Glorantha’s Founding Myth and the Nature of Religion

[mfbrandi]

14 hours ago, Eff said:

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. 

If we are getting Freudian — and I claim no special knowledge of Freud — aren’t the gods like the id? A cursory skim of Wikipedia turned up this striking quote (presumably edited by the Wikipedia contributor) from Siggy (New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933), p. 106 — apparently):

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contrary impulses exist side by side, without cancelling each other … There is nothing in the id that could be compared with negation … nothing in the id which corresponds to the idea of time

That’s Godtime and the Gods’ War, right there, no?

Isn’t the nearest thing to an internalised parent figure — and perhaps it is a case of close, but no cigar — the superego?

[soltakss]

On 10/4/2022 at 9:50 PM, mfbrandi said:

For context, here’s my take on the “founding myth” of Glorantha, the one we all read at the beginning of RQ2 — with some of the later elaborations:

That isn't really the founding myth of Glorantha.

First there was Chaos. Then Chaos formed itself into a bubble, or an egg, or something. The thing moved and changed, forming great dragons, or darkness, or something else. They changed and devolved, making more and more specialised versions of themselves, until they made something new, water, That also specialised and devolved until it created Earth, same again making Fire, forming a Golden Age. Then Fire and Earth made Air that broke the world. Like the others, Air devolved and became more specialised, but broke the world, letting Chaos in and embracing it. Chaos corrupted the world, almost destroying it, until the Lightbringers healed the world and saved everyone, hooray!

There are, of course many variants to that tale. Some have Gods and Anti Gods, some have the right and wrong way of behaving and doing things, blaming all problems on those who took the wrong path.

For me, much magic works because it is a reflection of the original God Time act that used that magic. So, Orlanthi can control winds because Orlanth controlled winds in the God Time. Aldryami can send the soul of slain plants to Aldrya's bosom because that is what Aldrya, or High King Elf, taught their people to do.

Sorcery works differently, of course, because it is all about the Sorcerer forcing things to bend to their will by using techniques and Runes.

 

[mfbrandi]

11 minutes ago, soltakss said:

That isn't really the founding myth of Glorantha.

Sorry, I was just being mischievous: treating the world of time as “our” only real world and playing on the myth’s coming at the beginning of early RQ rule books. We had to wait for the myths of the really early universe till when, Cults of Terror?

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

That isn't really the founding myth of Glorantha.

First there was Chaos. Then Chaos formed itself into a bubble, or an egg, or something.

I know that your perception is trained on Dorastor, but Chaos is a part/not part of Creation, and in the origin of Glorantha Creation only became. Glorantha emerged from the Void, that seething nothing of unfettered potential, with a strong limitation of potential and therefore being.

Then some of the unfettered potential of the Void seeped into the otherwise separated Creation, and that became Chaos.

Calling Chaos the source of everything is a dangerous fallacy, spread (among others) by the Lunar Way.

Really, re-read Cults of Terror, and the four explanations of "Before Creation". None of those names Chaos.

 

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

The thing moved and changed, forming great dragons, or darkness, or something else.

All of those, and more. The Spike and the two hemispheres of the World Machine may have been another "from the Start".

There is also all that Elder Gods thing, entities that received prayer from Orlanth when preparing for a Feat (the Godtime equivalent of a Quest, at least before the Greater Darkness diminished all that and more).

 

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

They changed and devolved, making more and more specialised versions of themselves, until they made something new, water, That also specialised and devolved until it created Earth, same again making Fire, forming a Golden Age. Then Fire and Earth made Air that broke the world. Like the others, Air devolved and became more specialised, but broke the world, letting Chaos in and embracing it. Chaos corrupted the world, almost destroying it, until the Lightbringers healed the world and saved everyone, hooray!

Chaos corrupted the world, mostly destroying it, until the Lightbringers salvaged a few dead but otherwise unharmed bits, and supported Arachne Solara in devouring the shapeless Chaos and regurgitating some of it to create a patchwork of authentic surviving bits of the world, a lot of extrapolation and reconstruction in between, and (IMG) tucking aside some shards which would weaken the new web if inserted and made part of the Mundane World.

