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 GodsThis is a short narrative and relevant references references from the Books where "Gods" are mentioned. I make no pronouncements on these matters, but report them as I find them. Arrive at your own conclusions. I wish you well, Fogaban Who did the common Gorean, be he of Ar or Torvaldsland or The Wagon Peoples or the Barrens venerate as Gods? During his instruction in Gorean life by Torm, Tarl mentions this.
However, Tarl did become familiar with offering a libation to the Priest-Kings.
Mentioned another time and happening in the presence of one of the Wagon Peoples, notice the thoughts of Kamchak.
Now, just because Tarl was willing to offer a libation to the Priest-Kings does not mean he was always willing to obey them, or at least, what some say is obedience.
When Goreans do pray, they do so standing up.
Below are listed the "Gods" I have found within the series. The Nameless One The Old Gods The Priest-Kings The Red Savages The Sea The Sky The Sun The Other, Stranger Gods
"Do you worship the Nameless One?" asked Cabot. "What is worship?" asked a Kur. "Do not be misled into heresy," said a Kur. "There are only Eleven Faces of the Nameless One." "Some say many," said another. "They are mistaken," said the Kur. "Why eleven?" asked Cabot. "Who knows," he said. "That is the number." "Why not five, or ten or fifteen?" asked Cabot. "Or a thousand?" "We do not know," said another. "Eleven is the number." "That is the teaching," said another. "I do not understand much of this," said Cabot. "Do not despair," said a Kur. "We, too, cannot understand it." "Much is beyond the scope of the finite mind," said another. "Inconsistencies are to be ignored?" asked Cabot. "Rather, transcended," said a Kur. "What if Agamemnon dies?" asked Cabot. "How can he die?" asked another. "He is the Eleventh face of the Nameless One," said another. "But what if he were to die?" asked Cabot. "That which speaks through the eleventh mask cannot die," said a Kur. "It is one, the Nameless One," said another. "Agamemnon is mortal," said Cabot.
The men of Torvaldsland, on the whole, I knew, while tending to respect Priest-Kings, did not accord them special reverence. They held to old gods, and old ways. The religion of the Priest-Kings, institutionalized and ritualized by the castle of Initiates, had made little headway among the primitive men to the north. It had, however, taken hold in many towns, such as Kassau. But Ivar Forkbeard had come in death, if not in life, to the temple of Priest-Kings, betraying the old gods, to have his bones anointed with the grease of Priest-Kings. No more would he make over his ale, with his closed fist, the sign of the hammer. "Praise be to Odin!" he cried. Standing on the broken fragments of the circle, Ivar Forkbeard cried out, his ax lifted, and his left hand, too, "Praise be to Odin!" And then, throwing his ax to his left shoulder, holding it there by his left hand the turned and faced the Sardar, and lifted his fist, clenched. It was not only a sign of defiance to Priest-Kings, but the fist, the sign of the hammer. It was the sign of Thor. Religious rune stones are repainted by rune-priests on the vigil of the feast-season of Odin, which on Gor, takes place in the fall. It coursed through the thronged warriors; it seemed a tangible thing, communicating itself from one to another; it was almost as though one could see it, but one could not see it, only its effects. I could trace its passage. It seemed first a ghastly infection, a plague; then it seemed like a fire, invisible and consuming; then it seemed like the touching of these men by the hands of gods, but no gods I knew, none to whom a woman or child might dare pray, but the gods of men, and of the men of Torvaldsland, the dread, harsh divinities of the cruel north, the gods of Torvaldsland. And the touch of these gods, like their will, was terrible. In Gorean legends the Priest-Kings are said to have formed man from the mud of the earth and the blood of tarns. In the legends of Torvaldsland, man has a different origin. Gods, meeting in council, decided to form a slave for themselves, for they were all gods, and had no slaves. They took a hoe, an instrument for working the soil, and put it among them. They then sprinkled water upon this implement and rubbed upon it sweat from their bodies. From this hoe was formed most men. On the other hand, that night, one of the gods, curious, or perhaps careless, or perhaps driven from the hall and angry, threw down upon the ground his own great ax, and upon this ax he poured paga and his own blood, and the ax laughed and leaped up, and ran away. The god, and all the gods, could not catch it, and it became, it is said, the father of the men of Torvaldsland.
