Your Dumbest Theory

[mfbrandi]

One story we all know starts like this:

• In a social situation —
  which was certainly prickly, but in which murder was unknown —
  the man who would be king slew the evil emperor.

Another ends like this:

• And he said “… Now it is a free world, of humankind, for humankind, and ruled by humankind.”
  — Argrath and the Devil

And by the rule of three, here is one from start to finish:

• The Emperors of the Periphery, Change and Uncertainty, are most kindly entertained by the Emperor of the Centre, Chaos. To repay the hospitality, Change and Uncertainty humanize Chaos by giving him the face — the seven openings — he alone lacks. When the seventh hole is bored, Chaos dies.
  — Zhuangzi (paraphrase of the end of chapter seven)

People have doubted whether the “returned sun” was the slain emperor. In all three stories, the personification of Chaos ends up dead. But the good magician controls our attention.

• As Eugene Eoyang has acutely observed°, the story can well be read as criticizing the political desire to shape “anything not like ourselves” according to our own image. Infant-like Daoist sages and primitive animal-like societies fall prey to a Confucian humanist mania … The “invention” of morality thus seems to be at the heart of the “original sin” of Confucian anthropocentrism.
  — Hans-Georg Moeller,
    “Hundun’s Mistake: Satire and Sanity in the ‘Zhuangzi’”
    Philosophy East and West, Vol. 67, No. 3 (pp. 789–790)

If the “Chaos creatures” of Time seem corrupt and dysfunctional, it is because Chaos is dead and the dead rot. To heal the world, Chaos (now cast as the Devil) must be returned to life as the sun and countless other gods were at the Dawn?

 

——————————————————————————————————
° Chaos Misread: Or, There’s Wonton in My Soup!

Edited June 23 by mfbrandi
elaborated introductions

[scott-martin]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Philosophy East and West

Someone sufficiently motivated could read the entirety of Central Genertelan ontological struggle as Greg's effort to consolidate "kralornelan" (kalerornian) influences into the otherwise fairly traditional western perceptive of the malkionite sagas . . . if there's a wonton in your soup, add soy . . . but the eastern perspective is constantly receding, leaving only an unstable translation in its wake. Can the tension be resolved?

[mfbrandi]

14 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

if there's a wonton in your soup, add soy

Or as I call it, the Last Drop of Darkness.

[mfbrandi]

Thinking about the Troll shamanism and ancestor worship shenanigans on the RQ forum, I improvise this farrago:

• Daka Fal gets skragged and thereafter material humans can look forward to periods of existence as disembodied spirits — shades — in the Underworld.
• As above, so below: Daka Fal gets skragged and thereafter darkness spirits can look forward to periods of existence as material “humans” in that awful place sandwiched between Heaven and Wonderhome.
• This is the secret origin of the trolls and the true nature of the so-called “mating” between Daka Fal and Kyger Litor: an underground “thermonuclear event”. But if it is the story of how darkness spirits got too too solid flesh, it is also the story of how humans got souls to dubiously augment (or alternate with) their mobile clay.
• The troll attitude to their own children — stupid, disgusting, mobile snack food — is a reflection of their horror at the mere fact of embodiment: stubborn flesh won’t flow like subtle Darkness. “Living” trolls are “dead” darkness spirits, and the “trollkin curse” is older than Time.
• If the uz are not refugees but revenants, what do we make of ZZ’s undead, now?
• So how good a job has DF done of separating the living from the dead? As a daily murdered and reborn fellow, perhaps to him the states are too ephemeral to bother tracking.
• Shadows burned on concrete.

[theconfusingeel]

Gaining a hero soul means you start to be mythically identified as yourself insted of as your god

[mfbrandi]

3 hours ago, theconfusingeel said:

you start to be mythically identified as yourself insted of as your god

Is this a weird form of modesty or next-level narcissism? 😉

[Akhôrahil]

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Is this a weird form of modesty or next-level narcissism? 😉

Like what I say about Occlusion: I'm not one with the Universe, the Universe is one with me!

