Turakian Age question: Ebistan Tarthu

[Yamo]

This site is described as "the only isolated temple willing to train priestesses" in the Hergeshite lands.

To this, I say: Huh!? The book goes into great detail about how the Hergeshite religion is heavily misogynistic. I can't imagine that the Heirakte and Lataro would allow Hergeshite priestesses to exist, no matter how far out in the countryside they were.

And what would a female Hergeshite priestess even do? I find it very hard to believe that she could ever practice her chosen trade successfully.

So...was this just a typo or was the Hergeshite priesthood's attitude toward women overstated or what?

[Gunrunner]

Maybe that's why it's the ONLY one - and isolated. Just because a land has people with a common culture doesn't mean that everybody in that region has the same viewpoints. Take almost any country in the world - there will always be groups of people with extremist ideas. Perhaps a temple that trains females would be extremist in this culture. If the Catholic church can have openly gay priests, then anything's possible right?

[Enforcer84]

And dieties love worshipers. They are probably willing to look the other way on some instances.

[Black Rose]

This site is described as "the only isolated temple willing to train priestesses" in the Hergeshite lands.

To this, I say: Huh!? The book goes into great detail about how the Hergeshite religion is heavily misogynistic. I can't imagine that the Heirakte and Lataro would allow Hergeshite priestesses to exist, no matter how far out in the countryside they were.

And what would a female Hergeshite priestess even do? I find it very hard to believe that she could ever practice her chosen trade successfully.

So...was this just a typo or was the Hergeshite priesthood's attitude toward women overstated or what?

Hey, so long as the little women know their place, and don't try to stick their nose where it don't belong, and leave the thinking to those best suited to it - i.e., men - there's no reason they can't be priestesses.

Alternately, I read a great definition of misogyny. I'll try to do it justice in paraphrase: misogynists are those men who fully grasp the power women have in this world, appreciate it, and resent its effect on them. Therefore, they do everything they can to counteract it.

[Koshka]

And what would a female Hergeshite priestess even do? I find it very hard to believe that she could ever practice her chosen trade successfully.


I can think of a couple possibilities:

1) Someone's got to handle religious services for the nuns (which the Hargeshite religion has). In the Middle Ages, that meant a male priest entering the cloistered area daily. Maybe an early Hierakte decided letting selected females go through basic priest training was better than sending a male into the convent. And a priestess could be required to live full-time in the convent, so it would have a minimal effect on the non-cloistered believers in the area.

2) Missionary work. "Don't be silly, those stories about how the Hargeshites treat women must be lies, there was a Hargeshite priestess through here just last week."