Jump to content

Glorantha’s Founding Myth and the Nature of Religion


mfbrandi

Recommended Posts

1 minute ago, mfbrandi said:

Thanks for chipping in, Richard.

I don’t want to put words into your mouth, but would it be fair to say that the two of us might look at an event, agree on some boring “scientific” explanation of it, but that you might also be able to say that it is God’s will?

Yes, exactly.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Something that's genuinely fascinating to me is the extent to which the interpretation of the Great Compromise is that it requires the negation of agency on the part of spiritual beings, (which I am using to minimize any dispute of whether something is a god or a great spirit or an ascended master) and the assertion of agency is seen as cosmologically threatening, something which could destroy the world. Existence in this interpretation seems to be built on- well, there are words to describe states of compromised or near-eliminated agency in the context of the real world, but they're intrinsically inflammatory, I think. So I'll say that Glorantha's existence in this interpretation seems to be a gigantic Omelas machine, or a kind of inverse gnosticism where it's the demiurge's archons who are truly the ones imprisoned in materiality. I'll own up to finding this distasteful, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding it. 

  • Thanks 2

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

that is perilously close to “if you pray, something will happen or it won’t.” But perhaps that is not what you meant.

There is that notion "You did not pray hard enough" (or for everyday engineer magic, "If something doesn't work, swear at it. In case of doubt, swear at it again. If it still doesn't work, you didn't swear hard enough.").

Dealing with capricious deities without the desired results might mean that you should find a better way to make deals, or you should find a different deity to give your attention and sacrifice.

And there may always be some other group who may have made a better offer for the attention of your deity.

 

There is a certain similarity to trusting elected officials' pre-election promises...

  • Thanks 1

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Eff said:

the assertion of agency is seen as cosmologically threatening, something which could destroy the world. Existence in this interpretation seems to be  … I'll say that Glorantha's existence in this interpretation seems to be a gigantic Omelas machine

Divine agency as threatening, certainly. And in as much as the hero is close to divinity, the hero’s too, I guess. As I tend to see “devil” and hero as the same entity, I see the Devil-full-of-gods dissected on the net as Argrath as much as it is Wakboth, the tortured child is the hero. Thus Argrath’s apotheosis — utuma — is his death to save/renew the world. That is a familiar enough pattern. And if Argrath is not only the dying “son” but also the cosmic dragon who creates the world, we can see the swallowing of the gods as a move toward monotheism of a hands-off “invisible” god variety. Perhaps, there is a reason Arkat comes out of the west.

So I don’t see this trajectory as Christopher Hitchens’ last laugh, but as a reminder that humanity must grow up and take responsibility for itself.

Doubtless there are a thousand things that militate against such a reading.

NOTORIOUS VØID CULTIST

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Dealing with capricious deities without the desired results might mean that you should find a better way to make deals

Or maybe the god’s will is done — as it always is — for that is what the unfolding of history is, whatever it contains.

NOTORIOUS VØID CULTIST

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

So I don’t see this trajectory as Christopher Hitchens’ last laugh, but as a reminder that humanity must grow up and take responsibility for itself.

Doubtless there are a thousand things that militate against such a reading.

I think my problem with that reading is that it is coming after a long period of imprisonment and incarceration of the gods, rather than their running free and causing problems. This sort of dampens any kind of metaphor about growing up by abandoning the gods, because it's not just abandoning them, it's very specifically destroying them in this reading, I think. Almost a fusion of an Oedipus and Electra complex together at that point, understanding gods as "parental" figures who humanity must move beyond to reach childhood's end. 

(I also don't think this reading can be fully sustained given the whole "But it's still here, and now it's invisible instead!" passage in King of Sartar, but in the event I suppose it could be interpreted as the everpresent threat of Mommy Sedenya coming to revert humanity to dependent childhood?) 

  • Like 2

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Eff said:

"But it's still here, and now it's invisible instead!"

But if we see the trajectory not as a falling away from the worship of the gods but as a moving towards a Gloranthan religion resembling IRL religions, where the gods are invisible/intangible/inaccessible and worshipers have to shift for themselves — which, if you like, is the divine plan, anyway — this is perfect, isn’t it?

Bye-bye J G Frazer theme park, hello grown-up religion.