The more common expression for the sun was Tor-tu-Gor, which means Light Upon the Home Stone. There was a sect among the people that worshipped the sun, I later learned, but it was insignificant both in numbers and power when compared with the worship of the Priest-Kings who, whatever they were, were accorded the honors of divinity. Theirs, it seems, was the honor of being enshrined as the most ancient gods of Gor, and in time of danger a prayer to the Priest-Kings might escape the lips of even the bravest men. The utter masters of that world, which we will call Gor, are alleged to be the Sardar, an expression commonly translated as Priest-Kings, a word, we suppose, which tells us less of their nature than of the awe they inspire. Certainly it is a word suggesting power, perhaps of an unusually potent and unnatural sort, and mystery. One gathers the Priest-Kings are worshipped as gods, which flattery, if they have taken note of it, they apparently tolerate, and perhaps, for their own purposes, even indulge, and encourage. The Priest-Kings of Gor, who served as the divinities of this rude planet, inspired little but awe, and occasionally fear. Men lived in a truce with the Priest-Kings, keeping their laws and festivals, making the required sacrifices and libations, but, on the whole, forgetting about them as much as possible. It was not far to the fair of En'Kara, one of the four great fairs held in the shadow of the Sardar during the Gorean year, and I soon walked slowly down the long central avenue between the tents, the booths and stalls, the pavilions and stockades of the fair, toward the high, brassbound timber gate, formed of black logs, beyond which lies the Sardar itself, the sanctuary of this world's gods, known to the men below the mountains, the mortals, only as Priest-Kings. In Gorean legends the Priest-Kings are said to have formed man from the mud of the earth and the blood of tarns. Most, I suspect, I feared that, given the doings on the beach at Port of Samnium and the fires in the woods, which men now strove to extinguish, it might have attracted the attention of the denizens of the palisaded, gloomy Sardar, the attention of the gods of fresh, green, beautiful, perilous Gor, the mysterious, mighty Priest-Kings of Gor.
Too, if one regards these things as of any interest, the counting of coup and intertribal warfare lends color, excitement and zest to the lives of the red savages. They live in a world in which danger is not unknown. Surely they could live otherwise, but they have not chosen to do so. They live with the stars and the winds, and the kaiila and kailiauk. They have not chosen to revere the fat-bellied, beer-drinking gods of more sedentary peoples. Too, of course, it should be noted that the counting of coup tends, statistically, to ensure that it is the stronger and healthier, the more alert, the more intelligent and sharper-sensed who will reproduce themselves. An adult Herlit is often four feet in height and has a wingspan of some seven to eight feet. The hunter must beware of being blinded or having an artery slashed in the struggle. The fifteen tail feathers are perhaps most highly prized. They are some fourteen to fifteen inches in height, and yellow with black tips. They are particularly significant in the marking of coups. The wing, or pinion, feathers are used for various ceremonial and religious purposes. The breath feathers, light and delicate, from the base of the bird's tail, are used, with the tail feathers, in the fashioning of bonnets or complex headdresses. They, like the wing feathers, may also be used for a variety of ceremonial or religious purposes.
After a lean dark winter spring is welcome. The shed doors are opened, the vessels on their rollers emerge, into the light, as though awakening, and the rigging, refitting, caulking, and painting begins. It is lovely when, later, the ships, wreathed with flowers, to singing and music, are brought to the water. Oil, and wine, and salt are poured into Thassa, the oil to calm her waters, the wine that she may be warmed and pleased, and the salt, in its preciousness, for honor, prestige, life, and hope, and, too, that it may be mixed with her own, that she may accept the ship as one with her, to be sheltered and protected, as sister, as kin.
I suppose the Tuchuks worship nothing, in the common sense of that word, but it is true they hold many things holy, among them the bosk and the skills of arms, but chief of the things before which the proud Tuchuk stands ready to remove his helmet is the sky, the simple, vast beautiful sky, from which falls the rain that, in his myths, formed the earth, and the bosks, and the Tuchuks. It is to the sky that the Tuchuks pray when they pray, demanding victory and luck for themselves, defeat and misery for their enemies. The Tuchuk, incidentally, like others of the Wagon Peoples, prays only when mounted, only when in the saddle and with weapons at hand; he prays to the sky not as a slave to a master, nor a servant to a god, but as warrior to a Ubar; the women of the Wagon Peoples, it might be mentioned, are not permitted to pray;
The more common expression for the sun was Tor-tu-Gor, which means Light Upon the Home Stone. There was a sect among the people that worshipped the sun, I later learned, but it was insignificant both in numbers and power when compared with the worship of the Priest-Kings who, whatever they were, were accorded the honors of divinity. Theirs, it seems, was the honor of being enshrined as the most ancient gods of Gor, and in time of danger a prayer to the Priest-Kings might escape the lips of even the bravest men.
The figure, as it could, was standing, just within the retaining wall. I did not know if it were praying, perhaps to the Priest-Kings, perhaps to other, stranger gods, or not. Goreans pray standing. |       
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