Your Dumbest Theory

[mfbrandi]

Why do Gloranthans hate Chaos, and why are there crazily purposive illuminati? Well …

• After a while, though, we lost interest. And there were several players who explicitly said that “knowing that the dungeon was random” was kind of killing the experience for them. There’s a desire to believe that there is a design behind things even when there isn’t, and when your nose is rubbed in the fact that it’s just dice determining what you find, that definitely turns some players off. — L J Tankersley, The Alexandrian

Cast this as character attitude to the world, not player attitude to the game. Cannot cope with the fact that meaning cannot be inscribed into the nature of the cosmos? To beat la nausée, invent a purpose and then chase it so hard that you forget you just made it up. Someone having a dig at existentialism?

Stumbled across the quote above while thinking about an apology to @Erol of Backford for all the goats. Library research as depthcrawl (cheap till tomorrow). When the scrolls reach critical mass, doors open into unimagined stacks, and …

• The Stygian Library is a creepily genteel dungeon set in an infinite extradimensional library. Each expedition generates its route as it explores, resulting in new locations being discovered with every visit … It's a big spooky library full of dangerous knowledge, spiritual automata and ghost-fueled computers.

All information conspires to the condition of Krarsht, as we had long suspected.

[Erol of Backford]

5 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Stygian Library

Wow, might have to get this!?

Takes me to the Name of the Wind series and of course it'd be linked to MOB's Getting of Wisdom and somehow involve the Great Library of Lhankor Mhy with ways to transverse between?

I am thinking that most larger libraries may have some hidden means to get to the Great Library, portals, way gates inside stacks, you just need the ceremonies and entry points to move through, is it like doorways to the Room of Requirements, Arkat potals, guided teleportation, you actually move to the God's panel in some instances?  

There some good threads on libraries:

Jonstown Library hierarchy 1625

Heroic Lhankor Mhy Questions

5 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

goats

Who doesn't like goats... it is unfair that they get a 3rd action with horns... the new cover of the Sourcebook shows that a human with deluxe horns should probably get an extra attack as well?

[Cassius]

15 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

Who doesn't like goats... it is unfair that they get a 3rd action with horns... the new cover of the Sourcebook shows that a human with deluxe horns should probably get an extra attack as well?

Or a nice source of fumble.

[Erol of Backford]

6 hours ago, Cassius said:

Or a nice source of fumble.

Come to think of it explaining to a group of players how a spear acted like a boomerang, came out of the ground to impale someone's foot behind a stone wall always cracks me up. Blowing it really badly was always funny especially when the 3 details had no relationship. Jar Eel the Razoress' corset strap breaks with the metal clip flying off and impaling the eye of Beat Pot who in turns cuts off your arm while he doing a face plant?  

[Joerg]

I have been wondering about the origin of the Orlanth Rex cult. We know that Alakoring brought it across the Rockwood Mountains to the Old Day Traditionalists of Southern Peloria who then (re-) joined the heirs of the three Brothers (ruling Carmania, Dara Happa and Saird) against the EWF. We also know that it was not present in the Kingdom of Orlanthland (which actually abolished the position of the High King (of the Heortlings) after the Tax Slaughter) and its successor, the EWF.

As far as I can tell, Alakoring was a Korioni tribesman from the Upper Tanier Valley, or possibly a member of one of the tribes of the Lankst region with Hsunchen origins theyalanized by the second and early third century Lightbringer missionaries in Ralios. The Vesmonstran Orlanthi had received a (strengthened, but already established?) dragonewt colony as their neighbors during the EWF period, something not exactly welcomed by the Ralian traditionalists. But traditionalists of what?

TL:DR: Some melange of Ralian solar Enerali kingship with a side dish of Seshnegi Men-of-All talar dynasties similar to Gerlant's, and possibly some innovations added by Arkat when he joined the Orlanth and Humakt cult in Ralios. After all, Arkat returned as stand-in for the Solar emperor alongside Harmast.

Spoiler

The Lightbringer missionaries in Ralios had met and influenced the Dari Alliance, a successor organization to King Dan's tribal confederation of the four Enerali tribes (Fornoari, Utoni, Korioni and Vustri) based on Hrelar Amali. The old Enerali storm gods Erulat and Humat were recognized as (aspects of) Orlanth the Lightbringer.

Now two of those four Enerali tribes were primarily storm worshipers, the Vustri (worshiping Erulat) and the Korioni (worshiping Humat). See https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/gloranthan-documents/greg-sez/safelster-in-the-first-age/ and https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/gloranthan-documents/greg-sez/the-enerali-circa-130-st/.

