Templars, Shamans/Other traditions allowed? Options

[toturi]

I was rereading Threats 2, when... I saw that the Templars did not restrict membership to only Hermetic mages. All you need to be is Awakened! And be an ordained priest...

So going by the game mechanics it is possible that a shaman or even a Tir Path mage be a Templar. What is your take on this?

[Herald of Verjig...]

That ordained priest thing is pretty limiting. I got the impression (somewhere...) that the Catholic Church only accepts magic by study, meaning shamen and voodoo is downright unacceptable (except for the Voodoo Catholic Church in Central America).

[Kagetenshi]

I could see some totems (Creator and Dragonslayer, especially) fitting right in. They could also have a magic by study sort of mindset, though what they're studying is as likely to be a bible to receive the knowledge of Yaweh the Creator or Christ the Dragonslayer.

~J

[Herald of Verjig...]

Whatever you do, don't try to join up if you are an adversary shaman.

[Kagetenshi]

That would be such an awesome mini-adventure.


~J

[toturi]

Personally I think that even totems like Sky Father, Wise Warrior, or even Sun can be accepted, although there isn't anything that forbids Adversary to join up (if he does at all).

And I do not think that Templars or the Catholic church requires magic by study only... after all, Divine Inspiration and Revelations from God are part and parcel of the Catholic faith.

[Zenmaxer]

I could see an Adversary shaman considering the templar or especially the catholic reform movement to be in a very subtle way one of the highest rebellions... the rebellion of authority itself.

[toturi]

Advocatus Diabloli, maybe.

[Cain]

Idol shamans in general could easily be saint followers under the Catholic ideal. I believe M&M even mentions as much.

[Kremlin KOA]

uh templars are listed as hermetic only, but order of st sylverter might avccept shamans of appropriate forms, an archangel or saint representing the totem qualities in question

[toturi]

[Edward]

Only some totems would be accepted, being known as a hogan is likely to result in excommunication and then your not a priest any more. There is a section on miracles in MITS that I have not red properly but it could be relevant, some other totems such as mentioned by Kagetenshi would also fit right in.

Edward

[toturi]

You know those loa spirits could theorectically be thought of as messengers from God. You know, like a prophet?

[Da9iel]

Did anybody mention ye olde dove shaman? That fits right in with Holy Spirit symbology.

[Kagetenshi]

But less so with the Templars.

~J

[Cain]

In real life, the bruja often consider the various Catholic patron saints to be Loa in their own right. It all depends on the form.

[Synner]

There's more on the issue of Magic and Christianity, and particularly Catholicism in SOTA64 (as well as a bit in SoE).

Basically shamans/idol followers of any type have a hard time fitting into the Catholic paradigm, let alone becoming priests. Shamanic magic comes from the belief in a very personal relationship with a shaman's totem/patron/deity of choice. However, the Catholic Church believes in a clear division between the divine (miracle) and the simply mystical (magic) - this is clearly stated in MitS and previous books - and in fact one of the Sylvestrine's missions is to investigate and distinguish instances of both. While "divine inspiration" and "revelations" are part of the Catholic paradigm they are gifts exclusively reserved for Sainthood and claiming or even believing oneself to be a saint is contranatura to any formally trained Catholic priest (the same however might not be said of many of the Evangelical Christian denominations and some of the obscure Orthodox sects), doubly so when Catholic dogma says magic is not divine by nature and magic users are not inherently touched by God (ie. Imago Dei).

This poses a Catch-22 problem for any devoted Catholic who happens to be a shaman. Believing that his magic is of "divine" inspiration is a big no-no since that is basically assuming a gift reserved to Saints and would fall under the cardinal sin of vanity (which in turn excludes Sainthood). This dogmatic contradiction means shamans would have a very hard time reconciling their beliefs with the foundation of Catholic clerical thought, and hence are unlikely to ever become priests (and I'm not even getting into the prejudice and possible accusations of heresy they might draw from the hierarchy). Theurgy, as Christian magic theory is known, one the other hand is a neutral version of Hermeticism, purged of the heretical and subversive pagan influences and revised to remain consistent with doctrine - it assumes the Gift is a God-given talent like any other and that magic is a neutral force to be manipulated for good or for evil depending on intent.

On the other hand the Catholic Church does accept the Cult of the Saints, and it is plausible that hermetic devotees of particular Saints might gain benefits similar to those presented in Threats 2 for the Templars' Archangel patrons.

[PiXeL01]

I seem to recall that it is written that the Catholic Priests are all Hermetic Mages. The problem is .. I cant remember where I read it. Could be SoE hell even threats2

[Kagetenshi]

It's simple enough to believe that one's powers are granted by God and yet not divine in nature. People believe it all the time in regard to more mundane abilities.

