The Old Earth Way

[Jex]

All right, I know I've been asking a lot of questions here as I'm trying to research and get things in order for my Marshedge gazetteer project (and I'm very grateful for all the helpful responses I've received), but I think I've now finally finished reading over all the most immediately relevant old source material, so hopefully this will be the last question.  (And with any luck within the next couple months I'll finally, finally get this thing done and up on the Jonstown Compendium!)  Anyway, this is something I've been wondering for a long time, but I haven't asked it here before because I was looking through various sources hoping to find an answer on my own, but having failed to turn up anything, I thought I'd throw myself one more time on the tender mercies of the forum...

The descriptions of the Lismelder tribe in Tales of the Reaching Moon #18 and #19 make repeated reference to a religious tradition called the "Old Earth Way" (or occasionally "Ways") that seems to have played a significant role in the Lismelder's early history.  Queen Lismelder, the first leader of the tribe, reinstituted the Old Earth Way among her followers, and her daughters tried to force the whole tribe to follow the Old Earth Way until Indrodar Greydog steered them back into the Orlanthi path.  But I've been unable to figure out what exactly the Old Earth Way was; I haven't been able to find the phrase used anywhere in any other Glorantha materials (though it's entirely possible I missed it somewhere).  Given its apparent importance to the Lismelder history (and, depending on what it was, maybe the possibility that it may still have some adherents today?), I'd really like to try to figure out what the Old Earth Way was all about.

The way I see it, there are three main possibilities:

1. The "Old Earth Way" just refers to the religious tradition practiced in Esrolia, or one similar, centered around the Earth Mother Ernalda and recognizing Orlanth as only one of her many husbands rather than as the king of the gods.  This would seem on the surface to be the most straightforward and obvious interpretation, but there are two problems with it.  For one, the way the Old Earth Way is referred to in TotRM seems to make it out to be something vaguely sinister—but then again, perhaps to good faithful Orlanthi this placing of Ernalda above Orlanth would be seen as blasphemous and sinister.  But another problem is that there's a reference to Indrodar "bringing [Queen Tara] back into the ways of Orlanth and Ernalda"—which wouldn't seem to make a whole lot of sense if they were already worshiping Ernalda.
2. It's an ad hoc reference that just doesn't fit with later canon and is best ignored.  Tome of the Reaching Moon wasn't an official publication, after all, and even if some things from this zine were later canonized, that doesn't mean everything in it is canon—and this is one thing that isn't.  I don't like this option, because I would like to incorporate what I can from earlier sources, and frankly the tribe's history with the Old Earth Way does seem to present some interesting possibilities... but if it doesn't fit, it doesn't fit.
3. The "Old Earth Way" refers to the worship of some earth god(dess) or collection of god(dess)es not now normally widely worshiped among the Orlanthi.  The Earth Witch, perhaps?

Anyway, does anyone have any insight as to which of these possibilities (or perhaps another possibility I haven't thought of) was intended, or is most likely to be correct?  Or is there some clear reference to the Old Earth Way elsewhere that lays out exactly what the term refers to and am I just dumb?

[metcalph]

I would have thought the Old Earth Way was following the religious practices of the Tarsh Exiles.

[Jex]

Hmm... some of the the Maran-Gor-centered practices of the Tarsh exiles do seem like they could be a good fit, and they do fit the "Earth" part of the name.  But does it fit the "old" part?  Are those religious practices of particularly long standing, or are they something the Tarsh exiles only came up with in violent defiance of the Lunar occupation?  (Honest question; I don't know.)

The only other problem I see with this idea is that Lismelder herself doesn't seem to have any connection to Tarsh.  Before she went off to found her own tribe, she was a member of the Malani Tribe; I'm not sure where she would have picked up Tarsh religious practices.  Or were the religious practices now followed in Old Tarsh once more widespread than they are today?

Ah, wait, okay, never mind; I think I found the answer to both those questions.  Per the Maran Gor entry in Cults of RuneQuest: The Earth Goddesses:

Quote

At the Dawn, Maran Gor was powerful and revered by the people of Dragon Pass. Her great temple at the foot of Kero Fin ferociously guarded the rights of the Earth goddesses. The cult of the Earth Shaker has waned considerably since the Dawning, but in certain isolated spots, she is still highly revered.

Okay, then, yeah, it all seems to check out.  Old?  Check.  Earth?  Check.  I don't know that I can be 100% sure this is what was meant in TotRM, but it does seem to fit the bill and I'll probably go with this unless I hear something more definitive.  Thanks.

