Meeting Wakboth

[Eff]

1 hour ago, Ynneadwraith said:

And the Lunars would have you believe these are the same things...

I'm not necessarily saying they are or aren't of course, I'm just positing the idea that there could be shades of godhood between 'heroes' like Harrek and Jar-Eel and 'True Gods' like Orlanth and Shargash. Perhaps, with her refusal to truly depart from the world of Time into the mythic, Sedenya is one of these shades. A shade like Nysalor, perhaps. Slightly different upper-tier steps on the path to enlightenment, that look indistinguishable to us puny mortals grubbing about on the ground.

I would go in a different direction. A buddha is not automatically a god (neither a deva or an asura) and is most likely to be a human, but within Buddhism, the knowledge of the Shakyamuni Buddha transcends that of Brahma the ruler of the devas. The applicability to Sedenya and Nysalor seems fairly relevant. Of course, some gods are also buddhas, and some buddhas wear the masks of gods in order to spread the dharma more expeditiously. The categories are not a pyramid, nor a ziggurat.

[Nick Brooke]

In this context, let me quickly plug my notes on Sedenya as “Mistress of the Three Worlds” (mundane, divine and mystical), on page 89 of my free Manifesto. They set down some consequences of ideas Greg was playing with when he conceptualised the Lunar Way: part of the uniqueness of the Red Goddess is that she combines and understands all three: she is simultaneously a goddess, and mortal, and a mystic.

[mfbrandi]

11 hours ago, Ynneadwraith said:

I'm just positing the idea that there could be shades of godhood

Some people might be imagining something like this:

1. Great God
2. Major God
3. Bog-standard God
4. Minor God
5. Great Spirit
6. Demigod
7. Superhero
8. Hero
9. Schmuck

Top Trumps!

Some might respond by quibbling about the categories and the orderings — the stamp collectors and train spotters — but not question the idea that the “right” set of categories (to be determined) would occur in an ideal “physics” of Glorantha. In their ontology, these are natural kinds … if you like.

But that is what I am skeptical about, although it is all but irresistible when the game has special rules for everything: the game “engine” becomes the physics of the world — “if you sacrifice x points (Joules) of POW (energy) to god y, then …” kind of thing.

Gods aren’t like gold, or water, or even stoats or gravity. In the grand account of how the world works, god as a category doesn’t show up at all. Something, nothing, anything could be mentioned as a god in a myth or religious rite. That is not to say there are no gods, but maybe they don’t have enough in common for there to be natural laws about how mortals and middle-sized dry goods interact with them.

Of course, there might be a myth about the gods arguing about who is objectively top god, who is a real god, who is a demigod, and who is just regular Jo Schmuck. Gods and mortals might even go to war over it — oh, wait … — but that doesn’t mean the whole thing isn’t misconceived.

Spoiler

Think of this as my over-earnest response to the depressing news that shiny new QuestWorlds — shorn of Glorantha-specific mechanics — cannot be used for JC publications. Shame, as HQG — to my untrained eye — seemed to push a system touted as narrativist back in the direction of simulationism. (And yes, I know the whole masteries thing is HeroWorldQuestWars simulationist original sin.)

Edited April 18 by mfbrandi
clarification: as a category

[Darius West]

On 4/18/2024 at 6:38 AM, mfbrandi said:

Simpler still: they are one and it would be foolish to try to cut them into distinct beings. 😉

I see three colors here.

[mfbrandi]

13 minutes ago, Darius West said:

I see three colours here.

Isn’t there always a third term in Arkat–Nysalor?

[Darius West]

22 hours ago, Eff said:

I would go in a different direction. A buddha is not automatically a god (neither a deva or an asura) and is most likely to be a human, 

Humans are closest to the Middle Way, they are neither too enmired in suffering nor too blissed out to achieve Moksha.  Also  of the 6 realms, human mainly interact with animals, and not with hungry ghosts, demons, asuras, and devas, so the Buddhas you may meet will almost certainly be human most of the time.

