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From: arak@ukc.UUCP (C.S.Welch)
Newsgroups: net.games.frp,net.nlang
Subject: Possible origin of "immolation"
Message-ID: <4849@ukc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 11-Feb-85 12:30:14 EST
Article-I.D.: ukc.4849
Posted: Mon Feb 11 12:30:14 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 18-Feb-85 06:32:22 EST
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Organization: Computing Laboratory, U of Kent at Canterbury, UK
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Xref: watmath net.games.frp:1194 net.nlang:2594


    It's a little while since the discussion on the real and assumed
    meaning of the word immolation, but I've finally managed to remember
    where I first came upon the word, and the answer would appear to have
     ome bearing on it's association with fire and flames in RPGs.

    The writer Clark Ashton Smith published a story called "The City of the
    Singing Flame" in 1931. I picked up on it in an anthology of his called
    "Out of Space and Time" published in the U.K. in the middle seventies.
    In this story, which to my mind is not one of his best, we find the 
    following passage.

    "The throng of worshippers was larger than upon my first visit. The jet
     of pure, incandescent flame was mounting steadily as we entered, and it
     sang with the pure ardor and ecstasy of a star alone in space. Again,
     with ineffable tones, it told me of the rapture of a moth-like death in
     its lofty soaring, the exultation and triumph of a momentary union with
     its elemental essence.
     The flame rose to its apex; and even for me, the mesmeric lure was well
     nigh irrestible. Many of our companions succumbed, and the first to
     immolate himself was the giant lepidopterous being. Four others, of
     diverse evolutional types, followed in appallingly quick sucession."

    It seems to me that this shows a very early connection between the word
    itelf and fire. Furthermore, if you were ignorant of the meaning of
    the word, the context (moth-like death) could easily lead to you to
    believe that immolation meant to immerse or cover yourself in flames,
    albeit as a form of suicide. (That's what I did until I looked it up
    the next day). It would be interesting to know if Gygax et al. ever
    read CAS. I reckon it's exactly the sort of thing that would appeal to
    the minds that unleashed D&D on an unsuspecting world :-)



                  "Not a lot of people know that"
   
                                                  Chris Welch
                                                  arak@ukc.UUCP