[Glorantha] Re: The One True God (was: Ompalam)

[Simon Hibbs]

> Mikko:
>
> >I was wondering if the "creator" of the monotheistic west has an origin
> >story like that in the early times? Was the West always like it is now,
> >with one supreme deity?

Well I suppose it depends what you mean by 'like it is now', but
without getting too pedantic I'd have to say - definitely not, no. In
the far distant past it was probably unrecognisable, as was the rest
og Glorantha. I'd have to ask how far in the past you're asking about
because 'always' is a rather long time. 2,000 years? 10,000 years? I
doubt it looked much like it does now a million years ago and yes, I
do believe Glorantha as a populated, living world may well be that
old. Maybe even Billions of years.

I think Gloranthans experience a different state of conciousness from
us. They percieve time differently, or at least the way the have
experienced it in their past has changed drasticaly, among other
things. For us we can point to a historical date when a particular
idea or concept was first 'discovered'. The discovery that objects
with different weights fall under gravity with the same acceleration
can be pinpointed quite precisely for us, but in Glorantha it can't.
Ideas are universal truths and so if something is true now, then it
must always have been true which means it's part of myth, which is
timeless and extends infinitely into the past and future. Because they
can interact with concepts and ideas mythicaly the fundamental
experience of discovery, imagination and intelectual speculation is
different for them.

A Malkioni might put it this way. If something is true then it must be
know to God. This means it must always have been known to god and so
it cannot be said to have been 'discovered' by a mortal in any
meaningful sense, it was merely learned. We can demonstrate through
heroquest that this truth was always part of the infinite library of
divine knowledge available to the prophets. We can Prove it! We can
heroquest to the Saint's nodes and ask the saints, and they will tell
us - this proves the saints know everything, and therefore always
have.

Which is true at some level, but meaningless at another. We all know
that the christian Bible contradicts itself in various places. One
Psalm talks about the four corners of the earth, while another states
that the earth has a circumference. The same events are recounted with
differences that are impossible to reconcile in the New Testament, etc
which may or may not be a problem depending on your point of view. The
Malkioni religion doesn't have any of these problems. Their religious
texts are provably accurate in every respect. They are fully testable.
However this does not mean that the world has always been as it is.
I'm speculating here, but I believe there are ancient texts that vary
from the currently accepted dogma and while they can be proved to be
wrong now, at some point in the past, by some people they were
considered to be provably correct themselves. What on earth is going
on? How can 'The Truth' change? It's beacuse myth is not history. In
myth the West has always been monotheistic (when it hasn't been
thoroughgoingly atheistic anyway) and the myths can be proved, but
that doesn't mean that in history it realy has always been this way.

I'll try and put this another way. The real modern world has a very
specific and rigorous concept of history and time. The only way we can
intract wth history is through careful analysis of documents and
detailed archaeological investigation. Based on this we can speculate
about what life was like thousands of years ago and what people
thought. In Glorantha they don't have that problem. If they want to
know what the Yelmic rleigion was like 10,000 years ago they just
heroquest the 10,000 year old myths and go and ask Yelm. They
(generaly speaking) couldn't be less interested in archaeological
reconstruction and historical anaylsis because they can experience it
themsleves. But are they realy experiencing the exact same thing as
someone performing that quest 5,000 years ago would have experienced?
Did people 10,000 years ago in Dara Happa realy wear the clothes and
talk the language that 'modern' gloranthan heroquesters experience in
their quests? I don't think most Gloranthans would understand the
question.

I suspect that if a Gloranthan reay could jump into a TARDIS and go
back 10,000 years, the world would look quite different to what they
were expecting.

Rambling and dificult to follow I'm afraid, but you asked a tought
question and it's tough to answer adequately.


Simon Hibbs

P.S. Now there's an idea - A Gloranthan version of Doctor Who.