NOTORIOUS VØID CULTIST

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, Eff said:

I suppose it could be interpreted as the everpresent threat of Mommy Sedenya coming to revert humanity to dependent childhood

Or the devil’s possible return is the possibility of humanity’s shirking its responsibility for itself and the world it has “inherited”? And we each individually bear the full burden of that. The devil should never be externalised.

NOTORIOUS VØID CULTIST

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

But if we see the trajectory not as a falling away from the worship of the gods but as a moving towards a Gloranthan religion resembling IRL religions, where the gods are invisible/intangible/inaccessible and worshipers have to shift for themselves — which, if you like, is the divine plan, anyway — this is perfect, isn’t it?

Bye-bye J G Frazer theme park, hello grown-up religion.

Do Gloranthans in the present of the setting not have to "shift for themselves"? 

And that's not true of "IRL religions" generally. It's true for some contexts, most of which are very historically contingent. 

  • Like 1

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

24 minutes ago, Eff said:

understanding gods as "parental" figures who humanity must move beyond to reach childhood's end. 

Or we are the gods, and we are just coming to understand ourselves better? If Arkat = Gbaji = Nysalor and Arkat = humanity and Nysalor = supernatural presence in the world ????????

The “enemy” is always oneself, never an external figure, not really.

(“We are all god and we are all on the hero’s journey” never sits well with me, though — that is because I am a dirty stinking Limey unbeliever.)

NOTORIOUS VØID CULTIST

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Eff said:

And that's not true of "IRL religions" generally.

And we are back to “Jesus Take the Wheel” — he won’t, not unless you take it yourself. Sincere religion needn’t mean an embrace of hocus-pocus and suspensions of normal causality.

NOTORIOUS VØID CULTIST

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You might trace religion to the 'Idea of the Holy' (Otto) or the Varieties of Religious Experience (James) or the Elementary forms of Religious Life (Durkheim) or whatever you like, but when all is said and done, all you have is a liberal European understanding of a worldwide phenomenon.  Faith is the thought that there is something bigger than ourselves that is worthy of trust, and has an absolute value - whether it is the Boy Scouts of America, Manchester United, the Large Hadron Collider or Brahma.

Greg was a shamanist, and encountered the other in quite different ways to Dara Happans or (most) Sartarites.  His Jrusteli Monomyth was the Campbellian Monomyth transported into Glorantha.  He came to realise that it failed as much in Glorantha as it did in California, which is why I greatly regret the over-simplification of the recent return to the Monomyth.  It isn't the commonality of religion which is important - that is a simple function of humanity - it is the variation from it, just as in the RW.

All faith is a function of irrationality, or as Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) put it "Faith is believing what you know ai'tent so".  Trying to pin religious faith down to a structuralist pattern is like trying to paint a cloud green.  It really doesn't - and can't - work that way.

 

  • Thanks 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Or we are the gods, and we are just coming to understand ourselves better? If Arkat = Gbaji = Nysalor and Arkat = humanity and Nysalor = supernatural presence in the world ????????

The “enemy” is always oneself, never an external figure, not really.

(“We are all god and we are all on the hero’s journey” never sits well with me, though — that is because I am a dirty stinking Limey unbeliever.)

So we come to understand ourselves better through what, in this version, is realizing that merely suppressing the "gods" is insufficient, we must kill them/feed them to the devil instead, which is how we come to understand ourselves better? Because we've snuffed out portions of ourselves, or permanently cut their tongues out? 

3 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

How are we supposed to understand Gloranthan divine magic?

I would say that it is not presented as something which obviates any need for labor, nor is it presented as a unique source of dependency, since hypothetically, spirit magic and sorcery and mystical magic/worldviews also allow people to live and survive as well as users of divine magic. Or to put it another way, methods other than submission to the gods allow you to live and thrive in the world. 

Just now, mfbrandi said:

And we are back to “Jesus Take the Wheel” — he won’t, not unless you take it yourself. Sincere religion needn’t mean an embrace of hocus-pocus and suspensions of normal causality.

Why does the possible "tangibility" or "accessibility" of the divine necessarily obviate human effort for you? I don't actually see where the two things come together- it only barely makes sense in the context of Christianity and Islam, in that if you take statements about divine omnipotence literally (which is philosophically a minority position, the more common one historically has been to understand the power of God as constrained or limited by other aspects of God) then you could say that obviously prayer could provide for all your needs and no effort is needed. But there are many other possibilities beyond that, which do not suggest that this is possible, let alone desirable. 