 

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

There are, of course many variants to that tale. Some have Gods and Anti Gods, some have the right and wrong way of behaving and doing things, blaming all problems on those who took the wrong path.

Lots of convergent or parallel developments, with protagonists who may be avatars or reflections of some other, possibly more important deity (being closer to the Rune, if that is criterion for importance - having many surviving supporters is another criterion).

The concept of the Collision of Worlds (that accompanied the now safely buried concept of Three Different Worlds) is one (possible) explanation for how all of these approaches are true.

 

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

For me, much magic works because it is a reflection of the original God Time act that used that magic.

Basically yes, although the reverse can be true as well - a newly discovered repeatable act of magic will insert (or re-awaken, if you prefer) into Godtime. Once having been imprinted into Godtime, it will (sort of by definition) always have been there.

 

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

Sorcery works differently, of course, because it is all about the Sorcerer forcing things to bend to their will by using techniques and Runes.

It's not like the runes don't play a role in rune magic, the name sort of spoils the surprise...

Sorcerous use of runes is different from regular use in rune magic. Theism and hence Rune Magic is the act of Being. Sorcery requires knowledge, but a sorcery spell as presented in RuneQuest Glorantha is an entity that while controlled by a sorcerer is detached from the sorcerer. This is reflected in the rules, a sorcerer doesn't overcome a target's POW with his own (there may be one or two exceptions to that rule), but instead the magical energy accumulated in the spell acts like a spirit, measuring its strength against any resistance of the target. Little different from a shaman sending a spirit entity with a similar offensive power against a target, only "Animism is something you have" while "Sorcery is something you know" and not relying on property (other than magical energy).

[mfbrandi]

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Glorantha emerged from the Void, that seething nothing of unfettered potential …

Calling Chaos the source of everything is a dangerous fallacy, spread (among others) by the Lunar Way.

Really, re-read Cults of Terror, and the four explanations of "Before Creation". None of those names Chaos.

Nonetheless, I think @soltakss is correct. Obviously, we don’t care about the other three accounts, just the first one (CoT, p. 11):

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THE VOID is the mystic origin of the universe. This pre-existence is said to be indescribable. “It is less than Nothing, Formless beyond Emptiness,” says a Kralori poem. The mystics claim that the dragon-powers manifested themselves in the void by becoming committed and entangled with the world which was yet to come, and in those actions created the barrier shimmering between the perfect void and our understanding of it.

And in the write up of the mythos of Primal Chaos (CoT, p. 24):

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Primal chaos is the untainted power of random change. It first entered the world through the cracks in the universe caused by the Gods’ War.

You say yourself that the Void is “that seething nothing of unfettered potential” — isn’t that “the untainted power of random change” by another name? The crack in the world doesn’t create Chaos/the Void, it just reveals that noumenal reality which draconic creation had hidden behind the barrier of phenomena (i.e. the world).

And of the “Devil” (CoT, p. 13):

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Kajabor wields entropy in the world. Often called God-Killer or Black Hole or Great Fear, he destroys all vestiges of matter or energy, annihilating all possibilities of individuality or unity. Entities slain by Kajabor have never returned, and often even their names have been lost after being pulled from the universe … Kajabor … is utterly impersonal and some say, as natural as the forces of creation.

As for the “lies” of the Lunars, the Lunar Priestess says (GoG, Talking to the Moon Woman):

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The Creator made the world and everything in it. He made the two races of gods first, the Celestial Court and the Tribe of Chaos … The gods of Glorantha fear Chaos in the way that living mortals fear death.

Very dull. I certainly hope the first bit has been retconned away, but anyway creation myths don’t always start at the beginning. The second part fits well enough with the nature of Kajabor.

