[Glorantha] Belief, Deities and their Worship.

[Donald R. Oddy]

In message <009b01c61242$dc7f2760$0100000a at malkhome02> "Malk Williams" writes:

>The deity I was considering when I first thought about this was Waha the
>Butcher.  In Prax, he is the Khan of Khans, and accomplished so many
>diverse feats to enable the nomads to survive in the Greatlands that it
>is hard to see him otherwise.  But in elsewhere, (Peloria?) he is
>worshipped merely as the god of slaughterhouses.  Now it seems to me,
>that if I were Waha, I would be less than happy with this state of
>affairs, even downright insulted - assuming that I was an entity with an
>independent sense of self.  Granted, as a god who is bound by the Great
>Compromise, his ability to actively do anything about it is limited, but
>even so, unless the gods of Glorantha are just so much divine putty, to
>be moulded into whatever shape their worshippers want, surely they have
>some say in the manner of their worship?  Or is it just that a fairly
>localised god like Waha is grateful for whatever worship and sacrifice
>he can get, and isn't about to turn people away just because they don't
>call him by his favourite name?

Are the gods are sufficently aware of what the worshippers think 
for this to matter?

It's explicit in TR that mortals only understand aspects of the
great gods and it's clear only some people understand the aspects.
Equally there is a reference in Cults of Prax (yes, right back
in RQ2 days) that the gods don't really understand mortals. So
most of the relationship between mortals and gods is exchange
- worship for magic. So some of Waha's worshippers only call on
him when they are involved in a particular kind of killing which
they do a lot of. Fine, he gets the worship, the spirits of the 
animals return to be reborn and the worshippers get some magic
to make their lives easier. The relative status of Khans in
Prax and butchers in Peloria doesn't mean anything to Waha.

-- 
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/