Greyhawk Supplement "Gate" Spell: The Shining One?

[cometaryorbit]

The Gate spell in Supplement I: Greyhawk says: "Employment of this spell opens a cosmic portal and allows an ultra-powerful being (such as Odin, Crom, Set, Cthulhu, the Shining One, a demi-god, or whatever) to come to this plane."

The other names are easily recognizable, but who/what is "the Shining One"?

(The Known World/Mystara had an Immortal called "The Shining One", aka Kurtulmak patron of kobolds, but that's waaaaay in the future at this point... Though that name might come from this reference for all I know.)

[gemini476]

I'm going to hazard a guess that it's Belenus, although I don't know what material Gygax was pulling from here. He doesn't show up in Vol.4's Celtic Mythos, however, so maybe he was basing it on some pulp interpretation of the god?

[delta]

Apr 10, 2020 13:03:17 GMT -6 cometaryorbit said:

The Gate spell in Supplement I: Greyhawk says: "Employment of this spell opens a cosmic portal and allows an ultra-powerful being (such as Odin, Crom, Set, Cthulhu, the Shining One, a demi-god, or whatever) to come to this plane."

The other names are easily recognizable, but who/what is "the Shining One"?

I also had to ask around about this in the past. It's from Merritt, The Moon Pool (1918-1919). See Chapter 13, "Yolara, Priestess of the Shining One", etc. Available at Project Gutenberg.

[cometaryorbit]

Ah, cool, thank you! I really need to read that story...

[geoffrey]

Delta is definitely right about the Shining One.

In my opinion, A. Merritt has 3 must-read novels:

The Moon Pool
The Face in the Abyss
Dwellers in the Mirage

[aldarron]

Huh, I would have thought the reference was common knowledge. Well, keep in mind that Gygax was a Jehovah's Witness. So that's his touchstone for the euphemism, but it's pretty common in American religious circles generally.

"The Shining One" derives from Isaiah 14:12, and (since I guess I should stop making assumptions about what people know) that is an "Old Testament" book of prophecy in the Bible, dating in its initial form to being a couple centuries shy of 3000 years old.

Here is the verse in an excellent and recent translation:

How you have fallen from heaven,
you bright morning star(b), son of the dawn! (EHV)

The footnote reads "b The term morning star here refers to the king of Babylon, but the Latin form of his name, Lucifer, has become a name for Satan."

So anyway, traditional versions like the King James or the Duoay-Rheims use the latin word "Lucifer" instead of "bright morning star" because that was the word used in Jerome's latin translation from way back when, and the translators took it to be a proper name. It is the only time the word Lucifer appears in the Bible, btw.

Now when theologians of the 19th and 20th century became aware of the problem surrounding the word lucifer, their go to resource was (and still is really) Strongs Concordance. In explaining the meaning of the original Hebrew phrase behind the translation of "Lucifer" in this verse, one interpretation given among others was "the shinning one".

Folks pickup up on that phrase and it became a fairly common lingo in religious circles to refer to Satan, or "The Devil".

The JW's use it too, as I mentioned, and you can see their explanation HERE. If you go to their version of the Bible (The New World Translation), here is how they render the verse

"12 How you have fallen from heaven,
O shining one, son of the dawn!
How you have been cut down to the earth,
You who vanquished nations!"

Long story short, The Shinning One is Satan.

[Deleted]

Good gate stuff.

[Malchor]

New thread, merged into the above one:

Greyhawk, under 8th Level M-U spells, is the spell the Gate, p. 28:

Gate: Employment of this spell opens a cosmic portal and allows an ultra-pow- erful being (such as Odin, Crom, Set, Cthulhu, the Shining One, a demi-god, or whatever) to come to this plane. It is recommended that the user of this spell have a highly valid reason for summoning such aid. The name of the being desired must be called when the spell is cast. There is a 95% chance that the called being will come, 5% chance for some other being coming instead. There is also a 5% chance that whatever shows up will simply return immediately after observing the situation.

What or who is the Shining One? Is this from mythology (perhaps Frey), fiction (some Appendix N novel), an Angel, a monotheistic deity, something else?

[Deleted]

I haven't read the book myself, but I think I read on Dragonsfoot many years ago that this was a possible reference to Abraham Merritt's "The Moon Pool".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Pool

Always made sense, in my mind, as the setting described in "The Moon Pool" seems be similar to what Mr Gygax would later describe in the T-A-GDQ modules for AD&D. Probably he got his inspiration for the Drow here.

[Zenopus]

A new thread on the same topic has been merged into this older one, see above.

[Malchor]

Jul 9, 2020 13:34:05 GMT -6 @rafael said:

I haven't read the book myself, but I think I read on Dragonsfoot many years ago that this was a possible reference to Abraham Merritt's "The Moon Pool".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Pool

Always made sense, in my mind, as the setting described in "The Moon Pool" seems be similar to what Mr Gygax would later describe in the T-A-GDQ modules for AD&D. Probably he got his inspiration for the Drow here.

From the wiki (saving other time to look), "The entity is called either the Dweller or the Shining One."

Well...that book just move quickly towards the top of my reading list.

[talysman]

Jul 9, 2020 16:59:52 GMT -6 Malchor said:

Jul 9, 2020 13:34:05 GMT -6 @rafael said:

I haven't read the book myself, but I think I read on Dragonsfoot many years ago that this was a possible reference to Abraham Merritt's "The Moon Pool".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Pool

Always made sense, in my mind, as the setting described in "The Moon Pool" seems be similar to what Mr Gygax would later describe in the T-A-GDQ modules for AD&D. Probably he got his inspiration for the Drow here.

From the wiki (saving other time to look), "The entity is called either the Dweller or the Shining One."

Well...that book just move quickly towards the top of my reading list.

All I will add to this thread is that it's a great book. Not only the source of a good chunk of the Lost TV series, but you'll notice its influence on Lovecraft (in particular "The Call of Cthulhu") and B movies like The Mole People. It's like discovering the fossil ancestor of hundreds or thousands of books, stories, films, and TV shows.

Edit to Add: I guess I should mention for those who haven't read "The Moon Pool" but have seen Lost, The Shining One would basically be the smoke monster.

[howandwhy99]

Jul 9, 2020 20:18:59 GMT -6 talysman said:

It's like discovering the fossil ancestor of hundreds or thousands of books, stories, films, and TV shows.

I had a similar experience a few years ago upon my first viewing of the Street Fighter movie* and its sequel. It's as if every element of kungfu film pastiche and kungfu anime had an Ur-film wherein everything was fresh and being done for the first time.

*When my younger friends asked "which one?", listing off bad 90s b-movie cast members, I said, "the real one. You know, with Sonny Chiba". Circa 1974-75, they are indeed the real ones.

[Malchor]

It appears the Celtic deity Belenos is sometimes referred to as "the Shining One."