In Glorantha, the Gods are Real… really?

[Benjamin Ludwig]

In the promotional literature, or when certain people have summarized what makes Glorantha special, I often hear something to the tune of “In Glorantha, the gods are REAL!” or “The world of Glorantha is actually a flat one! Seriously, it’s flat!” We all know that these things are true to the people of Glorantha… but how true are they, really?

To say that this world has gods that actually exist is a poor statement for two reasons. One, it seems to imply an ironclad belief that in this one, gods/spirits/etc. definitely do /not/ exist, which I think is a problematic statement. Two, every other roleplaying game can claim the same. In fact, the gods are /more/ concrete in every two-bit D&D McWorld, in that the gods are all viewed the exact same way by everyone.

For one thing, I know for a fact that Glorantha’s creator did not see our world as being devoid of spirits and gods. As a practicing shaman, he would tell you that he has encountered spirits/divinities/whatever that are completely real to him and certain others, but perhaps not to everybody. Our ancestors (yes, /all/ of our ancestors without any exception of which I am aware) in the Bronze Age would tell you that of course their gods are real, as are the many non-human intelligent races they felt populated the earth, and that of course the world is flat. And to them, of course, all those things were true. To us, they may not be.

Glorantha dares to both directly and indirectly suggest that its gods are not necessarily completely real in a physical, there’s-only-one-right-answer way, but that they are real in a realm beyond linear understanding. What the gods’ true nature is, or what the shape of the world is, only one in a million (then as now) ever directly experiences anything about themselves, questionably or otherwise, and most people believe in their culture’s authorized sources for those answers. How would your players’ characters ever find out the ‘true’ shape of Gloratha? And if they wouldn’t, why would you even tell them out of character that the world is flat? Why not tell them that in-character and let them wonder about the untouchable “Truth” of Orlanth or Humakt or the flatness of the world?

To sell the game as a world in which “The Gods Are Real” would have made me just think that it was like every other fantasy world with its literal, easy-to-understand gods. What makes me love Glorantha is that when you read the “Voices of Glorantha” text (the most important in the system in my mind) you come away with a world that dares to be like ours… a world in which no culture has all of the answers and in which our experiences are shaped far more by our cultural conceptions than by some kind of scientifically-measured atomic “truth”. Immersion can be achieved best by mirroring our own experiences as humans… we have a wealth of access to cultural information, but highly limited access to “the One Truth” regarding the nature of why things happen, if indeed that One Truth existed to begin with. Hence the beauty of Glorantha’s shamanic worldview, and the reason people really begin to feel like they are touching something familiar in Orlanthi culture, going all the way back to the Bronze Age.

Does that make sense to anyone else?

[RippedShirtKirk]

It did! I think I read somewhere once that Greg Stafford’a primary theme in Glorantha was exploring the relationship between the Sacred and the Profane (or, Gods and Men, if you prefer). I think that from the beginning (at least RQII), Glorantha’s treatment of it’s cults and their interaction with society at large has yet to be surpassed by any other game system or setting. Full Stop. Much like (to paraphrase from your post) real world historical cultures’ worldview is permeated by cultural bias-including religion. Gloranthan religions have a deep sense of verisimilitude that lend them an incredible richness; this translates over into gameplay. Most of our Gloranthan adventures were much more Biturian Varosh’s travels, or Spartans meet Mad Max in the River of Cradles, but behind it all was that deep cultural background. It’s amazing how it starts to seep into everything, and when you catch your players inadvertently act in character for mythic reasons (and then see them realize what they just did) it’s really a sight to see!

Re: the Flat World thing. This one is easy. I think this was brought up in Strangers in Prax, but there isn’t really a horizon on a flat world. Ask any sailor. Whereas we have a nice crisp horizon due to the curvature of the earth, Glorantha’s “horizon” would just be a muzzy band off in the distance. If you were to climb to a peak high enough in Genertela, and use sufficiently powerful sight-enhancing magics, you could literally see into Pamaltela. There are plenty of in-world reasons why this would be known to Gloranthans, at least those with a scholastic bent. 😉

[Anonymous]

What’s the promotional literature you refer to?

[Benjamin Ludwig]

To MJ: I’ve read that “the gods are real” thing several times, and I don’t remember them all, although this website says exactly that too. Just click on the “Glorantha” tab at the top of the screen. It’s listed as one of the primary draws.

