Did I get it right? (Illumination)

[Joerg]

32 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

 

It starts with the premise that chaos is inherently evil.

It is not that Chaos is evil - it is inherently inimical and annihilating. As long as Creation runs strong but not on steroids, limited annihilation is tolerable to the cosmos, although the individual annihilation is worse than the dread of death.

Chaos is alien to the Creation.

32 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

The ways that chaos entered Glorantha appear to be evil - at least after the Storm Age, but there is, in the end, no difference between Chaos and the emergence of life and variety in the Green Age.

There is a difference. The wilder emanations of the Green Age like Grotarons, Hoolar or keets are optimistic and playful applications of Creation. The Predark and the disruptive mutations of Chaos are the expression of negativity.

32 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

The violence and horror of the chaos of the Great Darkness is something that was imposed upon it by the non-chaotic entities that loosed it. None of the Unholy Trio were chaotic at first.

Not until their encounter with Rashoran.

32 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

Their violence and horror, sadly, emerged quite naturally from the troubles of the Storm Age.

Violence is one of the End of Green Age moments, and predates the birth of Umath. The horror and fear is an original property of Darkness, the first step of Elemental Creation.

32 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

'Destroy the World' = make something new we can't comprehend.

The overdose of Creation that enabled Predark Chaos to enter through the split seams that separated Creation from the Void didn't make anything new, but it allowed annihilative forces to enter Creation.

After a while, Making failed to keep up with Growing, and without Taking (Death) things went out of control. Some say the birth of Umath was such an out-of-control act of Growth/Creation.

32 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

The self-preserving instinct that fights this is entirely a reasonable reaction, but it's only moral quality is in that people have a right to live and be autonomous.

 

32 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

Look at the Aldryami, who don't recognise the existence of Chaos per se at all: they have Grower, Maker, and Taker, and chaos can be any of these.

Don't they? They are aware of the pernicious mutations that Chaos inflicted on their forests, and the elimination of their central forest.

32 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

If Arachne Solara hadn't consumed and rebirthed entropy, the universe would have ended, right then and there. AS offered a different solution: mitigation, repair, and acceptance, that in the end, is only thing that keeps the bubble of Glorantha unextinguished in the roiling sea of endless Chaos.

Arachne Solara created (and bought) time for the universe to achieve transcendence.

32 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

Edit: calling for the extirpation of all illumination means destroying the Universal Spirit, the spider, and that means the end of existence: and it's consumption by Chaos! I'm not sure how that end can be seen as anything but nihilistic.

Who is calling for the extirpation of all enlightenment?

[jajagappa]

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

The lesson we should take from this is that this "tolerance" and "moral relativism" are a form of apathetic suicide, not a deeper insight into a cosmic truth.

On the contrary, these are all simply stages on the way to Illumination.  Once you realize that there is no 'good' or 'evil', that all morals are in fact relative, apathy is a natural result.  But it is also a step or stage to overcome.  

[soltakss]

34 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Once you realize that there is no 'good' or 'evil', that all morals are in fact relative, apathy is a natural result.

Nah, once I realise that there is no "good" or "evil", it just means that I can anything I like without impunity.

[jeffjerwin]

I think it's more accurate to say that the universe does not acknowledge these ideas as some sort of immutable thing... indeed, neither Good nor Evil appear among the Gloranthan runes. Individual actions can be subjectively good or evil, often overwhelmingly so. In some ways the Illuminate is empowered to approach morality philosophically, rather than dogmatically, which means their decisions are both more nuanced and more considered than someone using the strictures of a cult or sect.

'Doing whatever I like without impunity' is still occlusion. We have to live with the consequences of our actions, even without the religious rules.

[jajagappa]

15 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Nah, once I realise that there is no "good" or "evil", it just means that I can anything I like without impunity.

Also a stage - unfortunately one that many get stuck at. 😉 

[Sir_Godspeed]

I was once explained the difference between Gloranthan Enlightenment and Occlusion as something like this: both realize that All is One, and that there no objective morality to constrain oneself. However, the Occluded take this to mean that existance is a kind of moral solipsism, where they are the sole arbiter of what can and should be done, and that therefore they are free to act however they like with no regards to others. The Enlightened, on the other hand, realizes that if all is one, the idea of a "self" that oversees others is false, and that harming any others is tantamount to harming the self, insofar as either is real in any meaningful sense*.