[theconfusingeel]

19 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Is this a weird form of modesty or next-level narcissism? 😉

I would say that you have to be a narcissist to try and become a god but I imagine the people who achieve this don't really realize what happened.

[mfbrandi]

10 hours ago, theconfusingeel said:

I would say that you have to be a narcissist to try and become a god

Maybe, but if we go with the “gods surrender agency” thing, then becoming a god is like becoming a volcano (ensuring fertile soil) or a weather system (e.g. bringing the needed spring rains). Wanting that kind of legacy might be thought of as narcissistic, but there is no ongoing strutting and caprice, just the one-off arrogance of daring to become part of the “landscape”.

I guess it also depends on one’s perspective and the relevant alternatives: next to dying and leaving no trace, it might seem a bit cocky; next to becoming a body-hopping indefinitely extended necromancer, it might seem more self-effacing.

I dunno. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[mfbrandi]

• During the Golden Age a son of Grandfather Mortal named Malkion founded the culture of what were later called the Malkioni.
  — Charlie Krank, Sea of Neliom (Wyrm’s Footnotes #11, p. 20, © 1981)
   
• Malkion was the son of Aerlit, one of the demigods of Air that followed Vadrus, and of Warera the Triolini.
  — Prosopaedia: Malkion (PDF, p. 81, © 2023)

The first would make Malkion the Son of Man, and that would fit with our early — whether or not correct — understanding of Malkion as the Jesus of the knights and wizards of the West. “Aerlit” sounds too much like “Orlanth” to my ear. Is Malkion supposed to be a brother of Damol (the staunch pagan conservative), now? The ignominy! Next thing we’ll all be converting to Aeolianism.

Spoiler

• Rolfasland was a Pendali land at the Dawn, but was conquered in 36 by the demigod Damol, the Lord of the West and son of the air god Aerlit.
  — Guide to Glorantha (PDF, p. 411)

What other parentages for Malkion do we have? There must be more than two (but I am lazy).

(Of course I wasn’t looking for any of that. I was looking for pre-RQ3 references to the West as “mediæval” (which needn’t mean high or late) — I am sure that is what we were expecting from CK back then, but memory plays tricks. And that got left behind, anyway.)

If Arkat murdered Nysalor, is this an echo of the ungrateful disposal of Malkion? Malkion, the “god of the West claiming omnipotence” (Cults of Terror, Classic PDF, p. 22). God must be killed to save the world, for:

• The Malkioni religion … supports active human dominance of the universe
  — Cults of Terror (Classic PDF, p. 11)

Malkionism as (a mostly very uptight) Christianity without the resurrection, and Arkat–Argrath as a sort of pro-active Judas (who cannot wait for the Romans and their nails)? This is why the Brithini are “atheists”?

Is this the beef between the Orlanthi Tendance Argrath and the Lunars Tendance Impérialiste — whether dead gods should stay dead? What good is a sacrifice that reappears?

Do we link Malkion to the air gods to tie it all up in a bow? And all the red hair is to make us see that the betrayals were really connived at. (Always have someone with a sharp sword standing behind you lest self-dismemberment prove too tricky. Even if that someone is yourself.)

Invisible God, Invisible Moon, Invisible Orlanth — is this a compromise position? It is gone. You haven’t seen it come back. You can kinda–sorta pretend it is still there … but it won’t do anything.

Glorantha fandom can sometimes seem gung-ho for (pretend) polytheism, but are there not hints that the creator was rather more ambivalent? And always Spinrad is wagging his finger at Campbell.

[scott-martin]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Is Malkion supposed to be a brother of Damol (the staunch pagan conservative), now?

TLDR he is now but this is a more recent theological invention that does not appear in the simplified catechisms that make their way to children, caste jumpers and foreigners like us. 

The fragmentary sources agree that Damol's mother was a daughter of the house of Neleos, which becomes more than a little infamous when you read between the faded typescript lines for applying itself with unusual gusto to the recombinant religious possibilities unlocked in the hrestolic revolution of consciousness. And they agree that Damol's father was some manner of storm dude. However, one of the most detailed accounts insists that his name was Arosen and not Aerlit at all! 