23 hours ago, Eff said:

the knowledge of the Shakyamuni Buddha transcends that of Brahma the ruler of the devas. 

Effectively, Buddha knows a hack for the wheel of karma.  That is all (but that is huge).

23 hours ago, Eff said:

 The applicability to Sedenya and Nysalor seems fairly relevant.

The illumination of Sedenya and Nysalor have nothing whatsoever to do with Buddhism and enlightenment.  Glorantha itself is implicitly and joyfully spiritually materialist in a way that Sakyamuni would 🙄 at.

In terms of Illumination there is a HUGE disconnect between Buddhism and illumination.  Buddhism recognizes morality as an essential part of its teaching, while illumination is "beyond good and evil" (shorthand for being evil AND arrogant).

[Darius West]

4 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Isn’t there always a third term in Arkat–Nysalor?

Will the real Gbaji please stand up then?  Oh, wait, they're both illuminated so they're both Gbaji.

Edited April 19 by Darius West

[Akhôrahil]

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

The illumination of Sedenya and Nysalor have nothing whatsoever to do with Buddhism and enlightenment.  Glorantha itself is implicitly and joyfully spiritually materialist in a way that Sakyamuni would 🙄 at.

In terms of Illumination there is a HUGE disconnect between Buddhism and illumination.  Buddhism recognizes morality as an essential part of its teaching, while illumination is "beyond good and evil" (shorthand for being evil AND arrogant).

I keep saying Illumination is Existentialism. There is no objective good or evil, no-one has real authority over you, and you get to create your preferred self without limits. God might not be dead, but if you're Argrath, that can be arranged.

[Eff]

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

The illumination of Sedenya and Nysalor have nothing whatsoever to do with Buddhism and enlightenment.  Glorantha itself is implicitly and joyfully spiritually materialist in a way that Sakyamuni would 🙄 at.

In terms of Illumination there is a HUGE disconnect between Buddhism and illumination.  Buddhism recognizes morality as an essential part of its teaching, while illumination is "beyond good and evil" (shorthand for being evil AND arrogant).

Fascinating to see an apparently genuine post from you. Shame it's over whether the word "applicability" means "exactly equivalent to" or not. 

[svensson]

[ You guys are a tough crowd. I really thought I'd get some shine for the 'how do magnets work' bit. 🤣😆 No worries. If it wasn't funny, it wasn't funny. *I* thought it was hysterical, but I'm kinda strange so... ]

[Darius West]

13 hours ago, Eff said:

Fascinating to see an apparently genuine post from you. Shame it's over whether the word "applicability" means "exactly equivalent to" or not. 

On the contrary, comparing any of the schools of Buddhism to Nysalorism is frankly an insulting mischaracterization of Buddhism, verging on racism.

[Darius West]

14 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I keep saying Illumination is Existentialism. There is no objective good or evil, no-one has real authority over you, and you get to create your preferred self without limits. God might not be dead, but if you're Argrath, that can be arranged.

This, I am far more in tune with.  Existentialism is a species of nihilism at its core, and so is Nysalori illumination.  It is a philosophy that refutes any intrinsic values in the world, and thus it devalues the world.  It sees no goof or evil, and hence it does what is most selfish, which is what is most evil, while insisting that it is beyond such classification, despite the fact that is for other people to judge as well, not just oneself.  Oh, and Argrath only killed the Gods to set them free, after they had ossified under the Compromise.  It was another sacred utuma ritual, conducted because the Great Compromise had died long before.

[Eff]

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

On the contrary, comparing any of the schools of Buddhism to Nysalorism is frankly an insulting mischaracterization of Buddhism, verging on racism.