Now, in hindsight, this is only ONE way one can become Occluded, but one of several logical "traps" along the way to enlightenment, I'd argue.

(*This also logically leads to the focus on Inaction, Stillness or Separation which exists in a lot of Vithelan mysticism, and even EWF draconic mysticism. Whether one agrees that it is the RIGHT focus is probably up for debate.)

[PhilHibbs]

On 10/21/2018 at 8:02 PM, Joerg said:

Chaos is alien to the Creation.

Correct, but it is also essential to it.

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

Correct, but it is also essential to it.

Sorry, but no. The Void is essential to Creation. Creation is the separation of limited creative potential from unlimited potential. The Chaosium is essential to let new potential enter, but not as Chaos. There is no requirement for Chaos inside Creation.

There is another aspect to Creation that is essential, the energies flowing from the Ultimate through the Middle World to the Chaosium. These are what power the runes. And IMO it is to this source of all that enlightenment is reaching, not to the random annihilation to the Void.

[Charles]

There is some suggestion that the Unholy Trio did something that substantially changed some aspects of Chaos. ‘Before’ their ritual, Chaos was Creation and Entropy; Construction and Destruction in equal measures. Chaos did these things because that was their purpose, their quality of existence. ‘Afterwards’, Chaos was led, herded, and bullied by Evil, the Devil, something that chose corruption, pain, horror, and destruction as their goal, not just as a means or even byproduct.

And, it seems, that the Compromise locked this behaviour into Glorantha. 

[Sir_Godspeed]

26 minutes ago, Charles said:

There is some suggestion that the Unholy Trio did something that substantially changed some aspects of Chaos. ‘Before’ their ritual, Chaos was Creation and Entropy; Construction and Destruction in equal measures. Chaos did these things because that was their purpose, their quality of existence. ‘Afterwards’, Chaos was led, herded, and bullied by Evil, the Devil, something that chose corruption, pain, horror, and destruction as their goal, not just as a means or even byproduct.

And, it seems, that the Compromise locked this behaviour into Glorantha. 

Is it that simple though? It seems equally to me that those features were always present, and started "leaking in" when Umath split his parents apart (or killed the World Machine as the Mostali would say), or perhaps even earlier.

It's not just about creation and destruction, it's about the breaking down of the classifications and categories that exist within cosmos, making differentiation impossible.

This reminds me of some Polynesian pantheistic ideas, apropos of keeping categories apart. In that worldview, the universe is a result of the infinite divine being separated and divided, thus making differences and particularity possible (illustrated by a great turtle shell held up by different pillars, and by the tattoos (tatau) worn by many men). Breaching taboos (tapu) is dangerous because they weaken the very structure of the cosmos, creating indifferentiation which makes human life as we know it impossible. very similarly, Chaos in Glorantha often takes the form of "things that should not be", categories mixing. It's the primordial soup re-digesting a crystallized back into something homogenous, if you will - or to use a modern physics analogy, the spread of heat energy universally across available space, ie. entropy.

I suppose you could argue that this "indifferentiation" or "border-breaching" is just another aspect of Chaos' destructive properties, but given that they can in turn take on a long life within Cosmos, it's hard to say if destruction is necessarily the inevitable outcome.

[Charles]

2 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

It seems equally to me that those features were always present, and started "leaking in" when Umath split his parents apart (or killed the World Machine as the Mostali would say), or perhaps even earlier.

I agree that these were always part of Chaos, but more as a side-effect of other things. After Wakboth took charge, they became the purpose.

[Joerg]

Not-Cosmos is not Chaos as long as it stays outside of Creation. There even is a place for the Void inside Creation, in a well-defined cyst, subject to a harmony of Creation and Un-Creation, as in the Spiral Map of the Holy Country Otherworld in Arcane Lore.

