Your Dumbest Theory

[Ali the Helering]

Blackadder:
I seek information about a Wisewoman.

Young Crone:
Ah, the Wisewoman... the Wisewoman.

Blackadder:
Yes, the Wisewoman.

Young Crone:
Two things, my lord, must thee know of the Wisewoman. First, she is... a woman. And second, she is...

Blackadder:
Wise?

Young Crone:
You do know her then?

Blackadder:
No, just a wild stab in the dark which is, incidentally, what you'll be getting if you don't start being a bit more helpful. 

[Nevermet]

6 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Newtlings know of puberty-suppressing drugs in fungi and algae which keep their potency when dried. As long as they consume their “herb”, bachelors do not age, and it is thought that after thirty years of steady dosing, the pharmaceuticals are no longer required and maturity is impossible. (Newtlings consider experimentation on tadpoles unethical, so don’t ask.)

That is one story. Others say that some newtlings spontaneously fail their final transformation and are doomed to an eternal sexless existence, forbidden return to their home ponds. A third school has it that meditation and asanas can extend bachelorhood indefinitely.

This we know for sure: there are wanderers on the way — bachelor sages with (at the very least) hundreds of sea seasons behind them and dedicated to wisdom and the aesthetic appreciation of nature — walking lightly on the world: modestly in it but not of it. They have much useful information (and more useless), but never call such a journeynewt “master” if you hope to learn from them.

How old is old? Some say it was the sight of a newtling with staff and backpack that caused a startled dwarf to nudge the world machine into motion. Perhaps she is wandering still, head cocked, perpetually amused, taking everything in.

Love this.

[mfbrandi]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

You can’t trust these so-called wise women: any bird-headed woman clearly wants to consume newtlings.

It is not a matter of trust: theirs is an honest and naked hunger. Of course, I side with your vision of the cosmic bird as more heron than pretzel-necked goose.

[Richard S.]

The individual Thunder Brother sub/cults of the HW/HQ1 era are the air god equivalent of Grain Goddesses.

Independent, regular storms like Destor, Finovan, Daylanus, Hedkoranth, and Helamakt can be initiated to without technically joining Orlanth (though Orlanthi always count as initiates of these storms, of course). They act for most intents and purposes like weaker versions of Orlanth Adventurous or Orlanth Thunderous, depending on whether they're primarily a windstorm or a thunderstorm. Unfortunately, Thunder Brothers can only be contacted through worship when physically present, which is a real problem given their natural unpredictability, but some areas at least one of them is regular enough to support a small cult (e.g. Pelanda and Doburdun).

Edited July 13 by Richard S.

[Whizbang]

20 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

Blackadder:
No, just a wild stab in the dark which is, incidentally, what you'll be getting if you don't start being a bit more helpful. 

...

"Here is a purse of monies... which I am not going to give you"

[Nevermet]

9 hours ago, Richard S. said:

The individual Thunder Brother sub/cults of the HW/HQ1 era are the air god equivalent of Grain Goddesses.

 

I'm now imagining a GL ritual similar to the Goddess Switch that produced the Windless Typhoon.

[mfbrandi]

• One of the wildest theories I have heard is that Shargash and Zorak Zoran are flip sides of what could have been a greater god of Destruction. The cults share a surprising amount of special Rune magic … and both have strong Underworld associations. But Shargash does not raise the dead and Zorak Zoran has no planetary paths … Any pathways between the cults were likely destroyed in the Gbaji Wars, as Shargash fought for his father, and Zorak Zoran fought for Arkat.
  — Jeff Richard, Notes on Shargash I

Dumb theory: Jeff likes to slather on the irony with a palette knife — by calling it a “wild theory” (rather than “superficially plausible”) he means it is obviously true, an open secret. It may be dumb, but it is the only charitable move available to us:

• A “planet” plunges into the underworld and then — after a night journey? — rises in the east. Is that not the Gloranthan template for the rising of the dead? As above, so below: ZZ’s corpses rise to shadow life.
   
• They fought for “different” sides, but “the hunter and the hunted are always part of one being” (RQG, p. 300, emphasis mine), and Arkat–Nysalor is the poster boy for this, even to the extent of the cult of the darkness-coded Arkat considering itself the light side of Nysalor (CoT, Classic PDF, p. 87).

In truth, with gods having multiple aspects, different runic associations depending on how they are approached, and pluripresence, it becomes hard to argue that any two Gloranthan deities are definitively distinct. And if this generates a centripetal monotheism, surely that will amuse Glorantha’s big eaters and black holes.

This isn’t where I meant to go, at all. A reference to “Zoranis” made me remember a claim I once read that the Dziga Vertov Group pretty soon split into Dzigan and Vertovian factions.° Before the films of the Groupe Dziga Vertov “the population thinks, learns, struggles, criticises, and transforms itself” … which kinda-sorta brings us back to our accidental theme of self-struggle and transformation.

