Alex

On 9/16/2021 at 3:39 PM, Akhôrahil said:

Of course, possession is nine-tenths of the law, and a lot of this might be a legal fiction, ceremoniously maintained. If an Earth temple tries to strip a tribe of its ancient lands, it'd better have the military backing required, or it's not happening. Your second quote supports this, too.

Which it might, if this is a "tribe vs clan" type of power struggle.  If it's more a "Storm vs Earth" one, then as jajagappa says, we might be more into "10 plagues" territory.

On 9/16/2021 at 1:48 PM, Joerg said:

There is no requirement to be initiated into any cult at all. A person responsible to lead a household or a stead does have to be an adult, though, initiated into adulthood by rites recognized by the community, and they must be initiated into the community connected to the lease.

What is required is lay membership, at the time of the grant of the lease in good standing, and some form of tithing to the cult(s) regardless of actual initiation.

I think this maybe comes down to what you see as a "normal" cult-membership status, either IYG or in a particular location.  For me, the average Orlanthi clan is pretty initiation-crazed, so it'd be the normal expectation for such an important role, and an "if not why not" special-pleading situation otherwise.  If lay membership is the local norm, then grand, so!

On 9/16/2021 at 1:48 PM, Joerg said:

There are at least two different concepts of stead, too - one is that of the economic unit of agricultural production on a hide, the other is the grouping of households that make up a hamlet or local cluster of farms.

Yeah, the "holder" of a single hide wouldn't be reckoned as a carl socially.  This might vary quite a bit from clan to clan, but I see the steads as being generally on the large side, with just a handful of main ones, and maybe a long tail of smaller ones in a different socio-economic niche.  They're not really a "nuclear family" sort of society.  Though nor are running Collective Farms:  someone may have day-to-day responsibility for and use of a hide without being seen as a steadholder more formally.  Sorta making them the tenant of a tenant of a tenant, or thereabouts.

On 1/23/2021 at 2:08 PM, Jeff said:

Prokaryotes ("before nut") fit within the God Learner schemes as life before Flamal, Mee Vorala, or Triolina. Or maybe the embryonic stuff that was later worked into those forms. They are entirely hypothetical of course, but then again, so is that entire schematic.

Ah, gotcha.  I think.  So they're kinda saying this is the Primordial Sludge (or should I say Ursuppe, for fellow Doris & Frank fans!), according to the divinations of top Jrusteli sorcerers, and their stab at an Eldritch Wizardry Standard Model.  Rather then them having a 20th-century take on the distinction between prokaryotes, protozoa, yeasts, and other such unicellular malarkey.

Slightly jarring terminology, but then again we'd a similar complaint about Essences, and any number of other Western concepts, so pick yer poison, i guess.  Or perhaps I should say, choose the form of the nomenclature Destructor!

On 1/26/2021 at 9:24 AM, Darius West said:

I 100% guarantee that is not the case.  Dayzatar is SUPPOSED to be THE Yelm Pantheon mystical tradition.  I don't want to do a literature search to prove the point, but I wouldn't raise the point if I didn't know it to be true.

I'd say the sources are a little mixed on that one.  At least if you count oral ones.  I can recall Greg on a couple of occasions saying "those guys are mystical materialists", and expanding on the point somewhat.  And then on another, having that quoted back to him by some obnoxious pedant -- not excluded to have been your present humble scribe -- and saying something along the lines of, "yeah well, I say a lot of things".

FWIW it has has a strong whiff of High Theism/self-sacrificial mysticism to me, at any rate.  Somewhat like initiating to one of the Greater Gods whose aspects you can get usable magic from...  only without the useful aspects.  (With all apologies for the nod to the Bad Old HW model.)

4 hours ago, Darius West said:

Hang on, if it is theism, what is it worshiping?  

Arguably a dragon-totem.  Not one that's anywhere named, mind you, but hey, one thing they definitely are is a mystery cult!  To me though it sounds rather more than a strange form of animism, if you take the form and structure of their magic as indicative of anything significant.  You might add speculation to speculation and wonder whether the 'strangeness' is just incidental, arising from the peculiar social form of the cult, and it's essentially just some sort of (re)constructed dragon-hsunchenism.  Or a low-end mystical thing -- some sort of illumination-type effect that affects the nature of their magic.  Or is to do with their God Learner origins.