Wakboth is Chaos born from Creation, through Rashoran's (Gbaji's?) power, abused and twisted by the Unholy Trio. Chaos deriving from Wakboth (and some of the eastern Antigod rulers) might be different to Chaos seeping in through the rifts.

Small Chaos is All Chaos? Only to the unenlightened. There is some truth to the Lunar acceptance of Chaos, although I think that Teelo Estara's union with Blaskarth in the Nether Hell makes her ultimately unable to ascend to the Ultimate. At least she needs a reboot - much like Ingolf after he had become wayward and squandered his achievements on the way to the Ultimate for mundane goals. But then even Lunar philosophy agrees that the Red Moon is only an intermediate step in the cycle.

The troll acceptance of the cave trolls and sea trolls may be another such case of insight beyond the unenlightened pure rage of Storm Bull and those who take his lead.

 

The notion of moral chaos is derived from Rashoran/Gbaji through the Unholy Trio and Wakboth, whether the moral crimes of rape (Ragnaglar/Thed), spreading disease (Malia), cannibalism (Cacodemon), head hunting (Thanatar) or sacrificing the soul or life for continued existence (Vivamort).

Other chaos like Bagog, Krarsht, Krjalk, Kajabor is simply the manifestation of an aspect of the Void in Creation, having intruded through seams or gaps.

[Akhôrahil]

On 10/20/2018 at 8:25 PM, Sir_Godspeed said:

Is there any mutual contention on whether Arkat or Nysalor were Occluded rather than Enlightened?

I'm not sure occlusion is an objective state. It's more like "Occluded: Illuminated person I disapprove of in a specific way".

[Sir_Godspeed]

18 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

I'm not sure occlusion is an objective state. It's more like "Occluded: Illuminated person I disapprove of in a specific way".

That makes sense too. Hence why both Arkat and Nysalor can be said to be either Illuminated or Occluded. What matters, materially, is their ability to surpass cultic taboos and restrictions through cosmic and mystic understanding.

One could of course argue that the only objective standard for occlusion is whether one rejects or embraces worldly concerns. But by this criterium, again, both Arkat and Nysalor would be as occluded as Sheng is. You could even argue that Sedenya is, too. Basically anyone Enlightened who did anything worth mentioning would be occluded. The only one I could think of would be that one Vithelan sage who in Revealed Mythologies is said to have done nothing and passed on into obscurity. That guy evidently did it, by this criteria.

Edited October 24, 2018 by Sir_Godspeed

[Joerg]

It is possible that Occlusion limits the potential for advancement in enlightenment, possibly more so than seeking transcendence through a single rune (like the Stormwalkers of Old Wind Temple). The Liberation through the Red Moon likely leads only into a certain direction, and once there it may take special hardships to escape that specific snare.

A successful mystic overcomes his physical existence, and leaves the limitations of the world. Revealed Mythologies names a few - Oorduren, Venforn, Sivoli. Larn Hasamador might have achieved Nothing, and Mashunasan - so what? Anything worth the mention coming from Mashunasan was separated from himself or from a disciple of his, and his "triumph" over Avanapdur basically was Avanapdur's (slightly enforced) ascension. Nenduren's limited path towards unity with Atrilith was quite successful, sufficiently so that Oorsu Sara undertook ages of intense meditation and best behavior before doing his corruptive act which consumed the remaining mortal form of the Sage (who was united with Atrilith already).

The EWF produced at least one successful mystic - Obduran. In fact, Obduran was more successful than the majority of true dragonhood, as he surpassed even that state of being.

[Darius West]

On 10/22/2018 at 3:22 AM, jeffjerwin said:

I can't agree with that.  It starts with the premise that chaos is inherently evil. The ways that chaos entered Glorantha appear to be evil - at least after the Storm Age, but there is, in the end, no difference between Chaos and the emergence of life and variety in the Green Age.

But the Green Age is gone.  Beware those many people who seek to bring it back, for that way lies Chaos, and Chaos is now indubitably evil. 

On 10/22/2018 at 3:22 AM, jeffjerwin said:

The violence and horror of the chaos of the Great Darkness is something that was imposed upon it by the non-chaotic entities that loosed it. None of the Unholy Trio were chaotic at first. Their violence and horror, sadly, emerged quite naturally from the troubles of the Storm Age.

