Yinkin Shadowcats god, where is it's animal part

[davecake]

16 minutes ago, metcalph said:

Why would I not?  It's a simple elegant solution which doesn't involve nitpicking over trivia and getting worked up about it. 

Because it makes up an entirely new spiritual practice, as far as I can tell just to try to win an argument with me (in that I don't think the idea of either cult having a practice of summoning only a small subset of their ancestral line, quite separately to other ancestor worship rites, has even been raised by anyone before this discussion). If you don't like it, just ignoring the issue I mention (and sticking to the letter of the rules) would seem a much simpler and more elegant solution, as I suggested. 

18 minutes ago, metcalph said:

I'm ignoring the rest of your belligerent post

I merely disagreed with the reasoning of this specific argument. How would one disagree with your reasoning, citing evidence etc, without you finding it belligerent? 

[Julian Lord]

On 8/15/2018 at 9:40 AM, davecake said:

The difference between a small god and a spirit isn't a 'real' or hard distinction - its really a reflection of how you interact with them.

YGWV, but Guide to Glorantha :

"It is generally recognized that four Otherworlds co-exist with the mortal world: the Essential World, the God World, the Spirit World, and the Underworld. Most scholars believe that these worlds are distinct and separate, and predate Time. A few philosophers believe that these seemingly distinct Otherworlds are the result of human limitation and frailty, and are but lenses for viewing the great mystery that is the God Time."

It's far less problematic to simply suppose that some otherworld entities might be of mixed nature than to start claiming "no difference" between gods and spirits.

[Joerg]

The pre-history of the Four Separate Worlds model was the collision of four distinct worlds, already somewhat pre-formed with a Creation mythology and some changes having gone on, fusing into the whole that we know as Glorantha. As far as I remember this, the fusion of the spirit world and the divine world preceded all others, and there are no myths about this encounter. The two flanking parts of the Inner World then folded in on the central north-south axis, and we have some of those earliest encounter myths (Kachasti->Kachisti, Vyimorni->Vadeli in the West, the three SherAdpara of Vithela).

The gliding passage from Spirit World to Divine World was inherent even in the strict separate worlds doctrine. HW and HQ1 obsessed about crossing those borders, making near-impossible encounters out of some of these. The encounters and border guardians (the archetypal knight guarding a river crossing, for instance) do and should remain a feature of questing as well as spirit travel.

[davecake]

I am not claiming that there is no difference between gods and spirits, only that it's not a 'hard' difference, but rather a mostly quite soft one. A large proportion of otherworld entities, quite likely a majority, are more effectively interacted with by particular magical approaches, and to some extent, probably a large extent, that is intrinsic to their nature. I would imagine something along the lines of the four otherworlds forming overlapping Venn diagrams, and furthermore the lines with which those diagrams are drawn being very fuzzy indeed. 

9 hours ago, Julian Lord said:

"It is generally recognized that four Otherworlds co-exist with the mortal world: the Essential World, the God World, the Spirit World, and the Underworld. Most scholars believe that these worlds are distinct and separate, and predate Time. A few philosophers believe that these seemingly distinct Otherworlds are the result of human limitation and frailty, and are but lenses for viewing the great mystery that is the God Time."

I clearly align with the minority view here. Just because it is a minority view doesn't mean it is wrong. Most of those scholars aren't even Illuminated, what would they know. And they are probably working from earlier editions of the rules sources.

10 hours ago, Julian Lord said:

It's far less problematic to simply suppose that some otherworld entities might be of mixed nature

If some otherworld entities are of a mixed nature, and always have been, that tend to indicate that the otherworlds aren't really distinct and separate, but overlap to at least some extent, right? 

[Julian Lord]

1 hour ago, davecake said:

... the otherworlds aren't really distinct and separate, but overlap to at least some extent, right? 

They're simultaneously distinct and separate, but they also overlap and merge.

This isn't a binary either/or question.

But typically, only mystics might see them as an unbroken whole and/or an immanent nothingness and/or etc etc. The Yinkin cult is meanwhile unlikely to have inspired very many down the mystic path ...

