> The main difference between Pharaonic Cults and ordinary cults in my
> thinking is that ordinary cults get their magic from the Gods, Saints
> and Spirits while Pharaonic Cults get their magic from the Holy Realm,
> the magical shadow of Kethaela. People and temples may worship both
> approaches or focus on one or the other.
>
> Pharaonic Magic would be like a clan wyter (see Sartar: Kingdom of
> Heroes), save that it can be modified with visits to the Holy Realm.
> I'm dabbling with the idea that the Masters of Luck and Death have their
> own pharaonic wyters.
>
I like this quite a bit. I could imagine two variations on the idea -- sort of an "Inner" and an "Outer" approach, where an inner practitioner could develop a "Pharaonic Self" to invoke the power of Belintar-as-Holy-Country (Peter, you expressed this better in a previous post) -- giving personal benefits and (one assumes) becoming more and more like the Pharaoh until the identification is complete and the practitioner becomes Belintar (wins the Tournament). An outer practitioner would create external effects by evoking the Holy Realm to manifest in Gloranthan Reality. The City of Wonders might be the most obvious example of this -- a near-permanent merging of the Holy Realm and Glorantha (since Belintar isn't around, the City is ceasing to function as "Gloranthan reality" asserts itself).
Which might give an insight into Belintar's motives -- perhaps winning the Tournament allows Belintar to incorporate some portion of the winner and his/her/its understanding of Glorantha into the Holy Real permanently, creating a correspondence between the two, that speads and deepens the Holy Realm. Which makes the Holy Realm more complete and better able to manifest in mundane Glorantha. Eventually, the Holy Realm and Glorantha will be coterminous and Everything Will Be Great! Or something.
The downside of this is it might be a little too much like Lunarism -- a kind of Mystic understanding layered on Sorcery, Theism, Animism, etc.
Peter
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