Evil is always a choice, as is the moral apathy of the riddlers.  The Unholy Trio chose chaos and evil, because it was also power, and it consumed them, for it wasn't their power.

On 10/22/2018 at 3:22 AM, jeffjerwin said:

'Destroy the World' = make something new we can't comprehend. The self-preserving instinct that fights this is entirely a reasonable reaction, but it's only moral quality is in that people have a right to live and be autonomous.

Outside the bubble of the Skydome lies chaos, and it surrounds Glorantha.  Every incursion of Chaos is another crack in the dome, and another victory for Kajaboor, who is not dead, but slowly eats the world as Time.  The aim of chaos has never changed, it wants to destroy that which is not chaos.  When you look upon Glorantha, the miracle is that Law has emerged from the chaos that surrounds it on every side, and we know how fragile that situation is.  When chaos wins, nothing will comprehend ever again, and everything new will be consumed before it can do anything in an endless tide of mindless, pointless, cancerous change for the sake of change.  The death of Glorantha will be very Lovecraftian.

On 10/22/2018 at 3:22 AM, jeffjerwin said:

Look at the Aldryami, who don't recognise the existence of Chaos per se at all: they have Grower, Maker, and Taker, and chaos can be any of these. If Arachne Solara hadn't consumed and rebirthed entropy, the universe would have ended, right then and there. AS offered a different solution: mitigation, repair, and acceptance, that in the end, is only thing that keeps the bubble of Glorantha unextinguished in the roiling sea of endless Chaos.

Elves too were at the "I fought we won battle" where chaos was defeated.  So, if they don't recognise chaos, what were they doing there?  Hiking with High King Elf?  No, they were there to stop themselves being annihilated by chaos.  The fact that they don't really know how to identify what chaos is, well, that is their own special form of ignorance really, as they want to believe that the source of their existence isn't tainted to the core, but there is a reason that new species don't spontaneously appear anymore, only broos and gorps etc.  You really must stop listening to those Hellwood Elves.  They worship Krjalk you know?

On 10/22/2018 at 3:22 AM, jeffjerwin said:

Edit: calling for the extirpation of all illumination means destroying the Universal Spirit, the spider, and that means the end of existence: and it's consumption by Chaos! I'm not sure how that end can be seen as anything but nihilistic.

The Spider already doomed everyone when she birthed Time into the world and incorporated entropy into the system.  Arachne Solara is ultimately a traitor, which is why Argrath will eventually destroy her, and the chaos taint within her, and the world will not be over, but saved from her treachery, for it is she who constantly allows chaos back every 686 years.  Arachne Solara isn't the sole spirit of Glorantha in any case, as the Windstop demonstrates, when deities die, they are replaced.  It isn't nihilism to excise cancer through surgery btw, but an affirmation of life, especially when that cancer is a corrupt spider deity.  Who put a spider in charge of the world anyhow?  They're poisonous!

Edited October 31, 2018 by Darius West

[Darius West]

On 10/22/2018 at 2:46 AM, Thoror said:

I'm starting to think that what happened is that Nysalor was a thesis, Arkat was an antithesis, and that the whole thing failed because the antithesis ended up destroying the thesis (or viceversa), instead of creating a synthesis (which is to say true, pure non-Gbaji Illumination) together. 

While Hegel postulates his dynamic of thesis, antithesis, synthesis, he never really explains what the synthesis will be.  When forces oppose each other, sometimes the synthesis is that one side was correct and the other side had nothing to offer, thus the synthesis is that the winning side trounces the losers and gains the fortune and glory, while the loser is consigned to the dustbin. Victory for one side and defeat for the other are also synthesis.  Similarly, the world we see suffers from a causality problem, in that events are never discrete bracketed logical occurrences.  Thus it can be argued that every thing in the world is in all 3 stages of Hegel's dialectic at all times and the dialectic is thus meaningless.

On the other hand, Glorantha is not the real world, and in the logic driven Church of Malkion, I am sure that notions such as the dialectical principal would be a matter of dogma with the usual  harsh penalties for heretics.  No Jungian golden shadow there.

