celtic mytholgy in RPGs

[madelf]

Some may remember a while back I had a thread going where some debate cropped up about pagan religions, their inherent morality/amorality, and the impact of religion on society.
I think the dust has settled enough that I'd like to bring it up again, without the extra baggage of a fixed game setting.

So this time let's keep it hypothetical and theoretical.
Let's also, for the sake of keeping this anywhere near controllable, concentrate on celtic religion/mythology, rather than on pagan religions in general (and keeping in mind its applicability to role-playing games).

I'd like to explore the mythology and the religion (if there is a substantial difference as was suggested previously), it's impact on day to day life, and what such a religion might have developed into if Christianity hadn't come along to squash it. This can also include discussion of a fantastic nature (ie: magic is real, the gods really are the divine ancestors of the mortal people, etc).

Since it was a big factor last time, I'd like to bring up morality first. I had maintained that morality (in the current, christian sense) was not a big issue in the myths of the celts. Having done some further research I still believe this is true. The celtic myths and legends are full (though no moreso than many) of gods who seem to think little or nothing about performing acts of theft, murder, incest, rape, and any number of (by modern christian standards) immoral acts.
Given this, what can we define as a celtic morality imposed by the religion, as contrasted to a social morality imposed by the necessity of living together in something resembling harmony?

Any takers?

[taalyn]

Oh boy, you've opened a can of worms! Let me open another... ;)

Depending on who you talk to, there is no such thing as a difference between religious morality and social morality. This is particularly relevant to the revealed religions, where social morality originally depended on religious beliefs.

Turning to Pagan traditions, there is still a religious morality (again, depending on who you talk to), but that morality differs significantly from revealed religions' morality, and hence doesn't seem like morality to people who grew up with the revealed variety, which depends on sin and redemption.

The Celts, as a particular case, do indeed have a morality. It's just based on a different set of principles than the Abrahamic system. Celtic myths and legends reflect a focus on hospitality, bravery, and honor - very distinct from the ideas of love and obedience common in the Abrahamic traditions - and even in such distinct religious traditions as Confucianism.

My personal thought, contested by many other Pagans I know, is that the Celtic system is entirely a social system, and the myths reflect this. Like several other Pagan traditions throughout history, the myths and practice of the tradition didn't have rules  about what was necessary to attain spiritual bliss, or any other goal. Rather, the myths support the social rules, the behaviors that allow one to be a respected and functional part of the society. This is part of why it becomes difficult to see""morality" in the myths - they represent social mores and structures, not mores and ethics based on some spiritual goal. Pagan traditions focus on how to live this life better/properly, for it's own sake, as opposed to modern predominant moralities which focus on living this life properly for the sake of a future in a spiritual realm of some sort.

With this understanding, it's clear there is no spiritual morality to Pagan mythology - they all resort to social structures. Modern Pagans, to a large degree, have missed this, and do depend on a spiritual morality. This is part of where your previous thread was sidetracked.

When it comes to fantasy game religions, I personally find only one thing done wrong, consistently. Pagan pantheons in fantasy games almost always have gods of evil. Evil is not a Pagan idea - at least, not one that becomes deified. Instead, forces of nature, perhaps deadly or scary forces, such as disease, take over. In every case, these deities of death or disease, also have the power of healing. Pagan religions regularly invoke paradox this way.

So pantheons with evil gods of disease or madness would never exist in any pagan religion. The god of disease would also be the god of healing, the god of madness covering sanity as well. The darker aspect would be invoked when a follower of the religion did something the god didn't like - this could vary from certain actions contrary to social morality to entirely unique and non-codified misbehavior.

In these cases, the follower resorts to the priesthood to discover the "sin" and how to "repent" or make amends. This sounds amazingly like standard spiritual morality - it's not, because these "sins" are not codified in terms of afterlife issues. The only exception I'm aware of is Egyptian religion, focused heavily on the afterlife and an understandably powerful influence on Judaic religious development.

So, summing up, I feel that the only differences between fantasy religions as presented in games and what would actually happen, would be the lack of evil or evil gods. Your other observations - on the freeform nature of society and inclusionary tactics of pagan proselytising - seem spot on to me. The warring nations/religions idea - that would depend entirely on the social mores of the culture in which the religion grew. Holy wars, within a Pagan tradition, would be exceedingly rare.

I know I didn't talk about the Celts much. This because the issues you raised apply to almost all Pagan traditions.

