Re: The Melting

Sally Caves sikyal:

> > Ah, this explains a lot. I'm still a little surprised that they managed to
> > become wholly Orthodox through their intermittent contacts with humanity,
> > but fair enough. Is their version of Christianity pretty, er, orthodox, or
> > do they have their own variations?
>
> They are not wholly Orthodox... there are Catholics and Protestants, also a
> fair number of Muslims, Gnostics, and Zoroastrians.  A few Jews.  Orthodoxy
> is only natural for a converted people who emerge into the Black Sea area.
It is. This makes sense. I myself have always been somewhat fascinated by
Orthodoxy--I find its iconography and mysticism more appealing than the
Roman Catholic tradition. Though as a bread-and-butter American
Protestant, I don't subscribe to either, of course.

> Then there is the old polytheistic belief of the Teonim which has been
> largely subsumed by monotheism, and reduced to legend.  I gave everybody a
> list of gods about two months ago which is still unfinished; the English has
> to find its Teonaht original in many of the items. :) :
>
>     http://www.frontiernet.net/~awen/gods.html
>
> Some of these gods look "borrowed" from Terran gods; Bast and Kronosai are
> examples.
You'll have to tell me from whom Bastet is borrowed. My best guess is
something Egyptian, as I don't recall any cat gods among the more familiar
Greek and Roman pantheons.

This reminds me of a currently unsolved puzzle of Yivrian mythology:
several of the Gods have clearly non-Yivrian names, but I know not from
whence they come, or how the Yivrindi collected them. These include:

Morillian (god of war)
Panthelioné (goddess of poetry, wisdom, foresight)
Baratasad (god of animals)
Saravoné (goddess of fishes and birds)

Of these, the first two have soundalike endings -illian and -elion, which
suggests they are from the same source, but I don't know what it is. (The
-é at the end of Panthelioné and Saravoné is a Yivrian feminine ending.)

> explains the adoption of many of our customs, language and religions.  They
> even have a patron saint (Saint Hpilhip and his sister Miriamne); they have
> been bent on escaping their world which is threatened by the Rrordaly, but
> also by natural disasters.
Rrordaly is a suitably menacing name. Why, pray tell, is their world so
wracked with disasters?

> > I like your description of the way that they interact with humanity. Is
> > Sendl's dislike for Teonaht anatomy based on anything more than desire not
> > to stand out?
>
> Her mother begged her not to disfigure herself.  Sendl's act was as much a
> rebellion against her mother as it was against her people.  Where she is
> now, I'm not sure, but probably making trouble.
Heh. Narnagol makes trouble wherever he goes. Perhaps he and Sendl can
team up. Fortunately, the Yivrindi are (almost) anatomically identical
with humans *here*.

Aargh! I have to leave now, and will be camping for the rest of the
weekend, so I won't be able to immediately respond to the rest of the
e-mail. I'll attend to it when I get back.


Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/blog

Jesus asked them, "Who do you say that I am?"

And they answered, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground
of our being, the kerygma in which we find the ultimate meaning of our
interpersonal relationship."

And Jesus said, "What?"