How accurate is the Western Myth?

[mfbrandi]

21 minutes ago, Cassius said:

a very different discussion if they had seen their neighbour throwing a fire spear

Sure, but if fire spear magic were commonplace (or at least, well-attested), it wouldn’t get filed as “one of those odd things that only happens in myth” by the intellectuals — it wouldn’t be among the anomalies to be “explained away” (or whatever treatment they thought appropriate). Magic wouldn’t be a marker of myth. Magic would be mundane, right? Thus “tales of gods are really tales of powerful magicians” might get more purchase than it would here and now — though what the Gloranthans would do with that, I couldn’t say.

What would continue to mark out myth from history? One thing — presumably — would be that contradictions (as opposed to uncertainty) would be tolerable in myth. Always a good marker of story. 😉

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

And of course... well, in Glorantha this stuff works, explicitly and pretty reliably. Who cares if Orlanth stole the myth of dragonslaying from Vadrus if the benefit it provides is practically applicable. You know?

I do, and sometimes I think of it as the key to Godlearnerism. I sometimes like to think of the GLs as operationalists:

• [who] rejected the idea of nature as a thing-in-itself existing behind the appearances observed in experimentation.
  — Brittanica: Operationalism

“Screw the big metaphysical picture — experiments show it works.”

It sometimes seems to me — but I am funny that way — that when people speak up for the polytheist on the Genertelan omnibus, they fall into the trope (not necessarily the trap) of “of course, we are all Godlearners, now.” I am not saying that is wrong, but it always seems a bit hard on the Godlearners themselves: “we” all think like that, now, but they were the ones who deserved to be blown up for thinking that way. Everybody else’s Glorantha will certainly vary.

[Jeff]

7 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

I do, and sometimes I think of it as the key to Godlearnerism. I sometimes like to think of the GLs as operationalists:

• [who] rejected the idea of nature as a thing-in-itself existing behind the appearances observed in experimentation.
  — Brittanica: Operationalism

“Screw the big metaphysical picture — experiments show it works.”

It sometimes seems to me — but I am funny that way — that when people speak up for the polytheist on the Genertelan omnibus, they fall into the trope (not necessarily the trap) of “of course, we are all Godlearners, now.” I am not saying that is wrong, but it always seems a bit hard on the Godlearners themselves: “we” all think like that, now, but they were the ones who deserved to be blown up for thinking that way. Everybody else’s Glorantha will certainly vary.

Again, if you read the Mythology book that is hardly the reason people hate/fear the God Learners. They are condemned for crimes far more serious than mutilating everyone's favorite stories to fit an understandable narrative structure. 

[Techpriest]

Yeah, there's other reasons to hate the God Learners, like how they caused a whole island to turn over, screwed around with the Godtime and swapped around gods, were weakening the Great Compromise, and so on. There's a lot of things they did that shouldn't have been done, even if at first they were with the best of intentions. 

[Sir_Godspeed]

This is true, and to clarify, when I say "relativization" I don't mean just pointing out relations or similarities. The Lightbringers themselves clearly went around connecting local survivor-cults to the larger corpus of myths that would become the Lightbringer pantheon and modern "Orlanthism". The World Council of Friends clearly were creative and inquisitive in melding the Pelorian and Lightbringers mythologies together. Monrogh is a more modern and more specific example. (The draconic Orlanthi also did this, but they were later rejected, obvs.) 

By "relativization" I am more trying to convey the idea of viewing gods as tools and objects, cult and ritual as a social technology, narratives as products. etc. etc. It's real bad stuff if you're someone who actually believes that these gods ARE persons, that these narratives DID shape who you and your people are, and that these rituals DO hold the universe together. They're IMPORTANT in and of themselves. 

It's not that theists DON'T change, alter, innovate their myths into achieving what they want according to contemporary and local needs and desires, it's rather that they (speaking in a generalized they here, not universal) do not think of it as manipulating or "using", but interacting with, exploring, "doing".  Or in short, theists probably aren't social constructivists.

[Cassius]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

It sometimes seems to me — but I am funny that way — that when people speak up for the polytheist on the Genertelan omnibus, they fall into the trope (not necessarily the trap) of “of course, we are all Godlearners, now.” I am not saying that is wrong, but it always seems a bit hard on the Godlearners themselves: “we” all think like that, now, but they were the ones who deserved to be blown up for thinking that way.

Godlearners seem to me to be as much strangers to our world as 'theists'. None of us thinks like a Gloranthan. We have nothing that comes close to what Gloranthans might experience when they discover the City of Wonders in the Choralinthor Bay, take part in a Sacred Time ceremony... or see their neighbour throwing a lightning bolt!

For both a Godlearner and an Orlanthi, we have to try to get inside their heads. And I'm not even sure that it's easier for the former than for the latter.

[mfbrandi]

12 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

“we” all think like that, now

10 hours ago, Cassius said:

we have to try to get inside their heads

Just for clarity — not to undermine what you say in any way — my scare-quoted “we” was meant to indicate 3rd-Age polytheistic Gloranthans (characters), not 21st-Century Earth people (players). My apologies for being unclear.