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For an immediate example of the last, here is Maimonides on angels:

Quote

All forces are angels. How great is the blindness of ignorance and how harmful! If you told a person who is one of those who deem themselves one of Israel’s sages that the Deity sends an angel, who enters the womb of a woman and forms the fetus there, he would be pleased with this assertion and would accept it and would regard it as a manifestation of greatness and power on the part of the Deity… But if you tell him that God has placed in the sperm a formative force shaping the limbs … and that this force is a “Mal’akh” … the man would shrink from this opinion…

(A Guide to the Perplexed, 2:6) 

Now for Maimonides, God is directly present in pregnancy, through the sending of angels, but he concludes that the force of heredity and reproduction, as he knew of it, (or in modern terms, DNA, meiosis, gametogenesis, and fertilization) was the angel, rather than there being a separate malakh/entity which manipulates the process. This is tangible, accessible divinity, but it is not a divinity which serves as a substitute for life. 

  • Thanks 1

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Ali the Helering said:

Any being who serves as a substitute for life is a parasite, not a divinity.

Yes. I agree completely. 

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Richard S. said:

.... from my perspective as a Christian, my real-life faith isn't really concerned with performing magic and getting results, the most important thing is simply the belief that I am an agent of a benevolent creator .......Sure, I pray and believe that God answers prayers, .....

Okay, to try and pivot this to Glorantha, I think it's the same deal that divinity is an almost mundane thing. ...

I'm sorry if this isn't very clear, it's been a while since I tried to give an actually intelligent answer and it shows. Hopefully it contributes something.

I am definitely not attempting to argue with your Christianity, and ask you to excuse me if any of my previous remarks  make you feel uncomfortable.

   But I do want to point out that Christianity is not relevant to our shared fiction of Glorantha, except that our (player and GM) reactions to fictional situations will be heavily influenced by Christianity as well as other present day cultural things which post date Christianity.

  Glorantha is a fiction (as I beleve all of us will agree) and was conceived with a set of pre Christian and very pre modern concepts as its operating principles: As I understand it, these include what if-the commonly held beliefs of about 4 000 years ago are true in our fictional world? 

The earth is flat, the sky is a dome. The stars appear to be on that dome, and none of this is very far away.  There are not 92 natural elements, but instead air, earth, and fire "runes"... with a couple of amendments.   And most important, various magical and religious beliefs and paradigms of the bronze age are as real and effective in Glorantha as electric lights are for us in the real world.  And myths are true, even though on the typical day they are (just?) stories told by the village elders, and even though there are different versions which are simultaneously true.

Among those bronze age paradigms are  multitheism and transactional religion mediated by priests.  A personal relationship with any god is rare, that is a 16th century paradigm, and in the bronze age it was for prophets and heroes..

And I think you have at least as good a grasp of that shared fiction as I do. Probably better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Squaredeal Sten
Spelling / typing
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

I am definitely not attempting to argue with your Christianity, and ask you to excuse me if any of my previous remarks  make you feel uncomfortable.

   But I do want to point out that Christianity is not relevant to our shared fiction of Glorantha, except that our (player and GM) reactions to fictional situations will be heavily influenced by Christianity as well as other present day cultural things which post date Christianity.

  Glorantha is a fiction (as I beleve all of us will agree) and was conceived with a set of pre Christian and very pre modern concepts as its operating principles: As I understand it, these include what if-the commonly held beliefs of about 4 000 years ago are true in our fictional world? 

The earth is flat, the sky is a dome. The stars appear to be on that dome, and none of this is very far away.  There are not 92 natural elements, but instead air, earth, and fire "runes"... with a couple of amendments.   And most important, various magical and religious beliefs and paradigms of the bronze age are as real and effective in Glorantha as electric lights are for us in the real world.  And myths are true, even though on the typical day they are (just?) stories told by the village elders, and even though there are different versions which are simultaneously true.

Among those bronze age paradigms are  multitheism and transactional religion mediated by priests.  A personal relationship with any god is rare, that is a 16th century paradigm, and in the bronze age it wss fir prophets and heroes..

And I think you have at least as good a grasp of that shared fiction as I do. Probably better.

Don't worry about it, you're fine.