To JL: Thanks for the reinforcement on the point of view regarding religion. Regarding the flat-world thing, though, I’m not so sure. First off, just for fun, let’s say that the world of Glorantha really is flat (which I don’t imagine it to be, for reasons forthcoming). You still wouldn’t be able to see into Pamaltela from Genertela, even with the Binoculars of the Divine. The reason is that the horizon isn’t the only thing keeping us from seeing forever. Dust and other elements of the atmosphere create haze, fog, rain and other impediments to sight which do not disappear no matter how well you can zoom in. You could see just as far as the first place which was at all hazy/rainy/anything else, and then all you would see is haze. Even if our world was flat, you still couldn’t see from Detroit to Tokyo with a telescope. You’d see a bit farther than we can with a horizon, but not all the way around the world. I’ve stood on many mountains, and it’s very rare to be able to see something even a few miles away perfectly clearly due to haze. Mt. Fuji disappears into the background from Tokyo most days even if the weather’s fine due to it, and binoculars just give you a better view of said atmospheric elements.

Additionally, for the 100,000 years our people thought the world was flat, they felt as though they had many justifications, some being far better than that, and literally all of “those with a scholastic bent” in ancient Bronze Age empires felt the world to be flat and could tell you why totally convincingly. That doesn’t actually make it flat. It makes it flat to the best of their knowledge.

And the real question is this: why would you ever want to go beyond that? Putting that little tidbit into Strangers in Prax might have gotten a chuckle out of a few people who like the sheer, simplistic novelty of a flat world. But for me, it destroys the immersion. To say that Glorantha is a world in which we’ve painstakingly reworked every cosmological detail so that things like seasons and weather systems (which rely on a round world for our idea of how they function) still occur seems pointless and improbable. Hence my question: why bother talking about what Glorantha is or isn’t when it comes to such things out of character at all? Many Gloranthan texts talk about the horizon as though it’s there, and the seasons and all other aspects of the world, and they have explanations which are the same ones our Bronze Age ancestors gave. I think that Greg’s point in creating this world was not to make us bend over backwards to justify how a flat world could literally exist, but rather to try and make us think like Bronze Age people, and never expect ‘scientific’ proof of that state. Far better to take a Schrodinger’s Cat attitude to the ‘reality’ of the world of Glorantha, and tell players in-character information about it which changes based on culture. Then, you’re tapping into a real state of human existence. If you’re insisting on stating the literal truth of Glorantha, you would just be stating some knee-jerk novelty for its own sake. “Play in a real Bronze Age setting” sounds really interesting to me. “Play on a flat world just because it’s flat” sounds a little empty.

[boztakang]

But of course the Hurtplace is flat… it’s made out of earth, which is Square.

Wonderhome was round, like the darkness rune, and things were much much better then, but it is childish wishful thinking to pretend that the broken world we live in now could be round and wonderful like the glorious home of our ancestors.

Seasons rely on a round world? that’s just silly. There were no seasons in wonderhome, except maybe darkness season, and it was always darkness season, so that hardly counts. “Seasons” in Hurtplace are just echoes of the history of the real world caught up in the Spider’s Web that we call time.

[Scott Martin]

Quote:

Quote from James Lee on September 4, 2013, 05:13
If you were to climb to a peak high enough in Genertela, and use sufficiently powerful sight-enhancing magics, you could literally see into Pamaltela.

Sure! Sufficiently powerful sight-enhancing magics are indistinguishable from enough points in divination. As long as god can reach Pamaltela, I can see it. Maybe god likes it when I climb mountains as part of the divination ritual so there’s a coincidental “go high to get a better view” effect, but maybe god likes it when I stare into a half-empty wineglass and will show me Pamaltela from there.

Now that you guys mention it, I wonder if the “hazy horizon effect” from Strangers in Prax isn’t actually an artifact of the Closing and/or Dormal’s work.

[Anonymous]

Quote:

Quote from Benjamin Ludwig on September 4, 2013, 20:53
To MJ: I’ve read that “the gods are real” thing several times, and I don’t remember them all, although this website says exactly that too. Just click on the “Glorantha” tab at the top of the screen. It’s listed as one of the primary draws.

Benjamin: I saw the text on the /glorantha/ page after I posted. Reading it, I don’t pick up an implication like you read into it, although your statement in the post I responded to could, I suppose, be taken to mean something of the sort. Perhaps it’s just the “!” that does it?