The Dari Alliance got into conflict with the Vustri of Galin, leading to the Vustri being pushed out of eastern Safelster into the wilderness after losing their war (allied to Hsunchen peoples) against the Dangans, at a time when both the Vustri and the rest of the Enerali had accepted Orlanth as replacement for their Old Gods storm deity. Hrelar Amali prevailed, with its strong Ehilm cult and (presumably) a tradition of stronger kings who could enforce the obedience of their followers.

The Dari Alliance remained with the Broken Council and evaded the worst of Palangio's retributions against the Heortlings. Instead, they received the attention of the Yelmite priest Holy Estorex who found his Old Gods counterpart Ehilm at Hrelar Amali. (It isn't quite clear where Galin with its birthplace of the Sun Horse ended up during the Bright Empire.)

After the Sun Stop and the conquests of the Heortlings and Maniria, Palangio entered Ralios, returning to the City of Miracles across Kartolin Pass.

At some point during the Bright Empire presence in Ralios, a Sun Dome temple was founded on the southern edge of Karia, a land formerly held by hostile Kivitti elephant Hykimi who had been fought to extinction (or assimilation) by the Second Council already.

 

On the lower Tanier River, the Fornoari were the northern neighbors of Tanisor. They had received the Pendali and Basmoli refugees of the Serpent King conquest of Old Seshnela, the ruins of whose temple city Basmol is located on the Tanier river in southern modern Tanisor.

The last Serpent King Mimtak conquered all of Old Seshnela and the lower part of the Tanier valley, but after the non-serpent-legged successors of his dynasty lost power in Seshnela, the kingdom lost this territory again to pagan warlords. One successor king employed Vadeli magics against Hrelar Amali, destroying much of the temple city, until he also fell afoul of the Waertagi who forced him to pay reparations and to erect a temple to Magasta in that holy city. Later, the Silver Empire of Seshnela spread an anti-pagan version of Hrestolism with its conquests in the Tanier valley, including significant amounts of Fornoari territory where they established men-of-all as rulers of conquered cities, who then would marry women from their pagan predecessor nobility to confirm their claims, and adopt pagan rites of kingship.

As the Silver Empire faltered again, Tanisor and Fornoari territories were lost again as the Dari Alliance used Theyalan magics and metallurgy to face off the Seshnegi. A few of the Man-of-All-founded dynasties may have remained, infusing the region with some Malkioni ideas of Talar kingship, too.

As the Bright Empire took over the Dari Alliance, some of these Fornoari remained wary of the illuminates, but apparently they were pushed out of their holdings. When Arkat fought the followers of Gaalth, the disease-bringing missionary of the Bright Empire in Seshnela, the decisive battle against the followers of Gaalth was almost lost when a certain Gerlant Flamesword rode onto the field with an unexpected force of (man-of-all?) horsemen, and saved the day even when Gaalth's followers erupted into chaos feature-bearing monsters.

Arkat's crusade then turned against the Vampire Kings of Tanisor, still aided by Brithini elements from Arolanit despite him having become a model Man-of-All. In the fight against the vampires, Arkat received support from (Ralian) Humakti and Orlanthi who apparently had not seen Nysalor's light, either. The tribal identities of the Enerali may have become less pronounced under the Second Council influence and then Bright Empire rule over Ralios, with Palangio probably exploiting the solar kingship expectations of the Safelstrans.

Without most of his Brithini comrades, but with enough of his formerly fellow men-of-all Arkat embraced the Orlanth cult and then the Humakt cult of presumably the natives near Arkhome, and led his war against the Bright Empire in Ralios. He led his followers all the way to Kartolin Pass, overcoming any military resistance of the Bright Empire, until he was slain and dismembered by Palangio at Kartolin Castle. Palangio then retook most of Ralios while Arkat lingered in Hell, where Harmast the Lightbringer found him, and returned him to Hrelar Amali (the former site of Holy Estorex spreading the Nysaloran ways). Arkat summoned those Seshnegi men-of-all and those Ralian Orlanthi who would follow him and ravaged all followers of Nysalor in Ralios, destroying the Telmori temple city in Vesmonstran in the process, and conquering most if not all of Ralios, including Hykimi tribes converted to the Theyalan religion in the eastern wilds of Ralios, and neighbors of the Telmori.