Well, you've got your crusade and that's that. I think there's quite a lot to unpick in how even the idea that fantasy might take the ideas of Buddhism and place them in a different context, such as having bodhisattvas who fuck or having a morally ambiguous transcendent entity, is apparently beyond the pale for you, but it seems quite clear that the offense lies in suggesting Gloranthan Illumination might have any connections to anything other than what you consider to be pure evil. Case in point:

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

This, I am far more in tune with.  Existentialism is a species of nihilism at its core, and so is Nysalori illumination.  It is a philosophy that refutes any intrinsic values in the world, and thus it devalues the world.  It sees no goof or evil, and hence it does what is most selfish, which is what is most evil, while insisting that it is beyond such classification, despite the fact that is for other people to judge as well, not just oneself.  Oh, and Argrath only killed the Gods to set them free, after they had ossified under the Compromise.  It was another sacred utuma ritual, conducted because the Great Compromise had died long before.

This is an utterly ridiculous way to characterize Kierkegaard, Camus, Sartre, de Beauvoir, or Dostoyevsky. In fact, taking existentialism, which first and foremost takes human freedom amd capacity to make choices as a good, as an essential part of being fully human, and characterizing it like this is frankly to align yourself with truly poisonous ideas of social control. This venue is of course not one that would allow such a wide-ranging discussion even in the specific context of Glorantha and Gloranthan fantasy and whether the world becomes meaningless if it needs thinking minds to see it and give it value, whether existence depends on garroting human beings to the point where moving more than an inch out of line chokes them, and the like. So all I can do is point at that potential discussion and note that there is something to talk about here, beneath all the- frankly nihilistic interpretation of Gloranthan texts you bring to the table.

[mfbrandi]

12 hours ago, Darius West said:

comparing any of the schools of Buddhism to Nysalorism is frankly an insulting mischaracterization of Buddhism, verging on racism.

So what is the approved manner of calling out a racist caricature for its inaccuracy if comparing picture and pictured is forbidden?

Clearly, the Nysalor cult was supposed to be seen as some kind of commentary on Zen Buddhism (Alan Watts flavour?) — with the riddlers offering their koans — and that may well have been culturally insensitive, but I don’t see how making the Nysalor cult essentially and exaggeratedly monstrous is going to help, even if you tag on a “thou shalt not compare this to Buddhism”.

As for the supposed nihilism of the riddlers, the slide into the dark side — the baleful influence of Star Wars? — was presented as an error, not an entailment of Chaos = Law, wasn’t it?

• Once a being has realized that there is no final difference between Chaos and Law, he may later make a similar but false parallel between his personal ethics and his personal desires, reasoning that since there is no ultimate division to the former, neither is there any final difference between the latter.
  — Cults of Terror (Classic PDF, p. 87) [emphasis mine]

Not “similar and similarly false parallel”. The slide to the Dark Side is an optional extra and an error in reasoning, not the essence of the insight (illumination).

If we are somewhere given a good reason to believe that if only the equivalence of Chaos and Law is true then what we want is what is right, I don’t know what it is (or where it is). I am sure there are people who think — of the real world, not the game world (as if any of us here can tell them apart!) — that unless we can read right and wrong from the physics of the universe we are lost; they are one step away from the dark side themselves, though they may rail against it.

It seems pretty clear that Greg’s Gloranthan gods viewed the void as evil — presumably because in it they would not exist, though why their extinguishment should be evil I couldn’t say — but I am not qualified to say what Greg thought on his own account; there is this, but what is one to make of it? It certainly seems that for someone (possibly fictional), nirvana is evil (or an evil).

• Other interpretations of evil will be revealed and explored where appropriate. Some will be mentioned here. There is an Empty Void, which is a pre-everything conception and bears some resemblance to a Buddhist Nivanna
  — Greg Stafford, Cults of Prax: Designer Notes (Classic PDF, p. 106)

Perhaps we can say that viewing the void as evil is itself an example of dark side “false parallel” thinking: “I do not want to be extinguished, therefore nirvana (the empty void/extinguishment/cosmic death) is evil.” The equation of desire and ethics.

Spoiler

Illumination as dangerous (rather than essentially evil) because it provides superpowers to those with free will is a different issue, isn’t it? Insight and askesis as providers of superpowers is — to me — a tedious trope, but it wasn’t invented in Glorantha.

