Note I said even if only one third...

A magician using Saint-George as a mentor spirit and christian imagery as his frame of reference for crafting magic is hardly a shaman.

Forget about pre-SR4 (and to a lesser extent, pre-SR3) definitions where any magician with a "totem" was a "shaman".

Shamanism as a tradition is now far more specific a term.

That would only be shamanistic in SR2 terms where by necessity anything spiritual in magic was shamanistic.

No, praying to the saints for a miracle is a very catholic thing to do by any definitions. And it would probably be Christian Theurgy in SR4 term, or whatever christian based tradition the GM came up with.

It's been here since the Universal Brotherhood module was released.

Neither hermeticism nor qabbalism have anything to do with shamanism so I don't even understand what your last comment mean in relation to your previous posts.

Anyway, you seem to still want to link christian theurgy to the old SR3 magic system where everything was either Hermetic-like or Shamanic-like. Anything spiritual was treated like shamanism with different totem.

But SR4, a Druid isn't a shaman by a different name. He's a druid. Likewise a Christian Theurge isn't a disguised shaman. Shaman in SR4 is a precise term, not a catch all term for any magician that rely on spirituality.

So you feel there are similarities between catholicism and shamanism? Well yeah. And between any two given religion. A catholic priest is still not a shaman, a druid or a budhist monk.

I've been trying to find some sort of completely whacked out magical tradition for an NPC in my game (besides toaster). That's the one I'm using. Thanks.

This is probably the thing I like the best about SR4 magic. It's so customizable without having to read whole chapters about wuxia or voodoun to use the "alternate" traditions. If I want to play a scientologist I can play one without having to be a Hermetic or Shamanic scientologist.

Some of my players are also having trouble wrapping their heads around this. Oddly it is the rules-lawyers that have jumped on the bandwagon first. I think it's the customizability thing that attracted them--the RP is a bonus.

A theurg is a theurg.

What I meant was that being a christian doesn't mean you have to be a theurg. You can still be a hermetic or a shaman or whatever (under certain restrictions).

I would say a rough mix of hermetic and shamanistic, with a dash of Shinto thrown in due to large Yakuza influence in the free state. I would also say that there is a small Buddhist population around San Fran, with every other practitioner going by the alias Kerouac, Snyder, or Ginsberg. I have though a bit about that idea since I am working on a Buddhist mage who comes out of San Francisco, and his master's alias was Keroauc.

Yeah, under the right condition. The conditions being that you are a shaman. You use a shamanic totem and call on spirits of nature to aid you with their power. Not on God, his angels and his saints. On Father Wolf, your ancestors and the spirits who surround you. And then you somehow reconcile that with your christian faith (like Twist from the first SR trilogy ever).

But you were arguing that someone mentored by Saint-George the Dragonslayer and who prays to God for divine intercession could be a shaman... If that is a shaman, every non-hermetic is a shaman!

Don't forget a hefty batch of crystal-rubbing New Age types (The image of a 70 year old surfer in Bermuda shorts going all Obi-Wan ... too fun) and probably a bunch of others.

I'm *inclined* to say that the majority would have been Shamans, but, lots of 'em went toxic, leaving Hermetics the majority by accident. Cali's weird, tho, and one of the older books that I never managed to grab, so, not sure.

Yeah, looks to me like you're thinking in an SR3 context. Mechanically, there's very little difference in shamanism and hermeticism now (SR4), so there's no real reason to think of Christian hermetics versus Christian shamans. After all, now a Christian hermetic (or theurge) can have a mentor spirit without being a shaman.

I would argue that. At least from a Catholic standpoint. No matter how bad a catholic I am I still consider myself a Catholic. The same holds true for everyone else I know who is Catholic. Even if they haven't been to church in years or think that the Pope is a whack-o they still consider themselves part of the faith.

Heck the rebels in Aztlan group themselves around their religion to help define their resistance, not just region or political motivation. Many of their leaders are said to be priests.

If anything the events of SR drove more people to religion and those new converts chose a higher percentage of "new age" religions (perhaps even the Egyptian or Norse pantheon) but their numbers would still be small relatively. The spread between them and the Abrahamic/Eastern religions would have shrunk however. That means less athiests/agnostics and more fringe religions.

Shadowrun aside, the percentage of Catholics in the world is dropping in the real world present. Same with most mainstream religions (Islam and Buddhism continue to rise, I believe, as do a number of alternative religions like Wicca).

Actually according to a London School of Economics survey for the UN in 2005, of the majors only Catholicism is on the slide and then only in the first world. In the developing world, South America, and in parts of the Far East (China for instance) Catholicism is actually on the rise.

Protestantism and particularly the Evangelical denominations are gaining marginally, mostly on their home turf (ie. conservative North America). Orthodox Christianity has had a slight rise since the early 90s. Judaism is pretty stable neither increasing nor decreasing significantly. Islam is the biggest growing religion in the world and Hinduism is also growing (despite it being one of the few faiths that doesn't actually have "conversion" doctrine built in and being essentially ethnically-rooted). The far-eastern religions also remain popular in their traditional playgrounds despite industrialization and the apparent materialism of modern Asian culture.

Organized religion and particularly the major faiths are actually bigger powerplayers than many of us would like to think.

If the population of the Earth is growing at a faster rate than that of the practicioner of a faith, that faith is losing ground and it's being slowly marginalized.

In the past years, World population grew by 1,5% per annum so the proportion of believers of all major faiths wouldn't actually be increasing according to your numbers. They don't keep up with the increased population, which isn't good for them.

Of course, at that rate it'll take a long time to be clearly felt and within 4 years by SR timeline is the awakening which would most likely reverse the trend.

Um in SOE,they talk about 1 billion Catholics..

Um, Yahuza playing a major role in magical tradition in California? Um no.

Actually I would say yes. A great influx of the Yakuza in the CFS means an overall great japanese influence in the state. With that influence it would be safe to say that Japanese religion comes along with them, aka Shinto. I am not saying that the Yakuza are playing a major role in California religion, but I am saying that they woukd play a larger role in the perentage of magic traditions in the CSF. Only 1% of the population is magically active...Californias current population is 33 million, which woud make 300,000 awakened in the state. Now of that one percent I don't quite know the percentage that makes up actual mages and shamans and not adepts and those with knacks or astral sight. But that leaves a smaller number of total awakened practicing any given tradition in the CSF. Now, the Yakuza would be set up in every major sprawl in the CSF and most of the smaller ones, giving them a pretty even distribution across the state. I am not saying that they are a majority, but they a considerable part of the minority and a consideration for one of the traditions being practiced in the CSF. Also see that I said:

Major role? Dash =/= Major.