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Of the Lightbringers gods (Orlanth, Chalana Arroy, Eurmal, Issaries, Lhankor Mhy), none accept human sacrifice, unless you consider the life of being a Trickster a very slow human sacrifice. Ernalda, Yelmalio, Yelm, Polaris, Yelorna, Ourania, Dendara, Lodril, Storm Bull, Waha, Eiritha, Asrelia, Ty Kora Tek - all refuse human sacrifice.

Of the gods of Death, Maran Gor, Babeester Gor, Humakt, Gorgorma, Shargash - all accept human sacrifice. So does Hon-eel. Several other Grain Goddesses do as well. So do Valind and Ygg.

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17 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Of the Lightbringers gods (Orlanth, Chalana Arroy, Eurmal, Issaries, Lhankor Mhy), none accept human sacrifice, unless you consider the life of being a Trickster a very slow human sacrifice. Ernalda, Yelmalio, Yelm, Polaris, Yelorna, Ourania, Dendara, Lodril, Storm Bull, Waha, Eiritha, Asrelia, Ty Kora Tek - all refuse human sacrifice.

Of the gods of Death, Maran Gor, Babeester Gor, Humakt, Gorgorma, Shargash - all accept human sacrifice. So does Hon-eel. Several other Grain Goddesses do as well. So do Valind and Ygg.

I'd assume Yara Aranis as well. Are there are other Lunar deities that accept human sacrifice commonly?

Though a Lunar through and through, she is also a human being.

"I just read an article in The Economist by a guy who was riding around with the Sartar rebels, I mean Taliban," -Greg Stafford, January 7th, 2010

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15 hours ago, Jeff said:

Of the Lightbringers gods (Orlanth, Chalana Arroy, Eurmal, Issaries, Lhankor Mhy), none accept human sacrifice, unless you consider the life of being a Trickster a very slow human sacrifice. Ernalda, Yelmalio, Yelm, Polaris, Yelorna, Ourania, Dendara, Lodril, Storm Bull, Waha, Eiritha, Asrelia, Ty Kora Tek - all refuse human sacrifice.

What about the Year King, or seven year Kings? Wasn't Belintar sacrificed as a Seven Year King? Or am I misremembering?

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Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

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46 minutes ago, soltakss said:

What about the Year King, or seven year Kings? Wasn't Belintar sacrificed as a Seven Year King? Or am I misremembering?

In case of Belintar, that was only a theory about Esrolia, but we have the sacrificial kings of the Illaro dynasty with their seven years terms of office, and apparently Unstey of Wintertop follows this model, too. But then, it is Sorana Tor who acts as the intermediate between the king and Ernalda, so "technically" Ernalda doesn't accept human sacrifice, but Sorana Tor does.

As goddess of the Greater Earth, IMO Ernalda receives the human sacrifice both from the sacred kings and from the maize rites.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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5 hours ago, Joerg said:

...

As goddess of the Greater Earth, IMO Ernalda receives the human sacrifice both from the sacred kings and from the maize rites.

I think the maize rites go to Sedenya... it's part of her "we are all us" effort to encompass all aspects of god-hood.

 

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21 hours ago, soltakss said:

What about the Year King, or seven year Kings? Wasn't Belintar sacrificed as a Seven Year King? Or am I misremembering?

Belintar being sacrificed as a Seven Year King was a Hero Wars era interpretation of Esrolia, which I've not seen repeated since, and I think is one we can probably ignore.

There is a seven year cycle at the Shaker's Temple which is seen in KoS.

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56 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I believe there's some comment in either the Guide or possibly the online design notes for the Guide about how the Year King thing isn't actually a thing. So presumably non-canon nowadays.

Given that there is no mention of a Year King in the Guide to Glorantha, the Glorantha Sourcebook, the Cults Book, or the material I am assembling on the Holy Country - it is safe to say that is not something Belintar participated in.

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That's right, you cut it. Here's the original source in Wyrms Footnotes #9, which makes it clear this is something Belintar outlawed. My suggestion back in the nineties was that this was only after he had participated in the rite (against his will?) as a dying and rising god, a human sacrifice to the goddesses of Earth. (Around the same time, other non-canonical fan theories had Belintar 'beating' each of the Sixths at their own sovereignty myths -- breaking the bank at Casino Town, and so on). My second suggestion was that this is the kind of thing the Old Earth Alliance might be trying to start up again, now that the God-King is no more.

Here's what Greg wrote:

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3 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

My second suggestion was that this is the kind of thing the Old Earth Alliance might be trying to start up again, now that the God-King is no more.

I'm sure the toxic economy ("trickle out," as it were) is a great temptation for some people, especially in the wake of the Great Winter failures and in the face of superficially compelling maize rites. If nobody is agitating for its return now, the reason might be really simple. Somebody already tried it and it didn't work. The rites needed a live Ernalda to function. She's part of them. They're part of her. Sublimated, deferred, subverted and latent in normal times, OK.

But in her absence, the seeds just didn't sprout no matter how they were watered. There was no reversion to pre-ernaldite agriculture. It just broke no matter how desperate they got. They broke the law anyway and nothing happened. And now that she's back (for the time being?) the people who ran those rites are unspeakable and probably accursed. It's an interesting story that someone could tell. It tells us an awful lot about deep Ernalda.

And I wonder now what strange and febrile earth cult they have in Ignorance.

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On 8/14/2021 at 7:27 PM, Jeff said:

Of the Lightbringers gods (Orlanth, Chalana Arroy, Eurmal, Issaries, Lhankor Mhy), none accept human sacrifice, unless you consider the life of being a Trickster a very slow human sacrifice.

Love that. On a long enough timeline every life spent in bhakti yoga is a consecration and sacrifice of one (1) human incarnation. We all make choices and all pay the bill.