[Jeff Richard]

Just a few quick comments:
1. In Glorantha, all cultures accept the reality of the mythological events of the God Time. Cultures and cults disagree as to the interpretation and meaning of those events (and of course some know more and less about certain events than others). Even the Malkioni acknowledge the reality of the Gloranthan gods (although Orthodox Malkioni do not worship them):

“The Malkioni venerate the Invisible God who created the Runes or True Beings. The Runes in turn, created lesser versions of themselves (called “Srvuali”), often in combination with other Runes (called “Burtae”); for example, Orlanth is a Burtae (as are most of his Storm Tribe) of mixed Fire and Earth. Many Srvuali and Burtae became corrupted and stood between man and the Invisible God. These gods warred amongst each other, and doomed their worshipers to endless cycles of rebirth and misery.”

The Gloranthan monomyth is at the core of Glorantha. Different cultures have different interpretations, different emphases, differing starting and ending points, and so on. But the basic structure of the monomyth appears in every Gloranthan religion.

2. As far as Greg and I are concerned, the Gloranthan cosmology is as described in the Guide:

[Benjamin Ludwig]

Thanks very much for your reply, Jeff, and also for the nifty image!

The reason I posted about this topic was certainly not to dispute anything about Glorantha’s cosmology as it is presented in the sources. We’re all on the same page there… the monomyth is certainly “true” for Glorantha. My intention in making the original post was not to dispute it, but to have a discussion about the merits of interpreting it “shamanically”, as a deep truth which can, at least at times, exceed the physical and objective reality, as opposed to interpreting it “scientifically,” and worrying about how the physical details of it transpired. Of course, any player can choose, but I think there are real advantages to taking the former attitude, especially since other roleplaying worlds don’t allow for that possibility while Glorantha does.

At the heart of my statement lies a certain question: why do people love Glorantha? Some, of course, love it because they grew up with it, which is wonderful but doesn’t really speak to the world itself, as every world has such people. Some love it because it is so different from the stock fantasy world; the ducks, the Uz, the dragonewts (my personal favorite) and so on. Quite a valid reason to like it there, too.

But the reason I like it most is that it has the potential to be a source of mystery in th minds of the players because the multiplicity of its sources leaves many questions open to interpretation. Its cultures are so compelling to me because they all have answers and interpretations of the monomyth, but no two are quite the same. I love it for its deep flexibility, and I think it sometimes harms that flexibility if we get too concrete about the background details, and I wondered if I was alone in that feeling or if others might be thinking the same.

[Martin Helsdon]

The Gloranthan ‘monomyth’ is full of contradictions, which is entirely valid, as any sophisticated culture is going to have its own perspectives, interpretations and approach, even between those that share a basic worldview. Attempting to force the myths of diverse cultures and species to full equivalence is doomed to failure, and reeks of God Learnerism. And we all know how that went…

This actually makes Glorantha’s mythic background more ‘real’ as unlike the majority of fantasy worlds, real world myth cycles weren’t (and aren’t) fully compatible. It’s possible to synthesize vaguely similar deities, as the Romans did throughout Europe, the Near East and North Africa, but if you spend any time wandering around, for example, the Roman period temples of Egypt, you’ll see some really odd results. Some of the ornamentation is obviously Egyptian, and would have been familiar to an Egyptian of an earlier period, but there are weird hybrids of Greek or Roman origin that would strike them as utterly alien.

Even when there are close historical similarities, Roman Jupiter isn’t exactly Greek Zeus, who isn’t Dyaus Pita, and despite Roman and Greek belief isn’t Amun.

[Simon Phipp]

In Glorantha the Gods are definitely real.

Some of them are still knocking about and you can go and speak to them.

When the Red Goddess was still walking the world, one of the Dara Happan city gods came out of his temple and greeted her. He then went back, so to meet him all you need to do is go to his temple.

Cragspider can be met, Waha was still around a few centuries ago.

The Crimson Bat is very much alive and well. You can go and meet it, if you want, for it is always hungry.

The other Gods and Goddesses can be met through HeroQuesting. You can incarnate gods, meet them through Temple Mysteries and so on.

At the ends of the Ages, the Gods come back to Glorantha and mix things up a bit. So, when the Hero Wars start, the Gods can come back and can walk the world again. Not all of them will do, for the Hero Wars uses Heroes as proxies, but Vinga certainly reappears. The Nomad Gods game has several deities incarnate on the game board for this period.