[Darius West]

On 10/22/2018 at 6:55 AM, jajagappa said:

On the contrary, these are all simply stages on the way to Illumination.  Once you realize that there is no 'good' or 'evil', that all morals are in fact relative, apathy is a natural result.  But it is also a step or stage to overcome.  

The very people who tell you that there is no good and evil are generally so far fallen into evil that they can no longer smell their own corruption, but Urox can.  Praise his mighty hooves that trample the tainted and save the world.

Edited October 31, 2018 by Darius West

[Joerg]

@Darius West writes an interesting piece on how the Compromise and Arachne Solara are tainted with Chaos and how that needs to be undone.

This makes a good in-world statement, possibly an occluded one, but definitely one requiring some form of enlightened detachment from living inside that world. I would think that there would be people around Argrath pursuing such an agenda, and pressuring Argrath directly or indirectly to further it.

They probably succeed when they convince Argrath's Trickster (still Elusu?) to let go of the net in the Ritual of the Net rite, a station that Argrath may not even have reached on his Lightbringers' Quest as he used demanding the boon for his quest as the starting point for the second, deeper quest for the prison of Sheng Seleris.

If he avoided that station at that time, when would he have returned to the Underworld on a LBQ?

17 minutes ago, Darius West said:

But the Green Age is gone.  Beware those many people who seek to bring it back, for that way lies Chaos, and Chaos is now indubitably evil. 

Wakboth (and possibly his parents) gave evil a bad name. Chaos let loose in Creation has never been benevolent, but it may not have been purposefully evil.

17 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Evil is always a choice, as is the moral apathy of the riddlers. 

Is "I want to make them suffer" necessarily evil? Probably yes, but then you get things like Hammurabi's code of law, or the similar Old Testament passages, which basically demand that a perpetrator of a crime was to suffer as his victim(s) did, and possibly worse. Which only brings us to a "they started it" style of ethics.

Revenge or getting even is a very strong theme in mythology. Is pursuing this after reaching some form of enlightenment evil? Is claiming necessity for such a pursuit a cheap cop-out?

Just now, Darius West said:

The very people who tell you that there is no good and evil are generally so far into being evil that they can no longer smell their own corruption.  

If the people who pronounce this have already shed themselves of more than just their corruption, this accusation doesn't hold. Objectively, they may be right from their point of enlightenment. To those who haven't overcome the dichotomy of good vs evil or the corruption it brings, such pronouncements bring all the evil of at best partial understanding coupled with misguided convictions put into action.

17 minutes ago, Darius West said:

The Unholy Trio chose chaos and evil, because it was also power, and it consumed them, for it wasn't their power.

The Trio chose to destroy everything, not minding their own destruction, which (according to their "enlightened" insight) was necessary anyway.

17 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Outside the bubble of the Skydome lies chaos, and it surrounds Glorantha. 

There is no Chaos where there is no Creation. Outside of the sphere that separates Creation from the rest, there is unlimited potential, eternal flux that will receive and dissipate any "energy" that goes there from the Source, the Ultimate.

It is way beyond my grade of "enlightenment" to decide whether that source is available through other routes than through Glorantha. I would think so, but it needn't be the case.

Creation is building from the bottom of slightly, then ever more firmly limited potential towards that Source.

Chaos is festering into Creation, not caring whether it expands its deletion towards the Source or not.

 

17 minutes ago, Darius West said:

The aim of chaos has never changed, it wants to destroy that which is not chaos. 

That's not so much an aim as the inherent nature of Chaos, and to be fair, Kajabor's Chaos doesn't have a selection bias against Chaos and will destroy other Chaos just as readily as it will destroy (parts of) Creation. Wakboth does have a selection bias, but will go against rivaling power anyway. Wakboth has a weird self-preservation drive, which may be explained by its conception inside Creation. Kajabor and other "Outer Gods" of elder chaos don't have these.