4 hours ago, Darius West said:

Clearly it is a form of immanentism, which is mystical,  and it is very body oriented, which is typical of mystic traditions.

Again, that sounds more like you're describing mainline animism, than anything in any way diagnostic of mysticism.

4 hours ago, Darius West said:

In short, I am not suggesting that IM is a great, good, or even mediocre draconic tradition.  It is obviously a bad one, but it has survived since the Second Age for a reason, and while pedigree is no measure of validity, when you compare the IM to the Autarchs who criticize it while performing their own mutant form of theistic sorcery, you have to wonder who is fit to criticize.  Clearly these people are turning into fire breathing lizardmen.  How?

I would personally take both the narrator-voice and Godunya-cult/imperial bureaucracy snidiness about the PoIM with a salt mine or two.  It's not the way to personal Enlightenment -- well, so what, it wasn't really ever billed as that, was it?  It's certainly seen as Skillful Means of Cosmic Dragon Realization, according to their apparent judgement in encouraging it as a popular practice.  So chalk up much of the snark to snobbery, and suspicions about the NDR connection.  (That was only a few centuries ago, so much too early to say, to borrow a line.)  For the authors of (the original) GoG, it was IMO also a rather clever device to set out a 'draconic' practice, hint at how it may or may not be a 'mystical' thing or not, but avoid being seen to set out any sort of definitive prospectus about how those might 'correctly' work as systems or not.  So on the facts in evidence, what the Archexarchs get up to could be functionally identical, just better regarded for reasons that could be any combination of the painfully obvious, or the too esoteric for any of us to care about.  Or equally, maybe wildly different.

16 hours ago, Eff said:

Mystic magic is a limited thing

Limited to the point of 'doesn't exist', according to one notable (and notorious!) source.

14 hours ago, davecake said:

I think ascetism, or austerities in Glorantha speak, is a practical technique that can be used by any magical tradition.

Aren't those specifically different in Gloranthaspeak?  (Depending on your particular dialect, naturally.  See usual 'language is a virus' disclaimers'.)  My recollection of the gist of Revealed Mythologies and related forms of that document is that its take was that you had-:

• Asceticism, giving rise to "pure" mystical practices;
• Ecstatic meditation, leading to "manifest" mysticism;, and
• Austerities, producing "failed" mysticism.

14 hours ago, davecake said:

Even without such cheesiness, though, austerities seem to be a form of magic that is not itself mystic, but is particularly useful to, and compatible with, mystics. The more you are able to control the self, the more you are able to overcome it and its restrictions. 

If you wanted to be a one-club golfer (or perhaps we could count this as four clubs, to be slightly kinder), you could take that approach that all mysticism -- indeed all magic, finessing the 'but is it mysticism?' semantic question entirely can be described in one of these ways:

• It's actually one of the Trad Three, but perhaps presented in a slightly offbeat way.  e.g. say such-and-such a Malkioni saint's path is understood to be 'esoteric wizardry', but ultimately still remains in the 'sorcery' quadrant of the Big World Diagram.
• It manifests as a nonstandard mix of sorcery, animism, and theism, "and make good" to permit this with an Illumination-like insight (vary details to taste if the RaW aren't quite right, or if you want to keep it plausibly deniable if they're 'really' the same or not).
• It's not a magical act on the part of the character at all, but simply a property of the game-universe.  So at that point you say "it's an NPC!", or "it's a narrative tag!", or something similar, depending on preferred style of play.

12 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

Allfather was not very Rex - it was Everyman Orlanth, really. Rex is limited to top political positions that PCs are fairly unlikely to sit on (even if for no other reason than lack of time).

I was too lazy to look out my copy of Thunder Rebels (and given that all mentions of it are mentioned with vituperation and declarations of Anathema to Canon, poorly motivated). But even if one draws the 'leadership' aspect fairly narrowly, it goes beyond Rex per se -- the most common form is going to be The-Chief-Subcult-Formerly-Known-As-That-Term-We-Mustn't-Use-Any-More.