IMG this is a textual artifact of the way regional understanding of the air gods evolved around early encounters with pre-theyalan precursors . . . we are told that "Coalot" (Kolat) develops in this era from "a former roadside cult" into a storm king figure roughly 150 years before the lightbringers intrude upon Hrelar Amali, much less the hrestolic west. I suspect that there were at least two waves of storm influence from this direction. The first is preserved in the transcriptions as "aerli" and this is the father of the god of our fathers. The second might have been heard as something like "worli" and to my ear is closer to the modern (W)Orlan(th) of the southern highlands.

But all this gets conflated or syncretized as the chroniclers achieve precision about the world outside the dawn age colonies . . . and become enmeshed in centuries of politico-religious controversy. The historical Damol was not just a great apostate. His line competed with the serpent king establishment around Old Frowal and lost, spending more than six centuries underground (or functionally extinct) before the upheavals of the reassessment era finally brought them to power. By this stage, the gothic pagan revival that often gets attached to the siring of Damol (pentagrams and bride sacrifice are variously involved) is probably extremely dilute or at best bad manners to mention. They're just another ancient family with odd heirlooms in the attic.

However, the air father iconography can then get more closely associated with the imperial ancestor cult of Malkion the Patriarch. "Arosen" drops out or is forgotten in the Damol stories that get rediscovered, refined and recirculated in this period. "Aerlit" emerges from the background to reflect the current political understanding that the invested kings of Seshnela are god's own great-great-grandnephews whose origins  recapitulate and reconstruct those of god himself. When the house of Damol finally dies out, Malkion Aerlit remains . . . until the reformers do their work to push all that awkward stuff back into the background. We would not have Damol's story at all today if not for passing anecdotes in places like the Guide. (And maybe strange references among the Aeolians.) After all, it was 1600 years ago and writing is kept from most of the population today.

Greg clearly got bored with the task he assigned himself of tracing the evolution of the Gloranthan west from its pagan origins in mythical time to something like historical monotheism. Hierophanic irruptions like Damol kept him going for awhile but if not for the invention of Central Genertela for the board games I doubt he would have continued with it half as long as he did. His loyalties are obviously elsewhere. 

 

[scott-martin]

3 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Malkionism as (a mostly very uptight) Christianity without the resurrection, and Arkat–Argrath as a sort of pro-active Judas (who cannot wait for the Romans and their nails)? This is why the Brithini are “atheists”?

For me the proximity between the aggressively literal "death of god theology" of God Forgot and the robust folk syncretism of the Aeolians nearby sums up the tension well. Close one eye and open the other: the sacrifice was in vain, the wheels of reason grind life into dust and the bird of enchantment dies in its iron cage. Switch eyes and magic is alive, it never left.

What we know is that resurrection is real in Glorantha. The repressed resurges. How we apply this to our lives around and away from the table (un travail très sérieux, avec de gros livres et beaucoup de papier sur une grande table) is up to us. Fuck the brithinists if they can't take a joke, so to speak. I do think, though, that having killed all their "dragons" they don't really have a living concept for utuma or even the grace of the knight of infinite faith who commits the sacrifice and has the sacrificial victim restored. If only they had some dragons.

[scott-martin]

5 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

pre-RQ3 references to the West as “mediæval”

"Print the legend," so to speak. To my jaundiced eye the RQ2 west was already as "mediæval" as your favorite pre-raphælite painting or steeleye spæn record as long as it is Below the Salt. A sense of a pre-revolutionary ancient regime. Murky forest fastnesses and humble cottages worthy of a Michelet study or A24 flick. Knights and princesses, quests and vigils. A mixed consort of lute and theorbo. The endless Pennsic Wars. Sir Boss.

We didn't have quite so much to play with in the earliest '80s. The past is larger and theoretically more authentic now.

Edited June 30 by scott-martin
a connecticut yankee & ye spirit of capitalism

[mfbrandi]

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

The past is larger and theoretically more authentic now.