Aidan

[madelf]

Turning to Pagan traditions, there is still a religious morality (again, depending on who you talk to), but that morality differs significantly from revealed religions' morality, and hence doesn't seem like morality to people who grew up with the revealed variety, which depends on sin and redemption.

This is a much better explanation of what I've tried to put into words before, and didn't have much luck trying.

Pagan traditions focus on how to live this life better/properly, for it's own sake, as opposed to modern predominant moralities which focus on living this life properly for the sake of a future in a spiritual realm of some sort.

This makes a great deal of sense. Especially since (if I recall correctly) the celts were strong believers in reincarnation. The otherworld was more a place for the soul to rest before going back into the world, rather than a final destination.

When it comes to fantasy game religions, I personally find only one thing done wrong, consistently. Pagan pantheons in fantasy games almost always have gods of evil. Evil is not a Pagan idea - at least, not one that becomes deified. Instead, forces of nature, perhaps deadly or scary forces, such as disease, take over. In every case, these deities of death or disease, also have the power of healing. Pagan religions regularly invoke paradox this way.

I've always liked the idea that the gods embody both light and dark aspects and it is the people who follow them who make the light or the darkness stronger, possibly even to the point of influencing the god entity. I don't know how well that meshes with actual celtic beliefs, but it seems like an idea with some interesting possibilities for a fantasy setting.

Holy wars, within a Pagan tradition, would be exceedingly rare.

A point in their favor I think.
:)
And an important thing to keep in mind when developing the history of a game world with a pagan pantheon as well.

Thanks Aidan.

I think we're off to a good start.

[taalyn]

Pagan traditions focus on how to live this life better/properly, for it's own sake, as opposed to modern predominant moralities which focus on living this life properly for the sake of a future in a spiritual realm of some sort.

This makes a great deal of sense. Especially since (if I recall correctly) the celts were strong believers in reincarnation. The otherworld was more a place for the soul to rest before going back into the world, rather than a final destination.

According to Posidonius and all the ancients who quoted him later, this is true. The technical term in metempsychosis, and allows for reincarntaion as other than human - in the body of an animal or a force of nature, for example. A mythic example is Eithne (the namesake of the singer Enya), who was a purple fly, a pool of water, and a wind spirit. Of course, those were spells cast by her enemies, but scholars believe ít's either a reflection of this metempsychosis, or a process similar to avatars - physical manifestations of deity (in this case, Eithne is Boand).

I've always liked the idea that the gods embody both light and dark aspects and it is the people who follow them who make the light or the darkness stronger, possibly even to the point of influencing the god entity. I don't know how well that meshes with actual celtic beliefs, but it seems like an idea with some interesting possibilities for a fantasy setting.

Couple of points:

- belief does change deity. Look at Athena, who was once a goddess of Sex and Battle (like the Celts' Morrígan) but changed into Wisdom.

- in every change that goes towards the darker side of things, there is an equal counterpull towards the lighter side simultaneously. Kali, The Dark Mother, patron of the Thugees, was a savior, "rescuing" the oppressed Indian continent from British rule. As long as it's recognized that a darker focus does not ever denigrate into "evil" (whatever that is), then a game setting would be realistically mimicking this world. Consider a deity like a tool, and you get closer to the meaning of deity in Pagan traditions - a force for good or bad at the same time.

One interesting use for this idea - Balance a dark cult by the bright cult out to eradicate the dark. This would be particularly interesting to have PCs in the middle - the "dark" cult has a valid and pressing reason for what they're doing (freedom from oppression as an example), while the "bright" cult is simply suppressing the dark out of PR concerns. Who's the good guy and who's the bad guy? Ooh, fun!!

And an important thing to keep in mind when developing the history of a game world with a pagan pantheon as well.

Yes indeed. Holy wars only develop out of an idea of "the one true religion". It's so much easier and realistic to follow history and have pagan people get into wars based on territory or ancestral opposition. Cliché, yes, but realistic. Even the Egyptians, who basically created the idea of monotheism (with the enforced worship of the god Aten by Akhenaten), didn't have holy wars.

Thanks Aidan. I think we're off to a good start.

You're welcome! I think it's a good start too. Now we just need to see some other opinions...

