> It doesn't seem like there's a good reason to stop
> people though. If you're in a situation where it's
> reasonable to do it, you do it.
The difficult question is what is "reasonable" of course. To an extent, Common magic is based on this premise. I may be a worshiper of Orlanth and the Storm Pantheon, but the spirits that live in the blackberry bush give us their magic if we perform their rites
>
> There are places in my game where the farmers worship
> at their Churches by day and go out to perform
> Barntar's rites by night. Think about all of the
> 'pagan' influence most of the holidays we celebrate
> have.
>
I think this is what HQ describes as "Misapplied Worship" - We take the pagan Fertitlity festival or Rebirth Festival and celebrate them in a Christian manner as Easter or Christmas
> Do any of you have friends from other religions? Have
> you gone to their ceremonies and performed their
> rites? Did you get anything out of it?
>
With the caveat that these are likely to be the "public" rites and
only allow you to paricipate at the lowest level of magic on offer -
so it *may* be possible to join an Animist tradition, and join in
the ecstatic worship ceremonies in order to qualify for the
possession/use of Tradition Charms, or to join a Church congregation
and thus qualify for the liturgists blessings while still belonging
to another (type of) religion.
Outsiders are generally not invited to perform the "inner rites" of
a religion.
Also in terms of getting the ongoing magical benefits of membership of a religion you need to continue to worship and to devote 10% of your time to the religion. Popping in to your local "Ship of Life" Church for a one off blessing might work, but if you fail to keep up your participation in the Praxian worship ceremonies then your Tradition Charms will cease working...
> If you have a friend you are close to who worships The
> Sun or Horses or whatever, and you get invited to go
> to church with him... you have a choice... go to
> church or not. It's up to you.
>
You also need to bear in mind the opinion of your own religion. Not all of them are happy for you to go off and worship other gods. The first commandments are to Have no other Gods and not to worship graven images. Joining most religions in rules terms means passing a test using your appropriate tradition or cultural knowledge, which may mean accepting two contradictory beliefs, and doing so with sufficient conviction that both sets of magic continue to work for you. (Doing so, of course is to become illuminated, which in and of itself may be sufficent reason to hate, villify and persecute you in some cultures, even before you start espousing foreign and unnatural practices as being acceptable...)
You may be a practising Christian and attend a Hindu friends traditional wedding service, but it is very unlikely that you could be a practicing Christian and a practicing Hindu at the same time (especially with the knowledge and acceptance of the members and heirarchy of both religions....)
There are (always) exceptions - the Japanese merging of Shinto and Bhuddhism is the one that springs immediately to mind (which may just be the product of too many Samurai RPG's...) But this is the RW equivalent of, for example the Pol-Joni or the Torkani, where the mixture of relgions is the cultural norm, and doesn't mean the average member of the culture is going to be able (or even desire) to join an additional religion, especially one that may be at odds with their exisiting beliefs (Islam, for example in the real world, or the Rokari church in Glorantha)
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