Edited April 20 by mfbrandi
V -> v

[Darius West]

21 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

So what is the approved manner of calling out a racist caricature for its inaccuracy if comparing picture and pictured is forbidden?

Clearly, the Nysalor cult was supposed to be seen as some kind of commentary on Zen Buddhism (Alan Watts flavour?) — with the riddlers offering their koans — and that may well have been culturally insensitive, but I don’t see how making the Nysalor cult essentially and exaggeratedly monstrous is going to help, even if you tag on a “thou shalt not compare this to Buddhism”.

It is a goddamned awful commentary on Zen Buddhism, that utterly misrepresents the core morality of Buddhism in favor of a hyping up of the weirdness.  Zen Koans don't work like Nysalor Riddles.  There is nothing "beyond good and evil" about Buddhism.  The core principle of Compassion rules that out.  Nysalorism is a form of nihilism, and Buddhism isn't.  Buddhists would not be easy going about chaos monsters, and within Buddhism, "Mapo", the end of the world/death of the dharma is something to be forestalled, not embraced.  Suffice to say I'm not a fan of Alan Watts either.

[Darius West]

On 4/20/2024 at 8:51 PM, Eff said:

Well, you've got your crusade and that's that. I think there's quite a lot to unpick in how even the idea that fantasy might take the ideas of Buddhism and place them in a different context, such as having bodhisattvas who fuck or having a morally ambiguous transcendent entity, is apparently beyond the pale for you, but it seems quite clear that the offense lies in suggesting Gloranthan Illumination might have any connections to anything other than what you consider to be pure evil. Case in point:

I find the whole issue of Bodhisattvas about the most problematic part of Buddhist doctrine.  The idea just doesn't scow on any level of examination.  Why would you avoid enlightenment to be reborn?  Clearly a bodhisattva is far too attached to being a living person to be enlightened for many lifetimes, despite understanding the suffering.  

If you know the Lotus Sutra, then a bodhisattva is someone who has left the burning building, seen the pretty carts out the front, had a ride in the carts, then gone back inside the burning building telling you that they will bring more children out to ride in the carts.  Are they really saved?  Are they really going to bring more children out?  Or are they just far too fond of the games in the burning building?

As to the notion of Bodhisattvas who fuck, not a problem; bodhisattvas are counterfeit enlightened people.  A truly enlightened person wouldn't be interested in sex.  Sex is just another pointless addiction/desire  that will just drag you back into suffering, karma, and rebirth, when you could be transcending all that nonsense.  A certain sort of person cannot conceive of anything better than sex, and they are not enlightened, any more than a glutton or a drunkard are enlightened.

As to moral ambiguity, that is unavoidable.  Every person will make morally incorrect or ambiguous decisions, even Buddhist teachers.  Much of this is the process of working off past bad karma.  The important thing is to measure one's actions against wisdom and compassion, and act according to the best and most selfless intentions.

23 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

As for the supposed nihilism of the riddlers, the slide into the dark side — the baleful influence of Star Wars? — was presented as an error, not an entailment of Chaos = Law, wasn’t it?

 There is no Law and Chaos in Buddhism.  They understand good and evil in terms of compassion and the lack thereof.  There is no "Dark Side", there are just arseholes who are justifying their lousy behavior with some sort of warped personal philosophy.   There is no "anti-Buddhism", the way Christianity has Satanism.

In Buddhism, the most bitter arguments are about curriculum i.e. which teaching method works the best. 

Occasionally there were doctrinal arguments over the meaning of certain teachings, but these were generally settled by a more knowledgeable third party.

There are also the usual institutional problems such as (a) Abbot X is far more interested in donations and luxury than in getting people enlightened, to which the Abbot counters (b)  I am trying to get money together to build a new dormitory wing and meditation hall so I can get more people training.  But it turns out that Abbot X is in fact entertaining a secret bevvy of pretty nuns for "tantric rituals", and he loses his position.