Aidan

[simon_hibbs]

I agree with much of what has been said about the relationship between pantheistic 'pagan' religons and morality. I think the best developed and most informative place to look for examples of this is in greek religion and greek philosophical thought. Socrates was no monotheist, but his moral philosophy is highly sophisticated and he was not alone in the greek world. Indeed there seems to have been a continuous two-way flow of ideas between greek philosophy and Judaism throughout much of their histories, which is one reason why christianity so easily spread through the greek world in it's early history.

I've always liked the idea that the gods embody both light and dark aspects and it is the people who follow them who make the light or the darkness stronger, possibly even to the point of influencing the god entity. I don't know how well that meshes with actual celtic beliefs, but it seems like an idea with some interesting possibilities for a fantasy setting.

Couple of points:

- belief does change deity. Look at Athena, who was once a goddess of Sex and Battle (like the Celts' Morrígan) but changed into Wisdom.

That is an external analysis you have imposed. I don't believe anyone in the ancient world has ever believed this. Rather, they would say that the worshipers discovered heretofore unrevealed aspects of the goddess.

The Egyptian's view of the god Set certainly changed. Orriginaly he was revered in upper egypt, but after some sort of civil strife the cult was deprecated and Set came to be seen as being a sinister force, and the myth of the betrayal or Ossiris became current. I realy can't believe that the egyptians ever believed that they had changed the nature of their god towards evil. Rather they discovered that the god of the defeated faction, in who's name that faction fought, was a corrupting infleunce, and that this simply hadn't been realised before. Set had always been a god of the desert storms, and so potentialy destructive.

Yes indeed. Holy wars only develop out of an idea of "the one true religion". It's so much easier and realistic to follow history and have pagan people get into wars based on territory or ancestral opposition. Cliché, yes, but realistic.

While I would agree that historicaly pantheistic religions are very tolerant of foreign religons, I think you go too far. The Romans were very tolerant of foreign religions and indeed their empire would have been impossible to controll if the hadn't. Nevertheless they ruthlessly tragetted and suppressed the religion of the druids, and I'd have no problem characterising their root-and-branch military expeditions against the faith through Gaul and the british isles as a crusade.

The ancient Egyptians were generaly tolerant too, but their history is full of inter-temple rivalries, and even naked power struggles which had a decidedly religious flavour. As with the example of Set above, the gods of those cults which lost out were at least severely deprecated if not effectively banned. All is not roses in the pantheistic world brotherhood of faiths, I'm afraid.

Even the Egyptians, who basically created the idea of monotheism (with the enforced worship of the god Aten by Akhenaten), didn't have holy wars.

Akhenaten's reforms bore similarity to monotheism, but it realy wasn't that at all. The other gods were still worshiped, and their sacred rites were not interrupted. Instead Aten became the new supreme deity, supplanting the previous contenders to this title, such as Atum and Ra. Furthermore there is strong evidence that the worship of Aten was exclusive to the royal family and priestly class, and that commoners were instructed to worship Akhenaten himself as the son of Aten - hardly strict monotheism although similarities with christianity can be certainly be drawn. The worship of Aten under Akhenaten certainly bears some fo the hallmarks of monotheism and may well have been a precursor to it (although some recent timelines make Akhenaten a contemporary of Saul and David!), but it wan't the real deal.


Simon Hibbs

[taalyn]

I agree with much of what has been said about the relationship between pantheistic 'pagan' religons and morality. I think the best developed and most informative place to look for examples of this is in greek religion and greek philosophical thought. Socrates was no monotheist, but his moral philosophy is highly sophisticated and he was not alone in the greek world. Indeed there seems to have been a continuous two-way flow of ideas between greek philosophy and Judaism throughout much of their histories, which is one reason why christianity so easily spread through the greek world in it's early history.

Actually, IMHO, Greece is one of the worst places to look. It was one of the centers of the Age of Philosophy (circa 500 BC (or AD - I always forget which), including China/India and Buddhism). In these places, philosophy and morality began to develop as part of an "atheistic" impulse. Greece at that point can really be considered pagan - most of its institutions had at that point become meaningless superstition - myth without meaning.

- belief does change deity. Look at Athena, who was once a goddess of Sex and Battle (like the Celts' Morrígan) but changed into Wisdom.

That is an external analysis you have imposed. I don't believe anyone in the ancient world has ever believed this. Rather, they would say that the worshipers discovered heretofore unrevealed aspects of the goddess.

 Certainly that's true. But we're not talking about how worshippers perceived the Gods way back when - we're talking about the here and now, and particularly as it relates to fantasy religions.

 That said, isn't recognizing new aspects of a deity a change?