How are the Zorakites distinguished from the Zoranis? I like to think that the violence of the Zoranis is straightforwardly other-directed: their only relief from their own pain is to inflict it on the rest of us (“you must watch our movie/attend the next struggle session”), but that the Zorakites are prepared to ratchet up their own pain to make themselves better revolutionaries, eventually to liberate us all — from what and how, one shudders to contemplate. However, it is a dictum of the Groupe Zorak Zoran that each of uz must draw the Zorakite–Zorani distinction in her own way, because .

All hail the Red Army of the Zombie Sun! 😉

———————————————————
° Of course, (a) I cannot trace this (The Wire? old BFI screening notes?) and (b) it was surely to some degree a put-on, but lock two lefties in a cell and you will pretty soon have three factions.

Edited July 15 by mfbrandi
missing hyperlink

[mfbrandi]

Circling around the same old same old (in the same silly fashion):

• Gonggong [] was ashamed that he lost the fight with Zhurong, the Chinese god of fire, to claim the throne of Heaven. In a fit of rage, he smashed his head against Buzhou Mountain, one of eight pillars holding up the sky, greatly damaging it and causing the sky to tilt towards the northwest and the Earth to shift to the southeast, which caused great floods and suffering. In one account of the myth, Gonggong kills himself in the process and fire comes out of the shattered mountain alongside floods.
  — Wikipedia: Gonggong

That should ring some bells. Even if storm is traditionally air, the Big O is a rain god, too. If “Umath” who lost a fight to a fire god and sent the sky wonky is a redhead with the body of a serpent, perhaps his “son” inherited the hair and the tendency to waterdragonhood (if only for the purpose of self-beheading).

[jajagappa]

13 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

A “planet” plunges into the underworld and then — after a night journey? — rises in the east. Is that not the Gloranthan template for the rising of the dead?

Except Shargash follows the Southpath, which does not rise directly in the east. 

[mfbrandi]

5 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Shargash follows the Southpath, which does not rise directly in the east.

Thanks. I did check, but clearly not carefully enough. This was my reference:

• Shargash: This blood-red body takes two weeks to traverse the sky along the Southpath, then spends two weeks in the Underworld. Because the path it travels varies in length, it does not travel at a fixed speed. It always rises in the exact spot on the eastern horizon, just north of where Lightfore and the Sun rise.
  — Guide to Glorantha: The Southpath (PDF, p. 647)

What should it be?

[Joerg]

24 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Thanks. I did check, but clearly not carefully enough. This was my reference:

• Shargash: This blood-red body takes two weeks to traverse the sky along the Southpath, then spends two weeks in the Underworld. Because the path it travels varies in length, it does not travel at a fixed speed. It always rises in the exact spot on the eastern horizon, just north of where Lightfore and the Sun rise.
  — Guide to Glorantha: The Southpath (PDF, p. 647)

What should it be?

Further up, you get (p.647)

Quote

The area from which the Southpath planets rise is called the Eastern Mouth, while the western area where they set is called the Dodging Gate.

I don't recall any other source for the Eastern Mouth being neat the eastern horizon slightly north to the Gates of Dawn, but I suspect the Celestialogy chapter in later editions of the Glorious ReAscent. A few degrees at most from the Inner World.

[mfbrandi]

How to Win at Rock–Paper–Scissors

• Thunder Bird is one of the Three Feathered Rivals. In this role, he is always beaten in contest with Raven, yet always victorious over Sun Hawk, who Thunder Bird wraps with his great clouds of feathers and smothers.
  — Prosopaedia: Thunder Bird (PDF, p. 122)

But as any fool knows, the Raven is the sun (jun-raven or wū (烏 also meaning dark)).°

I have always wondered what a sun hawk is, but the sun-born “phoenix” (鳳 = fèng) is sometimes identified with the wind, because it sounds like it (風 = fēng), and we are all happy to believe that storm can defeat itself.

For fans of the many suns, here are nine (presumably) dead ones in a tree in some otherworld:

———————————————————————————————————————
° All Chinese bird lore from Sarah Allan’s “Sons of Suns: Myth and Totemism in Early China”. I love this possible explanation of why the sun-raven sometimes has three legs: 3 legs × 10 suns (1 for each day of the week) = 30 days = 1 month.

[mfbrandi]

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Further up, you get (p.647)

And:

• In Central Genertela, the Southpath planets are believed to be Underworld beings rising to the Sky, rather than Sky beings who descend into the Underworld. In Orlanthi mythology, they are enemy gods who were bound into the sky as punishment
  — Guide to Glorantha: The Southpath (PDF, p. 647)

… which does not prove — I am not sure anything could — that Shargash is an underworld demon, but sits quite nicely with it. And in a world where sky stands for fire, we get a nice image of ZeeZee on the rack.

As for Fire’s initial location: underworld or overworld … ? Perhaps Lodril was “always” down there spurting upward.

Perhaps the Eastern Mouth is positioned “just off” because it is the “tradesman’s entrance” to the sky for not-quite-right and lower-class entities, just as some — not I: CA is faking it — might say that ZZ’s raised dead have undergone a lower class of resurrection, one that is not quite right.

