Might And Magic Links To Religion

The role-playing games (I-X) that started it all and the various spin-offs (including Dark Messiah).
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Jaspergentry
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Might And Magic Links To Religion

Unread postby Jaspergentry » 31 May 2016, 14:22

Before you read this, i must warn you i did not write this to offend any religion. This is purely for the interest of the reader in mind.

Fictional classics that have been linked to God or Religion have always interested me in this day of age, for example how Scientologists believe (some do) the story of Xenu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4SBfhRmvzU). And it has always affected me how closely linked these stories of Religion can be linked to the story of Genesis for example. They both provide a reason for the Earths creation.

This might seem crazy but, then this reminded me of my childhood classic of the first Might and Magic 1-5 games and how the Gods (The Ancients) would manipulate and create worlds with their omnipotent power. This again lead to me thinking how closely linked the early Might and magic series is to Religions we see today. And how the creators even thought of adding BS (Before Silence) and AS (After Silence) such as AD and BC with the rise of Jesus today? Surely they were trying to give a point across...

Care to Add, Disagree or link, as i am interested at how you think of this idea?
Btw, does this go against CH rule policy? I don't think it does...
Na, That's not me...

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Baronus
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Re: Might And Magic Links To Religion

Unread postby Baronus » 31 May 2016, 18:30

Very, very good topic.

Scientology as I read is a psychomanipilation based on sf not a religion. Disgusting practice.
...

But lets go to beauty stories.
Creator fantasy great JRRT told about it. Read this genial words big man:

Humphrey Carpenter;

On Saturday 19 September 1931, they met in the evening. Lewis had invited Tolkien to dine at Magdalen, and he had another guest, Hugo Dyson, whom Tolkien had first known at Exeter College in 1919..He was a Christian, and a man of feline wit. After dinner, Tolkien and Dyson went out for air. It was a blustery night, but they strolled along Addison's Walk, discussing the purpose of myth. Lewis, though now a believer in God, could not yet understand the function of Christ in Christianity, could not perceive the meaning of the crucifixion and the resurrection.

'But' said Lewis, 'myths are lies, even though lies breathed through silver..' 'No,' said Tolkien, 'they are not..' And indicating the great trees of Magdalen Grove as their branches bent in the wind, he struck out on a different line of argument. 'You call a tree a tree' he said ,'and you think nothing more of the word. But it was not a tree until someone gave it that name. You call a star a star and say it is just a ball of matter moving on a mathematical course. But that is merely how you see it. By so naming things and describing them you are only inventing your own terms about them. And just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.

We have come from God and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed, only by myth-making, only by becoming a sub-creator and inventing stories can man ascribe to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however unshakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic progress leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.'

In expounding this belief in the inherent truth of mythology, Tolkien had laid bare the centre of his philosophy as a writer, the creed that is at the heart of the Silmarillion, (of which the Lord of the Rings is a key part).

.....

I have just passed from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ - in Christianity. My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a great deal to do with it'
...

MYTHOPOEIA
To one who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though 'breathed through silver'.
Philomythus to Misomythus
You look at trees and label them just so
(for trees are 'trees', and growing is 'to grow' );
you walk the earth and tread with solemn pace
one of the many minor globes of Space:
a star's a star, some matter in a ball
compelled to courses mathematical
amid the regimented, cold. Inane,
where destined atoms are each moment slain.
At bidding of a Will, to which we bend
(and must), but only dimly apprehend,
great processes march on, as Time unrolls
from dark beginnings to uncertain goals;
and as on page o'erwritten without clue,
with script and limning packed of various hue,
an endless multitude of forms appear,
some grim, some frail, some beautiful, some queer,
each alien, except as kin from one
remote Origo, gnat, man, stone, and sun.
God made the petreous rocks, the arboreal trees,
tellurian earth, and stellar stars, and these
homuncular men, who walk upon the ground
with nerves that tingle touched by light and sound.
The movements of the sea, the wind in boughs,
green grass, the large slow oddity of cows,
thunder and lightning, birds that wheel and cry,
slime crawling up from mud to live and die,
these each are duly registered and print
the brain's contortions with a separate dint.
Yet trees are not 'trees', until so named and seen —
and never were so named, till those had been
who speech's involuted breath unfurled,
faint echo and dim picture of the world,
but neither record nor a photograph,
being divination, judgement, and a laugh,
response of those that felt astir within
by deep monition movements that were kin
to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:
free captives undermining shadowy bars,
digging the foreknown from experience
and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.
Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves,
and looking backward they beheld the elves
that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,
and light and dark on secret looms entwined.
He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers beneath an ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,
unless the mother's womb whence all have birth.
The heart of man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
man, sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with elves and goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sow the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.
Yes! 'wish-fulfilment dreams' we spin to cheat
our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat!
Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream,
or some things fair and others ugly deem?
All wishes are not idle, nor in vain
fulfilment we devise — for pain is pain,
not for itself to be desired, but ill;
or else to strive or to subdue the will
alike were graceless; and of Evil this
alone is dreadly certain: Evil is.
Blessed are the timid hearts that evil hate,
that quail in its shadow, and yet shut the gate;
that seek no parley, and in guarded room,
though small and bare, upon a clumsy loom
weave tissues gilded by the far-off day
hoped and believed in under Shadow's sway.
Blessed are the men of Noah's race that build
their little arks, though frail and poorly filled,
and steer through winds contrary towards a wraith,
a rumour of a harbour guessed by faith.
Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things not found within recorded time.
It is not they that have forgot the Night,
or bid us flee to organised delight,
in lotus-isles of economic bliss
forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss
(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,
bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).
Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,
and those that hear them yet may yet beware.
They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,
and yet they would not in despair retreat,
but oft to victory have turned the lyre
and kindled hearts with legendary fire,
illuminating Now and dark Hath-been
with light of suns as yet by no man seen.
I would that I might with the minstrels sing
and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.
I would be with the mariners of the deep
that cut their slender planks on mountains steep
and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,
for some have passed beyond the fabled West.
I would with the beleaguered fools be told,
that keep an inner fastness where their gold,
impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring
to mint in image blurred of distant king,
or in fantastic banners weave the sheen
heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.
I will not walk with your progressive apes,
erect and sapient. Before them gapes
the dark abyss to which their progress tends -
if by God's mercy progress ever ends,
and does not ceaselessly revolve the same
unfruitful course with changing of a name.
I will not tread your dusty path and flat,
denoting this and that by this and that,
your world immutable wherein no part
the little maker has with maker's art.
I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.
In Paradise perchance the eye may stray
from gazing upon everlasting Day
to see the day-illumined, and renew
from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.
Then looking on the Blessed Land 'twill see
that all is as it is, and yet made free:
Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden nor gardener, children nor their toys.
Evil it will not see, for evil lies
not in God's picture but in crooked eyes,
not in the source but in malicious choice,
and not in sound but in the tuneless voice.
In Paradise they look no more awry;
and though they make anew, they make no lie.
Be sure they still will make, not being dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their head,
and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
there each shall choose for ever from the All.
J R R Tolkien 1938


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