As for whether such positions are playable or not, as I say it depends on the scale and scope of one's game.  Those are small fry compared to the characters you're playing in the average Gloranthan freeform!  I personally won't get out of bed for being less than a duke or a tribal king, these days.  Never mind the Sartar High Council game of even longer-ago yore.

On 1/21/2021 at 9:48 PM, Sir_Godspeed said:

Farmers are generally warriors and warriors are generally farmers, barring the odd full-time warrior retainer, imho. I realize there are some who specialize more deeply (Barntari, etc.), but the whole peace clan - war clan thing sounds more like a game mechanic to me than a viable in-universe dichotomy, unless of course it's one that's more culturally symbolic than anything (but fantasy universes generally prefer to take symbolism and turn it into literal stuff, so I suppose there's that.).

I guess actually a trichotomy, as there's a 'neither one nor the other' default category (and indeed majority).  ("Balanced" is an especially weak-sounding term, though.)  In-universe this is apparently Heort's doing, so possibly he was just temperamentally very fond of this sort of broad-strokes categorisation.  Or maybe more likely, there was a pragmatic reason to do so.  Like some sort of codification of different views and customs on the matter of violence as a political and economic means.  A 'historic compromise', as it were.

33 minutes ago, Ladygolem said:

Bacteria exist in Glorantha? I thought diseases, rot etc. were caused by spirits and such...

Whoever's been detecting prokaryotes has been stacking a whole lot of Seeing magic, too...

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

12.   Age of Time. The Dawn. History begins.

I'm curious about the prevalence of the equation of the Dawn and Time.  Though I guess that as both the Orlanthi and the God Learners seem to have this belief, it'd be common currency in 2nd Age Nochet...

23 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

Vinga and Adventurous are basically the same and Rex is not really playable, so...

The 'Allfather' aspect as we called it more broadly in Ye Olden Days is a tad more niche than the others, but potentially playable in some games.  At the scale of the usual RQ campaign, granted not very.

2 hours ago, dumuzid said:

To add a little more substance, and maybe corroborate @Ladygolem's point, one of the more important mystical (as opposed to Illuminated) traditions in the late third age must be the Order of the Rising Sun in the East Isles.

I'm guessing this in the Guide, as there's so little else in print for the East?  (And because I'm too lazy to check, and there's a bulb out in that room (... that I've been too lazy to change).)

So in what sense is this mystical?  And in which (OK, bit of Wazboth's barristry here) is it clearly not Illumination?

4 hours ago, Ladygolem said:

If someone declared that they'd achieved such sublime Kabbalistic insight that they can eat pork now, they'd be laughed out of any Jewish community, society, seminary or study group they stepped foot in. It's theological nonsense.

The similarities to Gloranthan Illumination continue!  (OK, barely begin.)  This is clearly -- I say clearly, not so clear as I didn't forget to mention it in my li'l list in my previous post, oops -- a factor for any sort of mystical revelation.  (Or more broadly still any metaphysical one -- it's the Return With The Elixir, or whatever version of that structure (if any!) one favours.)  If your community doesn't accept the validity of the 'truth' you've returned with (and you don't have the cop-on to keep quiet about it), you're going to be in a whole world of trouble.  Even it's 'magically true' in some or all of the various other senses I did think to mention.

4 hours ago, Ladygolem said:

The point I was trying to make earlier is that we see that mystical practice, for the most part, functions as an extension of religious practice. They cannot exist in isolation from that religious context.

Numerous Gloranthan counter-examples to this, though they're generally so drastic and disruption that it perhaps tends to powerfully argue that it at least should not.

4 hours ago, Ladygolem said:

I notice many of the mystical traditions in Glorantha seem to be centred around emulating a particular Rune*. Larnstings are all about Movement, Lunar Illuminates obviously embody the Moon rune, Kralori mystics seek the Dragon rune, etc. Perhaps Gloranthan mysticism could be described as figuring out how to embody a rune directly.