The Egyptian's view of the god Set certainly changed. Orriginaly he was revered in upper egypt, but after some sort of civil strife the cult was deprecated and Set came to be seen as being a sinister force, and the myth of the betrayal or Ossiris became current. I realy can't believe that the egyptians ever believed that they had changed the nature of their god towards evil. Rather they discovered that the god of the defeated faction, in who's name that faction fought, was a corrupting infleunce, and that this simply hadn't been realised before. Set had always been a god of the desert storms, and so potentialy destructive.

There's some fundamental misunderstanding of Set's cult here. Set was always a chaotic force - he represented the powers of the desert. As Osiris was the Nile and its inundation, the two in opposition was an obvious conflict. As I've noted before, even though Set had a sinister side, originally, he did have a beneficial side as well, protecting the people from the dangers of the chaotic sands. I don't know where you get this civil strife stuff - do you have a reference I could read, to see where you're coming from?

While I would agree that historicaly pantheistic religions are very tolerant of foreign religons, I think you go too far. The Romans were very tolerant of foreign religions and indeed their empire would have been impossible to controll if the hadn't. Nevertheless they ruthlessly tragetted and suppressed the religion of the druids, and I'd have no problem characterising their root-and-branch military expeditions against the faith through Gaul and the british isles as a crusade.

This is also entirely incorrect. Yes, the Romans did campaign against the Druids, but not because of religion. If Roma had done so, it would be very strange to find Roman soldiers worshipping the Celtic horse-goddess Epona, as inscriptions and texts clearly show. The Druids were targeted because they were the central governing body of the Celtic tribes, and because they urged opposition to Roman presence on Gaulish and British soil. That the Druids also served in priestly roles was a coincidence, not a central facet of Roman antagonism - it was purely political opposition that spurred the Romans to target them.

The ancient Egyptians were generaly tolerant too, but their history is full of inter-temple rivalries, and even naked power struggles which had a decidedly religious flavour. As with the example of Set above, the gods of those cults which lost out were at least severely deprecated if not effectively banned. All is not roses in the pantheistic world brotherhood of faiths, I'm afraid.

I wasn't saying it was - I was saying that Holy Wars (where conversion and elimination of opposing religions is the plan of the day) never happened.  Please do provide some info on the Egyptian civil strife thing that you're talking about - now I'm all curious! ;)

Akhenaten's reforms bore similarity to monotheism, but it realy wasn't that at all. The other gods were still worshiped, and their sacred rites were not interrupted. Instead Aten became the new supreme deity, supplanting the previous contenders to this title, such as Atum and Ra. Furthermore there is strong evidence that the worship of Aten was exclusive to the royal family and priestly class, and that commoners were instructed to worship Akhenaten himself as the son of Aten - hardly strict monotheism although similarities with christianity can be certainly be drawn. The worship of Aten under Akhenaten certainly bears some fo the hallmarks of monotheism and may well have been a precursor to it (although some recent timelines make Akhenaten a contemporary of Saul and David!), but it wan't the real deal.

I disagree. Evidence unearthed at recently discovered temple of Herakleion in the Nile Delta, as well as scores of images of other deities whose faces and names were scratched out, point to a true monotheism instituted by Akhenaten. It seems he also forbade the worship of other "false" gods, and established laws mandating commoner worship of Aten. Herakleion even includes the city in the worship of Aten geomantically - the city is laid out on the same plan as the temple! Other gods were certainly worshipped throughout Egypt during this time - one man, even a Pharaoh, can only do so much, especially in the face of centuries of tradition otherwise. This does not counter the fact that the official religion under Akhenaten's rule was monotheistic (one God only, and he was/is the True God)- scholars agree as much.

All of which is mostly irrelevant - apologies. The issue is fantasy polytheistic religions and realism, not details of Roman-Celtic politics or Egyptian monotheism. I'll try to stop myself in the future.

Aidan

[contracycle]

Simon wrote:

That is an external analysis you have imposed. I don't believe anyone in the ancient world has ever believed this. Rather, they would say that the worshipers discovered heretofore unrevealed aspects of the goddess.

Hmm, OK, but why do you believe this?  I have not come across a discussion of "aspects" of gods used in this manner.  It sounds to me very much like Rome's very deliberate attempt to co-opt other religious systems.  So I'm curious to know where this idea is laid out.

Taalyn wrote:

I don't know where you get this civil strife stuff - do you have a reference I could read, to see where you're coming from?

