I see YT as being very selective about who is let into the cult. I also see the vast majority of YT Rune Lords as being officers in the Lunar Army. Given these assumptions, I think it would be very hard for a non-soldier to get into the cult. YT is the Lunar state warrior cult, and "state warrior" is pretty much synonymous with "soldier".YTs would probably look at non-soldiers trying to join much the same way that US Air Force pilots would look at a non-soldier wanting to learn to fly an F-16.
Even for soldiers, it would be hard for someone who was not on the "officer's track" to get in -- kind of a "good ol' boys" cult that wants to keep out the riff-raff. It would, I think, be possible for a non-soldier adventurer to join, but it would take some convincing before the YT hierarchy would let him in.
Of course one of the truisms of Glorantha is that cults vary from place to place. This would be less true of a Johnny-come-lately cult like YT, but there would probably be substantial differences between the cult as run in the Hearlands and the cult as run on the fringes of the Empire. In the borderlands the cult would be more likely to accept freelancers, irregulars, and special agents. There is an excellent writeup of a YT Lunar special agent in Strangers in Prax (Count Julan).
One of the things I think has prolonged this discussion is that Andrew is basing his statements exclusively on Culs of Prax. CoP has been out of print for a decade or more and much of the information has been superceded by later write-ups. The RQII books, while useful as background info, are very suspect, and should not be taken too seriously.
Glorantha is an evolving, ever-changing place. I think I heard somewhere that Sandy Petersen is working on an updated CoP (I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong), much the way LoT updated CoT. That, plus Soldiers of the Red Moon and Greg's new Solar/Lunar work, should pretty much relegate CoP to collector's item status.
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