So how about Kajabor, the Black Hole (which is maybe (Primal) Darkness, which the Uz tell us has always existed — GoG, Tales of the Night Hag), the Void, the true death of gods, Chaos, the Malkioni Zero, the destruction of information, and your unfettered potential all being the same thing, that which has always been, is not at all, and which lies beyond the veil of Maya? To touch it is illumination and extinction.

If Orlanth is the big I am puffed up with the wind of his own self-importance, you can see why he hates Chaos, the ultimate deflator, the infinite Void into which he will vanish as if he never was. But after a suitable course of treatment, he will open his third eye and let go his last stinky breath, finally blown out.

From Chaos we come, and to Chaos we shall return.

Edited October 6, 2022 by mfbrandi
recurrent emoji!

[Darius West]

20 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

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:

It's possible.  I read that Wittgenstein had been neglecting himself physically for years prior to the cancer diagnosis, and collapsed while preparing to cross a highway in the rain soon after the diagnosis.  People stopped to help him, but he only lasted a few days thereafter.

This is somewhat off topic.

Edited October 7, 2022 by Darius West

[Joerg]

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Nonetheless, I think @soltakss is correct. Obviously, we don’t care about the other three accounts, just the first one (CoT, p. 11):

The dreaded Storm Bull approach to philosophy...

Weird that you pick the left-handed (draconic)/Eastern perspective as authoritative, when the Theist (and thus most relevant) approach has emergence from Silence, quite a different proposition.

 

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

And in the write up of the mythos of Primal Chaos (CoT, p. 24):

Yes, the interaction between the Void and Creation is Chaos, or vice versa Chaos is the destructive interaction between the Void and Creation, the un-doing of Creation.

The Chaosium is the inverse process, limiting that unfettered potential into providing the necessary stuff for manifestation. While this process does not provide a complete conversion, causing (manageable) hostile Chaos to enter the world (mainly the Underworld where the Chaosium sits), it is the "natural" contact of the Cosmos with the Void.

The Mystic way is confrontation of the Created with the Void, allowing a sufficiently "steeled" mystic (by identification with the Absolute) to make use of that unfettered potential subject to their will.

 

 

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

You say yourself that the Void is “that seething nothing of unfettered potential” — isn’t that “the untainted power of random change” by another name? The crack in the world doesn’t create Chaos/the Void, it just reveals that noumenal reality which draconic creation had hidden behind the barrier of phenomena (i.e. the world).

Yes. The potential of the Void is like the radioactive fire of our sun - neutral or even beneficial as long as it doesn't directly interact with your reality, then catastrophically damaging.

 

 

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

And of the “Devil” (CoT, p. 13):

Yes - in a way, Kajabor was a victim in the Gods War, too, an entity drawn into a hurtful environment, slashing back at the most hurtful of that environment. Including Wakboth... Arachne Solara's re-shaping his substance and releasing him into the Void may have been an act of love, something that Teelo Estara felt an echo of when she herself gave her all to Blaskarth.

 

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

As for the “lies” of the Lunars, the Lunar Priestess says (GoG, Talking to the Moon Woman):

I am highly dubious about that Chaos Tribe. If there really was a demonic host besieging the interface between the Cosmos and the Void, waiting for their saviour Wakboth to open first a way inside and then opening the rift for more to enter.

 

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Very dull. I certainly hope the first bit has been retconned away, but anyway creation myths don’t always start at the beginning. The second part fits well enough with the nature of Kajabor.

Not just Kajabor, there is also the Void magic of Thed, and

Spoiler

the Maggot beneath Snake Pipe Hollow (IIRC)

 

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

So how about Kajabor, the Black Hole (which is maybe (Primal) Darkness, which the Uz tell us has always existed — GoG, Tales of the Night Hag), the Void, the true death of gods, Chaos, the Malkioni Zero, the destruction of information,

Black holes don't cause destruction of information... Mutation, yes.

"Always existed" in a timeless cosmos might be a matter of definition, but existance and Darkness seem to result from the same event.

 

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

and your unfettered potential all being the same thing, that which has always been, is not at all, and which lies beyond the veil of Maya? To touch it is illumination and extinction.