Some entities may be mixed because they have mixed ancestry, others may be mixed because they're old middle world or God Time entities that have been damaged or trapped in an otherworld or whatever, or conversely they might be otherworld entities who were trapped and compromised in the middle world during one of the Darknesses, some spirits might have stolen some god power and incorporated it into their beings or vice-versa, some might even be old mixed entities who somehow survived the Gods War and inhabit the middle world as an otherworld, and so on and so forth, but I can't really see much point in re-doing all of those old "sobjectivity" "debates" from the Glorantha Digest of yore ... nobody really ended up learning very much at all from them even at the time !

Some mixed entities exist that can have both a spirit cult and a divine cult attached to them, including probably some rare cases where the two cults might be one. Yinkin probably isn't one of them, but Yinkin probably has some offspring of mixed or spirit nature, due to that deity's promiscuous and exploratory habits. There's really no need to redo the cosmology, especially given the massive degree of peer review it's been subjected to over the past 40 years or so. It's solid.

Yinkin's "animal part" is still divine.

[Joerg]

Some entities may be mixed because the world they manifested in was already mixed-, and some entities like Kolat even unmixed themselves from the runic source.

There are other cases, too, like Yelm, who was dismembered and re-assembled, possibly using parts previously used in other dis- and re-assembly jobs - somewhere in Nida or Slon there may be protocols about the re-assembly process.

And maybe the distinction only started to matter within Time. Heort - the Silver Age founder of the Heortlings - approached Orlanth as a shaman. He was busy sorting other things, like the living from the dead, and probably had little to no thoughts to spare on whether Orlanth is more anchored in the God World than in the Spirit World. (Back in the time of the strictly separate Otherworlds, Greg said that Orlanthi worship is probably about 30% animist and the rest theist).

 

With Yinkin, we have the special case that Yinkin chose sides when the Serpent Beast Brotherhood and the Vingkotlings were at odds, and possibly earlier. The Bad Dogs harming Yinkin might have been a normal event in the Hsunchen/Serpentbeast ecology, and it is likely that many a form of beast went extinct in the Gods War at the teeth or claws of other Serpentbeast beasts. Anaxial's Roster mentions Shell Deer and Horned Wolves as part of the co-(d)evolution of predator and prey.

Yinkin getting it on with spirit, deity or whatever is an excellent point. Even without a shred of spirit world from the paternal side (that might have been ripped out of Yinkin by the Bad Dogs), maternal spirit nature would be able to create shadowcat entities tied to the Spirit World. When Yinkin was healed from the damage done by the Bad Dogs, he emerged as a divine entity. (He may have been mixed or already severed earlier. Possibly even at an encounter with his father.)

[davecake]

On 8/17/2018 at 3:10 PM, Julian Lord said:

But typically, only mystics might see them as an unbroken whole and/or an immanent nothingness and/or etc etc. The Yinkin cult is meanwhile unlikely to have inspired very many down the mystic path ...

The Yinkin cult is one that we only know of theist approaches to, sure. But a better example might be Odayla that is both a theist deity and has significant spirit magic connections. Would it really surprise anyone if a Serkos (the spirit tradition way to approach Odayla) was more developed outside Sartar somewhere and had access to the powerful core magic of transforming into a bear, just like the Hsunchen do (or maybe that 'project your spirit in bear form' thing IS the animist approach??) Of if the 'Moon Bear' cult of Sylila that was written up in the past, where the Lunars had developed their own approach to Odayla via the Red Goddess riding the Star Bear, allowed a mystic approach to the same god? Or some Seshnelan Bear society guy secretly had sorcery that allowed some kind of amazing Bear magic that looked suspiciously similar, and was known to be a tradition evolved based on ancient bear hsunchen practices? I'm not saying any individual person is likely to be able to work with all the multiple approaches at once, unless they are an Illuminate who goes out of their way to investigate them. I'm rather saying that multiple approaches might exist, that those who work with them might acknowledge the connection to the same being, and in (relatively uncommon) they might be integrated enough that worshipper can participate in multiple forms of worship (as they do with Urox/Storm Bull). 