[Joerg]

Possibly this refers to the concept of 7-year Sacred Kings, like the Illaro Dynasty had after the Tarsh CIvil War. Which would happen after the separation of the Lismelder Tribe from the Malani, those troubles might have happened around the Zarran War.

[Eff]

4 hours ago, Jex said:

Okay, then, yeah, it all seems to check out.  Old?  Check.  Earth?  Check.  I don't know that I can be 100% sure this is what was meant in TotRM, but it does seem to fit the bill and I'll probably go with this unless I hear something more definitive.  Thanks.

Without any personal knowledge of what was meant in those articles either, I suspect that there's first and foremost a root inspiration in Robert Graves' (and the associated, more academic work) beliefs about primordial matriarchal civilization and worship of a primordial triple goddess, with plenty of blood sacrifices and elaborations of the Roman rex nemorensis ritual in the Golden Bough tradition. You can certainly see that influence in the Wyrm's Footnotes article on the earth gods and the pair of triads of earth goddesses.

[Nick Brooke]

“Queens should rule tribes, because Kings tend to be violent warmongering assholes like Mad-Blood Malan.”

That’s probably most of it. It’s just the Esrolian alternative, seizing its moment after Lismelder repudiated her mad, bad dad.

[Jex]

3 hours ago, Eff said:

You can certainly see that influence in the Wyrm's Footnotes article on the earth gods and the pair of triads of earth goddesses.

Ah, I admit that except for issue 15 which covers the Upland Marsh (but which is largely copied from TotRM), I haven't really taken a close look at Wyrm's Footnotes.  I'll skim them and check out the article you mentioned for some possible inspiration.

[Beoferret]

7 hours ago, Joerg said:

Possibly this refers to the concept of 7-year Sacred Kings, like the Illaro Dynasty had after the Tarsh CIvil War.

7-year Sacred Kings? Is this a reference to rulers who'd be ritually sacrificed at the end of a set term?

Speaking of which ....

2 hours ago, Eff said:

Without any personal knowledge of what was meant in those articles either, I suspect that there's first and foremost a root inspiration in Robert Graves' (and the associated, more academic work) beliefs about primordial matriarchal civilization and worship of a primordial triple goddess, with plenty of blood sacrifices and elaborations of the Roman rex nemorensis ritual in the Golden Bough tradition. You can certainly see that influence in the Wyrm's Footnotes article on the earth gods and the pair of triads of earth goddesses.

Mary Renault's The King Must Die, historically accurate or not, offers a pretty evocative description of a matriarchal, earth-focused society with annual sacrifice of ritual kings. Worth a read. 

Also, there's the possibility that the ancient Irish sacrificed tribal kings, when times were rough (e.g., after a poor or failed harvest) and their bodies then placed in a bog. Not sure any Lismelder would want to put a body in the Upland Marsh though. 

[Geoff R Evil]

Worship of Maran Gor fits very well from my POV for all the reasons you list.  Blood sacrifices which may have included sentient beings certainly fits the old earth ways reference and provides a clear storyline as to why the people rebelled against such activities and ensconced a deity that includes being treated honourably in its ethos.

[soltakss]

2 hours ago, Beoferret said:

10 hours ago, Joerg said:

Possibly this refers to the concept of 7-year Sacred Kings, like the Illaro Dynasty had after the Tarsh CIvil War.

7-year Sacred Kings? Is this a reference to rulers who'd be ritually sacrificed at the end of a set term?

Yes, that is right. In Esrolia they used to sacrifice their kings until the Pharoah was a sacrifice, then he returned and stopped the practice. He was also thrown into a volcano as a sacrifice, returned and stopped the practice. I see a pattern here.

5 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

“Queens should rule tribes, because Kings tend to be violent warmongering assholes like Mad-Blood Malan.”

That’s probably most of it. It’s just the Esrolian alternative, seizing its moment after Lismelder repudiated her mad, bad dad.

Kings are useful to be sacrificed, that is their main purpose.

 

[Nick Brooke]

45 minutes ago, Geoff R Evil said:

Worship of Maran Gor fits very well from my POV for all the reasons you list.  Blood sacrifices which may have included sentient beings certainly fits the old earth ways reference and provides a clear storyline as to why the people rebelled against such activities and ensconced a deity that includes being treated honourably in its ethos.