Context is important. Exposing your fortified self to the Void can be liberating, allowing you to join the Ultimate. Exposing unfortified reality to the Void leads to annihilation thereof, and that is called Chaos when happening inside Creation (however wounded the barriers may have been at that period of the Gods War). Tapping into a limited amount (and limited exression) of this then no longer unfettered potential is what is behind effects like Cave Troll or Sea Troll regeneration (or Walktapus regeneration, which (the regenerating meat) can even be used for cooking  and is nothing bad in itself except for the behavior of its platform) or the shapeshifting of were-tigers or Telmori. While it triggers the sense of wrongness in Storm Bull PTSD, this kind of "non-festering Chaos" (when not coupled with another curse, like that of Talor against the Telmori gift, or unnatural fecundity) isn't any more destructive than Storm (e.g. Storm Bull or the Wild Hunter) or Trickster.

Nysalorean Illumination starts out as a different form of PTSD, possibly an apathy to triggers. It doesn't result from exposure to Chaos, but from Exposure to the Ultimate, which contains all the knowable and all the unknowable. Fortification from experiences of the Ultimate can negate the loss of self otherwise experienced upon contact with the Ultimate or its lesser gate-holders (like Atrilith in Eastern mysticism, the discipline mastered by Nenduren, the Master of Stillness, taught to Oorsu Sara who then inverted that.

 

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

If Orlanth is the big I am puffed up with the wind of his own self-importance, you can see why he hates Chaos, the ultimate deflator, the infinite Void into which he will vanish as if he never was. But after a suitable course of treatment, he will open his third eye and let go his last stinky breath, finally blown out.

Orlanth is fairly fortified against the Void, having undergone self-fortification in the Baths of Nelat and the Flames of Ehilm and having had his Inner Dragon awakened. The Mass Utuma of 1042 removed all mortal Dragonspeakers, but Orlanth Dragonspeaker remains in Godtime, a lot easier to access than Arkat.

 

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

From Chaos we come, and to Chaos we shall return.

Speak for yourself, knave of the Void. I prefer to be the result of the First Movement in the Silence of the Primal Plasma.

[mfbrandi]

4 hours ago, Darius West said:

collapsed while preparing to cross a highway in the rain soon after the diagnosis.  People stopped to help him, but he only lasted a few days thereafter.

He fell ill in the USA in 1949 (visiting Cornell) and got the diagnosis of prostate cancer back in England on 25 November 1949. I imagine he must have had the cancer for some time before the visit to Cornell. He died in April 1951, so not a few days after the diagnosis. I don’t know whether things would have gone better for him if the disease had been caught earlier or whether it was ‘his fault’ that he didn’t get an earlier diagnosis.

Off topic? Well, a little biographical excursion on a thread on LW’s take on magic is OK, isn’t it?

[mfbrandi]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Black holes don't cause destruction of information

Surely the traditional view is that they do (black hole information paradox). This upset physicists who like everything to be reversible. I believe that there is current research that suggests that they don’t after all.

Edited October 7, 2022 by mfbrandi
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[mfbrandi]

14 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Weird that you pick the left-handed (draconic)/Eastern perspective as authoritative, when the Theist (and thus most relevant) approach has emergence from Silence, quite a different proposition.

Isn’t Silence the Void cast in acoustic terms, just as Darkness is the Void optically?

And I am left-handed, after all.

Edited October 7, 2022 by mfbrandi
fuller quote

[Joerg]

11 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Isn’t that the Void cast in acoustic terms, just as Darkness is the Void optically?

Next you are going to suggest that the Invisible God/Prime Mover is a Chaos entity?

Silence is a phenomenon tied to Storm, really. That what precedes the Thunderclap. The eye of the Storm. The Yelmic/Celestial folk might feel more at home in the Primal Plasma that is said to be the source for the Animists (and which sort of seems to be understood similarly by the Brithini devolution theorists).

