Rodonis, a female Diomedean, offers a song to the Mother Moon.
"She did not address Sk'huanax the Warrior, any more than a male Drak'ho would have dreamed of petitioning the Mother." (p. 62)
In Briganti Moot, while it existed, we had a talk from a biographer of the founder of Wicca and another from a Traveller woman who claimed that, in her community, women had worshipped the Moon and men had worshipped Herne the Hunter. Scholars of the subject think that there was no survival of any unbroken Pagan tradition in Christian Europe so where did that community get its Moon- and Herne-worship from?
Sf writers base alien religions on human religions. Perhaps the most original and imaginative alien religion is the Ythrian New Faith in God the Hunter in Poul Anderson's Technic History.
Kaor, Paul!
ReplyDeleteActually, no, I thought the Ythrian New Faith thinly fleshed out and uninteresting.
Happy New Year! Sean
Sean,
ReplyDeleteIt is a very different, uncomforting, concept of God and based on the fact that Ythrians are flying carnivores. Anderson deduced their psychology, sociology and theology from their biology.
Paul.
Well, effectively -we're- carnivores, and have been for nearly 2,000,000 years including our pre-human ancestors.
ReplyDeleteBut we are not carnivores that can swoop down on a prey, break its neck with our teeth, eat it draw and remain outdoors in a storm.
ReplyDeleteeat it raw
ReplyDeleteWe can eat it raw, and we can remain outside in a storm -- soldiers do that all the time. And in the environment we evolved in -- tropical Africa -- we can do it without clothing or blankets, too.
ReplyDeleteWe did evolve coterminously with tools, originally as simple as clubs and stones in the hand.
OTOH, our physical adaptations are directed at running prey to death -- we're the champion long-distance runners of the animal kingdom, superior even to wolves or jag-hond.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
ReplyDeletePaul: I'm rereading "The Three-Cornered Wheel" because that's the Technic story which gives us the most detail of any non-Terrestrial religion we see in the series. And I could tell the monotheistic faith of Larsum, on Ivanhoe, is far more fleshed out than the thinly detailed Ythrian New Faith.
Mr. Stirling: Granted that our remote ancestors ate meat raw, I thought our digestive system could absorb meat much more easily once it was processed and cooked. To say nothing of being safer!
Happy New Year! Sean