Hrrrrrm.  I guess it's certainly a form of mysticism, and it does capture the first of those as they themselves would see it.  And it's comparable to 'worship' of the totality of a Greater God -- by definition a 'Rune Owner', after all! -- which goes beyond common-or-garden mystery-cultic emulatory theism, of the sort we're most familiar with.  (As alluded to up-thread.)  But that's definitely not how the Lunars or the Kralori would see their practices.  They're seeking unity with the Ultimate, not with a 'mere'(!) rune.  That's a W9 vs W15 difference right there!  (Another obscure and cheesy Hero Wars-era  reference -- I'll apologise for that one in advance...)  OTOH, they both have a rather Augustinian approach to that in practice -- O Oneness, I seek thee:  but not just yet, I have an empire to trundle around with down here, such fun.  So arguably closer to the reality than they'd care to admit.

4 hours ago, Ladygolem said:

Lunar Illuminates can mix cults, utilize chaos etc. because that's what the Moon rune does, beyond simply the spell effects afforded to worshippers of the Red Goddess or the Seven Mothers.

Kinda inviting us to conclude, Arkat:  big ol' Moon Worshipper ahead of his time...  (And ahead of the time of there being any moon in the sky to speak of, slightly more awkwardly.)

4 hours ago, Ladygolem said:

Mechanically, mysticism could maybe be implemented as working similar to Divine Intervention? Succeed on a roll (Meditate? POW? Relevant Rune rating? Some combination of these?) and the magical thing just happens. Maybe that's too close to sorcery? I have no idea.

I kinda like that, actually.  For the self-conscious RuneQuesters -- see what I did there, huh, huh? OK, I'll get me coat -- this could be an active, wilful act.  That'd be your Larnsting example, the Old Wind goðar, Dayzatari, Great Earth mystics in the temple complexes of Nochet, and so on.  For 'pure' mystics it would be more of a passive 'side-effect' -- the ascetic remains without action, the universe turns around them according to its own workings.  Middle cases like the the Lunars and Draconics, rationalise to taste.

Certainly the 'your POW is now zero, remove character from game' case is entirely apt...

6 hours ago, soltakss said:

They might. It isn't the only outcome and is a rare one, but that is possible.

It's hard enough to extrapolate between different magical traditions in the same world, never mind between the real world and Glorantha...  Not least because of the risk of ending up being obnoxiously reductionistic about RW belief systems.  But kinda comes with the territory, oh well.  But suppose for the sake of argument that a Practical Kabbalist starts off with the belief that following the Law of the Torah by the letter is necessary for:-

1. Their personal spiritual well-being;
2. Their PK to work magically; and,
3. The universe to operate in a morally well-ordered manner.

Then a RW analogue of Illumination might lead them to believe the first is no longer the case, to find that the second isn't, but still belief the third is true.  (Or if you prefer, flip the example around and consider a Malkioni wizard, of some comparable tradition, in an analogous situation.)

So the two aren't obviously glaringly incompatible, as such, but it's not at all clear that anything in Illumination as written is especially helpful in helping describe Kabbalah as a 'mystical' practice.

6 hours ago, soltakss said:

I just thought that exchange was typical of discussions about mysticism in Glorantha.

And of many discussions on t'internet generally!

10 minutes ago, Ladygolem said:

It's hard for me to say exactly, even harder to explain in a forum post. I don't think any form of Kabbalah maps neatly onto a Gloranthan analogue. I was merely using it as an example of mysticism, in order to explain my thoughts on the Gloranthan version of it. It's really quite hard to explain Kabbalah in concrete terms because most of the concepts are vague and meant to be understood intuitively after years of meditation and study.

Mysticism situation normal, in other words.

Neat analogues are rarely fun.  And rarely even neat, as people then get annoyed at something being too direct a steal, cue maHOOsive argument.  (I was about to throw in an example or two, then sanity prevailed.)  But my thinking was roughly on the following lines:  the Kabbalah is, on the face of it (but see also below!) a type of liturgical mysticism.  Seems likely that Glorantha has at least one example of liturgical mysticism.  In fleshing that (or those) out, how do RW examples from the same part of the Big Chart potentially inform those?  Or more crudely, how much can we nick without it being too cheesy or too awkward a fit.