The Silence has to do with potential, too, as far as I (fail to) understand it - it is a pre-Creational state of unfulfilled potential. A bit like the Copenhagen interpretation.

Darkness isn't optical, it is what blocks the seeing rays emitted by the observers' eyes to taste the impact of Light. It certainly is not unlimited potential, or annihilating you upon contact. It may well be the fear of such annihilation, though.

 

As to black holes, these objects do retain momentum, both linear and angular, and there may be energy fluctuations in the event horizon (where all that light gets slowed down so much it cannot enter or leave the black hole). A realm where everything that ever happened to the object is present and preserved.

Sounds somewhat familiar. Godtime?

Edited October 7, 2022 by Joerg
Black holes

[mfbrandi]

18 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Next you are going to suggest that the Invisible God/Prime Mover is a Chaos entity?

I thought I already did — in the sense that “the One” comes from Chaos/the Void = the Malkioni Zero (GoG, Cults Book, p. 6):

Quote

Pre-Creation …

Malkioni—Numerological Succession
Since nature is a recognizable and measurable function, creation begins with the first arithmetic functions. From the unknowable (zero) comes the One, or the Creator; who makes Two, or Cosmic Duality; which generates Three, the Knowable World, and so on. The various elements and powers from which the world forms spring from one another in mathematical succession.

Didn’t I do this with diagrams starting with the “slashed zero” version of the Chaos rune in another thread? If you fancy Harmony (from which we construct Law) as necessary for the world to be knowable, all the better.

Edited October 7, 2022 by mfbrandi
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[Joerg]

 

Just now, mfbrandi said:

I thought I already did — in the sense that “the One” comes from Chaos/the Void = the Malkioni Zero (GoG, Cults Book, p. 6):

Didn’t I do this with diagrams starting with the “slashed zero” version of the Chaos rune in another thread? If you fancy Harmony (from which we construct Law) as necessary for the world to be knowable, all the better.

No, you did not, other than chaotically equating Chaos with the Void.

Also consider that Disorder is the effort to create a straight vertical line from two thirds of a circle's sections. If you make the possible permutations of such combinations (disregarding sequence), you arrive at the required material for the Law rune again, too.

Voi Law...

[mfbrandi]

29 minutes ago, Joerg said:

chaotically equating Chaos with the Void

Well, it is certainly true that I did that — and I have now slapped myself on the wrist with a pencil.

Who knew that the origin of the world in Chaos was so controversial?

Edited October 7, 2022 by mfbrandi
add drawing

[Kloster]

33 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Voi Law...

Ouch

[Eff]

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Next you are going to suggest that the Invisible God/Prime Mover is a Chaos entity?

Well, if it exists outside of creation but acts upon it, parsimony would suggest that it is such, simply because of how Chaos is defined as "outside Glorantha". And of course the kind of transcendent entities like Ourobouros that encompass all of existence and nonexistence within themselves have to, by definition, be Chaotic. But then, because Chaos is also within Glorantha and "everything is made of everything", the real question is whether there's anything which is rigorously provable to be totally non-Chaotic. 

[Ormi Phengaria]

19 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

You say yourself that the Void is “that seething nothing of unfettered potential” — isn’t that “the untainted power of random change” by another name? The crack in the world doesn’t create Chaos/the Void, it just reveals that noumenal reality which draconic creation had hidden behind the barrier of phenomena (i.e. the world).

 

It is. Primal Chaos is the point of contact between Glorantha and the Void. But within Glorantha, in relationship to it as a cosmic twin rather than as a primordial unity, it is perceived to be something else. Chaos appears when the world has reached its perfection—when and where further change makes the world "worse". The change that Chaos works becomes Oblivion. Conversely, obliterating, corrupting, lessening changes are Chaos.

