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How Cults Change

Posted on November 11, 2022

The archetypes and patterns of the God Time are eternal and fixed. But what we in Time experience of the God Time, what we call things, what we offer magic points to and draw upon when we use magic – that changes as we mortals do. “Myths” are the stories we tell about the God Time – we can see the God Time in our rites, our ceremonies, and when the Gods World is close to us. Sometimes we can even interact ourself with the archetypes and patterns of the God Time – that’s what we call Heroquesting.

Yelmalio – Little Sun – is a title. We apply it to the Light in the Darkness, the light remained when the Sun was killed and the light that refused to go out in the Darkness. We have places where we can meeting the Little Sun, where he is so close you can reach out to touch him. We can walk in his path and ascend to the Hill of Gold and try to fight against the Darkness, but we know that our god was defeated by Orlanth and robbed by Zorak Zoran – that’s part of his definition. If we do not experience that, we do not follow in his path. Like a Jesus who is not crucified.

But perhaps something we thought was the Little Sun – his Golden Spear perhaps – is something that we can draw power from directly. We can worship the Golden Spear as a god, separate (but associated) with Yelmalio. Or perhaps we see the time that Yelmalio worked with Orlanth and decide to focus only upon that, and call that subset of Yelmalio with the name Elmal. Or perhaps we experience Yelmalio as merely the light that emanates from Yelm, and worship Yelmalio merely as an attribute of Yelm.

Perhaps on a heroquest, we follow Yelmalio’s path, are extinguished but rekindle ourself with our purity. We bring this back to our temple with a new Rune Spell of one-use Resurrection or maybe just Restart Fire. Perhaps we gain a new gift, not on the list, or take a new geas, not previously seen. In this way, cults may change.

Jeff Richard

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