Theoretically. 😉

[Nick Brooke]

When I am enjoying a fantasy role-playing game, theoretical authenticity to some Procrustean reinterpretation of the source material trumps familiarity, fun and playability every time. (Said nobody, ever.)

[Joerg]

3 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

What other parentages for Malkion do we have? There must be more than two (but I am lazy).

There is the Devolution of Malkion as manifestation of the Invisible God in Revealed Mythology, with three "Man" Malkions - the Founder of Third Action, the Prophet of Fourth Action, and the Sacrifice of Fifth Action.

 

18 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Is Malkion supposed to be a brother of Damol (the staunch pagan conservative), now? The ignominy!

Half-brother and more than three-eighths ancestor. The only non-confirmed direct descendant of Malkion and Phlia Tilnta in his maternal ancestry is his great-grandmother Xemela.

One may assume that the twin children of a Tilnta would be able to reproduce without any danger of incest. Less sure about the twin children of a land goddess like Seshna, as the second Serpent King Thamor, son of Ylream and Nebrola (daughter of Froalar and Seshna, and her mother's high priestess) left a difficult inheritage to his son Bertalor, third of the lineage of Ylream and ending that branch of the Serpent King dynasty.

 

13 hours ago, scott-martin said:

The fragmentary sources agree that Damol's mother was a daughter of the house of Neleos,

Damol's maternal grandfather: Duke Yadmov, son of Neleos, personal friend of Hrestol and one of the regents for Ylream (the first Serpent King), a third generation descendant of Aerlit (second generation descendant of Malkion)
Damol's maternal grandmother: Princess Fenela, daughter of Froalar and full sister of Hrestol, half-sister of Ylream and his twin sister, herself a fourth generation descendant of Aerlit (third generation descendant of Malkion).

In a way, Damol is the counterweight for the three demigod children of Basmol with one of his female descendants from the Orphalsket lineage, one of which (the "witch" Narvwi) ended up marrying first a Man-of-All and then the son of one of the Pendali kings who joined the Serpent Kings' kingdom (from the house that granted Froalar his settlement before the Greater Darkness). One brother died a heroic death against Ylream before Ylream himself left the Surface World, the other (oldest) brother became the effective leader of Pendali warfare against the Malkioni.

Damol becomes the ally of the serpent-legged grandson of Ylream, both marry a daughter of the forest king Jorestl (each with the by-name Aldryama). Damol sires five sons on his forest wife, the Serpeng King a serpent-legged son and two daughters on his wife.

13 hours ago, scott-martin said:

the house of Neleos, which becomes more than a little infamous when you read between the faded typescript lines for applying itself with unusual gusto to the recombinant religious possibilities unlocked in the hrestolic revolution of consciousness.

Doesn't the House of Neleos die out with the death of Yadmov's and Fenela's son on a quest? Admittedly he was known as a priest-knight, which does indicate dabbling in the Serpent-King-Era of combining the serpentine Earth cult with Seshnegi Hrestolism. IIRC he dies breaking into the citadel of Orphalsket, the richest of the Pendali fortresses.

Yadmov starts out as the somewhat sheltered Talar son of Duke Neleos, who claims that Neleoswal used to be part of Brithela before the Neliomi sea cut it off the mainland. He is aghast at Hrestol's blatant disregard for the old caste ways, but gets swayed by his successes on the field of battle, then joining the men-of-all in training and becoming one of the foremost of the new elite alongside the (soldier-born) Sir Faralz who gets a talar position as earl of a former Pendali fortress-town.

After Hrestol's short return (before leaving for his Brithos exile) and Froalar's disappearance in the Temple, Yadmov, Faralz and IRC Fenela (Hrestol's sister) became the regents for Ylream.

 

There is a strange name similarity between Neleos and the sea deity (Neleom or Neliom), but the lineage is rather clear - Neleos and his twin sister wife are the children of Malkion and Phlia Tilnta, just like other twin-sibling couples (Talar and Eule of Talarwal, Duke Horal (not the warrior) and Menena of Horalwal) and the caste founders Zzabur and Holar Swordwielder. And yes, this "other Horal" business is confusing and a bit hard to reconcile with the Brithini description first published in the RQ3 Genertela box and nearly unchanged in the Guide. My simple fix would be  to switch their names and that of the coastal Brithos community Hrestol married into.