~J

[Synner]

Note my comment on it being seen as a "God-given talent like any other". However I will note that that is not in itself a shamanic perception.

Shamans believe that the higher power they are linked to is not only the original source of their Gift, but that it is an integral part of their everyday lives and the world around them, that it defines the shape of magic), and that they can interact with it - all to a degree a Catholic priest would consider sacrilegious if it the deity were God.

Shamans believe in a unique relation between the individual and the higher power, a bond which empowers them and to a certain extent molds not only their beliefs but also their worldview. In Native American, Asian and African shamanism, the shaman is singled out from the tribe by the Totem or deity not because he is born gifted but because he is chosen/touched by the (relevant) Power. Even in Druidry and pre-Christian European shamanism, the druid/shaman is directly empowered by a god/totemic power becoming an earthly avatar for the elemental forces of nature. In SR this manifests in several ways from the Totemic behavious modifiers and the Shamanic Mask through to the "unproven" shamanic belief that Totems/Idols not only exist but can be interacted with.

There's far more to it than that, since the spiritual complications and ramifications on the Catholic side are even more complex. However, all this makes fitting the shaman into the rigid and dogmatic Catholic paradigm a complicated square-peg-in-round-hole exercise. Don't get me wrong, it can be done... as long as you have a sledgehammer handy.

As usual anyone is absolutely free to go with what they prefer and suits the style of their game, I'm just being nitpicky and trying to stick to plausibility.

[toturi]

[Synner]

[Da9iel]

I always considered a Shaman being able to fit in with the church by considering his or her totem to be a servant of the most high God. Of course the character I had in mind was struggling to find his place in a protestant church, but I would think it is possible for such a shaman to find a place to serve in the Catholic Church. A Catholic would already know that God made higher beings like the various orders of angels. His or her totem could be identified as one of these higher beings, much higher in the order of things than mere humans, but under God. Since a Christian believes that God made absolutely everything, adding totems to that list is no problem. Yes you're right in that the Church would have some serious issues with where exactly a shaman's allegiance lies, but I don't think it is impossible or even unlikely for shamans to be active within the Catholic Church.

[Synner]

As I said in my first post there really shouldn't be much problem in a member of the Evangelical Protestant Church being a shaman (in fact there are canon references to Awakened televangelists and pastors), and likewise for one of the Orthodox Christian sects (for entirely different reasons). However both the Catholic Faith and most of the Reform Protestants (Lutherans, Anglicans, etc) have serious dogmatic issues about the divine intervention the hierarchy of their cosmology and the interaction between the various levels of that cosmology.

Yes, the Church believes in higher order beings such as angels, archangels and dominions but interaction with an angel is seen as a miracle and a sign of Sainthood and as such impossible to a simple priest (or Pope for that matter) or leyman. For instance, there's the problem that magic is objectively verificable, meaning that while a shaman priest could call forth an angel to smite his foes, an atheistic forensic mage that came in later would be able to detect the use of magic and the conjuring of a spirit. Neither of which the Church believes to be inherently divine (note - the Templars know they're calling forth elemental spirits not angels even though they give them the appearance of such).

Without getting too deeply into the matter and trying to avoid the pitfalls of oversimplification, this is the main reason why the Catholic Church and "[...]most major Christian Churches followed Rome's lead" have to draw a line between magic and miracle.

If there wasn't a distinction between magic abilities which "are not, by nature, evil. Rather like any other human ability, they may be used for good or evil ends" and the divine, then there is no temporal division between a secular magician's abilities and a Saint, and sooner or later the whole edifice the Christian Faith is built on is brought into doubt and begins to crumble. Not only are Saintly divine abilities brought into question, but inevitably the nature of Christ's own divinity too. Neither is something the Church would allow - in other times people have been burned for less.

This doesn't even begin to touch upon the problems raised by the issues such as the nature of spirits (which is why Conjuring is banned without special Papal dispensation), the cosmology of the metaplanes (which actually validates many counter-Catholic Gnostic views), the animistic pagan powers represented by Totems and the fact that magic works equally well if you're a pious Catholic Sylvestrine mage and if you're a Odin-worshipping pagan gode (and you can't even get away with the argument that the gode is being duped by Satan to practice black magic because of the Imago Dei enycyclical quote I used above).

(Disclaimer - Though it may seem I'm being a bit retentive on this issue, I am in fact simply presenting the arguments and grounding that comes from quite a bit of research. For anyone following this discussion I'd just like to reiterate that you're free to do what you like in your games, change or modify any aspect of the setting that you disagree with.

[toturi]

Unfortunately your argument is invalidated by SR Canon(not to be confused with religious canon).

The following quotes are taken from Threats 2 p108.