To me it is entirely logical that you don't get as much back from Orlanth by venerating him as a Saint (or worshipping an aspect of Orlanth as a spirit) as you do from worshipping him theistically and trying to emulate him. However that same worshipper probably has other irons in the fire, and gets other magic by other routes. Their magic may be impressively flexible, but they will probably be a jack of all trades, and master of none.
Of course the old HW "misapplied worship" rules covered a different situation as well -- the people who worship a Saint as if they are a God (wasn't there a region in which some people worshipped St Gerlant theistically?) To me this is a lot more problematic. If Saints are no more (or less) than master cartographers of the Essence Plane, I'm not sure how I can rationalise this sort of worship delivering any useful return for the worshipper.
I'm not bothered about animists worshipping 'proper gods' through a spirit cult -- they interact with only a fraction of the god's power and get only limited access to that god's magic, but they don't have to show the same level of devotion to the god-- they just have to keep a geas and a holy day and maybe a few other basic restrictions. It is pretty much a self-correcting mechanism.
In old RQ terms I use something like the old spirit cult rules that were reproduced in the Cults Compendium (and first published in the RQ Companion?). In HW terms I would probably treat it like learning a feat or spell from a god other than your own.
I suppose this leaves questions about the division between the Spirit Plane and the God Plane unanswered. My initial answer to this is that the animist magician is interacting with the God plane in a limited way, but he/she may not see it in those terms. It is enough for the animiist to know that these spirits are too big and powerful to summon and bind, and have to be worshipped in exchange for their blessings instead.
I guess it is a bit like the difference in Call of Cthulhu magic between an otherworld creature you Summon, a demon/god you Call and a demon/god that you Contact. Animists dealing with gods use something very like aContact spell.
Changes brought about by HQ taking essence plane magic back to its more humanistic, neo-platonic origins c. Cults of Terror, raise new questions about what happens when an essence plane magician venerates a pagan god as a Saint.
When one vernates an 'orthodox' Saint, one learns to walk in the steps the Saint has trod across the Essence Plane. The power bestowed by a Saint is the power of knowledge -- how to work part of the Essence plane in a particular way. The magical energy that makes it happen comes from the Essence Plane, not the Saint. It is probably also easier for liturgists to access magic this way than through the more arcane, cabbalistic grimoires of 'proper' wizards and sorcerors.
Can one really see the veneration of the pagan god in the same terms?
One possibility is that you can't. Malkioni sects which venerate pagan gods as saints are all a bit henotheistic or Stygian, and their worship combines 'normal' Malkioni practices and a relationship with pagan gods which in form looks like the veneration of a saint, but in practice the transactions of magical energy involved are more like a 'spirit cult'.
Another possibility is that to these Malkioni the pagan gods are anthropomorphised runes , so their myths can be seen as ways of mapping and manipulating the Essence Plane just as the lives and grimoires of a more conventional Malkioni saint can.
However this last hypothesis needs to explain the metaphysics of how beings from the God Plane can leave something on the Essence Plane that those venerating the god/saint can follow. Maybe they interact with the God Plane without realising it (though previously this was said to be the secret only of Aeolian magic?)
Maybe it is also all getting a bit Godlearnerish ...
Richard Hayes
To: WorldofGlorantha_at_yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, 5 December 2011, 21:31
Subject: Re: Misapplied Magic
I got into Glorantha with HQ1, and the setting I fell in love with was the Trader Princes & Wenelia
/// So did I, and so went the Fay Jee "blue falcons" campaign for 32 games in 3 years !
Was misapplied magic purely a mechanical artifact of HQ1, or was it an attempt to mechanically "model" something that an extant element of the setting? In other words, was there a previous, in-setting idea that venerating Orlanth as a saint was fundamentally inferior to making sacrifices to him as a god?
/// I never cared much about the "misapplied worship" rule, so no extra HP to buy "spells from a God" or "spirits from a Saint". I never used these rules. Instead, what might happen is there is a limit to Magics learned in a "wrong" context. But said limits were never applied. We thus had an animist of the raccoon totem who was also a pretty good "sorceress", etc.
I just didn't have the heart to make Magics acquistion more restrictive.
Yahoo! Groups Links
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]