[Benjamin Ludwig]

Simon, everything you just said applies to our world, too. Billions of people on our world think that divinity manifests physically on this plane, and many more will tell you that you can still encounter the gods of Earth through initiatic mysteries, ritual, shamanism, and so forth. Certainly, if you go back to our Bronze Age, everyone would say everything about our Earth gods that you just said about the Gloranthan ones. They would reference some story about someone encountering the gods and say “just ask them”. They encountered massive beings they didn’t understand and called them “dragons” or any number of other names. What is the benefit of insisting that Glorantha’s world is fundamentally /different/ from ours, when the benefits of understanding it as being a /reflection/ of our deepest cultural experience seem to be so much greater?

Tell me how understanding gods to be easily-understood physical beings helps you have more fun in your campaign. That’s the real question here.

[Joerg Baumgartner]

The Gloranthan deities may take on physical manifestations that go beyond simple natural phenomena. Starting with needle-shaped 30 km (miles?) high Kero Fin Mountain or the huge sphere in the sky ripped out of Pelorian earth, but this may become more manifest (usually when the Compromise is broken) like the appearance of the Black Eater at the Battle of Night and Day. The gods don’t always limit themselves to human (or other races) avatars, but sometimes they do.

The physical manifestation of a deity (or a True Dragon) isn’t easily understood. A mountain range may be the body of a dragon, or it may be just a geological formation covering a dragon, and that reality may change back and forth.

On the other hand, a deity doesn’t require a physical reality to be real on Glorantha. It may provide very real magic that is handled by its worshippers. It may be the very magic.

On Glorantha, both magic and the presence of deities can be empirically tested and proven. The sorcerers can even measure both.

One important way in which there is a difference is the way expeditions into the myths (aka heroquests) affect not just the questers and their supporters, but also their opponents, and as often as not a huge number of innocent bystanders as well. The concept of Godtime as still present along Time is radically different from even such misguided concepts like biblical time scale applied to the reality of our world.

Reducing gods to mere physical beings is a fallacy. Starting with the phenomenon of pluripresence…

[Simon Phipp]

Hmmm, you wouldn’t expect Krishna, for example, to get up and walk out of his temple one day, though.

In Glorantha, deities existed and performed actions. Sure, most of them are tucked away by the Great Compromise, or its equivalent, so they don’t interact with the world in the same way as they did. In that sense, they are very much like real-world deities in that people say they existed and cannot physically manifest now.

Demigods, however, can and do manifest, often having a physical presence in the world. Yara Aranis is alive and well, sitting in her temple waiting for horses to come by. In the Hero Wars, she devours Sheng Seleris and can be seen wandering Peloria. Sure, she isn’t a major goddess, but she is a goddess and is physically manifest.

As to “how understanding gods to be easily-understood physical beings helps you have more fun in your campaign” – I don’t really care. We don’t go into the mystical elements of Gloranthan worship in our games. Basically, people sacrifice to the gods and they get special powers. They walk in the gods’ steps and gain special powers or achieve things that the gods did. They might even meet the gods and interact with them, talking to them and perhaps even defeating them. That is what we find exciting about Gloranthan deities.

If you want to deal with gods as part of a deep cultural experience then go ahead – you will certainly enjoy it. Gloranthan deities can be considered in that way and they behave exactly the same.

[Scott Martin]

Quote:

Quote from Simon Phipp on September 8, 2013, 20:26
Hmmm, you wouldn’t expect Krishna, for example, to get up and walk out of his temple one day, though.

To echo the original post, In My Earth (IME) Krishna gets out of the house all the time: in ecstatic visions, bhakti yoga, ritual drama, increasingly CGI. He is the Mahabharata and the Mahabharata is Bharat, which is to say India. Maybe the “great compromise” of enlightened secularism keeps the statue from walking around too much in broad daylight without a festival procession under him, but he is still pretty darn mobile and his followers enjoy their compensations.

I like this thread but to me the contrast between Glorantha and the lack of empirical claims to immanent divinity here on earth has only incidentally been part of the joy of the lozenge and its “real” religions. Instead, most of the joy comes through the contrast between Glorantha on the one hand and, on the other, other created worlds and their relatively simplistic religious systems.

If anything my glorantha and my earth approach each other in their divine complexity, making statements like this marvelous thing of yours possible:

Quote:

If you want to deal with gods as part of a deep cultural experience then go ahead – you will certainly enjoy it. Gloranthan deities can be considered in that way and they behave exactly the same.

[Author]

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