And when we get back to Yinkin, are we really sure that there is any magical law telling us that Yinkin couldn't be approached via multiple methods in the same way, if only the Yinkini believed it was so? What if their mythology wasn't so entwined with Orlanths, and their cult so thoroughly domesticated and Heortling in practice? Isn't theist Yinkin looking like a weird special case, and a more mixed nature for many animal gods looking more common? 

I'm not particularly interested in redoing the cosmology as such. But as I said, my read of it is pretty much that the majority view presented there is what most people believe, but the minority view is closer to the actual truth. 

 

[Julian Lord]

55 minutes ago, davecake said:

Isn't theist Yinkin looking like a weird special case, and a more mixed nature for many animal gods looking more common? 

No.

Uralda the Cow Mother isn't mixed nature either, nor are all the others far too boring to be even mentioned in the source materials.

Many Orlanthi gods also have an animal form, that they adopted as disguises against enemies during the Lightbringers Quest left the Stead unprotected. Thus it is that cattle are associated with Ernalda, horses with Elmal, and etc., because they took those forms when hiding best they could from the wars and the chaos.

We'd probably know a lot more names of Orlanthi animal gods if these were games about farming and agriculture rather than heroic fantasy or fantasy wargaming.

Just be glad we didn't get excruciating lists of all the petty farmyard animal divinities in Thunder Rebels and Storm Tribe !! Rooster and goose gods, and the crafty fox goddess and the weasel god, and their stirring adventures in the forest and farmyard muck !!

[davecake]

2 hours ago, Julian Lord said:

Uralda the Cow Mother isn't mixed nature either, nor are all the others far too boring to be even mentioned in the source materials.

Is Uralda the only cow deity? Are you sure some of those other cow deities aren't just the same being under a different name, from a different culture? How would you tell? 

2 hours ago, Julian Lord said:

Thus it is that cattle are associated with Ernalda, horses with Elmal, and etc., because they took those forms when hiding best they could from the wars and the chaos.

Ah yes, those famously simple and uncomplicated deities Ernalda and Elmal. Ernalda who wouldn't possibly already have connections to various mystic, animist and sorcerous (among the Aeolians) paths? Who notoriously raises all sorts of complex issues about identity? Elmal, who might or might not be Yelmalio, who in turn might have once been closely associated with mysticism, and might raise even more questions about identity? Yes, simple uncomplicated examples that will definitely convince us all that the otherworlds are places that don't raise any complicated questions about identity and essential nature at all. 

[Julian Lord]

20 minutes ago, davecake said:

Ah yes, those famously simple and uncomplicated deities Ernalda and Elmal.

That's just trying deliberately to miss the point, as if every single god weren't complicated in one way or another, instead of accepting that there is such a thing as an animal god, a simple enough point that you insist on refusing to accept as is

24 minutes ago, davecake said:

Is Uralda the only cow deity? Are you sure some of those other cow deities aren't just the same being under a different name, from a different culture? How would you tell? 

viz. my earlier comment about pointless "sobjectivity" "debates" Glorantha Digest -style passim ...

I think I'm done on this one, have a nice time down that rabbit hole, Alice.

[jeffjerwin]

5 hours ago, davecake said:

And when we get back to Yinkin, are we really sure that there is any magical law telling us that Yinkin couldn't be approached via multiple methods in the same way, if only the Yinkini believed it was so? What if their mythology wasn't so entwined with Orlanths, and their cult so thoroughly domesticated and Heortling in practice? Isn't theist Yinkin looking like a weird special case, and a more mixed nature for many animal gods looking more common? 

I have generally thought of the whole notion of Cat Witches (there are at least two of them...) as telling... the term 'witch' in Glorantha generally indicates some sort of non-standard form of magic, usually spirit-based. I think it highly probable that Yinkin has a shamanic subcult, like Kolat to Orlanth.

It is, however, probably a secret, non-social, aspect to Yinkin. The cat-witches live outside of society, like shamans: they are the feral aspect of Yinkin.

So I think theist Yinkin is by far the most common or overt form of Yinkin worship, but I don't believe it to be all of the worship.