I'm very aware that my faith isn't very similar to Gloranthan religions, but I don't think it's entirely irrelevant. Religion is religion; we believe in an element of "supernaturalness" in the world around us, and that there are beings greater and more powerful than humans. How those things are seen and what they mean are certainly different, but I still think I can personally relate to a degree with how Gloranthans, or even our own ancestors, would see their world. So I tried to bring some of that perspective into the discussion, of how divinity is something that can exist within the world, not just as a separate thing.

Edited by Richard S.
  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  

19 hours ago, Darius West said:

For example, I would suggest that Wittgenstein was absolutely an idiot based on the way he died, as it was completely f*&king idiotic and preventable.

I admit to some curiosity about this comment given that he died of prostate cancer, which is not so easy to prevent even today.

 

8 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

I am in the camp of real-life magic and religion are not about blowing stuff up and pulling the lever on the celestial chocolate dispenser, so we don’t get to point at all the practitioners and say, “You idiots, you didn’t get nothin’!” I seem to be in a minority of one, because everybody else thinks that either [a] it is about a faulty understanding of cause and effect or [b] it is not so crazy to think that there is cause and effect there. I would, of course, be overjoyed to be wrong about what other people think (which I usually am, anyway).

Speaking as a panpsychist Quaker chaos mage who prays mainly to Athena, I have a pretty definite position on the question. The cause and effect operates materially, by affecting the consciousness and actions of people involved (and, sure, in more direct material ways with things like dietary restrictions that had health benefits, though that's probably less important than the consciousness-effects to a modern urbanite trying to have a spirituality.)

Accordingly I find certain aspects of religion much more effective than others in my life, which does inevitably give me a soft spot towards movements in Gloranthan mythohistory (e.g. the Lunar and Jernotian Ways) that reflect those aspects, as well as a tendency to look for "subversive" ways of interpreting areas of the historimythology that don't match up as well. The beauty of Glorantha (and I also find this in the heavily Glorantha-influenced Elder Scrolls, but in few other places) is that the tools exist to allow me to do this successfully, not just from one angle, but from a variety of them.

 

2 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

  Glorantha is a fiction (as I beleve all of us will agree) and was conceived with a set of pre Christian and very pre modern concepts as its operating principles: As I understand it, these include what if-the commonly held beliefs of about 4 000 years ago are true in our fictional world? 

The earth is flat, the sky is a dome. The stars appear to be on that dome, and none of this is very far away.  There are not 92 natural elements, but instead air, earth, and fire "runes"... with a couple of amendments.   And most important, various magical and religious beliefs and paradigms of the bronze age are as real and effective in Glorantha as electric lights are for us in the real world.  And myths are true, even though on the typical day they are (just?) stories told by the village elders, and even though there are different versions which are simultaneously true.

Among those bronze age paradigms are  multitheism and transactional religion mediated by priests.  A personal relationship with any god is rare, that is a 16th century paradigm, and in the bronze age it was for prophets and heroes..

And I think you have at least as good a grasp of that shared fiction as I do. Probably better.

Glorantha is a strange creature, which is, yes, partly a riff on an aesthetic-magical understanding of broad antiquity as seen through a modern set of shamanic eyes, but also a mishmash of whatever it wants to be. There are religious concepts invented by Christianity such as "heresy" present. There's also a "pedalcopter." It's beautiful.

With that said, I do appreciate your bringing up multitheism. Even when I play a hero devoted deeply to a single god (quite nonstandard in antiquity) I'm always tracking my relationships with the others. I vastly prefer this approach to the mystery-cult-ish model of joining up with one god and paying little heed to the others that some (but not all!) frameworks for roleplaying in Glorantha encourage.

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

  Glorantha is a fiction (as I beleve all of us will agree) and was conceived with a set of pre Christian and very pre modern concepts as its operating principles: As I understand it, these include what if-the commonly held beliefs of about 4 000 years ago are true in our fictional world? 

 

I would think that as it was made by a very modern (as of the writing) shaman and his very modern game playing buddies with modern educations, sensibilities and mores that are very evident in the anachronisms and conceits inherent in the game. They did try, but it being created in the 70s I am not sure it can be anything other than what it is. 