After clearing Ralios and laying a blockade to Kartolin Pass, Arkat turned south into Palangio's provinces in Maniria, fighting a long grueling war towards the east until he received unexpected Hendriki aid at Kaxtorplose. With these new allies beyond Palangio's well-fortified lands of Caladraland and Kotor/Esrolia, Arkat hired Waertagi ships and made landfall in the Kingdom of Night, liberating the Hendriki and the Only Old One from the Bright Empire, then advancing into the Heortling lands. Ralian Orlanthi would meet Heortlings as part of Arkat's host, and possibly exchange customs and cultic secrets as Lokamaydon's hold on Heortling initiation and magic was broken. But Ralian kingship rites apparently did not make their way into Heortling culture - possibly because the Hendriki had their own home-grown kingship of Larnsti holy men that may have been copied by the liberated Heortling tribes, or what remained of their cohesion. By the end of the Gbaji Wars, Orlanthi warlords like Vastolf Son of Quivin and Hendriki heroes had conquered Dara Happa while Arkat and his troll allies (and a core of human followers) fought the increasingly chaotic forces of Nysalor on their way to Dorastor.

As Arkat pronounced his Command to share the riches of Dara Happan tribute with his troll allies not only from Shadow Plateau but also Dagori Inkarth, his Ralian Orlanthi followers would have returned to Ralios alongside their again human-shaped hero and become part of his Autarchy while those Ralians who might have preferred the Bright Empire times sort of slid out of the Autarchy's envelope - if not during Arkat's lifetime, then in the struggles with Gerlant's successor Nralar, or the Return to Rightness crusade re-taking Seshnela from the archon of the lower Tanier Valley, and then defeating the Autarchy as a whole.

The Ralian Orlanthi outside of urban Safelster made the Malkioni resurgence quite unwelcome, and retained independence at least in the upper Tanier Valley. It isn't clear whether they still admired Arkat or whether they cursed him for bringing the trolls to Guhan, but it seems to be this population of Orlanthi who practiced the Rex kingship that Alakoring carried into the EWF lands north and east of the western Rockwood Mountains. Eastern Ralios apparently saw EWF administration with Ingolf Dragonfriend active in the region, using his dragon form in the wars. Ingolf apparently never met Alakoring, but might have been in remediary meditation to regain an untainted draconic self after having squandered his mystic experience until then in entanglement. From the account of his demise/enforced semi-ascension to Kapertine, it seems like Ingolf was one of the more prominent victims of the 1042 mass utuma ordered by the dragonewts.

Alakoring had dealt a massive blow to the Third Council slaying its leader Isgangdrang in his Great Dragon form, liberating much of southern Peloria. The Hendriki kings somehow made contact with Alakoring across the dragon-infested lands of Kerofinela, and included Rex kingship rites into their ways as the dragonfriends were weakened in the ongoing fights against the Slontans in Kotor and the united alliance of EWF foes in Peloria. Alakoring managed to insult the aldryami of the Elder Wilds and was slain by Tobosta Greenbow, but his staying dead somehow brought the aldryami into the anti-EWF coalition.

When the EWF leadership disappeared in 1042, the greater part of Dragon Pass turned to the Hendriki Orlanth Rex kings as protectors against the raiders from Peloria. Strenthened by the Rex Cult and the manpower provided by refugees from the Pass, the Hendriki conquered much of Esrolia in the Adjustment wars, only to lose, regain, and lose again as the grandmothers renewed their king-slaying powers.

 

[mfbrandi]

So here’s the thing: we have old Charlie Williams bobbling about between A E Waite and T S Eliot, and:

• Williams departs here from the quasi-unitarian theology of Many Dimensions, a novel built on Islamic lore. In this more Trinitarian work, which even devotes a scene to a choral performance of the Athanasian Creed, the Fool is specifically God the Redeemer, dancing with God the Creator — signified by the arcanum of the Juggler.
  — Barbara Newman, The Fool’s Dance: Finding the Still Point in The Greater Trumps

So in CW’s world, card zero of the Major Arcana is JC without the beard. But this is where Eliot got “at the still point, there the dance is,” which already reminded me — if no one else — of someone dear to us all [spoiler]. Now:

• The Greater Trumps (1932) introduces the “original” Tarot pack (Williams knew its reviser A E Waite through the Order of the Golden Dawn) and a set of golden images corresponding to the Cards, all magically dancing except for the Fool — whose stillness, however, appears to a seer’s eyes as motion so rapid as to be omnipresence.
  — Dave Langford, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy

So how would we inscribe all this in Gloranthan terms? Surely, . And if we consider that the Fool sits between the destruction of the old world and the creation of the new and is numbered zero, are we mad to think of and/or/as the Void (rather than, say, the scab)?