Well, as I understand it they stand as symbols for the unification of Egypt into a single state; and I don't think this is accidental either, in that in Mesopotamia just this sort of thing happened all the time.  Gods came and went with the fortunes of cities.

This is also entirely incorrect. Yes, the Romans did campaign against the Druids, but not because of religion. If Roma had done so, it would be very strange to find Roman soldiers worshipping the Celtic horse-goddess Epona, as inscriptions and texts clearly show.

Not exactly; Rome made a great deal of the barbarism of the celts practice of human sacrifice, and ostentatiously claimed to be bringing Truth, Justice and the Roman Way to the barbarians.  Parallel but NOT contradictory with this process is another to re-interpret the local gods into a meta-pantheon quite literally managed from Rome.

In all these I don't think we are looking at any sort of unified cosmology.  We are looking at a synthetic system establsihed for essentially political goals.  They are not coherent systems, and many of them are accreted from successive rewritings and post-facto rationalisation drive by realpolitik.

In the first post, Madelf wrote:

Given this, what can we define as a celtic morality imposed by the religion, as contrasted to a social morality imposed by the necessity of living together in something resembling harmony?

Not a great deal, IMO.  Theres not much info available about the Druidic organisation, if in fact there even really was such a thing (I think so, but some have doubts).  But a question: why would we even expect a religion to provide moral instruction?  I don't think thats what they are really there for; although they may pass on instruction which contains moral value incidentally.  Celtic society was not marked so much by adherence to law in the first place as a regulated sequence of responses and reprisals after the law was broken.  So I tend to see the Druidic function as more interested in Fair and True and Correct rather than in moral terms such as good and bad.

[simon_hibbs]

Simon wrote:

That is an external analysis you have imposed. I don't believe anyone in the ancient world has ever believed this. Rather, they would say that the worshipers discovered heretofore unrevealed aspects of the goddess.

Hmm, OK, but why do you believe this?  I have not come across a discussion of "aspects" of gods used in this manner.  It sounds to me very much like Rome's very deliberate attempt to co-opt other religious systems.  So I'm curious to know where this idea is laid out.

This was in reply to the suggestion that the worshipers of Athene changed the nature of the goddess. If we assume that the religion is false, Athene does not realy exist and is merely imagined by her worshipers, then certainly it's true that the worshipers can change the nature of the goddess as fashions change. However if we were to assert that the religion is true, Athene does exist and is a real goddess and grants real magical power (as a fantasy game with working magic suggests), asserting that the worshipers still determine the nature of the goddess seems a bit weird IMHO. If it were true, why do the worshipers need gods at all? Why couldn't they construct a more efficient and utilitarian religion that granted customised and optimised magic? Surely such artificial religions would be the natural result of continual refinement if it was all just in the worshiper's heads anyway?

Taalyn wrote:

I don't know where you get this civil strife stuff - do you have a reference I could read, to see where you're coming from?

Upper Egypt was subsumed under the controll of lower Egypt at the same time as the religious reforms which deprecated the Set cult. The civil strife comment is conjecture, I suppse it's entirely possible the Set priesthood meekly packed their bags and the whole political and religious reform was just an amicable administrative reorganisation. Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but I just think that seems a bit unlikely.

Well, as I understand it they stand as symbols for the unification of Egypt into a single state; and I don't think this is accidental either, in that in Mesopotamia just this sort of thing happened all the time.  Gods came and went with the fortunes of cities.

Quite. And the religious pretext "They worship evil god(s), so killing them and taking their stuff is okay" wasn't invented in 1095 AD.

This is also entirely incorrect. Yes, the Romans did campaign against the Druids, but not because of religion. If Roma had done so, it would be very strange to find Roman soldiers worshipping the Celtic horse-goddess Epona, as inscriptions and texts clearly show.

Not exactly; Rome made a great deal of the barbarism of the celts practice of human sacrifice, and ostentatiously claimed to be bringing Truth, Justice and the Roman Way to the barbarians.  Parallel but NOT contradictory with this process is another to re-interpret the local gods into a meta-pantheon quite literally managed from Rome.

Indeed, they also highlited the barbaric and depraved religion of the Carthaginians and used it as a pretext for annihilating their only real rivals in the mediterranean at the time.

In all these I don't think we are looking at any sort of unified cosmology.  We are looking at a synthetic system establsihed for essentially political goals.  They are not coherent systems, and many of them are accreted from successive rewritings and post-facto rationalisation drive by realpolitik.

