Yelm and Chaos?

[Grievous]

16 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I'm reading the Fortunate Succession now, and this raised a question regarding Yelm and Nysalor: isn't there something about the Sun God not being Yelm Proper before the Sunstop or something? So technically the decision to create Nysalor would have predated the Dara Happan perception, at least, that Yelm was "back". (The sun gods prior to this appear to have been called Antirius and Kargzant, which, altough we usually think of them as Lightfore deities, seem to have served as the sun disk gods post-Dawn until the Sunstop as well). 

In regards to this theory, I think one new piece of the puzzle is that Yelm certainly exists in Six Ages. So, either this knowledge of Yelm was lost until it was restored within Time, or..... somebody did some God Learner level tweaking of the Godtime... 

[simonh]

10 hours ago, John Biles said:

In Glorantha, your god expects various things of you and sends spirits to punish you if you violate those laws.  This puts limits on how many gods you can worship.  Yelm and Red Goddess worship didn't seem very compatible to me, especially since Yelm worship says women's job is to be subordinate and get kicked down the stairs.  

People's general answer seems to mostly be 'Yelm worship is just a sham now, which illumination lets you get away with'.  So be it.

 

Sure, spirits of reprisal punish transgressions, but I don't think acknowledging, propitiating or worshiping another god in the same pantheon that shares myths and rituals with your primary god is a transgression. In fact it's fully expected and even required. After all, if your god's myths and rites include participation by other gods in the pantheon, which they almost invariably do, it's actually not possible to worship your primary deity without also worshiping some or other of the other gods. Aspects of Sedenya are part of Yelmic myth and participate in Yelmic ritual. Try worshiping Orlanth without ever also worshiping, acknowledging and propitiating his wife Ernalda for example. For most Sartarite characters it's practically impossible.

I dont think many nobles devoutly worshiping Yelm in the Lunar Empire thinks their religion is a sham. The Empire has never been more powerful, and the Emperor is proven to be an incarnation of Yelm. Their rituals and magic are as potent as ever. Well yes, some stick in the mud traditionalists surely do in secret, but they're crazy

Edited July 3, 2020 by simonh

[Leingod]

3 hours ago, Grievous said:

In regards to this theory, I think one new piece of the puzzle is that Yelm certainly exists in Six Ages. So, either this knowledge of Yelm was lost until it was restored within Time, or..... somebody did some God Learner level tweaking of the Godtime... 

Or maybe names like "Yelm" and "Elmal" are simply being translated into their more recognizable modern forms for our benefit to keep things accessible to new players or people who only know Glorantha from King of Dragon Pass, which would also explain why Orlanth isn't being addressed as "Umatum" or some other Peloricized name you'd expect Dara Happan refugees to be referring to him by.

[Grievous]

22 minutes ago, Leingod said:

Or maybe names like "Yelm" and "Elmal" are simply being translated into their more recognizable modern forms for our benefit to keep things accessible to new players or people who only know Glorantha from King of Dragon Pass, which would also explain why Orlanth isn't being addressed as "Umatum" or some other Peloricized name you'd expect Dara Happan refugees to be referring to him by.

Sure, names are names though, and the point is that there is a face behind the name..

* * *

On further contemplating the Red Goddess in regards to Yelm, I did some digging to give fuel to my contemplation as I'm still trying to unfurl the complexities of her role and better get a grip on her position in the Solar mythos.

The Red Goddess, as Verithurusa, helped kill Yelm. That's pretty damning, I guess.
Under Lesilla, the Mernitans who venerated her became rebellious. In response, the Emperor Lukarius killed her and made slaves of the people of Mernita. 
As Gerra, she snuck into the Sky Dome, was later mistreated by the Emperor and blamed for the world's troubles, was staked and then the Sky Dome was shattered.
Her current form, Natha, is the Goddess' Shadow Portion. Considering Solar associations with Kazkurtum, this doesn't sound like much of a good thing either.

So, she's not exactly a beneficent figure in Solar myth. This isn't a reason for her not to have a place at all of course, but the myths would imply that she's more likely to be a recipient of propitiatory worship and sacrifice. Certainly she has a place in the culture, but to me she seems often to be the scapegoat, the demon, at best a wrathful protector, etc. 

[Joerg]

On 7/3/2020 at 12:26 PM, simonh said:

I dont think many nobles devoutly worshiping Yelm in the Lunar Empire thinks their religion is a sham. The Empire has never been more powerful, and the Emperor is proven to be an incarnation of Yelm. Their rituals and magic are as potent as ever. Well yes, some stick in the mud traditionalists surely do in secret, but they're crazy

Given that madness is a sacred state of mind in Lunar religion, wouldn't it be more perjorative to call them "hopelessly sane"?

