More about praxians later, but you are right about the hsunchen. As David Cake pointed out, animism is more than shamanic spirit manipulation, which I failed to take in concern.
> >But I think that a
> >Malkioni commoner's magic is very limited as he would
> >normally trust the local wizard to supply the magic he needs
> >and is entitled to.
>
> This isn't the Malkioni approach to magic. Wizards do not
> cast spells for the average Malkioni because there are too
> few wizards for that purpose.
No, the wizard doesn't cast minor spells on his congregation, but he does perform all the communal magic which keeps the community safe and strong, the blessings and exorcism that makes minor, personal spells less necessary.
> >Bad phrasing, I was comparing a common Stygian to a Malkioni
> >adept.
>
> Well that's still a fallacious comparison to use. One should
> compare similarly powered magicians to compare the magic
> capabilities of both cultures. Unless you had some other
> meaning of adept in mind?
Take it from another angle then, on a fictive abstract power/number scale you have perhaps 1 sorcery adept with power 10 and 100 malkioni commoners with power 1, 1 stygian adept with power 8 and 100 stygian commoners with power 3. Don't take the numbers as any absolute.
> >In Sandy's
> >Pamaltelan work, they seem about 50/50 theist/shamanic.
>
> Sandy's work had the Doraddi similar in practice to the
> Horned Man or the Hsunchen. Any theistic elements in
> the Doraddi cults are largely an artefact of the RQ3
> rules IMO.
That is most probably right. But given the amount of god myths, I don't think the Doraddi are pure animists, mostly so yes, but with a touch of theism.
> >I think they are a shamanic/theist mix, but with the proportions
> >reversed as compared to the Orlanthi. The religious leaders are
> >shamans, but the Paps seems more theist and there is a cult of
> >sorts of the Storm Bull.
>
> The issue was generally accessible magic. Arguments about the
> nature of the priesthood at the Paps or the Storm Bullies
> is irrelevant.
This particular argument was not about the accessibility of magic, it was specifically about the point that the Praxians have a theist element, as indicated by those examples.
> Most Praxians use animist magic for their
> daily lives and it provides them with as much magic as the
> average Orlanthi.
Yes.
> >I think the muxed mystic traditions are rather
> >weak magically, as mysticism abjures all magic use.
>
> I don't think the magic gained from worshipping an
> eastern god (who is really a mystical concept if I
> understand Greg correctly) is any weaker than
> theistic magic.
Worshipping liberated gods (Mairnali fashion) gives you a path to liberation, but little magic. High Priesthood (worshipping the High Gods with the most ancient rites) gives no magic. Worshipping a non-liberated god in the east is theism. Is there something else you are thinking of here?
> >Martial
> >arts is not necessarily a mixed tradition btw, the first
> >martial artist, Darja Danad, was a mashunasanic monk for
> >example.
>
> He learned secret stories from the Elders and had become
> obsessed with Kabalt before becoming a Monk. Hence I
> don't think he was a pure mystic.
Actually, he was. I found this utterly weird as well. The explanation isn't completely convincing: the trick is that he was around in the Atrocity War, when everything around him was quite sucky, so bad indeed that when he had mastered an orthodox school of mysticism (based on Mashunasan's teaching) his enemies were struck by the Liberation Bolt when they attacked him, and there were enemies everywhere. Later martial artists couldn't do the same stunt, because the world wasn't as bad, so they had to adopt other basic methods.
The Sivolic school, which also has martial arts methods in its progeny, is a manifest school, whose pure or mixed status is rather confusing.
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