You don't need to become a woman physically, certainly, but if you take of a woman's role in all respects, as Nandan types (or perhaps rather 'sufficiently advanced' Nandan types) do, you're essentially becoming a woman in a social and religious sense.
> In many cultures, it's
> by their tasks ('tomboys'). Orlanthi society doesn't seem to be quite like
this
> - Vingans are still considered women, it appears. So Nandans would likely
still
> be considered men, unless something magical does actually happen. That, or
> cultural values may just be uneven - women can act like men, but men who act
> like women may no longer be men. Just a few options for Your Glorantha. :)
Those cases aren't symmetrical, though. "Vinganism" is a common activity, Nandanism a relatively rare one. Whether Orlanthi society as a whole is or not is something of an open question. More of a mirror image to Nandan would be some hypothetical (?) goddess that let you make rain and thunder, and(/or) impregnate (other) women.
Vinga's mythic counterpart is Barntar, though the comparison is hardly exactly, since many men sacrifice to, and indeed to some extent identify with Barntar, since he's the god of the plough, (and to a smaller extent, it's at least alleged, cattle-tending too) which a lot more than Greg's notorious 15% of Orlanthi do. One might still compare them in terms of numbers of 'initiates', or in terms of rough numbers of people for whom that's their primary identification, or other such admittedly only semi-meaningful measures.
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