17 minutes ago, Darius West said:

When you look upon Glorantha, the miracle is that Law has emerged from the chaos that surrounds it on every side, and we know how fragile that situation is.  When chaos wins, nothing will comprehend ever again, and everything new will be consumed before it can do anything in an endless tide of mindless, pointless, cancerous change for the sake of change.  The death of Glorantha will be very Lovecraftian.

Creation in Glorantha is a self-organizing or higher-self-organized irregularity in the infinite randomness outside. Creation is a flaw in the Void, growing from infinite potential through limitations towards an Ultimate. 

17 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Elves too were at the "I fought we won battle" where chaos was defeated.  So, if they don't recognise chaos, what were they doing there?  Hiking with High King Elf?  No, they were there to stop themselves being annihilated by chaos.  The fact that they don't really know how to identify what chaos is, well, that is their own special form of ignorance really, as they want to believe that the source of their existence isn't tainted to the core, but there is a reason that new species don't spontaneously appear anymore, only broos and gorps etc.  You really must stop listening to those Hellwood Elves.  They worship Krjalk you know?

Elves have faced whoever threatened their collective forever. Often without success, as when Pamalt of the Veldt kept out the encroaching forest, or when the Seas flooded vast forested areas in the Flood. At times with compromise, where humans created culture land (starting with palaeolithic fire-farming for hunting - possibly avoided by the Hsunchen, but likely practiced by cultures like the Votanki).

 

17 minutes ago, Darius West said:

The Spider already doomed everyone when she birthed Time into the world and incorporated entropy into the system.  Arachne Solara is ultimately a traitor, which is why Argrath will eventually destroy her, and the chaos taint within her, and the world will not be over, but saved from her treachery, for it is she who constantly allows chaos back every 686 years.  Arachne Solara isn't the sole spirit of Glorantha in any case, as the Windstop demonstrates, when deities die, they are replaced.  It isn't nihilism to excise cancer through surgery btw, but an affirmation of life, especially when that cancer is a corrupt spider deity.  Who put a spider in charge of the world anyhow?  They're poisonous!

The spider and the world she defended was doomed before the Ritual of the Net. Going through it and giving birth to Time has delayed the ultimate fate, and however each of the cycles will leave Glorantha worse off than the previous one, I think that there is a shrewd asymptotic trend involved that will keep Creation active forever, despite Time. Each cycle might reduce the influx of energies from the Ultimate, but within each of the cycles, there is potential to reach for the Ultimate and become one with it.

From the perspective of what (and who) remains in Creation, things will disappear, or get so remote that they have effectively ceased to interact with their reality.

Godtime did not count cycles, but I am fairly convinced that the cycles did stack up towards the Source, with Creation Age being the closest, and the Great Darkness the most remote. The Gray Age may be an anomaly in this, pre-Dawn Time that still is accessible in the heroplane cyclical time. Breaking of the Compromise after the Dawn might have created similar anomalies.

Is Time chaotic? It is entropic, that is for sure, taking Creation/Cosmos further away from the Ultimate.

The mystical ascension game appears to be a separation from "corruption" (or, in the Venfornic practices, all-encompassing those and everything else) and an acquisition of stuff closer to the Ultimate at the same time. Much of the "corruption" separated appears to be rooted in Creation.

[Joerg]

On 10/21/2018 at 5:46 PM, Thoror said:

I'm starting to think that what happened is that Nysalor was a thesis, Arkat was an antithesis, and that the whole thing failed because the antithesis ended up destroying the thesis (or viceversa), instead of creating a synthesis (which is to say true, pure non-Gbaji Illumination) together. 

Maybe the problem here is that Osentalka was the perfect synthesis, possible under the timeless state of the Sunstop, but disintegrated into what might be mistaken for thesis and antithesis while each being part of both (but not the whole), and at least one thing more, a destructive barrier in between.

 

58 minutes ago, Darius West said:

While Hegel postulates his dynamic of thesis, antithesis, synthesis, he never really explains what the synthesis will be. 

It's cyclical. Whatever synthesis one arrives will become a thesis, to be tested on an antithesis which might similarly have been arrived at by synthesis.

