I think that the Mayan spiritual leaders, from what I've read on them, would be classified as either priests, or priest/shamans from a RQ point of view. There _are_ highly-restricted shamans on Glorantha, who deal only with a certain limited group of spirits, and who receive a wide range of Rune Magic. For human groups, this is no more than a step along the road to losing one's Shamanry and replacing it without outright Theism.
Sandy >Take a shaman away from his homeland and the spirits he
knows, and he
>is far weaker than a priest, who in turn is weaker than a sorcerer
Peter Met > Although this is true for Hsunchen Shamans, I don't
think a Horse >nomad shaman who roams far will be as badly affected
as a Priest from one
>of the East Isles.
Yes, well we were talking about Hsunchen and hunter-gatherer cultures. Hunter-gatherers who evolve into nomad herders will evolve down a different path, but the result will still be the loss of Hsunchen characteristics -- just as the possibly-Hsunchen Praxian tribes, and the certainly-Hsunchen Pent horse nomads have lost almost all trace of this.
And the priests of the East Isles are limited in dozens of ways. Which is why most magic there is performed via sorcery. The priests are viewed almost exclusively as religious and political figures, rather than magic support.
As you say, Peter, there are certainly cases where the Hsunchen are absorbed by a greater population, or exterminated rather than accepted. But there are as clearly cases of conversion.
Sandy P.
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #451
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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