Zorak Zoran: Mother of Us All

[mfbrandi]

 Spun off from Lodri Great Temple to avoid threadjacking. It is all just playing with the pieces, not the word from on high.

On 1/8/2023 at 4:27 AM, Joerg said:

That would make the Darkness trio [Zorak Zoran, Xiola Umbar, and Argan Argar] something like the midwives or perhaps even mothers of the three brothers [Dayzatar, Yelm, and Lodril]?

Specifically, ZZ is the mother of Fire–Sky, XU the midwife, and AA maybe the “father” who looks away from the carnage in the birthing suite. The Natural Childbirth Trust had nothing to do with this one.

ZZ we can suppose gave birth through his forehead/third eye — doubtless, some kind of drill was involved. This echoes the fatal trepanning of Chaos (Huntun) and the birth of virginal daddy’s girl Athena (Yelmalio) from the head of Zeus (storm god — see also Orlanth and good old “let there be light” Adonai). Thus the passion of Yelmalio and ZZ dare not speak its name not because it is homosexual but because it is a parent–child thing (Yelmalio as sun fragment). Arguably, it is also necrophilia, as ZZ surely did not survive giving birth to the sun/cosmos through a hole in his head (see also draconic utuma as the origin of all) — still for a(n un)dead guy, ZZ is pretty spry, and he assures me that he is absolutely fine (and I am not going to argue).

In Glorantha, we sometimes have trouble keeping generations and siblings apart, even when they are concepts. We have a progression of Chaos —> Disorder —> Storm, but simultaneously a wish to collapse these. There is also the question of the relationship between Chaos and Darkness: they are both hungry, early, filled with potential, and an absence which we are tempted to characterize as a presence.

Think of Chaos as a primal zero state that kicks out positive numbers and their corresponding negatives simultaneously. For the sake of argument (polarity surely doesn’t matter, though some may think it does), let us say that the positive numbers correspond to matter/cosmos and the negative to the anti-matter which threatens to destroy it (or be destroyed by it). Some may identify the “destructive force” with Darkness, others with Chaos; we put these labels on everything that is not Cosmos/positive, but that — say the illuminated, who have seen the beginning of things — is just a matter of perspective: positive schmositive. Say instead that in the beginning, Darkness and Chaos were indistinguishable and that Darkness only gained definition when the yawning absence of the Void gave birth to Cosmic Fire — one day, all will meet and cancel back down to Zero. If ZZ now presents as Darkness and Disorder, that is because he has released some of his Fire to create the universe, but one day he will swallow it/us all again and regain his balance as primal Chaos, utter Zero. (Then, we may suppose, by random fluctuation, the whole mistake will begin again.) In the meantime, remember that he is become Death, the destroyer of self, and thereby given Life to us all. Or some such psychedelic fever dream.

Where does that leave windbag Orlanth? The charitable view is that Orlanth/Storm is ZZ/Chaos in disguise: in self-trepanning, he released Yelm/created the universe and the idea of him as an usurper of Yelm rather than his necessary complement and mother is a mistake. The legit Orlanth is Invisible Orlanth, who is everywhere and nowhere, baby. Or of course, he is just a Johnny-come-lately who has hi-jacked the regalia of the Ur-gods. As you will.

And what of the relationship between ZZ the Zombie and Arachne Solara the Ghost? Surely, Cragspider the Firewitch must know … and that sounds like a cue for some prog rock.