So this is the plan, we take down that cross-shaped fellow looming over Rio and erect a statue of Krarsht the Redeemer, “a princess of the other world on her travels through this one.”° We can easily crowdfund 600 tonnes of concrete, right?

Is this all just coincidence? An occult pursuit of a joke or a grudge? Perhaps the important distinction is not between Cosmos and Chaos but between will (the Magician) and surrender (the Fool).

———————————————————————
° As Waite didn’t quite say in his Pictorial Key (p. 76).

Edited November 18, 2023 by mfbrandi

[Tindalos]

Gerendetho is the Dara Happan name for Pamalt. 

[mfbrandi]

12 hours ago, Tindalos said:

Gerendetho is the Dara Happan name for Pamalt. 

So — per the Prosopaedia — they have similar constituencies:

• [W]idely worshiped by the peasantry
  — Gerendetho, p.45

• God of peasants and … the personification of the common man.
  — Lodril, p. 78

• [H]is worshipers are … the working people of the plains.
  — Pamalt,  p. 97

So if we view Pamaltela as hot and tropical — with a daily but not an annual solar cycle — we would see Pamalt as “really” a solar/fire deity, but the ruler of and the life of the earth. This fits with both Pamalt and being sons of and with Genert being the old (northern) sun. Thus Pamaltela gets cast — by Pamalt worshippers, at least — as a continent in which the pre-Time patriarchy was not overthrown? Was it that the earth in the south was not chafing under her son’s rule (Lodril being a son/husband relatively easy to live with) or that he had acquired enough and to keep his seat of power? Or perhaps the earth was cautiously experimenting with counter-coups — easy does it: one continent at a time.

In Genertela, was the rivalry between “brothers” and for the »cough« “affection” of their mother spontaneous, or was she trying to shrug off the rule of fire by beguiling an element of much bluster but little intellect? I wonder how that is working out for her: perhaps Old Windychops makes a better summer husband (when he is largely absent) than the new-but-not-necessarily-improved sun, giving Ernalda more power for part of the year, but at the cost — perhaps no cost at all! — of spending the winter underground, where it is nice and cosy, sharing a hearth with a fiery son/husband. Perhaps the climate experiment is working out. Perhaps it is just as well that Orlanth is notoriously unable to tell when his “wife” is missing.

Or — as always with these top-of-the-head rambles — not.

[Richard S.]

Got a wild one after reading HotHP: the conflict between Lokamayadon and the Heortlings was originally the first schism between Orlanth Adventurous and Orlanth Thunderous. Lokamayadon represented Adventurous, being supported by Voriof and being a master of Change. Tarumath (Tar-Umath?) was his name for Larnste, the power behind all change and creator of Umath.

[Richard S.]

A few more random ones:

1. Brithini have no afterlife because they refused Malkion's final law: to die.

2. The priests of Yelmalio and Humakt can control what gifts and geases their followers receive. In times of trouble it isn't unknown for them to use precise gift and geas combinations on new generations of initiates to create immediate crack fighting units, or to set geases that will all but force promising members into the priesthood eventually.

3. There has been one man within time who won the Hill of Gold for Yelmalio. He kept Avivorus Spear and the Bright Shield from being stolen by Orlanth, drove off Zorak Zoran before Enverinus Fire could be ripped from him, and at the summit confronted the filth of Kazkurtum and overcame it. This is how Khordavu returned Yelm's worship to the world.

I don't particularly like number 3, too much of a stretch and ignores the point of the HoG, but well it's a dumb theory.

Edited November 12, 2023 by Richard S.

[scott-martin]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Ignorance has always been externalized.

The essential process of Vithela is disintegration: starting with an undifferentiated experience, the magician of the dawn corner proceeds to identify and expel everything that differs in pursuit of the perfect unity at the core. Thus Kralorela, for example, is shrinking as impurities are externalized, often at least initially as flawed or incomplete reflections of the current imperial system: Dara Happa, for example.

The aim is to become both infinitesimal and ineffable.

[Joerg]

28 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

The essential process of Vithela is disintegration: starting with an undifferentiated experience, the magician of the dawn corner proceeds to identify and expel everything that differs in pursuit of the perfect unity at the core. Thus Kralorela, for example, is shrinking as impurities are externalized, often at least initially as flawed or incomplete reflections of the current imperial system: Dara Happa, for example.

The aim is to become both infinitesimal and ineffable.

