[Glorantha] Re: Ancestor Worship

[Andrew Solovay]

Greg S:
> Simon P:
>>   Finally, although ultimately all ancestor worship derives from Daka Fal,
> 
> Not anymore. Except insofar as "Daka Fal" is taken to be the "human" rune,
> a form upon which the many races were modelled... Daka Fal is a specifically
> Praxian form of the First Person. Other cultures have different names.

(I hope it's not presumptuous for me to add comments! Needless to say, I don't 
think I'm *contradicting* anything the Greg said, just offering ancillary 
opinions.)

As I understand it (just as a reader), back in RQ2 days, "the cult of Daka 
Fal" had two overlapping meanings. On the one hand, it meant the Praxian cult 
of the First Man and associated ancestor worship; on the other hand, the term 
was sometimes used more generically to just mean "ancestral worship cult" in 
general.

As a result, we'd get anomalies, like Daka Fal being listed as an "associated 
cult" of Thed (in the original "Cults of Terror"). I don't think Thed 
worshippers were ever welcomed at Daka Fal rituals, and I don't think Thed 
covens ever venerated Daka Fal by name; rather, I think that was just a 
shorthand way of saying "worship of Thed also includes worship of ancestors", 
and Daka Fal was the published cult that said the most about ancestor worship.

There were other similar cases, IIRC. I seem to remember that back in RQ2  
days, it was implied that the trollish cult of "Hunter" was the *same* cult 
worshipped by human hunters; in HeroQuest (and the semi-canonical "Uz: TToG"), 
it's made more clear that lots of cultures have their own hunter cults (Zong, 
Foundchild, Odayla, etc.), but that they'll tend to have some things in 
common.

>> I suppose in HeroQuest terms, animists don't worship their
>> ancestors and Theists worship their Founder rather than the ancestors
>> themselves.
> 
> Some, but it varies betweeen cultures. Heck, even between families within
> a culture.

We know from "Thunder Rebels" that (theistic) Heortlings worship their 
ancestors as a collective, though individual ancestors aren't generally 
distinguishable unless they're worshipped heroes. But that "worshipped heroes" 
niche may be a big one--it might be that many or most clans have some 
particular heroic ancestor they worship by name. (It might be that many clans 
can trace themselves, by blood, to Heort and/or Vingkot.) And in any culture, 
a particular ancestor could easily serve as a clan/temple/city guardian--I'd 
expect that's very common, and a straightforward case of a specific ancestor 
being worshipped.