  • Helpful 3
  • Thanks 1

... remember, with a TARDIS, one is never late for breakfast!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Eff said:

So I'll say that Glorantha's existence in this interpretation seems to be a gigantic Omelas machine, or a kind of inverse gnosticism where it's the demiurge's archons who are truly the ones imprisoned in materiality. I'll own up to finding this distasteful, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding it. 

You are not the only one, and although I should have seen it coming, that is why my own founding myth ended up as almost a Lunar apology, as they seem to be the ones willing to break that vicious cycle. 

But you could also take the view that the entities trapped in the Godtime are really undead, so their forecast destruction at the end of the Third Age is just a deferred affirmation of their death in the Greater Darkness cataclysm. I can see many Western sorcerers taking that view, as they are the ones that consider deities as resources to exploit, cyclically forgetting that humans can touch the divine and change it by heroics, so it is not as predictable or immobile as they expect, usually when it bites them back.

I accept there was a storm entity named Orlanth, which accumulated great power, stolen, wrested from enemies and inherited from family and friends. But the Orlanth of the Third Age that millions of people experience owes much more to human heroes within time, and the tidal wave of millions of dead worshippers going to their afterlife in his stead. Adapting the god to the changing world. Sudden change requires new gods, but the old gods, at least those that persist, slowly adapt to the world, or they adapt the world to them. It is a two way road, because as the Bronze Age setting, the timelessness of the Godtime is a lie, or more accurately a metaphor, useful but not true when you scratch. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Aiun said:

  I admit to some curiosity about this comment given that he died of prostate cancer, which is not so easy to prevent even today.

I was under the impression that this death was preceded by a period of prolonged self neglect of which his death in the street was part.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, Darius West said:

a period of prolonged self neglect of which his death in the street was part

Death in the street? Are you perhaps thinking of someone else?

It is maybe worth quoting at length from Ray Monk’s account of the last days of dear old Ludwig (pp. 579-580 of my edition) as it touches on the topics of this thread:

Quote

The last remark of On Certainty was written on 27 April [1951], the day before Wittgenstein finally lost consciousness. The day before that was his sixty-second birthday. He knew it would be his last. When Mrs Bevan presented him with an electric blanket, saying as she gave it to him: ‘Many happy returns’, he stared hard at her and replied: ‘There will be no returns.’ He was taken violently ill the next night, after he and Mrs Bevan had returned from their nightly stroll to the pub. When told by Dr Bevan that he would live only a few more days, he exclaimed ‘Good!’ Mrs Bevan stayed with him the night of the 28th, and told him that his close friends in England would be coming the next day. Before losing consciousness he said to her: ‘Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life.’
  The next day Ben, Anscombe, Smythies and Drury were gathered at the Bevans’ home to be with Wittgenstein at his death. Smythies had brought with him Father Conrad, but no one would decide whether Conrad should say the usual office for the dying and give conditional absolution, until Drury recollected Wittgenstein’s remark that he hoped his Catholic friends prayed for him. This decided the matter, and they all went up to Wittgenstein’s room and kneeled down while Conrad recited the proper prayers. Shortly after this, Dr Bevan pronounced him dead.
  The next morning he was given a Catholic burial at St Giles’s Church, Cambridge. The decision to do this was again prompted by a recollection of Drury’s … although Drury admits: ‘I have been troubled ever since as to whether what we did was right.’ …
  Wittgenstein was not a Catholic. He said on a number of occasions, both in conversation and in his writings, that he could not bring himself to believe the things that Catholics believe. Nor, more important, did he practise Catholicism. And yet there seems to be something appropriate in his funeral being attended by a religious ceremony. For, in a way that is centrally important but difficult to define, he had lived a devoutly religious life.
  A few days before his death Wittgenstein was visited in Cambridge by Drury, and remarked to him: “Isn’t it curious that, although I know I have not long to live, I never find myself thinking about a “future state”. All my interest is still on this life and the writing I am still able to do.’ But if Wittgenstein did not think of a future life, he did think of how he might be judged. Shortly before his death he wrote: ‘God may say to me: “I am judging you out of your own mouth. Your own actions have made you shudder with disgust when you have seen other people do them.”’
  The reconciliation with God that Wittgenstein sought was not that of being accepted back into the arms of the Catholic Church; it was a state of ethical seriousness and integrity that would survive the scrutiny of even that most stern of judges, his own conscience: ‘the god who in my bosom dwells’.

  • Like 1

NOTORIOUS VØID CULTIST

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...