 

[Sir_Godspeed]

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

Elves too were at the "I fought we won battle" where chaos was defeated.  So, if they don't recognise chaos, what were they doing there?  Hiking with High King Elf?  No, they were there to stop themselves being annihilated by chaos.  The fact that they don't really know how to identify what chaos is, well, that is their own special form of ignorance really, as they want to believe that the source of their existence isn't tainted to the core, but there is a reason that new species don't spontaneously appear anymore, only broos and gorps etc.  You really must stop listening to those Hellwood Elves.  They worship Krjalk you know?

Judging by Belintar's recollections from his life as an elf on the Glorantha site, there doesn't seem to be much thought given to Chaos or any good, clear Chaos analogy/synonym. What IS mentioned though, and given a good deal of space, is the IMBALANCE between Grower and Taker. Hell, it's even implied that the Green Age was imbalanced too, imbalanced towards Grower. With the Storm Age and Darkness Taker became imbalanced. Judging by that text, the elves Belintar merged with, at least, saw the world of Time as a world where Grower and Taker were balanced at last.

In this sense, the "Taker that doesn't leave anything behind" seems an apt understanding of Kajabor or the forces of Chaos in general. However, it still seems the aldryami perspective is different.

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

The Spider already doomed everyone when she birthed Time into the world and incorporated entropy into the system.  Arachne Solara is ultimately a traitor, which is why Argrath will eventually destroy her, and the chaos taint within her, and the world will not be over, but saved from her treachery, for it is she who constantly allows chaos back every 686 years.  Arachne Solara isn't the sole spirit of Glorantha in any case, as the Windstop demonstrates, when deities die, they are replaced.  It isn't nihilism to excise cancer through surgery btw, but an affirmation of life, especially when that cancer is a corrupt spider deity.  Who put a spider in charge of the world anyhow?  They're poisonous

This would be fine, except that Argrath nowhere seems to end *time*, the result of Solara's supposed treason, thus continuing the world's doom. Way to break it, Hero!

4 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Wakboth (and possibly his parents) gave evil a bad name. Chaos let loose in Creation has never been benevolent, but it may not have been purposefully evil.

Chaos, or "Void-inside-the-Cosmos", might not always have been evil, and indeed may have had its necessary influx into the universe through the Chaosium to fuel creation as fundamental to Glorantha as the sun's rays are to life on Earth. However, on the other hand, as I mentioned above, regardless of intent, it might simply be that Chaos is by its very nature so inimical to life and existance as we mortals know it that it's difficult to see it as anything other than harmful. Soap isn't inherently evil either, but it's difficult for it to coexist in the same space as conventional bacteria, as it dissolves their very structure and renders them formless and unable to live - to use a belabored metaphor.

5 minutes ago, Joerg said:

The Trio chose to destroy everything, not minding their own destruction, which (according to their "enlightened" insight) was necessary anyway.

It'd be interesting to know their intentions and thoughts, beyond "angry at the other gods" and "insane", which is the usual impression I get by their description.

5 minutes ago, Joerg said:

There is no Chaos where there is no Creation. Outside of the sphere that separates Creation from the rest, there is unlimited potential, eternal flux that will receive and dissipate any "energy" that goes there from the Source, the Ultimate.

As I mentioned above, Chaos is perhaps best understood as "Void/Predark-inside-Creation". To quote the famous anthropologist Mary Douglas, it is "matter out of place". Its not dangerous because if its own nature, but because it's where it shouldn't be (like soap next to a bacteria - from the bacteria's perspective, of course!)

6 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Creation in Glorantha is a self-organizing or higher-self-organized irregularity in the infinite randomness outside. Creation is a flaw in the Void, growing from infinite potential through limitations towards an Ultimate. 

Mathematically, this is interesting. In a context of infinite potential, then everything will at some point both exist and not exist. So in other words, Glorantha was inevitable, as was every other possible infinite permutation of existance and non-existance.

If you're into that sort of musing, anyway.

[Darius West]

3 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

This would be fine, except that Argrath nowhere seems to end *time*, the result of Solara's supposed treason, thus continuing the world's doom. Way to break it, Hero!