True, but the crusades themselves were hardly free of any political context. Partly it was to defuse tensions with europe, and give young hotheads something to do other than bash each other's heads - go bash some Mohamedans instead. The Catholic crusade against the Cathars was primarily to maintain the power of the church rather than to save anyone's souls, and the same could be said of the Roman's persecution of christianity, since it was the christian's very refusal to accept the validity of other people's faiths that threatened the empire's religious status quo.

All of which is veering well off topic, but the essential point remains. In times of peace and without any reson for conflict pagans generaly were quite tolerant of each other's religions, but where it was expedient they have always been quite capable and willing to use religion as a pretext for war, and perhaps even occasionaly to actualy wage wars, or at least instigate repression on religious grounds.


Simon Hibbs

[contracycle]

However if we were to assert that the religion is true, Athene does exist and is a real goddess and grants real magical power (as a fantasy game with working magic suggests), asserting that the worshipers still determine the nature of the goddess seems a bit weird IMHO

Hmm, well as it happens I think they eventually did develop a more elegant system - Monotheism.  But that was not really the question; regardless of the game discussion, you said that

I don't believe anyone in the ancient world has ever believed this. Rather, they would say that the worshipers discovered heretofore unrevealed aspects of the goddess.

And I'm just looking for the reason you think thats how ancient peoples would have thought of it.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

The thread Calvin is referring to is Help with magic?

I also recommend reviewing the Is religion so much of a problem? thread, which in some ways become sort of humpbacked, but also contained some useful posts for this discussion.

You know what I'm not seeing in this thread? Role-playing. The hobby the Forge is about. And without a post from Calvin explaining how the topic directly applies to role-playing as an activity, this thread will be closed. There are plenty of venues on the internet for discussing paganism, morality, religion, and whatnot as topics in their own right, and this isn't one of them.

Best,
Ron

[ejh]

(Edit: many apologies.  Didn't read Ron's post closely before posting.  I'll just leave this link as a useful resource on the topic of real ancient pagans wrestling with these issues, and edit out the commentary I'd posted. http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/philo/writings/dialogues/euthyphro/euthmain.html )

[contracycle]

Hmm, well, I'll plead guilty with mitigating circumstances.

Firstly, we keep hitting this issue and I think thats significant.  It has never, IMO, been done well in an RPG and that is both an interesting ommission and a frustrating problem.

Secondly, I feel it relates to the sharks with lasers on their heads thread.  Even I, mundanity fan that I am, find myself drawn toward the significance/drama of supra-normal events and environments.

I saw an interesting review of Dumb & Dumberer the other day, and this mentioend that both sequels and prequels suffer a major problem: by default, a story operates on the conceit that the story is the Most Important Thing that happened to these characters; it is therefore hard to accept that a sequel shows something even mre important that happened later, or a prequel showing an even more profound event that occurred earlier.

I'd not encountered that sort of analysis but it makes a certain sense to me.  I'd extend it a bit further and say: another alternative, perhaps something like the Passion Plays or stories about, say, Napoleon, operate on the alternate conceit that this is a highly important event to the audience.  Either way, the point is that the story rests on a presumption of Importance: from "this was how Bob and Janet met and fell in love" to "this was how the mighty evil was averted".

Star Wars without the Force would have lost some of its impact.  The heroism of the heroes would not be established, and Solo could not have been meaningfully redeemed.  I feel the tendency toward laser sharks or alien abduction of whatever occurs to locate the conflict in a sphere that is bigger than just the person.  And for most RPG, those occurring in pseudo-historical settings, that thing is going to be magic/religion.  Furthermore, there may be many places to discuss the nature of religion, but not that many that can do so in the context of RPG.

[Ron Edwards]

Less movies, more role-playing.

Gareth, when you say "it," what do you mean? Religion? Paganism? Morality? Or what?

Best,
Ron

[simon_hibbs]

I don't believe anyone in the ancient world has ever believed this. Rather, they would say that the worshipers discovered heretofore unrevealed aspects of the goddess.

And I'm just looking for the reason you think thats how ancient peoples would have thought of it.

Because to think otherwise would be to accept that their religion was false.


Simon Hibbs

[Ron Edwards]

Hey!

Are people not reading? This is a moderator post.

Unless the topic of this thread shifts significantly in the direction of role-playing, it will be closed and locked. There isn't any more wiggle room.

Best,
Ron