Bisociation in Scion

Posted a slightly different version of this at the white-wolf forums in response to something earlier today.

Mythology is rife with Bisociation. Bisociation is a term coined by Arthur Koestler. It refers to when something has multiple meanings and/or realities at once. It's somewhere between metaphor and contradiction. It's what powered Gnostic mystery cults in ancient days. It's superficially akin to Syncretism.

Examples relevant to Scion:
Saturn is both the barbaric Titanic father of Zeuss (aka Chronos, who ate his own children) and the merrymaking fun-god that Saturnalia celebrates. He's also the god of planting and growing grain.

Loki is both a Giant and a God. He is both a good guy and a villain. Both a humanoid and fire itself.

Most gods have multiple contradictory avatars. This is doubly true after the Romans got their hands on them. Most are also in some way metaphorical.

Helen of Troy's parents were Zeus and Leda (according to Homer and Euripedes) or Zeus and Nemesis (according to Asclepiades and pseudo-Eratosthenes). She was abducted Paris, went willingly with Paris, fled to Egypt instead, and was abducted by Theseus, depending on the author. Troy itself lies in Turkey, Greece, and England.

The holy grail is the chalice of the last supper, the cup that caught Christ's blood, the philosopher's stone of paganism, (the secret child of Christ and) Mary Magdelene, and the Merovingian bloodline. It was found by Galahad, the Templars, Indiana Jones, and Tom Hanks.

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas, Apollo's Chariot, Horus's golden barque, a bright flaming diamond orbiting the earth in a crystal sphere, just another star, and a giant nuclear furnace.

Horus, Jesus, and Mithra were all born of Virgins on the 25th of December. Christmas roughly coincides with their births, Viking Yule, Roman Saturnalia, the Solstice, and the time when Jolly Old St. Nick (not to be confused with Old Nick, unless you're really messin' with the PCs) shimmies down chimneys.

The trick to using Bisociation in Scion is to except every mythic metaphor as truth. When the players point out the contradictions, acknowledge them out-of-character, but be brief and vague about it. "Yes, that does seem to contradict, doesn't it? I wonder what that means." Fate has tied everything together in ways that make objectivity impossible.

In-character, mortal NPCs each pick a single truth (or are just clueless). Gods accept every contradictory truth from their own pantheon's point-of-view, and the Norns accept multiple trans-pantheonic truths. All other NPCs fall somewhere between those extremes.

Further reading: The best article on relating Bisociation to gaming is Kenneth Hite's "Two-World Minimum: Bisociation and the Art of High Weirdness" which originally appeared in Pyramid, but is reprinted in Supressed Transmission: The First Broadcast