Where do souls come from?

[Shiningbrow]

Apologies if this is,already canonically answered somewhere, but I just thought about it given that the Bat destroys souls (apparently a bad thing), or souls go to some afterlife (Or become ghosts).

I'm aware there is some reference to reincarnation somewhere for some peoples.

But... If the gods are stuck in/out of time, then I figure they're not creating or making new ones... And if there's no general reincarnation, then the old ones aren't being recycled... So, it suggests new souls are being made all the time...

Where? From what? And if soul-stuff keeps going out, and not going back in (due to various afterlife stuff), then can we presume there's a limit to the number of souls that could exist?

Is there a "soul-maker", and how do souls "decide" where to go? Are there different souls for different species?

Etc etc..... 

[Leingod]

As far as I know there isn't really a definite answer of where souls come from in Glorantha, certainly not one that everyone in Glorantha could ever agree on. Much as IRL, there isn't even an agreement on what the soul is, whether you have more than one, and how many exactly there are if so (the Lunars predictably think you have seven, the Theyalans seem to believe you have at least five - one for each element - and possibly more, etc.).

But several deities and spirits have names that suggest a close relationship with souls, and in some cases a form of reincarnation is described. For example, one of Larnste's names is the "Soul Arranger," it's said that kolatings join Kolat in the Horn Zone when they die and eventually become umbroli, and in Kralorela it's said that Yothbethda's Stream is where the souls of humans are sent "upon the Clear Stream to the wombs of those who will bear them," which is straight-up reincarnation as we tend to think of it.

[Sir_Godspeed]

The ultimate source of whatever souls are made of is probably the Chaosium, the place at the bottom of the Underworld. However, this isn't super useful, since that's where all the energy that enters Glorantha comes from. 

If there is a specific process that specifically makes souls, or some deity that does it, I wouldn't know, though I suspect lots of deities would claim the honor, and Larnste does have that byname. 

It's also worth considering that the creation of specific souls coincides with the creation of specific bodies, but then again reincarnation is not unheard of. 

[simonh]

Death is the severer, when a being dies they dis-integrate (break apart) and their different parts often go different ways. The process of the creation of life is one of re-integration, making and moulding, not creation from nothing. So there's a cycle. I think only Chaos can destroy utterly, and only Chaos can truly create from nothing.

[Akhôrahil]

This is the kind of thing where every religion will have its own answer. To the Orlanthi, for instance, the soul is the Breath (a very common theory on Earth as well). When you're born, you draw your first breath (I don't think they need a theory of souls beyond this). When you die, your breath leaves your body.

I would imagine a lot of Orlanthi mysticism is about stuff like the Breath of the Cosmos and so on.

Edited June 2, 2020 by Akhôrahil