As I have been exploring and detailing Gloranthan mythology for the last several years, I’ve been struck by how the cults of Chaos represent those evils that are simply contrary to the continuation of the cosmos. Secret murder, rape, slavery, betrayal, obsessive desire, refusal to accept death, and the like – all of these are evils far beyond simple violence, rebellion, ambition, or mayhem. Zorak Zoran is preferable to Thanatar!
And yet then there is the Red Goddess. She is undeniably a Chaos deity. And she holds that Chaos is a part of the cosmos, promising to free us from our innate fear of Chaos, and Chaos from its innate hatred of existence. She is a contradiction and a paradox, a Rorschach test for Gloranthan mythology.
Red Goddess dancing into the Sky by Jakob Rebulka, from the
Glorantha Sourcebook
Slavery? Surely that is a normal part of Glorantha. Worshipping slavery as a concept has been associated with Ompalam since before White Bear and Red Moon. And Ompalam is a chaotic god. Lots of cultures accept its presence but few worship it.
And so like Schroedingers Cat, the Red Goddess can be both a force of liberation and balance AND a force of cosmic evil. Both can be true simultaneously. The fear and hatred most cults have for her is both misguided AND entirely correct.
