From: brandon@caldonia.nlm.nih.gov (Brandon Brylawski)
Subject: Re: RQ: Heroquesting Re-addressed
Organization: National Library of Medicine
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 93 23:25:04 GMT

loren@wmkt.wharton.upenn.edu (Loren Miller) writes:
: In article <1993Jan4.164906.10840@nlm.nih.gov> brandon@caldonia.nlm.nih.gov (Brandon Brylawski) writes:
: >David, these are both examples of a heroquest to UNDO a curse or fight that
: >has already had effect. What about heroquests to retroactively ADD something
: >to a cult's history, ritual, or worldview? I recall Phil Davis describing
: >a Chalana Arroy Healer who quested to make the hummingbird a cult animal, and
: 
: Where was this?

Sorry, don't remember.

: >after he succeeded (at idiotic risk, but never mind) everyone knew it had always
: >been so. It makes perfect sense to me that these are different categories of 
: >changing history. Once a stone tablet has been written on, it can't be erased;

: But the evidence is there. People remember the quest. They remember that 
: once things were different but now the "immutable face" of myth is 
: different, and Hummingbird is allied with Chalana Arroy. It's apparent to 
: anybody who goes to the world of myth to check it out, but if you can find 
: an old collection of myths, written by God Learners perhaps, you will 
: discover that the myth which established a connection between Hummingbird 
: and Chalana Arroy is not to be found, or perhaps they had a different one 
: that changed Chalana Arroy into a slave of Thed in the same place.
: That's why you have to Heroquest, to alter the immutable face of myth, but 
: it won't retroactively change historic or documentary evidence. To change 
: the effects of mortal actions, you have to use mortal means such as 
: bookburning and purges.
: Caladra and Aurelion were also created from nothing, yet the evidence is 
: there if you can find it. The effects of heroquests on myth are not 
: seamless. In my opinion they shouldn't be seamless unless Chaos or the Devil 
: is involved, because all sprang from Chaos and only Chaos can duplicate the 
: original effects of Chaos and wipe Myth clean, giving a blank slate, or 
: reversing time to retroactively add the effects of a action. Even Wakboth 
: the Devil might not be able to pull it off, though he/she/it/they will 
: certainly try, and has the best chance of anyone to do it, since Time was 
: woven by Arachne Solara from his/its/her/their carcass and is thus 
: presumably closest to Wakboth's domain of all the gods and devils.

This makes perfect sense to me, inasmuch as historical documents are doubtable.
It would of course, be regarded by many as a bad God Learner mistake to try to
disprove the myths that everyone knows. Granted all this, I just thought it
valuable to distinguish between questing to undo a done myth versus creating a new
one. In the former case, the existing myth can be said to 'resist' being changed;
for example, in the Hill of Gold, Zorak Zoran and his followers won, and they have
gotten used to having the fruits of that victory, so that any attempt to undo
that myth would essentially involve defeating the Zorak Zoran culture as a whole.
The difference between a resisted quest and an unresisted one is substantial, whether
the resistance is caused by a mythic pattern or by the direct action of an adversary.
Preexisting myth is not as strong a foe as another heroquestor who is specifically
opposing you, but when multiplied by the force of the culture to whom that myth is 
important, it can be nevertheless impressive.

Brandon
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