[Eff]

Chaos in Glorantha really refers to a couple different things, out of universe. On one hand, there's the unformed or unsorted "existence before existence", the Kaos of Greek myth, the tehom of Genesis 2:2, the Ginnungagap of Snorri Sturluson, etc., which can also be translated as "void". On another hand, there's the transcendental "materialized ideology", the Chaos of Moorcock and Games Workshop, which is a kind of intangible or ethereal quality that causes icky mutations and typesetting that GoES LIke ThIs. On a third hand, there's the "moral tehom", Chaos as the source of evil in the world, which is Chaos as Poul Anderson used the term. 

These three hands make a fourth: "Chaos" as "gnosis of cosmic horror"- the universe begins from transcendental malevolence, which is continually present and warping reality. The transcendence of mysticism reveals only the vile genesis and the universal perversion, which is why mystics seek nonexistence- they've hit 0 SAN and have rolled "clinical depression" as the consequence of that exposure to sanity-blasting metaphors for Howard Philips Lovecraft's insecurities about special relativity. 

They also make a fifth: Chaos as metaphorical depiction of reality. Because Chaos is "unformed" or "void" but also evil and "contagious", Chaos may be used to depict things that the author views with contempt and disgust to warn people away from them via using Glorantha as an artistic medium. 

But there is also a sixth: Chaos as metafictional seepage. When we attempt to reconcile the Satanic Chaos with the Jerry Cornelius Chaos, we have a difficult puzzle in explaining why sometimes an activity is morally neutral (Cannibal Cult) and sometimes cosmically unraveling (ogres). The verbal stumblings that tend to be produced by these efforts are thus Chaos contaminating our speech and rendering it incoherent. 

And of course this incoherence spills over into how to interact with Chaos, whether in the game or in the metagame. If Chaos is malevolent and an intrinsic quality, surely unceasing opposition is necessary and it would be only righteous to go into "Gaumata's Vision" fully prepared to kill all those ogre and lamia kids with "nits make lice" in your player notes, since they are built for nothing but evil. Which is to say, the trifold aspects of Chaos, which confuse contingent qualities like moral decisions with intrinsic qualities like "do you have a tentacle for an arm", pushes us towards justifying genocide in play. 

Or we reject one or the other of those things, and adopt a vision where Chaos is totally willful or totally absent intrinsic moral character. Truly, your Glorantha must vary, because taking the thing at a whole seems unsustainable. In all this, the underformed void of pre-existence is easy to make drop out, because it's not relevant to the present of the setting. 

But if we actually baked the rejection of one or the other of those things into a formalized change to the setting, we would lose the most important part of Gloranthan play: killing broos playing secret ogres Lunar discourse. And that, I think, may well be intolerable. 

[Ali the Helering]

38 minutes ago, Eff said:

Chaos in Glorantha really refers to a couple different things, out of universe. On one hand, there's the unformed or unsorted "existence before existence", the Kaos of Greek myth, the tehom of Genesis 2:2, the Ginnungagap of Snorri Sturluson, etc., which can also be translated as "void". On another hand, there's the transcendental "materialized ideology", the Chaos of Moorcock and Games Workshop, which is a kind of intangible or ethereal quality that causes icky mutations and typesetting that GoES LIke ThIs. On a third hand, there's the "moral tehom", Chaos as the source of evil in the world, which is Chaos as Poul Anderson used the term. 

It is also worth noting that tehom is cognate with Tiamet, and the portion of the Genesis 1 Creation narrative where 

6 And God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ 7 So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. 

can easily be understood as the splitting of the Chaos goddess in two, and the RW being created between those parts. This is directly referenced in the Enuma Elish Tablet IV verses 101 - 140.

[Bill the barbarian]

57 minutes ago, Eff said:

Chaos in Glorantha really refers to a couple different things, out of universe. On one hand, there's the unformed or unsorted "existence before existence", the Kaos of Greek myth, the tehom of Genesis 2:2, the Ginnungagap of Snorri Sturluson, etc., which can also be translated as "void". On another hand, there's the transcendental "materialized ideology", the Chaos of Moorcock and Games Workshop, which is a kind of intangible or ethereal quality that causes icky mutations and typesetting that GoES LIke ThIs. On a third hand, there's the "moral tehom", Chaos as the source of evil in the world, which is Chaos as Poul Anderson used the term. 