I’ve played in Jeff Richard and Neil (happy birthday!) Robinson’s “Fall of the House of Malan” a couple of times (it’s a freeform about the formation of the Lismelder Tribe, inter alia) and this doesn’t sound like anything that was going on. The Malani were Humakti extremists, not Old Earth Tarshites. Queen Lismelder and her daughters would have been happy to establish female rule, they wouldn’t have felt any need to add sacrificial male kings to the mix. Of course, YGWV, but as a Greydog clansman and an historical reenactor your scenario doesn’t sound very likely. The guys and gals who broke from Malan were rejecting bloody madness and pointless killing. Not looking for new atrocities to commit.

[Jex]

Hm; religions and other traditions do change over time... Perhaps it could be that under Queen Lismelder the Old Earth Way started as something benign—little more than an Esrolian-style matriarchy with worship focused on Earth goddesses—but that later under her successors (Queen Tara "under the influence of her evil sisters", as TotRM 18 puts it) it seemed to be threatening to metamorphose into something darker and harsher.  (TotRM 18 does refer to Lismelder giving her tribe "the bounty of the Old Earth Way", which does seem to imply that it had positive effects at first, so something must have changed for the tribe to later be on the verge of civil war over it and for it to be such a problem that Indrodar was willing to break his Humakti geas to put an end to it.)

(Whoa, hey, hey, rereading the history of Indrodar in TotRM 19 just now I just noticed something I'd somehow glossed over before... Queen Tara and her sisters "ruled the tribe from Marshedge"!  How the heck did I miss that on my previous readings?  That's certainly something interesting that's worth thinking about... and possibly even a seed for a future adventure set in Marshedge, if Queen Tara and her sisters left anything hidden somewhere from their old ways...)

[jajagappa]

3 hours ago, soltakss said:

Yes, that is right. In Esrolia they used to sacrifice their kings until the Pharoah was a sacrifice, then he returned and stopped the practice.

That's not a canonical viewpoint, but something suggested briefly in the early HW/HQ1 books and not returned to since. I would not follow it - it's not present in the Esrolia book or the Guide at all.

6 hours ago, Beoferret said:

7-year Sacred Kings? Is this a reference to rulers who'd be ritually sacrificed at the end of a set term?

Where this does come from is the Shaker Temple at Wintertop, and you can see it reflected in the sacrificed kings listed in King of Sartar. Unstey is the latest of these kings to come to his position (noted in the Old Tarsh section of RQG).

[Nick Brooke]

3 hours ago, jajagappa said:

That's not a canonical viewpoint, but something suggested briefly in the early HW/HQ1 books and not returned to since. I would not follow it - it's not present in the Esrolia book or the Guide at all.

Greg Stafford, Gods of the Earth, Wyrms Footnotes #9 (1980):

[Soccercalle]

I like the concept of old time earth priestesses practicing blood sacrifice and stuff like that. But I get Nicks point that isn't the canon.

But a more "canon-like" interpretation can be that Lismelder wanted to go back to a more Ernalda-dominated culture after the break with her mad father. The Malani lived in Kethaela and was probably well informed about the Esrolina way of running things.

But she was probably later influenced by Indrodar and others to settle for a more traditional heortling way of doing things. It would probably give Ernalda a stronger position than the Humakt dominated ways under her mad father. The Malani was more of a war band than a tribe under Mad Dog Malan.

You could also add (if you want to make a story out of this) that Lismelder was supported by the Maran Gor cult during her break up with the father. They could have tried to use that moment to make the customs more "bloody".

 

[Jex]

Okay, originally I'd posted asking if you were sure you weren't thinking of a different tribe, because the Malani were nowhere near Kethaela... but then I looked into their history, and whoops, I hadn't realized they had originally come from Hendrikiland not too long before Lismelder left the clan.  Huh.

Anyway, though, at this point based on what @Nick Brooke said about the "Fall of the House of Malan" campaign and some of the wording in Tales of the Reaching Moon, I think what seems to fit the best is that, like I proposed in my previous post, under Queen Lismelder the Old Earth Way started as a benevolent cult focusing on the Earth Goddesses, and it was only under her successors, who tried to force the Old Earth Way on the entire tribe and may have turned it in a darker direction in other ways as well, that it became something more oppressive and objectionable (though even then, I'm not sure it would have quite extended to human sacrifice).  But you have a point that the fact that the Malani came originally from Kethaela—which I didn't realize until you mentioned it and I looked up their history—could fit in with Lismelder's having been familiar with Esrolian customs; I think I may use that.  Thanks.