[mfbrandi]

• Old-School Religion: Gods are immortals who interacted with each other before the Dawn.
   
• New-School Religion: Gods are dead mortals, mortals who lived their lives after the Dawn.
   
• Lunar religion is of course liminal: The RG is a mash-up of pre- and post-Dawn components.
   

Spoiler

Surgeon General’s Health Warning: This is Glorantha, and other styles of religion have long been available.

[Ali the Helering]

That Old-Time Religion: Followers are brain-dead mortals

[Joerg]

4 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

As for Fire’s initial location: underworld or overworld … ? Perhaps Lodril was “always” down there spurting upward.

Three curious spirits - ZZ, XU and AA encountering Aether in the Underworld. Nuff said.

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Nuff said.

Indeed, although before the revelation of Aether, presumably the realm of Darkness was not geographically constrained.

[Joerg]

10 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Indeed, although before the revelation of Aether, presumably the realm of Darkness was not geographically constrained.

Somehow the Green Age began without Aether as intermediate for the energies of the Source. The earliest Green Age seems to have basked in those energies without the later filter of the Sky Domes. Flamal (or his tree) might have been the mediator.

As such I think that the extent of Darkness was limited. While it pervaded the lower portions of Sea and Earth, direct exposure to the Source may have been the limit.

[mfbrandi]

2 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Somehow the Green Age began without Aether as intermediate for the energies of the Source.

My troll informant whispers that the so-called Green Age began as a fungal age … but I don’t believe her.

[metcalph]

I think the Bloodspillers worship the Blood Sun and if Jar-eel becomes a goddess, it will be the basis of her cult. 

[davecake]

The Baths of Nelat are not just purifying and painful, they are acid and completely dissolve the body of the person being tested (or in Water god terms, turn it all to liquid=Water), and to survive them you must have the wisdom to know that you are not your body, and be able to master the powers of change enough to create yourself a new body. It is purification also, of course, when you create your new body you can rid yourselves of any external corruption. 

Orlanth of course has this power of change, and so survives, though it is a great trial. His reward is wisdom from the Well of Daliath, or course - but also Mastakos, the ultimate power of change. And Mastakos teaches that if you can magically create one body, you can create another - dissolving the body is the Meld Form ritual, creating it anew is what the Proteus spell does. 

And this may be the source of all that shape changing magic known to Heort and his ancestors.

[JayLay]

On 7/16/2024 at 6:43 PM, Joerg said:

I don't recall any other source for the Eastern Mouth being neat the eastern horizon slightly north to the Gates of Dawn, but I suspect the Celestialogy chapter in later editions of the Glorious ReAscent. A few degrees at most from the Inner World.

On 7/16/2024 at 6:10 PM, mfbrandi said:

Thanks. I did check, but clearly not carefully enough. This was my reference:

• Shargash: This blood-red body takes two weeks to traverse the sky along the Southpath, then spends two weeks in the Underworld. Because the path it travels varies in length, it does not travel at a fixed speed. It always rises in the exact spot on the eastern horizon, just north of where Lightfore and the Sun rise.
  — Guide to Glorantha: The Southpath (PDF, p. 647)

What should it be?

The Eastern Mouth and Dodging Gate vary in positions over the course of days. Just to collect all things together about them on pg 647:

• "The area from which Southpath planets rise is called the Eastern Mouth, while the western area where they set is called the Dodging Gate."
• Artia: "... It always rises from the exact same spot on the horizon, a fair distance south from where the Sun and Lightfore rise."
• Shargash: "It always rises in the exact spot on the eastern horizon, just north of where Lightfore and the Sun rise."

Given that Shargash and Artia manage to both rise consistently at the same place, but are said to emerge from the same "Mouth", that would suggest that the Eastern Mouth cycles on a period of 7 days, 14 days or 28 days. The fact that the Dodging Gate is never mentioned probably means it is doing something even more crazy and unpredictable.

Now why would someone say that two planets that always rise from different places (this also means that they can never rise on the same day) are rising out of the same mouth, and on the same path? My guess is that since the twinstars are on a period of 6 days, which is out of step with the Eastern Mouth (and Dodging Gate?) cycles, the twinstars are able to rise on every possible day. So, if they rise on the same day as Shargash and Artia they will also rise from the same point on the horizon. They would be the critical link to realising that all 3 planets are on the same path.

[Ali the Helering]

The Bath of Nelat is overstated - it was Orlanth's first bath.

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Ali the Helering said:

The Bath of Nelat is overstated - it was Orlanth's first bath.

Funny, but with all his Heler dalliances before, Orlanth would at least have showered a lot. Fighting off Worcha, the Raging Sea, might have resulted in temporary immersion, too.

[Ali the Helering]

8 hours ago, Joerg said:

Funny, but with all his Heler dalliances before, Orlanth would at least have showered a lot. Fighting off Worcha, the Raging Sea, might have resulted in temporary immersion, too.

Nah, that's why he hated the thought of a bath.  Enforced immersion is like that...