Now, I should note that I do not necessarily share Mr. Uzko's opinions. But I think the Lunar elite would be well-advised to give them a good reading.
I developed my personal thoughts a little more in an email to Gerak Kag; I might as well quote myself. To wit:
My "aha" moment was when I was reading the sourcebook "Glorantha IttHW" (I think), and it mentioned that Lunar missionaries in Malkioni lands present the Seven Mothers (and other Lunar mortals-become-gods) as "saints", since "saint" is a Malkioni concept that would let them grasp the Lunar emphasis on apotheosis.
I thought, Waitaminute--GIttHW says Lunars are theists who, in the West, present themselves as monotheists/socerers. How do we know that it isn't the opposite? How do we know that they aren't monotheists who (in Dara Happa/Kerofinela/etc) present themselves as theists? Or mystics (don't forget Nysalor & Taraltara) or animists (Jakaleel et al) presenting themselves as theists or sorcerors?
In actuality, I assume the Lunar elite are God-learner type synthesists, who think you can play it all four ways whenever you like (and like the God-learners, I think they're cruising for a cosmic bruising). But I think the typical Lunar-on-the-street thinks the Lunar way is however the local priest spins it. Praxian Lunars think it's animistic, Dara Happans think it's solar-theistic, etc.--and when those unwashed masses find out that the faith is presented differently elsewhere in the empire, they'll begin to wonder (like my uzko) whether the elite really believe anything at all.
...since the Lunars are so often compared to the Roman empire, we might want to recall Gibbon's words about Roman religion--to the common man, all religions were equally true; to the philosophers, all were equally false; to the magistrates, all were equally useful. And as it happened, this was not a stable state of affairs--when the people tired of being told that "Zeus" and "Jove" and "Amun" and "Wotan" were all equally valid perspectives on the Divine Principle, they ended up joining cults that actually believed something and knew what it was--cults of strange, anti-Roman Eastern gods, like Semiramis and Osiris and Christos.
The Lunars may be due for something like that. More likely, they'll collapse in civil war, or get stomped on by the next End-of-Age Cosmic Asskicking.
Just my $2e-2...
--AMS
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