At 8:45 PM +0000 2/21/02, BEThexton wrote:
>In Gloranthan terms, clearly it is your own "breath" that protects
>you from the fierce heat. And this is why men would take saunas so
>hot you could cook in them, to prove how powerful their own breath
>is, that it can let them relax and enjoy such conditions. More than
>machismo, in Glorantha it is probably literally true, so that the
>most powerful magically can take the most punishing heat.
That's clever. I'm impressed. We've got the Baths and
purification, we have "breath" and machismo (how do the women deal
with it? just more earthy, I guess), we have a myth and a group
Sacred Time ritual, and we have how amazingly free and cool you feel
on leaving. Taken together, those are a pretty good answer to a
mytho-cultural question.
Peter Larsen