Daruda and Aptanace still were on the side of integration (at least of that which wasn't clearly Sekever). The Venfornic principle exists besides the nihilistic forms of meditation and mysticism. Vith's wives exemplify the tension of the extremes of existence, allowing Vith to define the Middle that is pure.

The concept of Dara Happa (the Good Land, not in the sense of territory but in sense of society) redistributing the energies of the Source (the gateway to the Absolute) from Above differs from the Vithelan acknowledgement and tolerance of the Below. The closest Vithelan approximation to this might be Nenduren's contemplations of Stillness to reach Atrilith, the Mask of the Source, or his disciple's meditations on Perfect Stillness once Nenduren's practice had been subverted by Oorsu Sara.

[mfbrandi]

7 hours ago, Joerg said:

Ignorance has always been externalized

6 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Impurities are externalized

Is this perhaps the crux of it? Ignorance is an absence — of true or right belief (attitude) — but impurities are a presence, although a wrong or undesirable — a disordered — presence. (A disease is a disorder.) In Cosmos, there is stuff, but it is rightly ordered stuff. Cosmogonists may cleave more to one question than the other (though I guess they needn’t):

• why is there “rightness” (order) rather than “wrongness” (disorder)?
• why is there something rather than nothing?

Corresponding to these questions are competing notions of the “C” word:

• wrong or disordered existence
• no existence

For ideological reasons, some (Maran Gorites, maybe) will not want to associate Chaos too closely with Disorder, but others (dragons, perhaps) will not want to equate it with the Void. So equivocation and confusion reign. (Both/and would upset even more factions.)

When order is absent but stuff is present, you may get a tumour (a “chaotic feature”) or a “chaotic creature” (a “wrongness” in and of the world). But there is also “a hole in reality, a hole in existence … the absence of an underlying actuality.” Is a gap where there might have been stuff — “right” stuff — itself an example of wrongness, or is it just that the stuff arranged around the “hole” is disordered? If some examples of “reality failure” are wrong, should we conclude that they all are? If reality failed entirely, would that be the ultimate wrongness — although there would be nothing to be disordered?

Edited November 15, 2023 by mfbrandi
updated diagram

[mfbrandi]

  Spun off from Power of the Air Gods:

13 hours ago, scott-martin said:

call that the OX but who needs these complications, as it were

The X can be seen as sitting between the Life and Death runes as a modified form of either: —>X<—. Not dead, but not fertile, either.

The O suggests who in Glorantha may have invented the rubber castrating ring. Wrestle with with care, wannabe patriarchs: you may find that the only way to have a daughter is to get out the dressing-up box. As to whether some Light gods have been getting high on their own supply …

That sort of thing?

Edited November 16, 2023 by mfbrandi
comma

[Joerg]

Prompted by @Crel's musings at his blog I got into argumenting over at the Glorantha discord, where we were musing about the nature of Kargan Tor. I blurted out about Eurmal, Humakt and "not-yet-Vivamort" (Nontraya?) being involved in releasing capital D Death into the world.

Not-yet-Vivamort's role in this was dereliction of his guard post at (the bottom of) the Spike. This is the very fault blamed at Kargan Tor when he failed to guard the Spike against the advancing Chaos horde led by Wakboth and his parents.

So, in addition to Uleria and Changed Larnste, we may have identified a third of the eight power deities remaining in the world: Kargan Tor might be Nontraya might be Vivamort. The Death that came to Prax, tricked by Tada when he buried his wife/beast queen Eiritha.

 

Portions of Kargan Tor persist elsewhere in Glorantha, too. Karrg is the martial son of Kyger Litor, (K)Argan Argar is the spear-wielding Darkness counterpart of Lightfore ("Darkfore"), and we find "Tor" in the avatar of Kero Fin, Sorana Tor, the demi-land-goddess overseeing the human sacrifice to the Earth.

Edited November 18, 2023 by Joerg
added discord link

[scott-martin]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

"not-yet-Vivamort" (Nontraya?)

Collecting recombinant insight like this is one of the main reasons this thread exists. Thank you for bringing it here . . . and to all for all the rest of it!

Opening up the "not yet" or "premature" aspect of the vampire complex gets me thinking about its probational characteristics, the way the background was rushed to fit into Cults of Terror and then remained a kind of unfinished placeholder throughout the publishing history. It's never going to be ready to go. It's always "coming soon." Not yet. Hanging over us like the apocalypse or death on our shoulder.