23 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Once a being has realized that there is no final difference between Chaos and Law, he may later make a similar but false parallel between his personal ethics and his personal desires, reasoning that since there is no ultimate division to the former, neither is there any final difference between the latter.
— Cults of Terror (Classic PDF, p. 87) [emphasis mine]

 

That's Nietzsche, not Buddhism.  This is the mindset of Dostoyevsky's Nietzsche reading character Raskolnikov in "Crime and Punishment", before he goes and commits a double homicide, because he is "Beyond good and evil".  Any person who thinks they are beyond good and evil in this sense is really only in the process of getting ready to do something bad deliberately, and using philosophy as a justification for behaving like an arsehole.

23 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

It seems pretty clear that Greg’s Gloranthan gods viewed the void as evil — presumably because in it they would not exist, though why their extinguishment should be evil I couldn’t say — but I am not qualified to say what Greg thought on his own account; there is this, but what is one to make of it? It certainly seems that for someone (possibly fictional), nirvana is evil (or an evil).

• Other interpretations of evil will be revealed and explored where appropriate. Some will be mentioned here. There is an Empty Void, which is a pre-everything conception and bears some resemblance to a Buddhist Nivanna
  — Greg Stafford, Cults of Prax: Designer Notes (Classic PDF, p. 106)

This is a classic translation problem to do with the doctrine of Annata, and the idea of Nirvana in Buddhism.  In a western mindset the Void is a dark thing like a bottomless pit or the inky depths of frigid outer space.  The void seems synonymous with a form of hell, where we go to be annihilated.  While referring to a void is poetic, it is misleading, but speaking of "absence" isn't half so intriguing as a sales point, even though it would be closer to the truth.

A classic teaching of Buddhism is to see enlightenment as the snuffing out of "the self" much as one snuffs out a candle.  Wow, can that be misinterpreted.  Think about it in these terms.  What does the flame do to the candle?  It burns up and melts the wax.  If it is left to burn, the candle will be destroyed.  So we snuff out the flame.  We can see the flame as the self and its worries and desires prematurely consuming us.  But wait?  Isn't the purpose of a candle to burn and provide light thereby?  Yes, it is.  So don't waste the candle by burning it without a proper purpose.  Snuffing the candle is an analogy.  It is not a metaphor for suicide, as some German students believed.

While the point I will raise is also fraught with the potential for error, I would suggest that it is better to view Buddhist enlightenment, no-self, and Nirvana through an alternative philosophical perspective.  Imagine if you will, that it is possible for a human to be Objective.  That it is possible, through close monitoring of personal bias and mental process, to remove all mental clutter and to ditch one's Subjectivity.  The result is a somewhat alien clarity of mind where you can "sense clearly" what others cannot.  "The Void" that the loss of self involves in Buddhism is often described as being "indescribable", which is something of a Lovecraftian problem. 

Those enlightened people who have tried to describe it say it is nothing dark, but an experience of the most excruciatingly perfect and crystalline clarity where the beauty of the world is expressed in ravishing splendor, and one's mind, memory, and senses are perfect and you never miss any detail, like stepping into the antechamber of omniscience.  You find yourself in love with the world and all living things (an expression of compassion), and can clearly see that with a few words you can potentially make a wicked person choose to be good, and a good person become even more excellent.  Many people find the experience so overwhelming that they lose the power of speech and reason and behave like they have gone insane for weeks.  Even the best minds struggle not to be saturated by the richness and overwhelming joy of the experience.  This is the howling void we are referring to.

This is why Nysalor isn't teaching Buddhism, he's teaching Nietzschean Ethics and Cultural relativity.

Edited April 21 by Darius West

[Eff]

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

I find the whole issue of Bodhisattvas about the most problematic part of Buddhist doctrine.  The idea just doesn't scow on any level of examination.  Why would you avoid enlightenment to be reborn?  Clearly a bodhisattva is far too attached to being a living person to be enlightened for many lifetimes, despite understanding the suffering.  