 

 

15 hours ago, scott-martin said:

The historical Damol was not just a great apostate. His line competed with the serpent king establishment around Old Frowal and lost, spending more than six centuries underground (or functionally extinct) before the upheavals of the reassessment era finally brought them to power.

I don't quite agree. The Damolsten lineage (five sons of Damol) opposed King Bertalor for his treatment of his wife and his burning of parts of Jorestl's Forest. The five sons of Damol went out of their way to save their aunt from her captivity and helped cause the crisis which led to the death of Bertalor's adult serpent-legged son.

Bertalor feared Aignor the Trader - the grandson of Hrestol born among the Vadeli, who had entered Seshna's Temple and sired a serpent-legged child on her (Sonmalos) before he was betrayed. Aignor's father was the son of Hrestol's marriage in Brithos, and apparently he inherited the job as Vadeli Judge when Hrestol left the Vadeli Isles for Fronela for his second attempt at getting the henosis thing right.

When Orphalsket and the sorcerer son of Basmol, brother of Narvwi had been conquered, Damolsten was far from the Pendali conflicts. IIRC the Damolsons supported Aignor and his son Sonmalos after Bertalor had adopted Sonmalos as his heir when his serpent-legged (?) infant son by a concubine died and the male lineage of Ylream had come to an end.

We don't know much about the sea travels of Boltror, the serpent-legged son of Sonmalos who never ascended the throne, instead ceasing it to his son Mimtak and joining his father's "ascension" into the Earth realm of Seshna. Boltror was pretty much fully pagan, deeply involved in the Earth mysteries, and at a guess his wife Pamala might have come from the Earth temple at Ezel, from Nochet, or possibly the Paps. There is a good chance that he had travel companions from Damol's lineage aboard that Waertagi ship. His grandfather Aignor seems to have been on good terms with the Waertagi too if he could conduct his trading across the Neliomi Sea.

 

One of Damol's descendants had the perishable honor to become the first sacrificial royal husband of Queen Anilla, the daughter of Mimtak who ruled as an Earth-Queen and high priestess of Seshna - hardly in the underground. His Man-of-All replacement from a Malkioni lineage in Seshnela died before a year had passed, too, and there was a general dissatisfaction with Anilla headed by her nephew Neeilin and the holy knight Gothimus (who then got to war about her succession).

 

(Of Hrestol's adventures in Fronela I only know the short paragraph in Middle Sea Empire which states he regained mastery of all the four castes, founded the Kingdom of Loskalm or Akem by uniting the coastal Malkioni city-states and taking land from the Enjoreli Bull Folk. After the Kingdom was stable, Hrestol retired for a third attempt to achieve Henosis with the one Mind, during which he was martyred and ascended to join Malkion and his wife's uncle Yingar. This has a bit of a Jedi ascension vibe, written a decade or so before Star Wars introduced a ghostly Obiwan Kenobi.)

 

Speaking of making full use of the "Malkion son of Aerlit" stories, IMG the ancestors of the Worker caste, descendants of Kala (the goddess of a hill range in Brithela) and Malkion, came as male twins just like the children of Talar, by the names of Dronar and Dromal. One of the brothers left Brithos and founded a kingdom in Fronela - King Drona.

But then, maybe there was only one such son, and he left with the Kachasti because his Phlia-born brothers did not respect him and his caste as he deserved.

Either way, the Dronar/Dromali caste was bereft of strong leadership to balance the three Phlia-born castes and became the lower caste of Brithela while King Drona established his Earth King kingdom in southern Fronela.
 

[scott-martin]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

strange name similarity between Neleos and the sea deity

It gets complicated. My baseline assumption (dumb theory) here is that Old Neleos either exploited or engineered the similarity in his own exploratory efforts to transcend the mortal condition. Before the hrestolic revolution, there was a sea and there was a duke. Afterward, the duke and the sea were conflated and then the duke went away, leaving only the sea god behind.

