Re: OT: Rokbeigalm & henotheism (wasRe: God's loaded dice (was Re: semi-OT: Re: "defense of wilderness" (wasRe: lexicon))

On Wed, 11 Jun 2003 23:32:38 EDT J Y S Czhang <czhang23@...> writes:
> In a message dated 2003:06:10 09:34:52 PM, Steg in Israel
> (draqonfayir@JUNO.COM) writes:
-

I'm not in Israel, i'm in New York!  :-P
(ObJoke: "What's the difference between New York and Israel?  New York
has more Jews!")

> >ObConlang/culture: Hmm... the Rokbeigalm seem to be pretty
> monolatrous...
> >although i don't know for sure; is it still monolatry if you don't
> >believe that the things you *aren't* worshipping are also divine?
> Like,
> >the Rokbeigalm believe in Kabakh-a, their Creator God, who is the
> only
> >deity they have and pray to.  But aside form Kabakh-a, they believe
> that
> >the world is full of |ailzhm| "powers", which can be anything from
> >'sock-stealing gremlins'
>     LOL.
> >to the sun, to the force of gravity, to powerful
> >supernatural beings that could be considered 'gods' by other
> people.  So
> >a Rokbeigalmkidh would see nothing wrong with believing in the
> existence
> >of Athena, or Marduk, or Quetzocoatl or whoever in addition to
> Kabakh-a,
> >but would refuse to identify them as an |eilos|, 'deity'.
>     More like demi-gods then? Or lesser supernatural beings? Or
> perhaps in modern
> Rokbeigalmkidh minds, Jungian-Spirituality-like _archetypes_,
> avatars, aspects of Kabakh-a's multiple personality?
-

Hmmm...

I don't think so, i get the feeling that the dichotomy is a lot more
rigid than that.  Only Kabakh-a (the name means "the Founder", as in
'setter of foundations', btw*(1)) is truly super-natural, as in
transcendently above and separate from nature.  A Rokbeigalmkidh*(2)
would probably put it something like this: "Everything that is, is;
except for That which caused them to be."  (|ilu ga'uzoi-tzat, uzóí -
ja'gaur uhz-a oolu-daleghiid tzmu tzat|)  Everything that exists within
the world is by definition - due to the fact that it exists within the
world - natural, and therefore *not* a god (which the Rokbeigalm see as
intrinsically separate/transcendent) or anything supernatural.

Maybe they see other people's gods as (overly?-)personified ideals
similar to their own use of personification.  For instance, in
Rokbeigalmki, you can say |semoz-a uza-ghalub| 'the sun is rising' or you
can say |sémoz uza-ghalub| 'Sun is rising'; But just because you
personify the sun as if "Sun" were its name and not just a proper noun,
it doesn't change its status as an inanimate object, still using the
pronoun |uz| 'it'.

*(1): |kabakh-a| is short for |khada-a oolu-kabak dwim-a sudglendm-a|,
'the one who founded the great waters'.
*(2): usage note - '(the) Rokbeigalm' is the ethnos; 'Rokbeigalmki' is
the adjective and the name of the language; '(a) Rokbeigalmkidh' is an
individual member of the ethnos.


-Stephen (Steg)
 |azii-ghalub tzii ekham wa'waur gyomihlm-a
  nga'pawa uzii-elyeb dagair-ad-a tzii-a?
  dagair-ad-a tzii-a nga'saur hashém -
  ^dawazh^maró, ^dawazh^amál...
  híyéí!  uhzii'nyih-daaghnaab
  i uhzii'nyih-ajhlu
  ^haildh^yisrauéíl...|
     ~ from psalm 121 (song of ascents: i lift my eyes)