(Although, hm, I need to take a closer look at the chronology.  How old would Lismelder have been when the Malani left Kethaela?  Would she have been old enough to remember it?  Would she even have been born yet?  Okay, probably not; it looks like the Malani passed through Colymar lands on the way to their current location in 1325, and Lismelder left the Malani in 1356; I don't know how old she was when she left (is that established anywhere?), but I'm guessing younger than 30.  Especially since she died in 1383, and that was in battle rather than of old age, so if she'd been in her teens when the Malani left Kethaela she would have been actively fighting zombies in her 70s, which seems... not impossible, but not all that likely.  But I guess even if she wouldn't have her own direct memories of life in Kethaela, older tribe members certainly would, and she could have heard stories of Esrolian customs from them...)

(Okay, wait, on second thought, Lismelder can't have been that young when she left the Malani, because she had six daughters.  (Her husband's death was a big part of the inciting event that made her leave in the first place, and there's no mention of her remarrying later, so presumably all six daughters had already been born before she broke off from her father's tribe.)  The family history charts in the Roleplaying in Glorantha core book seem to imply that people of Sartar generally start having kids in their early twenties, so even if she had one child a year (barring any multiple births) she'd have to have been at least 26 or so, and she could very easily be a few years older, so okay, maybe she was born before the Malani left Kethaela.  Having her old enough to remember Kethaela still may be pushing it, though...)

Edited September 26 by Jex

[Nick Brooke]

Kethaela isn't that far from Quiviniland. And Esrolian influence isn't cut off by the Cross Line, once everyone realises it's not keeping humans out any more. As a simple man, Bad Queen Tara and her wicked sisters are the obvious villains of the piece. If the Pharaoh bans the Year King rites in Esrolia, bloody-handed witch-priestesses who find themselves persona non grata could migrate north to Quiviniland with their now-heretical rituals...

[Jex]

6 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Bad Queen Tara and her wicked sisters are the obvious villains of the piece. If the Pharaoh bans the Year King rites in Esrolia, bloody-handed witch-priestesses who find themselves persona non grata could migrate north to Quiviniland with their now-heretical rituals...

Oh, Queen Tara and her "evil sisters" definitely weren't exiled witch-priestesses who migrated to Lismelder lands from Esrolia... they were Queen Lismelder's daughters.  I guess I probably should have mentioned that.  And Queen Tara didn't turn out to be that bad in the long run, given that after Indrodar Greydog married her and she returned to Orlanthi ways, Indrodar and Tara stayed together apparently happily for more than two and a half decades.

I'm actually inclined to suppose that the whole "evil sisters" thing is largely in-character exaggeration or bias from an Orlanthi POV, and that Lismelder's daughters may have overreached and made some divisive demands (yeah, trying to force the whole tribe to follow the Old Earth Way wasn't a great decision) but weren't really hand-rubbingly, mustache-twirlingly evil.  If there is to be a villain of the piece, though, the best candidate is Lismelder's third daughter (and Tara's sister) Elwina-Gor, who was going around threatening people who opposed the Old Earth Way even while Lismelder was still alive before things got out of hand, and who, when Indrodar and Tara were married and Tara gave up the Old Earth Way, "cursed her sister and husband and retired to the Holy Country."  (Hm... which it now occurs to me does further point to a connection between the Old Earth Way and Esrolia).  She seems to have been the main instigator and the cause of things going awry, if anyone was.

(Huh, another interesting note: ToTRM 19 specifically says that civil war was threatened in the Lismelder tribe when "Tara and her sisters...demanded that the Goodsword and Greydog clans follow the Old Earth Way".  So... the other clans were okay with it?)

[Nick Brooke]

My point was that ideas and personnel from Esrolia can easily make it north to Quiviniland, once we know the Cross Line is defunct. Bad Queen Tara (who was bad: I’m a Greydog) could have had an entourage of evil witch-priestesses, exiled from Esrolia by Pharaonic decree, and got her ideas from them. (Or from nice Earth Priestesses, if you believe the propaganda.)

[Soccercalle]

The Heortling culture is quite egalitarian between men och women, with the men a bit more powerful. The Esrolian culture makes the women a bit more powerful. I guess that the men were clearly in charge among the Malani and that a lot of leading women wanted to turn that around. And they saw their moment when the new tribe was formed.

[jajagappa]

8 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Greg Stafford, Gods of the Earth, Wyrms Footnotes #9 (1980)

Did not remember that bit, thanks. It has not been carried forward into either the Guide, Glorantha Sourcebook, or Earth Goddesses books, though.