The rest of the family got up to similar exploits in its short but explosive early career. The careful will note multiple early "vadelite" entanglements on this genealogy . . . I think this material was deliberately suppressed by the people who ended up winning this dynastic struggle. 

Obviously this "alpha and omega" set of scans cuts Damol's (here "Damiliol," there is a Peredur / Percival split between more and less paganized traditions) career in its entirety as well as Yadmov (here "Yaradoz"), Kanthor, the sinister original Teleos and so on. Then the line of Damol picks up again and has the adventures we allude to here and more.

I love all the other stuff you have here, who has time to quibble about minutia few may ever see?

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

It gets complicated. My baseline assumption (dumb theory) here is that Old Neleos either exploited or engineered the similarity in his own exploratory efforts to transcend the mortal condition. Before the hrestolic revolution, there was a sea and there was a duke. Afterward, the duke and the sea were conflated and then the duke went away, leaving only the sea god behind.

The rest of the family got up to similar exploits in its short but explosive early career.

Rather fascinating! Not only Neleos but Teleos, his grandchild! 

As your second text asks: "Who are the puppets?"

[jajagappa]

3 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Before the hrestolic revolution, there was a sea and there was a duke. Afterward, the duke and the sea were conflated and then the duke went away, leaving only the sea god behind.

Is this the true Brithini immortality? When a Brithini is able to conflate themselves with a sea (Neleom) or a land (Teleos) and so endures without aging? 

[Joerg]

3 hours ago, scott-martin said:

It gets complicated. My baseline assumption (dumb theory) here is that Old Neleos either exploited or engineered the similarity in his own exploratory efforts to transcend the mortal condition. Before the hrestolic revolution, there was a sea and there was a duke. Afterward, the duke and the sea were conflated and then the duke went away, leaving only the sea god behind.

Neleos and his twin-sister-wife were original children of Malkion and his Tilnta wife, presumably nearly as old as Talar, Zzabur, Horal/Holar, Menena and Dronar (measured in turnings of the Red Sands of Time in Godtime). He is still the ruler of the city state named after him when Hrestol sets off to his theomachy quest, with Yadmov just his princeling (of indeterminate age, but the same apparent age group as Hrestol).

Quick cut to the rite performed by (now adult) Ylream before his advisors (the illustration of Dawn Age Seshnela in Vol.2 of the Guide), including his former regents, one of whom is Duke (and man-of-all) Yadmov, evidently having succeeded his father to the office of ruling Talar of Neleoswal. This suggests some form of retirement, possibly violent since the western front against Orphalsket saw quite a bit of military action during Ylream's regency. Or possibly aboard one of the Waertagi ships keeping his city in sparse contact with the Brithos motherland? Possibly for a journey on the Boat Planet, Waertag's abode in the Sky?

 

The sea god or at least his body of water had been tapped almost completely devoid of energies during the Gods War by both Brithini and Vadeli. After the Breaking of the World, new energies coursed through these waters or maybe just through this water bed. IMG the local Ludoch population (possibly from beyond the western edge of the world, adjacent to the Waertagi piers reaching out from Danmalastan) gets washed off into the new Homeward Ocean and above the former sea bottom of Faralinthor on its northern edge, reviving Choralinthor alongside the waters carried in by the Creek-Stream River from the celestial waters.

There is another occasion in the Gods War where four seas gave up their energies to empower Worcha, the Raging Sea. None of them recovered from that, except for the Oslir River.

 

For some weird reason, the name of Warera's tribe in the Sourcebook got changed from the old form Wartain (e.g. in Missing Lands and the Wyrm's Footprints collection of Footnotes articles) into the name of Waertag, which is the name we know one of the Danmalastan founder sons of Malkion by. (Although possibly a different incarnation/devolution of Malkion?) By the genealogy of the Brithos story, Waertag would be Warera's grandson and sort-of nephew by her cousin Jeleka, a niiad or ludoch Triolina of the Wartain tribe. But possibly the tribal founder reborn, or possibly even the (re-)incarnation of one of the ten Triton sons of Phargon and Mirintha (seven of which founded one of the seven kindred each, with the rest being the patrons of the spirit, theist and sorcerous magic of the merfolk).