If you know the Lotus Sutra, then a bodhisattva is someone who has left the burning building, seen the pretty carts out the front, had a ride in the carts, then gone back inside the burning building telling you that they will bring more children out to ride in the carts.  Are they really saved?  Are they really going to bring more children out?  Or are they just far too fond of the games in the burning building?

As to the notion of Bodhisattvas who fuck, not a problem; bodhisattvas are counterfeit enlightened people.  A truly enlightened person wouldn't be interested in sex.  Sex is just another pointless addiction/desire  that will just drag you back into suffering, karma, and rebirth, when you could be transcending all that nonsense.  A certain sort of person cannot conceive of anything better than sex, and they are not enlightened, any more than a glutton or a drunkard are enlightened.

As to moral ambiguity, that is unavoidable.  Every person will make morally incorrect or ambiguous decisions, even Buddhist teachers.  Much of this is the process of working off past bad karma.  The important thing is to measure one's actions against wisdom and compassion, and act according to the best and most selfless intentions.

Fascinating. So you accept the Lotus Sutra as authentic but reject the notion of the bodhisattva entirely? Where did you receive your education in Buddhism? From whom did you learn the dharma/dhamma? Because what you are expounding is not a part of any school of Buddhism with which I am familiar- the schools of the "great vehicle" and those of the "way of the elders" both agree that there is a kind of person called a bodhisattva, that this is a positive phenomenon, and disagree about what specific positive meaning to assign to it and the extensibility of the phenomenon. Perhaps some of the esoteric schools of the "thunderbolt vehicle" might, just might, say what you say here, but frankly, I doubt it. I suspect strongly that this is your original or personal interpretation that you are presenting as the "truth of Buddhism", which would frankly make you a teacher of false dhamma from a Buddhist perspective. But this is only a suspicion. So before we go any further, where did you receive the dharma?

[Darius West]

20 hours ago, Eff said:

 Where did you receive your education in Buddhism? 

Partly from extensive personal reading.  Partly from a gentleman with a verified lineage.  Partly from a meditation group.  Partly from arguing with Buddhists.

20 hours ago, Eff said:

So you accept the Lotus Sutra as authentic 

The Lotus Sutra is a tool.  I am dubious about all things Mahayana, as there is so much obvious fraud in their sutras.

20 hours ago, Eff said:

 but reject the notion of the bodhisattva entirely? 

Not entirely, but I am extremely skeptical of the idea of bodhisattvas as part of Buddhist doctrine.   There are too many contradictions regarding what a bodhisattva is.

20 hours ago, Eff said:

 From whom did you learn the dharma/dhamma? 

A living lineage operating out of Indonesia's Hakka Chinese community that can trace its origins back to Huineng.  I am not giving out names without permission.

20 hours ago, Eff said:

 Because what you are expounding is not a part of any school of Buddhism with which I am familiar

Living lineages' primary duty is the transmission of enlightenment.  Dogma and ritual are only useful if they promote that transmission for the specific individual.

20 hours ago, Eff said:

the schools of the "great vehicle" and those of the "way of the elders" both agree that there is a kind of person called a bodhisattva, that this is a positive phenomenon, and disagree about what specific positive meaning to assign to it and the extensibility of the phenomenon. 

I am a skeptic first and a Buddhist second.  My teacher liked the fact I asked difficult questions.  About Bodhisattvas, consider this...  Probably the clearest transmission of Buddhism into the West was via the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom into Alexandria and the Roman Empire, and became known as the Philosophy of Stoicism. 

Are bodhisattvas recognized within the philosophy of Stoicism?

Edited April 22 by Darius West

[Eff]

23 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Partly from extensive personal reading.  Partly from a gentleman with a verified lineage.  Partly from a meditation group.  Partly from arguing with Buddhists.

The Lotus Sutra is a tool.  I am dubious about all things Mahayana, as there is so much obvious fraud in their sutras.