So Argrath couldn't unmake Time ?  So what?  What he probably achieved was to block the return of Chaos every 686 years.  The price? The opposite of illumination i.e.  ignorance.  Chaos lost its knowledge of Glorantha and goes its separate way, but Gloranthans lost their knowledge too and there is mere illiterate barbarism, which is pretty much the default state for 90% of its cultures anyhow.  Definitely preferable to the "sex with broos" capitulation ritual that Arachne Solara dreamed up.  What Argrath does is buy Glorantha a lot more right to exist, and potentially prepare itself to defeat Time through Logic.  When things stop falling apart, they all come together.  Life itself is neg-entropic, as the cycle of nature allows for a renewal that entropy shouldn't allow.  It is quite possible that the sentient peoples between them will be able to overcome both time and entropy, or they won't rise to the challenge and the world will die and be subsumed into chaos.  You can never count on the value systems of future generations, or in what ways the future may mirror the past.

[Charles]

My understanding is that Existence in Glorantha since Time is a balancing act between Stasis and Chaos. Too much Stasis leads to ossification, everything stops. Too much Chaos leads to complete degeneration, everything separated, everything flies apart and there is ultimately nothing. Existence continues and will continue for many Cycles (or Ages) - something like 13 to the power of 13 Ages according to one prophecy that I half recall.

The source of Chaos and newness in Glorantha is the Chaosium. I even suspect that the new ideas that arise in each Age originated in the Chaosium - it’s not just the source of Chaotic entities, it’s also the source of small new Creation.

I’m not sure of the source of Stasis, though I understand that the Dwarves and Mostali are its agents. I’m not sure if it’s a thing, or a joke, or both: their operations centre is the Lead Zeppelin that they placed at the Zenith in the Sky.

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Charles said:

My understanding is that Existence in Glorantha since Time is a balancing act between Stasis and Chaos.

Acos used to be the name for the universe, at least in some Western philosophy (or the earliest version of Greg's writings - which means no great difference), but I don't think that you can single out any one of the Powers as the only opposite of Chaos. A similar case can be made for each Power Rune, and for any of the (established) elements. (Moon with its chaotic leanings may be an outlier.)

 

1 hour ago, Charles said:

Too much Stasis leads to ossification, everything stops.

Again, this kind of argument applies to all Powers.

1 hour ago, Charles said:

Too much Chaos leads to complete degeneration, everything separated, everything flies apart and there is ultimately nothing. Existence continues and will continue for many Cycles (or Ages) - something like 13 to the power of 13 Ages according to one prophecy that I half recall.

Do you have any idea where you have seen that weird number?

1 hour ago, Charles said:

The source of Chaos and newness in Glorantha is the Chaosium. I even suspect that the new ideas that arise in each Age originated in the Chaosium - it’s not just the source of Chaotic entities, it’s also the source of small new Creation. t

Is the Chaosium the source of (Predark) Chaotic entities? 

Predark means the bits of Chaos that slipped in before the great invasion from the North or seeping in through the rift left behind by the implosion of the Spike.

I have come to the conclusion that such Predark entities managed to slip in whenever Creation was used excessively. Maybe the Creator entities pulled in more raw potential than they could handle, through the Chaosium, in which case yes, the Chaosium would be the source of the chaotic entities.

But I can see another case, with too much new Creation straining the boundaries of the universe, allowing Predark to seep in from places other than the Chaosium.

I can see the Mostali making this argument for the consequences of the Birth of Umath which disrupted their World Machine project.

1 hour ago, Charles said:

I’m not sure of the source of Stasis, though I understand that the Dwarves and Mostali are its agents. I’m not sure if it’s a thing, or a joke, or both: their operations centre is the Lead Zeppelin that they placed at the Zenith in the Sky.

There is a Mostali repair plan, made by the ancestral Mostali when Mostal fell silent, and Zenith may very well be part of that. I think it is possible that Zenith is the control platform for the Somelz project. After that, the Zenith might be the sky anchor for the reconstruction of Magnetic Mountain.

[Sir_Godspeed]

Is the zenith a literal, physical place? I know that the Mostal want to "readjust" the sky dome, but that's about what I know about that topic. Is it at the same place as the Pole Star, or at the current "zenith" of the sky dome?