 

God damn Eff, amazing!

 

12 minutes ago, Ali the Helering said:

It is also worth noting that tehom is cognate with Tiamet, and the portion of the Genesis 1 Creation narrative where 

 

A little Babylonian creation myth underlying the Talmudic creation myth. Cool. I know of a few other areas that the religions interact (Sargon/Moses, the floods) but that is just too cool. 

[Ali the Helering]

Just now, Bill the barbarian said:

A little Babylonian creation myth underlying the Talmudic creation myth. Cool. I know of a few other areas that the religions interact (Sargon/Moses, the floods) but that is just too cool. 

Since the excavation and translation of the Ugarit/Ras Shamra material the Bible has to be seen as part of a continuum of Mesopotamian-Levantine religious material.  Biblical literalists fail to take the Bible seriously.🤣🤪

[Bill the barbarian]

17 minutes ago, Ali the Helering said:

Since the excavation and translation of the Ugarit/Ras Shamra material

Ali, I hate you! Down the rabbit hole I go... again...

Edited October 7, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[Eff]

50 minutes ago, Ali the Helering said:

It is also worth noting that tehom is cognate with Tiamet, and the portion of the Genesis 1 Creation narrative where 

6 And God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ 7 So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. 

can easily be understood as the splitting of the Chaos goddess in two, and the RW being created between those parts. This is directly referenced in the Enuma Elish Tablet IV verses 101 - 140.

Well, that and the the "serpents of the deep" or tannim, presumably cognate with other (frequently serpentine) watery monsters in neighboring mythologies, though Ltn/Lotan/Leviathan gets individualized in poetry. 

"Tiamat" may even come from the same root as tehom, as Apsu/abzu was a similar concept of cosmological deep waters that predated the Enuma Elish and got personified as Tiamat's husband and counterpart, fresh water to her saltiness. 

[Ali the Helering]

7 hours ago, Eff said:

Well, that and the the "serpents of the deep" or tannim, presumably cognate with other (frequently serpentine) watery monsters in neighboring mythologies, though Ltn/Lotan/Leviathan gets individualized in poetry. 

Sorry to be a pedant, but while the singular of "serpents of the deep" is tannin the plural is tanninim.  

Tannim has been translated a number of ways, including 'monster', 'dragon' and 'jackal'.  Such precision is what makes the Bible such a simple book to understand....

[mfbrandi]

On 10/7/2022 at 7:47 PM, Eff said:

In all this, the underformed void of pre-existence is easy to make drop out, because it's not relevant to the present of the setting. 

I know you don’t suggest we drop it, but would it be that easy to drop, anyway? The illuminated hero or aspirant deity seems key to the setting, and isn’t illumination all about touching Chaos conceived of as the Void? Isn’t that why Nysalor has the Chaos rune?

Dipping a bucket into the Well of Daliath, I came up with this from that Stafford guy on the taint of Chaos:

Quote

A chaos taint is a hole in reality, a hole in existence. Have you had anyone close to you die? If you have, perhaps you know the feeling of their absence. There used to be something, but you have an awareness that now there isn’t. A chaos taint is like that, only more so. It is not the absence of a person, but the absence of an underlying actuality. Something so deep that is inexpressible just simply is not … it is not tangible. Sometimes the world, protesting the violation of its reality, bursts forth in a wild effort to fill that non-hole, and this is expressed as a chaos feature.

So back in 2007, it seems to have been hemi-demi-semi-quasi-official that Chaos is the Void and that that tentacle trying to strangle you is not itself an incursion from the other side but the phenomenal world having a very bad reaction to finding out that there is Nothing behind the curtain.

Now maybe IRL the headlong rush toward Nirvana is dangerous, but haven’t the rabidly anti-Chaos factions in Glorantha — characters in a fiction, remember — always seemed rather comical to you? Someone was sending them up.