work of an Illuminated Ernaldan writing something subversive?
Finally is there any objective truth in the 'heresy' from Lunar Tarsh that Ernalda is somehow synonymous with the Seven Mother called She Who Waits (even as she is also the loyal husband of Orlanth), even if it is mostly false but with an element of truth in it somewhere? Obviously the Lunars can convince themselves (and some people in Tarsh), but equally the rebels in Eastern Tarsh, Sartar and most of Esrolia thinks otherwise-- for good reasons of their own. Would it be too simple for the Lunars to be just plain wrong?
Richard Hayes
On 12/8/2011 5:51 AM, Charles wrote:
> In my opinion, there are at least 2.5 radically different kinds of Illumination. Probably more, because we have not discovered all the basics of all major cultures of Glorantha, never mind the interesting corner cases.
The three known types of Illumination are:
Yelmic Illumination - known from the Glorious ReAscent and the Fortunate Succession. Effects unknown.
Nysaloran Illumination - The classic form of Illumination as described in Cults of Terror and Dorastor: Land of Doom.
Lunar Illumination - Revealed by the Red Goddess. Described so far in Under the Red Moon.
> Draconic Illumination seems to be somewhat similar to but not exactly the same as Mystical Enlightenment. Draconic Illumination is a Mongoose misnomer IMO.
> And to stick my neck out, I suspect that some aspects of God Learnerism were derived from Nysalorean Illumination. What exactly was that little being that popped-up out of the book the early God Learners found, that was likely looted from "Stygians" and possibly before that, looted from the Nysalorean Empire? (See pages 35 and 41 of Middle Sea Empire).
Not everything from Nysalor's Empire is Illumination related. What was discovered was a False God but there's little evidence of any profound change in mental awareness that is the hallmark of Illumination or other forms of trascendant awareness.
> I am trying but failing to find the source quote that states something a bit like "All praises to Chaos, the source of all things", which is noted as an Ernaldan prayer. To me, this indicates that Ernalda knew something of Chaos before it was poisoned with evil. >
It appears in A Chaotic Interlude (Cults Compendium p262) originally being in Cults of Terror.
--Peter Metcalfe
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