10 minutes ago, Ladygolem said:

My initial sense would be that Meditative-Ecstatic Kabbalah is to Judaism as Illumination is to The Seven Mothers or Larnstings are to the Orlanthi - a deeper understanding of religious practice that allows a new perspective. Practical Kabbalah, to throw you a curveball, could actually be described as closest possibly to spirit magic - a lot of it deals with deriving enlightenment through positive possession by angels or ghosts of deceased sages (ibburim) or expelling or repelling evil ghosts or demons that negatively possess people (dybbuks), with an understanding that all of these are ultimately subservient to G-d, whom the practitioner obviously still worships in the regular way.

That actually fits into the Four World/System concept rather well, as it's another strand that could also be seen as liturgical animism, rather than -- or as well as? -- liturgical mysticism.

10 minutes ago, Ladygolem said:

Almost everything else falls under divination (dream interpretation mostly) which I'm unsure how to categorise. The Golem myth, the part that everyone's most familiar with, is most similar to a heroquest than anything else - a magical reenactment of a mythical event in the hopes of recreating its effect.

Those are both essentially universal, I think, just varying the 'detail' -- not that the 'details' aren't pretty large and significant.

10 minutes ago, Ladygolem said:

(Note: historically, it's unlikely anyone actually attempted to create a literal man out of clay - rather, it referred to an ecstatic ritual where participants would induce an altered mind state through meditation, chanting and walking in circles until a particular transcendent state of mind was achieved for the briefest of moments, emulating/witnessing the formation of Adam, after which the steps of the ritual were reversed to "return the golem to the earth" and thus, safely return the participants to the mortal world)

Yeah, that's (with a lot of informative detail I didn't know, for which thanks) the sort of thing I was filing under 'Worship [Liturgical Deity] (only in a much more ecstatic rite)', in broad-strokes game terms.  Conceptually the divination angle might tie in here, as the type of narrative structures you might need for each seem to me at first wink to be similar.

10 minutes ago, Ladygolem said:

Anyway, enough about Kabbalah, it was only ever tangential to the point and the thread threatens to derail completely. I have thoughts on how mysticism works and, more importantly, how it might work in the context of game mechanics, but this post is long enough as is and I should really try to sleep at some point (it's 10:30 am and I've been up nearly a full 24 hours)

Hey, it's a mystical thread -- the rails were only ever illusions! @.@ I look forward to your other thoughts on that generally.  Rest well, middle way, don't be overdoing the Austerities!

53 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Meanwhile, I find RQG:s subcults a bit weaksauce - pick up as many as you like without even any cost to it. Gotta catch 'em all?

(Hopefully, the Cults book will introduce complications or costs to doing this.)

Surprised that's the case, must go read those rules!  But I guess if nothing else, the player is giving the GM a One Man, Two Guvnors type of stick to beat them with.  Though not in a James Corden type of way -- that would be cruel and unusual.

5 hours ago, Darius West said:

Real world examples of ascetics would include religions such as Buddhism, Sikhism, some parts of the Hindu tradition (though it is mainly pantheistic).

I wondered if Sikhism was maybe a slip for Jainism here (which is pretty consistently ascetic, moreso than Buddhism, or the (poly)theistic aspects of Hinduism), but apparently not as you repeat this later.  As I understand it, Sikhism is significantly influenced by the Abrahamic religions, consequently adheres to ascetic practices much less than (other) Dharmic religions, and indeed is doctrinally anti-ascetist.

5 hours ago, Darius West said:

Mystics would have powers to overcome physical limitations of their bodies.  They can ignore privations like extremes of temperature, needs for sustenance, the need to breathe, and even ignore certain types of physical damage.  A mystic could perform feats of levitation, bi-location, or even telepathy and teleportation.  Your classic Shaolin martial arts Monk likely supplements his fighting ability with a measure of ascetic mystical training.