And we know it's never finished because the name is still such an obvious Latin motto that a child would find defiant and clever but lacks the deep embedded development that people associate with post-unfinished Glorantha. Nobody ever formally went looking for the secret name of Vivamort or what he was called before adopting that goofy alias for himself. He's like King Griffon or Undine or Empress Earth or one of those other archaic placeholders, a revenant or trace of the trajectory of Gloranthan discovery. Not quite a survival, not quite a ghost.

Identifying the original Vivamort with the historical Nontraya is great. I love the way it opens up a theoretical role for him as the boy who would have symbolically carried death in the Ancient Earth sacrificial system and, more importantly, refused the role he was assigned by the goddess we now call TKT. He was born to embody the fourth corner, the corner that comes and goes in its season, and decided that meeting the fate of Genert or some other earth king sacrifice (the words are gendered in Nekropolitean) wasn't going to be fun, so he rebelled and was cursed. Whew. That's a lot of chatter. 

But the specifics are interesting. I love the implication you have here that one of the best ways they invented to kill sacrificial earth kings (i.e., excess boys who had become boring for some reason) was to manipulate them into fighting each other. The "tor" human sacrifice complex and the "tor" power rune combat complex were one and the same. We can imagine a kind of arena where the grandmothers watched stony, ornamented and cruel as various earth king candidates fought to the death. Losers were expendable. The winner might be married and deified, by which we can read killed more happily. This was the origin of the modern "marriage contest" reflected in the husband-protector rivalries and the Garhound rites. We might also see survivals if we squint in places like the Basko gladiator games (and the Kargg "warrior son" cult) and the historical Ten Women Well Loved story but this gets a little more complicated.

They all did it because they didn't know any better. It was just part of their neolithic sense of death, life and gender. At least one of them found out about death and opted out: "non trayo, I will not surrender it." Their entire emotional economy couldn't handle that so they expelled him.

I think the (K)arg is the spear here, which has uh pregnant implications for the emotional emancipation of trollkin as well as the binding of local Lodril. In their particular form of the rite the original husband contenders were probably as simple as it gets: winter and summer, night and day, dark and light. The boys fight, either individually or in communal contexts as part of teams. Sometimes one wins and sometimes the other wins. The goddess is eternal. At one point in prehistory the night side fixed it so they wouldn't lose again for a very long time. 

As you went north and west (and east toward the Tada / Genert civilization) the symbolic ecology changes to mirror local conditions. The important thing is probably that modern humanist Ernalda only remembers the story as a sort of fairy tale that teaches young women to beware men too narcissistic to embrace the immanence of death. We can imagine an Esrolian Angela Carter writing in Nochet, the city built on the deferral of human sacrifice: we will all die some day but not yet. Nochet Vivamort, maybe his original name was pronounced something more like No(n)chet Rya. 


 

[scott-martin]

Ty Kora Tek Karg = TKT(K)

In English publishing, this is a proofreader's mark to indicate that Text will "K"ome later because it is Not (ready) Yet. Thus the goddess of the three known corners holds space for the fourth that will emerge, the earth king who is transient in the northern systems and whose ritual necessity the would-be grandmothers have built a civilization to manage. The perpetuation of their economy revolves around the deferral of its ultimate collapse. One day at a time, ladies.

"Lord make me chaste but not yet."

See also: Corflu, cultists of

 

[mfbrandi]

8 hours ago, Joerg said:

Kargan Tor might be Nontraya might be Vivamort.

Excellent, but it does cast doubt on the deal with the Devil story. The “obvious” conclusion is that Kargan Tor’s problematic status as death-before-it-was-properly-death is the explanation of Vivamort’s “undead” condition: before Chaos reasserted itself in the world — Humakt as Lord of Terror — the vampiric state was the natural form of the dead (or the “dead”).

There was always something fundamentally wrong with the universe, a half-heartedness, until Chaos and sweet oblivion came to tidy things up. Like Boulez on the problem of opera — ka-boom! 😉

[mfbrandi]

More on Cosmos, Chaos, and the Void. WD traces the evolution of some ideas in scripture through time:

• The bow that Shiva uses is made of the Year, and his own shadow, the Night of Doomsday, is the bowstring, for Shiva himself is Time and Death. This is a myth of cosmic destruction by means of combining disparate elements, the mirror image of the myth of cosmic creation by means of dismemberment. To separate and put in order is to create, in this context; to cause oppositional pairs to unite, and thus to lose their separate identities, is to produce chaos and annihilation …
  
  Ultimately, however, the mythology resorts to the open-ended, ‘break-through-the-roof’ system in which it is, in fact, possible to cheat not only evil but death forever. The world to which the devotees of Shiva are translated now is an infinity of something, of the love of god, perhaps, in place of the infinity of nirvana or moksha, the Vedantic/Buddhist infinity of emptiness.
  
