According to rules, ungifted individuals have a few limitations when doing mystery initiations.
Other realms have things that act as equivalents to the gift.
The Faerie realm has strong alignment allowing them to learn faerie abilities.
The Divine realm has True Faith.
The Infernal realm has gaining infernal warping.
Do these associations allow "ungifted" individuals to function in non-magic mystery cults as if they were gifted?
For example, could someone with the faerie equivalent of the gift be able to self-initiate into a new virtue in a faerie mystery cult?
The Church has the well fleshed out Holy Tradition: Franciscans, whose initiations (p.138ff) have many features which would be excluded by HMRE p.14 box UnGifted Initiations.
Which struck me as kinda weird since according to both 'The Church' and 'Realms of Power: The Divine', True Faith wouldn't actually be possessed by the most of those initiates - though I suppose those lacking said virtue could simply utilize a different script.
In any case, I agree that such powers should be treated as equivalent to The Gift in this context and, in fact, would suggest that RoP:TD suggesting mystery initiations to learn divine powers well before the rules for initiating ungifted individuals were published can probably be taken as implicit confirmation with the benefits of hindsight.
TMK there is no statement anywhere, that an analogy to HMRE p.14 UnGifted Initiations applies to Holy Traditions at all, and that e. g. members of the Holy Tradition: Franciscans without True Faith would have to undergo different initiations.
The Egyptian college for magical agents (The House) has a cult initiation that removes the mechanical penalties from non-magical initiates, as a minor virtue. (It's in Lands of the Nile).
Uhm, well I had looked at that insert, but all I see there is:
a) the "Teacher of the House Initiation Path", that provides the Good Teacher, Affinity with Teaching, and Improved/Great Communication Minor Virtues.
b) the "Child of the House" Major Virtue, that provides bonus xp.
c) the "Agent of the Sultan" Major Virtue, that is basically the Wealthy Virtue with a few minor changes.
The insert, and in particular a), does point out that (as per TMRE, HMRE) unGifted initiations are "penalized", but I cannot find any Minor Virtue that removes those penalties.
The virtue in question (Ancient Initiations), does not appear to have survived to the Final Draft. At the very least it has been moved and is no longer associated with The House...
Indeed there is no such Minor Virtue. The Teacher of the House Initiation Path is open for unGifted followers, but goes beyond what is allowed in HMRE p.14 box UnGifted Initiations.
We read "The House may have faster paths of Initiaition for the Gifted, ...", though: encouraging SG creativity.