In The Day Of Their Return, Aycharaych told Erannath that the Chereionites were the Ancients, Elders, Others, Foreunners, Builders, High Ones, Old Shen. Erannath relayed this information to Ivar Frederiksen. That was on Aeneas. On Imhotep, an Aenean spaceman told Diana Crowfeather about the Old Shen sites on his planet and Diana has also heard rumours that the Chereionites, whoever they were, had been responsible for such remnant walls and ruins on various planets. Those rumours must trace back to what Aycharaych told Erannath.
The Aenean spaceman thought that the Old Shen must have originated on a small, dry, thin-aired planet like Aeneas and therefore colonized such planets whereas Axor suggests that it is merely that remnants of ancient buildings are best preserved on such planets. In fact, we have learned that Chereion was such a planet. It was Forerunner ruins on his home planet, Woden, that had started Axor on his quest. Can he establish that there was a divine incarnation among the Forerunners as he believes that there was on Terra?
Diana is what I call a casual pagan. She invokes Tigery gods without believing in their literal existence and asks Axor to ask his God to make the rumours of war only rumours. Once again, the Technic History narrative moves into troubled times.
18 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Even "casual pagan" seems a bit too strong for describing Diana's POV at this time. I think "casual agnostic" is more accurate.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Somewhere in between them. It's a spectrum. But it is Christians who make a big issue of belief. Someone held a pagan ceremony in our house. My daughter asked whether it mattered that she didn't believe in it. She was told of course not. A sceptic can take part in an offering to a god but should not recite the creed or receive communion in a church. That is set apart.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I would disagree with whoever said it did not matter. I have more respect for hard polytheists than I do for the soft ones. In Snorri Sturluson's saga about King Haakon the Good, the first Christian king of Norway, I read of the struggles and disputes the king and hard pagans had about religion. Both sides believed it mattered!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Pagans believed it mattered whether Christianity was imposed on them but I don't think they made a point of wondering whether someone who made an offering to Thor really did believe in Thor. That would be a Christian attitude imported into a different tradition.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I disagree, and I have read Snorri's saga about King Haakon in the YNGLINGASAGA. The pagans in that saga certainly believed it mattered that sacrifices be made to Odin and Thor. Just as it mattered to Haakon that he could not sacrifice to those "gods."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
It mattered that sacrifices be made but not that everyone be made to declare his belief in the Norse pantheon under pain of prosecution for heresy. Those ideas had simply not occurred to anyone yet.
Paul.
Sean: the Norse didn't give a good goddamn what Haakon -thought- or -believed- about Thor or Odin.
They didn't care if he participated in Christian rituals.
They were concerned that whoever was the King make the customary sacrifices, because they believed that not doing so risked catastrophic bad luck for the country -- invasion, crops destroyed by bad weather, and so forth.
Poul brings this out in HROLF KRAKI'S SAGA, where neglecting the rituals is always accompanied by bad weather and other disasters.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Not relevant, because I said not a word about "prosecution for heresy." I was talking about what Haakon and the Norse pagans believed in, believed was right.
Mr. Stirling: I am not so sure all Norse pagans were that indifferent to whether people believed or not in Odin or Thor.
I do agree many, many Norse pagans believed in the necessity of the king sacrificing to the gods to ensure prosperity and good luck to the land.
I remember that about HROLF KRAKI'S SAGA, and of how many of the Danes were alarmed when the king stopped sacrificing to the gods. They feared disaster and bad luck.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: not all, but the vast majority. Pagan religions like those of the old Norse make a sharp distinction between actions and subjective states.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Understood. It's simply that the disputes between Haakon and the Norse pagans in Snorri's saga of that king seemed very "intense."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Of course you didn't mention heresy. I cited that to try to contrast two attitudes: you Christian attitude which makes an issue of belief and pre-Christian attitudes which did not.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Because I still disagree. I don't agree the kind of attitude you find so unique is limited only to Jews and Christians. Another example I've thought of from the past the would be the "Amarna heresy" of Pharaoh Akhenaten and its aftermath, with special stress on the latter. After Akhenaten's death his son Tutankhamen soon restored the worship of the old gods. Here I have in mind Tutankhamen's Restoration Stele in which he discussed how the anger and despair caused by Akhenaten's attempt at imposing worship of the Aten as Egypt's sole god soon failed. These Egyptians were hard, not soft polytheists.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
OK. But that doesn't change the attitude of the European pagans who did not insist that everyone else should believe exactly as they did. According to "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," which I think is right about this, they were prepared to make offering to Christ in Christian lands.
Paul.
I share the antique view that what you -do- is more important than what you say or think.
Words lie; actions reveal truth.
I think that we are misusing the hard poly soft poly distinction. Surely this is a modern distinction? People in Viking times took for granted the literal existence of gods just as we take for granted the literal existence of atoms. People were "hard" polytheists.
However, they accepted that:
other people had other gods;
sometimes one pantheon might be identified with another but on a very loose basis;
a philosopher could be sceptical about gods as long as he did not object to performing appropriate rituals.
In general, they did not rationalize or intellectualize the whole question the way we do.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Now you are touching on complications like how Catholics and Orthodox believe only validly ordained priests could offer the once and for all sacrifice of Christ in a re-presentative and unbloody way at every Mass. So, say, Viking era Scandinavian pagans could not sacrifice to Christ. But, I think it was accepted that Scandinavians who came peacefully to Christian lands (not as raiders or invaders) could agree to live in peace with Christians.
This debate about "hard/soft" polytheists reminds me of what Anderson said in IS THERE LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS? on how Christian philosophers and theologians worked out precise and exacting ways of reasoning logically and precisely. Largely thru the influence of Aristotle and Christian successors beginning with Boethius.
I am sure there are some who don't care about a careful defining of terms and are bored by it. I disagree because only a careful defining of terms will at least sometimes avoid confusion.
Mr. Stirling: I agree, as would Christ!
Ad astra! Sean
Carefully defining our terms also involves recognizing that some other people don't.
Kaor, Paul!
Correct.
Ad astra! Sean
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