These are all possible examples, but all also problematic ones, given the (both RW and Gloranthan) arguments that such practices are not mystical in nature at all.  (Or are 'false' mysticism, which may or may not be the same thing.)

5 hours ago, Darius West said:

The most commonly existing Gloranthan mystic would probably be a Kralori Martial Artist, [...]

Those are pretty common, but the semantic question is 'but are they mystics'?  And the answer from the pount of view of the 'purists' -- the precepts of Buddhism, Vithelan mysticer-than-thous, Greg most (but not all!) the time he was asked about this, would be 'no'.  But given that they exist, and certainly do exhibit magic powers, the more practical question is, how best to describe them?  And one argument is that since they do, and since magical manifestations are pretty much by definition sorcerous, theistic, and/or animist, martial artists do one or more of those.  And if they do more than one, we're starting to edge back into the realm of 'Illumination-like effects', in rules terms.  (Loath though I personally am to get anywhere near the area of declaring whether different such practices are ultimately 'the same' or not.)

34 minutes ago, Ladygolem said:

Right, though I think I was arguing for exactly the reverse (or is that converse? Maybe inverse? I'm lost here...)

I was tempted to say inverse too (in relation to our other sidebar), but decided at least another two cups of tea were needed before I strayed any further into formal or rhetorical logic.  I was making that observation not directly in response to you, but in the context of the broader method vs. object point.  I'm not sure how that immediately applies to the Kabbalah (or Gloranthan analogues), but am happy to have a bash at teasing that out, with the big disclaimer that you could walk through my knowledge about (or even of, as Bart Simpson might say) the Kabbalah without getting your feet wet.

Let me try to frame it as the following questions:-

If one were writing up RQ (or HQ, etc) Practical Kabbalah -- or some fictional Kabbalah-inspired practice -- how would it crucially differ from 'normal' Sorcery?  (Assuming that's the closest available starting point.)  Which 'rules' of sorcery might it 'break'?

And likewise, what're the gameable effects of Ecstatic Kabbalah (or fictionalised analogue again), beyond what we'd see with the standard Worship [liturgical entity] sort of thing?

On 1/19/2021 at 9:12 PM, Joerg said:

Thunder Rebels appears to have been a bit too true to the sources of our ancient world when it came to gender (almost equalling sex) roles. The vision of the (too) many Earths (and Storms) or at least more names than even hard-core Glorantha afficionados could tell apart did make playing Orlanth cultists quite diverse and more interesting, but the Allfather and Allmother aspects (while mythically sensible) made Ernalda quite domestic and very much non-adventuring.

Nothing against a minor form of an Earth Healer in the Ernalda cult, but as a dedicated, exclusive cult? Hands up, who had such a character (even as side-kick or NPC) in their game?

Personally I liked the names (mostly, though they did seem like Theyalan Scrabble, especially some of the extremes of near-duplication) and the specificity, but the problem was indeed the exclusivity.  If we'd kept the subcults as descriptions, but tweaked the rules so that characters could 'specialise' to different degrees to a particular subcult, or mix-and-match within a deity or aspect's cult-at-large, that would have been much better.  (Or indeed beyond -- it might be uncommon for the Orlanthi, but for the theistic world in general there's surely a certain amount of worship (and obtaining magic) across the breadth of a greater god, or indeed dare I say a whole pantheon.)

16 minutes ago, Ladygolem said:

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I follow what this has to do with what we're describing here? Where do -20s come into play? I'm not even sure I disagree, I just don't understand your argument.

My apologies, that was unduly cryptic, I a) need more tea, and b) have a nasty habit of forgetting that not everybody has internalised every Gloranthan ruleset published in the last 40-odd years!  Essentially way back when there was a rather crude model of the Other Side where you needed to divide everything metaphysical up three -- or maybe four, as we're adding mystical concepts back in -- ways, and then decide if you were interacting with them the One True Correct Way (grand, work away), or Wrongly Any Other Way (get an utterly absurdly large penalty).

Just now, Akhôrahil said:

I think this is how we're supposed to think of Tarumath?