A living lineage operating out of Indonesia's Hakka Chinese community that can trace its origins back to Huineng.  I am not giving out names without permission.

Permit me to clear away as much of the gory remnants of my post you so mercilessly vivisected and aim for clarity in response. 

Ah. So Chan Buddhism but rejecting the Great Vehicle's sutras as fraudulent? I am satisfied. You're propounding a false dharma by Buddhist standards, one without any affiliation to any school, and holding it up as received truth. That's bad manners at the very least. 

23 minutes ago, Darius West said:

I am a skeptic first and a Buddhist second.  My teacher liked the fact I asked difficult questions.  About Bodhisattvas, consider this...  Probably the clearest transmission of Buddhism into the West was via the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom into Alexandria and the Roman Empire, and became known as the Philosophy of Stoicism. 

Are bodhisattvas recognized within the philosophy of Stoicism?

This is a truly fascinating claim. Have you any evidence for it, beyond superficial resemblances? It certainly isn't part of the generally accepted historiography of the Stoics.

[Darius West]

24 minutes ago, Eff said:

Permit me to clear away as much of the gory remnants of my post you so mercilessly vivisected and aim for clarity in response. 

Sure.

24 minutes ago, Eff said:

Ah. So Chan Buddhism but rejecting the Great Vehicle's sutras as fraudulent?

Point to this Great Vehicle please.

24 minutes ago, Eff said:

You're propounding a false dharma by Buddhist standards, one without any affiliation to any school, and holding it up as received truth.

So, Theravada is a false dharma according to you?

24 minutes ago, Eff said:

This is a truly fascinating claim. Have you any evidence for it, beyond superficial resemblances? It certainly isn't part of the generally accepted historiography of the Stoics.

Start at the very beginning and follow the footnotes: Greco-Buddhism

Edited April 22 by Darius West

[Joerg]

They say that the devil is in the details (so this is not completely off-topic), but this debate about defining Buddhism should move to the Tavern or private exchanges.

[Eff]

So let's think mythologically. What does it mean that the Devil is under the Block for Praxians? After all, we could say that the Devil was only ever in one place, but looking back over Revealed Mythologies makes it very clear that Vovisibor is also the Devil as understood by Pamaltelans, and the Nargan Desert is where Vovisibor's (c)remains would be. So there is clearly some kind of mythological meaning to these places where the "Devil was defeated", and perhaps it might just be that that's where the weird Chaos critters come from. But let's put that possibility aside for a moment. 

Wakboth is crushed by the Block of Law, Storm Bull dies, and Waha emerges and begins building things and determining the order of Praxian society. Waha digs a canal to wash the Devil away, as one of his first acts. The Devil is held down by the laws of Waha and by maintaining the things which Waha built. The Eternal Battle still rages across the plain(e)s, so Storm Bull is perpetually fighting the Devil to a draw, but the Survival Covenant is what puts the Devil down. 

Let's go one step further. If the Devil is under the Block, how can you encounter him on a Heroquest? 

Trivially, the body does not move through the material world for the precise distances someone would have to move in order to carry out the actions of mythology when on a Heroquest. As such, the Devil, who clearly has to still be a potential threat if he's at all meaningful, and thus must have some kind of mind, can be present in the Gods War when you are. 

But stepping back a little, the Devil's imprisonment or ineffectiveness is conditional. If the laws of Waha are violated too deeply, if people forget the Right Footpath of Pamalt, if people reject the justice of Antirius, then the Devil might be freed, in part or in full. And if the Heroquesters believe this is the case, then they will encounter or at least see the Devil in their Hero Plane, partially or fully freed, where someone else might simply see a vicious demon. 

What would a multicultural group see? Quite possibly different things, or quite possibly an overlap of them all. A more interesting question- would an Illuminate see "The Devil", or would they see an entity with personhood- the avenging son of Thed, the abandoned son of Malkion, whatever lies behind Vovisibor? Under what circumstances would an Illuminate encounter the Devil? Arkat didn't call Nysalor the Devil, after all.

