A Great[er] God:
o Is the Owner of a Great (or Core) Rune. (One might interpret "Owner" as "clearly pre-eminent theistic expression", perhaps.) o Is one of the (small number of) defining gods of a whole society, in particular the complete expression of one path therein (such as gender roles, or some other "covering partition" of all the necessary functions of that society). o Has a number of distinct aspects, recognised as parts of the whole, but practically, worshipped separately. o Has 9 Dubyas or so.
First of all it seems to be worth making the point that in practice, all these do seem to be fairly highly correlated, at the very least; one can trundle down the old RQ boxed set list and "tick off" most of them on all three of the other criteria, I think.
This thread seems to me to turn on a stronger proposition (which I've not seen stated explicitly as such, but which seem to be lurking behind much of the heat therein): which is that the such definitions are _always_ equivalent in extension in Glorantha (or that some of the senses aren't really valid, but that the remainder are indeed equivalent). That, I think, would be to overstate thing. Mastakos is cited as the Movement owner, but seems unlikely to qualify under any of the others. Humakt also seems "iffy" to me on some of them, though this one is obfuscated by various appeals to some sort of "Great Humakt" of which the Heortling deity is just a cultural perspective. (So why still call him Humakt at all, Peter L. reasonably asks...) However, these have already been thrashed over in painful detail, which I don't wish to repeat, except as to put them in the context of these definitions as hostages to fortune...
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