A very good question.  HW had one version of this -- you sunk more HPs than it would take to beat up the entirely Lunar Army into all the aspects of a Greater God, then you disappeared from play.  I don't know if the implication is that's what Lokamayadon -- or some 'failed mysticism' version of it where you go thus far, then do a handbrake turn right before you Become One with the GG, and go around with your cheesy new mystical magic.  Or if was supposed to entirely different.  It strikes me that there at least some parallels, in that he seems to have been in some sense (re)assembling the Orlanth cult from fragmentary, isolated pieces of storm worship.  (A ball the God Learners in their own way picked up and ran with.)

5 minutes ago, Ladygolem said:

"Illumination works like this, therefore Kabbalah also works like this?" That would be a ridiculous thing to claim, if I'm understanding you correctly. I'm simply mentioning Kabbalah a lot because, as a Jewish person with some formal religious training, it's the form of mysticism I'm the most familiar with - I can't help if it colours my ideas, much as anyone's background influences theirs. (And that's a good thing!)

No, that would be the converse, not at all what I meant either.

9 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Right. Just because you could do anything - "everything is permitted" or perhaps "do as thou wilt" - doesn't mean you should. But any moral restrictions to your actions are now completely up to you, personally, in an existentialist kind of way. A Humakti who gets Illuminated is not forced to adhere to Humakti rules any longer, but can still decide to, possibly even doubling down on them.

Indeed, and we have a very close parallel to that 'in canon' -- or in what I think is still canon this lunchtime, check recent updates on that, or at least in a document Chaosium will still be happy to take your money for.  That's the best-known of the possible interactions -- (poly)theism+Illumination.  How that generalises to other possible parts of the grid -- shamanism+Draconic Realization?  sorcery+High Worship of a Greater God(dess)? -- gets sketchier and sketchier.  Especially when we're trying to cross-pollinate two things that haven't been entirely satisfactorily described independently in the first place.

6 minutes ago, Ladygolem said:

Nobody is saying "Kabbalah works like this, therefore Illumination must also work like this".

I took the implication to be the reverse, if anything.  Perhaps I made myself obscure.

2 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I think this definition is a little restrictive. There are Christian and Muslim mystics as well, who often don't practice ascetism (at least not a very strong one - excess should typically be avoided). There's an ecstatic aspect to it that is almost universal, though, as in Sufi whirling. The idea is to achieve direct contact with an otherwise inaccessible Ultimate, whatever that is pictured as being (God for Christians, unsurprisingly).

So an Old Wind Orlanthi mystic might seek to achieve a direct connection with Transcendent Orlanth (painting himself blue, breathing in a controlled manner, and reciting the Laws of Umath and Orlanth).

Back in the HW era, and in the parallel track of Greg's draughtier ideas around the same period, we got sucked down the vortex of equating the method and the object.  Thus if we were doing a spell on something, it was an Essence, even if it filled a part of the magical ecology that made it look a lot like what would otherwise be called a spirit (say).  In that sort of concept, we'd declare that you got to the Transcendent Orlanth by some sort of High Theism, ecstatic worship was the shamanic method, so 'Manifest Mysticism' and 'High Animism' were essentially the same thing, and so on.  Liberally issued -20s all round.  Not exactly the pinnacle of the roleplaying or metaphysical arts.

So I think we have to unpick those:  what's the method, and what's the object.  And the third dimension is then of course what the magical consequences of the interaction of the those two.  And then yet another particular to the medium:  if 'mystics' eschew magical powers per se, but grandiose magical effects 'just happen' around them, how are we choosing to handle that?

29 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

The large focus on Nysalorean Illumination with its frequent outcome of "nothing is true, everything is permitted" seems like short-changing the mystical tradition as well. No-one would do Kabbalah and then suddenly realize that no divine laws apply to them any longer.

Everything is permitted in a rules and metaphysical sense -- not necessarily in a moral one.  But whether Practical Kabbalah has anything much in common with rules stabs at 'mysticism' such as Illumination or Refutation does seem pretty dubious to me.  Much less how one might map that to Monotheistic/Liturgical mysticism in Glorantha, as meaningfully distinct from 'normal' sorcery and IG worship.