But recursive ancestry can be extended, with Grandfather Mortal as the father of Phargon possibly being Malkion (at least in sharing the archetype).

 

Greg had a story about a citadel founder being coveted by the sea (or at least a sea goddess) in western Seshnela, but that honor went to Orphals, the IIRC oldest of the five most divine sons of Pendal and Ifttala and first ruler or warlord of the westernmost Pendali tribe/Basmoli kingdom. While situated on an estuary on the Seshnelan coast, the citadel warded Orphals from his marine stalker.

I wonder whether that story could have been conflated with the fate of Neleos, too.

[metcalph]

So... after the collapse of Teleos's revolt, the Waertagi secreted him and his household on the isle of Imadsalash, where they used the Teleono to create the Six Peoples in a step up from Damilol of the Five Worlds.  But the hoped for hero never came.

 

[PaulJW]

On 6/30/2024 at 3:33 PM, mfbrandi said:

Malkionism as (a mostly very uptight) Christianity without the resurrection

That was kind of the feel you got for it from RQ3 days and in various materials written by various people prior to RQG.

I think it is now erring more in the direction of a more mystical, yet ultimately still potentially just as uptight version of Hinduism.  Also, I get the impression that Chaosium thinking on Malkionism is also erring in the direction of renaissance hermeticism (which itself was actually inspired by medieval Christian mysticism).

With such influences it could potentially go in any number of directions depending on the particular sect of Malkioni.

What many people think of as medieval Christianity today, however, is often a fairly shallow pastiche of the historic reality.  So Malkionism could yet benefit from drawing to some extent from that source of inspiration.

We tend to remember people like Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (if we think of him at all) as the man who preached the 2nd Crusade, the founder of the Knights Templars, and the somewhat 'uptight' champion of medieval Catholic orthodoxy.  But his mysticism is much less well recalled.  It is the latter element of his thinking and, indeed, the mysticism found within medieval Christianity itself, that we have all but forgotten entirely (and which, in fact, could make a most interesting inspiration for Malkionism moving forward). 

It was medieval Christian mysticism that ultimately gave us such things as the Holy Grail legend and all the mythology and esoterica that has evolved from that.  And, ultimately, it, along with classical mythology, spawned hermeticism.

 

[Ali the Helering]

On 7/1/2024 at 10:09 AM, Nick Brooke said:

(Said nobody, ever.)

Lightweight 🤣

[John Biles]

17 hours ago, PaulJW said:

 

We tend to remember people like Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (if we think of him at all) as the man who preached the 2nd Crusade, the founder of the Knights Templars, and the somewhat 'uptight' champion of medieval Catholic orthodoxy.  But his mysticism is much less well recalled.  It is the latter element of his thinking and, indeed, the mysticism found within medieval Christianity itself, that we have all but forgotten entirely (and which, in fact, could make a most interesting inspiration for Malkionism moving forward).

His mysticism was very much the flip side of his burning hatred of Universities, scholarship, rationalism, etc.

The sort of person who writes books about how you shouldn't be reading and learning from books.

But yes, there's a *huge* strain of Catholic mysticism, bound up with monasticism.  Most monk/nun saints were mystics to some degree. 

[mfbrandi]

On 7/4/2024 at 10:49 AM, PaulJW said:

I think it is now erring more in the direction of … Hinduism.

Sure, and something like the varnas has been there for quite a while, I think. We could even build a version of Hindu monotheism, if we had to. Whatever the set-dressing it would be a shame to lose sight of Gloranthan (hardcore) monotheism, atheism, and ambivalence about gods and heroes. IMHO, Gloranthans shouldn’t all agree about what the world is like, what religion is all about, and what they should think about those things. Gloranthan diversity shouldn’t boil down to a cross-reference on a cult compatibility chart (or which soccer team they support). In my fevered brain, anyway — cooler heads may prevail. 😉