 

[Soccercalle]

Quote

 

The thing I like with this (even if it's not canon) is that it makes earth-worshipping more nuanced. All other main powerful cults has both good and bad things. Orlanth may be a hero but he definitely breaks things. Seven Mothers saved their country but are also occupants and so on. But Ernalda is just good and the cult is just positive. Food, love, motherhood, community and sex.

All the "dark" things in the Earth Pantheon are delegated to Babs, Maran and Ty Kora Tek. The only exception may be in @jajagappas Nochet Book where the Grandmothers are compared with Mob bosses. I like a cult that needs to be controlled and also do bad things. Like Lhankor Mhy can be "god learnerish", Eurmal needs Orlanthi and so on. 

[Nozbat]

23 hours ago, Eff said:

Without any personal knowledge of what was meant in those articles either, I suspect that there's first and foremost a root inspiration in Robert Graves' (and the associated, more academic work) beliefs about primordial matriarchal civilization and worship of a primordial triple goddess, with plenty of blood sacrifices and elaborations of the Roman rex nemorensis ritual in the Golden Bough tradition. You can certainly see that influence in the Wyrm's Footnotes article on the earth gods and the pair of triads of earth goddesses.

Absolutely @Eff.. Graves through and through... Sacred Kings being ritually sacrificed seem to be common before the ascendency of male deities. In many of the matrilinear tribes, the King was not of the Royal household but only becomes the King by his relationship with the Queen and adopting a title which seems to explain how the lives of heroes like Hercules, Daedalus, Teiresias, and Phineus span several generations. 

The Sacred king was sacrificed when the year ended; making him a symbol of fertility, rather than the object of her erotic pleasure. His sprinkled blood served to fructify trees, crops and flocks, and his flesh was torn and eaten raw by the Queen's fellow nymphs—priestesses wearing masks of bitches, mares and sows.

Time was first reckoned by lunations, and every important ceremony took place at a certain phase of the moon; the solstices and equinoxes not being exactly determined but approximated to the nearest new or full moon. The number seven acquired peculiar sanctity, because the king died at the seventh full moon after the shone day. These months later became what the English-speaking world still calls 'common-law months', each of twenty-eight days which was a sacred number, 

As a religious tradition, the thirteen-month years survived among European peasants for more than a millennium after the adoption of the Julian Calendar; thus Robin Hood, who lived at the time of Edward II, could exclaim in a ballad celebrating the May Day festival:

                  How many merry/months be in the year?

                  There are thirteen, I say ...

which a Tudor editor has altered to

                  ... There are but twelve, I say ...’

Thirteen, the number of the sun’s death-month, has never lost its evil reputation among the superstitious.

In Greece, the Aeolian and Ionian invasions were probably less destructive than the later Achaean and Doric invasions and the invaders integrated with the pre-hellenic matriarchies. The Kings reign was extended to the Great Year of a 100 lunations in the length of which occurs a near-coincidence of solar and lunar time. However the harvest had to be protected and fructified, thus a surrogate would have died for the King. The King underwent a mock death and rebirth on the intercalated one, lying outside the sacred sidereal year—to the surrogate boy-king, or interrex, who died at its close, and whose blood was used for the sprinkling ceremony.

At the end of the Great Year the King still died a ritual death which varied greatly in circumstance; he might be torn in pieces by wild women, transfixed with a ray spear, killed with an axe, flung over a cliff, burned to death on a pyre, drowned in a pool, or killed in an arranged chariot crash as can be seen in many of the deaths of the Greek heroes.

[scott-martin]

Look how beautiful this thread is.
 

[Jeff]

When humans returned to Dragon Pass in the 14th century (some 300 years ago), they came primarily from four regions:

Prax: The surviving Pure Horse People of Prax fled to Dragon Pass. They actually came in the 13th century and were very few in number.

Hendriki: The first wave of settlers primarily came from the old Hendriki homeland in what is now Heortland. This was an old Orlanthi land, and one that did not participate in the Empire of the Wyrms Friends. 

Esrolia: Many settlers came from Esrolia, as that land had long ties of marriage and cult with the Hendriki.  Many followed the Old Earth Way, and held Ernalda and her sisters to be the great powers of the cosmos that needed to be placated with blood sacrifice.

Saird: Following the Lunar wars of the Conquering Daughter, many Pelorian Orlanthi fled to Dragon Pass. They brought with them Orlanth Rex.