Well, you're asking all the right questions, and hopefully Greg and Jeff will get you some feedback... :)
In the meantime, here's my personal view on this, and I hope I don't get too Glorantha-Digest-y, or Greg might spank me :D
> If one must be a woman to be initiated into the mysteries of Ernalda, maybe one has to be a man to be initiated into the ways of Orlanth?
I think this is actually a false dichotomy.
Ernalda is the women's goddess, and Orlanth is the men's god. Other gods & goddesses and other cults exist, but that's your basic setup.
However, the orlanthi religion is very fundamentally polytheistic, so that ALL men worship the women's goddess, and ALL women worship the men's god. And ALL the other gods & goddesses and ALL the other cults for good measure.
The Orlanthi try from the *religious* point of view to make sense out of all this, with taboos, cult strictures, social mores, education, ritual, myth, and other such means to encourage people to follow existing paths -- but spiritually, there is NOTHING to prevent Ernalda calling a man into her service, nor Orlanth calling a woman.
Nothing. At. All.
The religion tells us that these are "women with penises" (and yes, quite a few of them very well may be) ; and that these are "women doing the work of men" (and yes, quite a few of them are doing exactly that).
Spiritually though, these are people who have either been chosen by the god or goddess, or who have chosen the god or goddess, for whichever reasons of nature or spirituality or destiny or sexuality or MGF or accident or weirdness or whatever.
And have proven through HeroQuesting, even just basic initiatory or Sacred Time HQ, that such are their identities.
People *try* and make sense out of all that, and tell each other stories and myths about who these people are, and how they came to be, but the truth is that each individual's call is unique, and different, in the eyes of Orlanth and Ernalda -- but the individuals themselves can have trouble understanding the meaning of these unusual callings.
The cults of Nandan and Vinga provide answers, support, and meaning for these people, as well as a place in society, friendship, and magic.
I don't think that they really care if you're an utterly feminine woman with a penis, or just some man that Ernalda has chosen for herself because he's absolutely fantabulous with children, and an amazing artist at the loom weave. :)
> If so, does this mean that Vingans must really be men, despite appearances to the contrary? Because Vinga is the way "women" worship Orlanth, just as Nandan is the way "men" worship Ernalda (but by so doing, they prove that they are women really)
I would say yes and no -- but Vingans can always exercise a legal right to be recognised as men. And I think they can exercise a legal right to be recognised as women, too. Their choice :)
> Also should Vingans "have relationships" with (other?) men, or with (other?) women.
The Orlanthi allow same sex marriage. Whether the legalities of male versus female identity are just fig leaves or have deep ritual and mythic significance belongs to YGWV.
Nandani can of course marry Vingans, and I would think that in such poetic cases, the Vingan would always be the groom, and the Nandani the bride. I think clan members would insist on it, if only for the entertainment value ;)
> Even if they don't marry, that doesn't necessarily commit them to celibacy (which seems quite unOrlanthi). In my Glorantha Vingans are often "ladettes".There are some who do either, and maybe even some who do both (or neither), but they do whatever they do outside marriage (and this is acceptable). Indeed some early/unofficial write-ups of Vinga suggested that the red hair dye doubled as a contraceptive, and gave Vingans a degree of 'sexual liberation'-- is this still the prevailing orthodoxy?
The Starbuck character in the revamped Battlestar Galactica is pretty close to how I would envision a Vingan.
Women's fertility is a very strange thing, even in RW -- I had a very good friend whose desire not to have children was so strong she actually stopped ovulating, and didn't have the corresponding periods either -- then she had some deep change of mind, and it all started up again, and she had a child.
Otherwise I've never really liked the contraceptive red hair stuff, it just seems like an easy cop-out. A Vingan's sexuality should be defined in-game, not waved away for convenience' sake (unless that's what GM and player both want of course, and fair enough, not everyone wants such complexities in their game -- but really, female characters in games are very often all magically immune to pregnancy and VD etc anyway ;-) ).
> In my Glorantha Vingans are usually unmarried but need not be celibate. Vingans are also reasonably free to marry men and rejoin Ernalda worship if they choose. Some do, some don't.
OTOH I believe it's a fairly strong taboo that you can't swap from Orlanth initiation to Ernalda, or vice-versa...
All just IMO, and YGWV
Julian Lord
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