But one of the insights of lightbringer-style initiation is that the currency that really matters is abstracted as POW and not the commodity fetish of blood, sweat, tears, elemental reservoirs, whatever. POW is a renewable resource. When the POW is willing, you can get more done with metaphor than with rote mechanical exchange.

What drops out of this? Well, a monograph on vampiric economy becomes interesting again, but not really. We all really know how a parasite works. On the other hand, efforts to deny the lightbringer sacrifice can get channeled back into the development of what we call sorcery, ritual alienated from narrative. It isn't enough for the sorcerer that we pay the god precious attention (POW) and get the fruits of POW in exchange.

The sorcerer focuses on the fire we light, the words we say and the place in the forest we go. The story is just a story. Repeat the routine and something happens. With experimentation maybe you can make it a little portable even if it costs you a little efficiency. Archaic blood magic is like that. The first proto sorcerers may well have been sacrificial mothers making hard choices: something like trolls, something like scientists and something like the ritual killers they are.

This is probably a temptation within the zzabur complex . . . only they say "tap." Commodify the quality and render it fungible. Blood is blood. Blood for blood. But who knows what malign psychic parasites they attract, sitting on their POW behind the scenes, hungry for it.

EDIT and one of the horrible thing "witches" do is run their magic on non-renewable characteristics. Take someone's SIZ or APP to run a spell, for example, and it won't grow back under normal circumstances. You aren't asking for a few magic points or a little POW. It's cosmically inefficient, a wound in the world. But it gets their thing done. They'll trade for the characteristics they covet. If Humakt hates vampires and the beards hate a headhunter, this is what we hate.

Edited by scott-martin
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And to pull this ecological metaphor of symbiosis further, shamans and spiritism can be understood as commensal relations to go with the parasitic sorcery and mutualistic worship. The shaman benefits from the god's fostering of spirit courts through cosmogonic acts, (receiving free POW) and needs not sacrifice POW, neither benefiting nor harming the god. And indeed, the awakened fetch is almost an antisacrifice, an entire person emerging spontaneously. But at the same time, a shaman has a life dedicated to the Otherside to the point of being an Otherside entity in some key ways, which is also in its own way sacrificial. Perhaps even more so than a Rune Priest, who simply dedicates 90% of their time and resources to living in sync with their god, but a shaman is presumably a shaman 100% of the time. 

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Though a Lunar through and through, she is also a human being.

"I just read an article in The Economist by a guy who was riding around with the Sartar rebels, I mean Taliban," -Greg Stafford, January 7th, 2010

Eight Arms and the Mask

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4 minutes ago, Eff said:

the awakened fetch is almost an antisacrifice

Love it. The sacrifice of self to self, object and subject united on the shamanic mirror. "On that tree of which no man knows from where its roots run." HMKT works like this in some Gloranthas. Or at least the deep expression of the cult does.

And great point, the economy of animism is all about those pareto superior outcomes. The spirits (metaphors) want things. I want things. I have things. I give the spirits my things and they give me spirit things. We are both satisfied. Magic happens. The character sheet is the ledger. Our conversation (around the spirit table, as it were) is the rite. 

There are traces of pareto destruction in fringe "theistic" cults like Bloody Tusk and Blood Sun. We know they aren't exactly shamanistic because the mirror relationship is usually absent . . . instead the sacrificer provides a surrogate who may or may not be a willing third party. Surrogates become important here in order to defer the ultimate consummation with death. Not a deal with "god." A deal with someone else you're running downhill away from. These hounds almost never belong to "love."

But I've never been deep into the road of Bad Man so can't really speak to all that.

 

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When I was a student I created a cleric for a D&D game that ended up running on for years, and I chose Ishtar because I could be "Good" alignment and practice human sacrifice, and that sounded like a hilarious combination to me. It really wound up the guy playing a paladin. And that was what roleplaying mostly was when I was a student, getting one up on your mates.

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1 minute ago, scott-martin said:

Love it. The sacrifice of self to self, object and subject united on the shamanic mirror. "On that tree of which no man knows from where its roots run." HMKT works like this in some Gloranthas. Or at least the deep expression of the cult does.

And great point, the economy of animism is all about those pareto superior outcomes. The spirits (metaphors) want things. I want things. I have things. I give the spirits my things and they give me spirit things. We are both satisfied. Magic happens. The character sheet is the ledger. Our conversation (around the spirit table, as it were) is the rite. 

There are traces of pareto destruction in fringe "theistic" cults like Bloody Tusk and Blood Sun. We know they aren't exactly shamanistic because the mirror relationship is usually absent . . . instead the sacrificer provides a surrogate who may or may not be a willing third party. Surrogates become important here in order to defer the ultimate consummation with death. Not a deal with "god." A deal with someone else you're running downhill away from. These hounds almost never belong to "love."

But I've never been deep into the road of Bad Man so can't really speak to all that.

 

Well, we know the secret of the Blood Feast, don't we? Life from death (death brings life). Dying and rising, but this isn't Amun-Ra creating himself each night on the Boat of a Million Years, you're reliant on something outside you to complete that cycle. And who would trust something so inhuman as the Bloody Tusk or the Blood Sun? 

(Presumably, those who do quickly leave the outer order behind and find their own paths onward.) 

In the interim, you have these societies, who seem pretty reactionary, in the sense of being a reaction to some external disrupting presence. I think Spolite religion fit this category too. Possibly fits, still. 

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Though a Lunar through and through, she is also a human being.

"I just read an article in The Economist by a guy who was riding around with the Sartar rebels, I mean Taliban," -Greg Stafford, January 7th, 2010

Eight Arms and the Mask

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