[Eff]

On 7/3/2020 at 7:05 AM, Grievous said:

Sure, names are names though, and the point is that there is a face behind the name..

* * *

On further contemplating the Red Goddess in regards to Yelm, I did some digging to give fuel to my contemplation as I'm still trying to unfurl the complexities of her role and better get a grip on her position in the Solar mythos.

The Red Goddess, as Verithurusa, helped kill Yelm. That's pretty damning, I guess.
Under Lesilla, the Mernitans who venerated her became rebellious. In response, the Emperor Lukarius killed her and made slaves of the people of Mernita. 
As Gerra, she snuck into the Sky Dome, was later mistreated by the Emperor and blamed for the world's troubles, was staked and then the Sky Dome was shattered.
Her current form, Natha, is the Goddess' Shadow Portion. Considering Solar associations with Kazkurtum, this doesn't sound like much of a good thing either.

So, she's not exactly a beneficent figure in Solar myth. This isn't a reason for her not to have a place at all of course, but the myths would imply that she's more likely to be a recipient of propitiatory worship and sacrifice. Certainly she has a place in the culture, but to me she seems often to be the scapegoat, the demon, at best a wrathful protector, etc. 

Minor note: the pre-Lunar Dara Happan sources we have don't make the connection between "Sedenya the Changer" and "Verithurus/a". The former is one of the slayers of Yelm and later a contender in the War of Many Suns, the protector of Mernita. The latter is, in feminine guise, one of Yelm's suitors, and in masculine guise, one of the proctors of the Ten Tests. Lesilla appears in the Plentonic commentary on the Gods Wall as the "goddess of mothers", while Gerra is the "goddess of sorrow", but their position in Lunar myths is absent from the Glorious Reascent. Rashorana also appears as the "tortured woman" on the Gods Wall, while Verithurus/a and Zayenera/s appear in their places as children of Yelm. Natha is noted as keeper of the Second Hell. Only Orogeria/Ulurda is totally absent from the Gods Wall in Plentonius's commentary...

If we had a better idea of where some of these stories come from (it's entirely possible that the extant Lesilla and Gerra stories just aren't recorded by Plentonius but existed in his time) we would have a better sense of what it means in an emic sense for the various stories to be combined together into a single mythical story. 

[Sir_Godspeed]

Peloria, perhaps more than any other region in Glorantha, has an absolute mountain of cultural strata layered above and below each other, with names, rituals and titles being reused in different contexts, and cross-imported/exported across the bowl as polities rise and fall. (Un-universe, perhaps this might have something to do with a relatively high population density and many different literate groups - but that's neither here nor there.)

Couple this with a kind of "uncanny valley" syndrome of the region, where many cultures are sort-of-similar, but-not-quite (unlike the Orlanthi Lightbringer cultures, which while obviously different, have a more recent unifying mythos layered above the pre-Dawn local substrata - I'm simplifying here, obviously, but still), you end up with the (likely) extremely long-lived traditions of urbanized Pelanda, matriarchal Naveria/Darsen, the Avian Northeast, the mixed Storm-Sun southern plains*, the Imperial pretenders of central Dara Happa all kinda overlapping while still retaining various unique myths or practices or beliefs. The Feathered Eagle Lords possibly being a true empire unto themselves in their own mythos, but being reduced to a dynasty from a central Dara Happan viewpoint, the Darsenite goddesses being largely marginalized outside of that region until Valare Addi came along (that marginalization possibly being a change from a former state of Green Age preeminence, even), etc. etc. It is, imho, *extremely* difficult to know which traditions are deliberately (re)constructions and which arose organically. While it is tempting to throw everything Plentonic aside as a one big propaganda piece to essentially "invent" a Gold Age Empire that may never even have existed, his writings still remain our primary sources, and it's equally possible to overreact in the other direction (maybe the Empire was more pluralistic, dynamic or even more of a religious/cultural hegemony that also included the Golden Age Solar East under Vith and Govmeranen, with Peloria being one surviving extremity, for example, and it's not like the Vithelans' stories about universal Solar Emperors were also invented to help out Khorzanelm's propaganda machine). It's enough to drive you nuts. 

And hence very realistic, ofc.

(*I'm not sure if anyone else views Saird, Vanch, Imther, Dara-Ni, Terarir as "mixed Sun-Storm plains", but it was the best generalizing term I could come up with off the cuff) 

 

Anyway, got a bit carried away there. I definitely wish we had more comprehensive knowledge of the different traditions, and how they were utilized, but even with what we got, it's difficult to keep things straight.

Edited July 6, 2020 by Sir_Godspeed