  — Wendy Doniger, ‘Death and Rebirth in Hinduism’ in On Hinduism, pp. 100–101
   

Spoiler

“To separate and put in order is to create” is — I believe — the mantra the serial killer recited as they were taken to the Glamour State Home for the Criminally Bewildered after arranging their latest victims’ entrails carefully across the municipal tennis courts. It was, they insisted, a time-honoured ritual to preserve the Cosmic order and at least it wasn’t Chaotic.

Meanwhile, the Void cultist is quietly working on their matter–anti-matter “device”. If that one comes off, probably there will be much less cleaning up to do.

[mfbrandi]

This belongs in What Counts as Undead? — but they wouldn’t believe me.

Vampires really should be lumped in with those superpowered yogis who take cultivating aversion to one’s own body as far down the left-hand path as it will go. Do we need a vampire/scary yogi checklist?

• mortification of the flesh — perfected
• magic powers and physical strength — check
• indifference to physical pain and social conventions — check
• polluting and dangerous — check
• sexual threat — check
  (we will avert our eyes from the varying methods of acquiring bodily fluids)
• militant — check
  (ascetic guerillas fighting the British Raj or Lunar vampire legion)
• a path to immortality — check
• “going after a kind of god one could find only by breaking away into madness and horror” — check°

Of course, some people get bad PR, especially if it is written by Mahatma Guru Sri Paramahansa Shivaji. 😉

—————————————————
° Wendy Doniger, “Assume the Position: The Fight Over the Body of Yoga” in On Hinduism (p. 118, article starts p. 116)
The above cherry picks some of the lurid bits from the article’s account of the long, complex history of the various things called “yoga”.

Edited November 19, 2023 by mfbrandi
too much “really”

[Joerg]

10 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Excellent, but it does cast doubt on the deal with the Devil story.

 Why? Cannot a Celestial Court deity succumb to existential angst now its former power of Separation has been superseded, and fallen into the hands of a trickster and a Storm-born upstart? 

 

10 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

There was always something fundamentally wrong with the universe, a half-heartedness, until Chaos and sweet oblivion came to tidy things up. Like Boulez on the problem of opera — ka-boom! 😉

Kargan Tor as a god of athletic contests clearly was a rune with unfulfilled potential up to the release of Death. We have stories about some of the Power deities - most strikingly the interplay between Uleria, Ratslaff (or rather his Boggles) and Tylenea, and the ventures of Larnste that lead to the Rockwood Mountains and Kero FIn. Orenoar is reflected in Lhankor Mhy's lost love (or it might be an oedipal relationship, possibly up to and including killing Acos? Or at least aiding and abetting it through the sin of Ignorance - for the Knowing God).

 

Another interpretation that that "always something fundamentally wrong with the universe" might have been that it is a compassionate universe, a universe that has been forgiving to a fault, until that fault threatened to overwhelm it, and forced it to transform into the devouring Sun Spider, integrating oblivion in as compassionate way as possible. (And then Sedenya overtook that with her reassembly/rebirth).

[mfbrandi]

On 11/19/2023 at 7:27 AM, Joerg said:

Cannot a Celestial Court deity succumb to existential angst … ?

Sure, I didn’t mean to deny that — one might expect those “pure” old fossils to be prone to angst and wallowing in self-pity as they wait in line at the STD clinic. The idea was that it might not be necessary to explain Vivamort, who we can — if we choose: I don’t want to force it on anyone — after your revelation see as the pre-Humakt state of death-not-quite-death, which to us — post-Humakt — looks odd and perverted. Application of Billy’s razor.

On 11/19/2023 at 7:27 AM, Joerg said:

And then Sedenya overtook that with her reassembly/rebirth

Overtook? As in continued Arachne’s good work of reconciling opposites? Will the spider in the end eat the sun? Yelm looked very nervous when he saw Yara Aranis take down Sheng Seleris, and shuddered when he heard her remark, “And what are you, nomad, but a Loose-sun and a Fast-sun, too?”

When the old lady is the spider, how do the children’s songs go?

