Person 2: How would you imagine a conversion from other worship to the seven mothers as a process goes?
Jeff Richards: It is easy to become a lay member of the Seven Mothers. Just tell the priestess of your desire to join. The new member’s name is then entered on the Paper Lists, and kept there until the next Full Moon, when they are burned, and the lay member must rejoin. Lay members may request that their names be inscribed in the Wood Lists, whey they are kept for five years.
To be initiated in the cult requires that you must have been lay members for a year. You get quizzed on about the basics of the religion, on your attitudes, expectations, and intentions. If you pass this questioning, you get accepted as an initiate of the Seven Mothers.
Sacrifice that point of POW and gain that Rune Point!
And so it is REALLY easy to be a lay member.
Person 2: I think i may have worded it wrong
Rather than just the process of being officially joined i meant more ‘how people go from primarily following one god to the seven mothers’
Person 1: In occupied Sartar, did Orlanthi move to Seven Mothers mostly because of revelation (this is my new truth), or pragmatism? It seems a big deal to give up any culture’s magical truth in favour of something new. And to do the same again after a few years once the Lunars are run out of town.
Jeff Richards: How many people leave their cult to join the Seven Mothers? Is that the question?
Person 3: My understanding of the Seven Mothers, and the Lunar Way in general, is that it is an accretionary religion. The Seven Mothers cult’s “job”, in a sense, is convincing people in the conquered territory that there is a place in the Lunar Way for the truth of their religious experiences.
So whether or not they leave their own cult, they likely don’t leave behind their believes / truths.
Jeff Richards: The Seven Mothers primary function is to prepare people for the Red Goddess. Most of the cult’s activities are in the Heartlands, and always have been.
In occupied Sartar, probably two-thirds of the 21,000 initiates of Lunar cults were from the army, the provinces, or the Heartlands, leaving about 7,000 local cultists. As of 1627, there are perhaps 5,500 Seven Mothers initiates in Sartar, the vast majority of them native Sartarites.
About 2/5ths of those are in Boldhome or Alda-Chur.
Person 1: What made those 7,000 join Seven Mothers? What was their motivation?
Jeff Richards: In most cases, it is because the Seven Mothers offered them something that Orlanth, Ernalda, or the other Lightbringers did not.
Sometimes it was because you wanted to ingratiate yourself with the Lunar occupiers, but also poets, artists, visionaries, dreamers, or free thinkers who found the Lunar way liberating or resonant.
There is no one reason why people decide to initiate into the mysteries of the Seven Mothers.
This Q&A originally appeared on Discord.