 

 

[Joerg]

45 minutes ago, Eff said:

So let's think mythologically. What does it mean that the Devil is under the Block for Praxians?

The whereabouts of a deity are a bit less meaningful with the concept of Pluripresence that Greg enumerated (possibly in too much detail to be playable outside of a board game) in his hero plane/heroquesting notes in Arcane Lore.

What it means is that there is a guaranteed presence of the Devil under the Block, right next to their most holy land around the Paps, and that there is an unending supply of chaotic emanations in the Devil's Marsh, up to Cacodemon and the Devil's Hand.

Mythologically it means that they occupy Ground Zero of the Gods War, the place that ended the Greater Darkness. Between the Block and the Eternal Battle, only Magasta's Pool is a similarly big remainder of the Gods War.

More than mythologically, the presence affects their society (created by Waha).

 

The (Praxian) Waha leadership is more or less dependent on these Chaos emanations. Without proven defeat of Chaos in the Devil's Marsh, you cannot be a proper Khan of Waha (although I think that killing Chaos in the Krjalki Bog might be an acceptable alternative). (Waha cultists who are dedicated butchers in Orlanthi society are rather unlikely to become khans, but they might have cult shamans to stand in leading cult rites.)

Followers of the Storm Bull are guarding the Block as a sacred duty, one of the safer postings you can have as a berserk. Chasing the Eternal Battle or guarding the Footprint might see more attrition.

Most other Praxians might be relieved if that presence could be changed into an extermination, although that might have ecological consequences that might destroy their cultural premise. Such changes have fallen on earlier emigrations from Prax, with bison participants at Argentium Thri'ile in the Dawn Age (the big victory over the Horse Warlords of Dara Happa) becoming a fairly acculturated nobility in their new homes in Sylila. Their Sable compatriots managed to keep their culture alive in the isolation on Hungry Plateau, although even they became fairly urban.

The Morokanth regard the border of the wetlands of the Devil's Marsh as their ancestral grazing - they managed to survive into the Gray Age there, closest of the still extant tribes.

[mfbrandi]

3 hours ago, Eff said:

Arkat didn’t call Nysalor the Devil, after all.

I dare say that is right, but some things are suggestive:

• Nysalor -> The Bright One -> The Shining One -> Lucifer -> The Devil
• Gbaji -> The Deceiver -> The Prince of Lies -> Satan -> The Devil

We could see Rashoran/a as an angel ministering to the distressed in the Dark till s/he met the notorious Trio. Perhaps their ritual of chaos birth was persuading or forcing Rashoran/a to glug down Dr. Jekyll’s formula. So angels fall, even the brightest.

If Lucifer is the light-bringer, the dawn-bringer, we might imagine that that is the Gloranthan Devil’s rôle, too: stitch the Devil into the dying world to create the mundane world of time and the first sunrise. The power of chaos birth.

As long as chaos has its “right” place in the world, the Gods War is held at bay, and it is possible to birth gods into time, providing they have the right relationship with time — chaos births.

And destroying the “lighter” aspects of Rashoran/a come again perhaps brings us closer to the lifting of the Block, chaos rebirth, and Mr. Hyde redux.

Perhaps I see these alternations everywhere. Perhaps they are an illusion, and both aspects are ever present — or neither is and the death of the Devil is the death of the gods, as it represents the demystification/disenchantment of the mundane world. Perhaps not. 😉

[Don’t worry, this isn’t a credo. I am just letting the wheels spin.]

And as to what Arkat gets to call anyone:

• Arkat -> Zorak Zoran -> Lord Demon of the Legions of Death -> pot calling the kettle black?

[mfbrandi]

4 hours ago, Eff said:

Under what circumstances would an Illuminate encounter the Devil?
Arkat didn't call Nysalor the Devil, after all.

• Does Dr. Jekyll encounter Mr. Hyde?
• Does Arkat have a mirror?