• There was an old lady who swallowed the sun
  Perhaps it was fun
  To swallow the sun

Edited November 27, 2023 by mfbrandi

[mfbrandi]

Gloranthan Karaoke

Yelm sings of — and for — his wayward daughter (well, we are all children of the sun):

• Beauty and madness to be praised
  ’Cause it is not easy to be brave
  To walk around in so much need
  To carry the weight of all that greed
  Dressed in stolen clothes she stands
  Cast iron and frail
  With her impossibly gentle hands
  And her blood-red fingernails
  
  Out of the fire and still smouldering
  She says “A woman must have everything”
  Shades of Scarlett Conquering
  She says “A woman must have everything”

Edited November 21, 2023 by mfbrandi
link

[mfbrandi]

Back to the duality of concepts of Cosmos and Chaos. We can maybe find some rough correspondences in Hinduism (see Wendy Doniger’s ‘Saguna and Nirguna Images of the Deity’ in On Hinduism):

• SAGUNA : having form, existence, qualities
• NIRGUNA : lacking form, existence, qualities°

Doniger has the notion of a temple which is saguna (detailed, colourful, mind-blowing, worldly) in its external expression but increasingly nirguna as you move into its heart (the innermost shrine or ‘womb house’):

• [O]ne encounters the simplest of images in the garbha-griha … sometimes a small icon completely mummified in layers of cloth, a sinister image but one without qualities, nirguna … And although one has moved from a large physical space (the outer boundary of the temple) to a small physical space (the small cave, cool and dark, reeking of bat urine), the feeling is that one has been moving outward all the time, spiritually, into larger and larger spaces, until one encounters in the still centre the nirguna image that is the totality of the universe. — ibid, p. 155

The Lunars are totally gonna have that, right? (The headbanging, hardcore Voidjockeys may demur.) Join me in the cave for pass-the-parcel with a blue potato?

Spoiler

And with a gender flip, maybe this, too:

If you say he exists, he does;
his forms are these forms.

If you say he does not,
his formlessness
is of these non-forms.

If he has the qualities
of existence and non-existence,
he is in two states.

He who pervades is without end.

— Nammalvar, Tiruvaymoli 1.1.9
(in Carman & Naranayan, The Tamil Veda)

———————————————————————————————
EDIT 2023-12-05: Doniger’s introduction to the Penguin Hindu Myths doesn’t necessarily sit too well with what I say here, so she shouldn’t be taken as agreeing with my take on Chaos. As if anyone would think that, anyway!
———————————————————————————————
° There are things which exist but lack form: the sea, a gorp, that dress you wore last night. Even an aniconic nirguna icon of a deity exists.

Edited December 5, 2023 by mfbrandi
disclaimer

[mfbrandi]

Aunt Nancy Solara: Three is the Magic Number

Trickster is sometimes a spider — Nanni, Ananse, Aunt Nancy — whose mother (of the same name) produced the silk from which God (pick one) made humans. Her rôle in creation underappreciated, she taught her child tricksterish ways. So we retell a retelling of a retelling of …
 

When the Sky God — Wulbari — had to put some distance between himself and Mother Earth, he went to live with the animals. After managing to trade-up from a single corncob to one hundred slaves, Trickster claimed to be cleverer than Wulbari. The Sky God overheard and said that if Trickster could bring him “something,” he would concede the truth of the boast.

Obviously, Wulbari would not be happy with just anything, but he didn’t say what Trickster was to fetch. Trickster went away, returned in disguise, and contrived a situation in which Wulbari would tell the other animals what he wanted. Having heard which three things would impress the Sky God, Trickster set out for real.

Trickster was gone for a long time. Some say to fetch items from the belly of a great serpent. Eventually, Trickster returned to Wulbari — carrying a bag clearly bulging with something:

       Trickster opened the bag: Darkness was released, and no one could see;
       Trickster pulled out the Moon, and — by its weak light — people began to see again;
       Trickster extracted the final item from the bag: the Sun …

At which point, we can straight-up quote from my source:
 

• Those who were looking directly at Ananse when he took the sun from his bag became blind. Some were not looking straight at the sun, and their sight was only partly harmed, and others were looking away. They were not harmed.
  
  So it is that blindness came into the world because Wulbari asked Ananse for something.
  
  —— Stephen Belcher, “Ananse and the Corncob”
     (A tale of the Krachi, neighbours of the Ashanti)
     African Myths of Origin, p. 116
   

Is this tale an ancestor of “Three Curious Spirits”? The Secret Origin™ of the Sun Spider? The reason Jakaleel has a spindle? Testimony that the daughter is mother to her father (as often seems to be the way with gods and fits Moonson’s status as Yelm-on-earth)? Another reason Trickster wasn’t holding the edge of the Net (as when you leave it to certain parties, the serpent’s belly contains only dead things)? I don’t know.