I may be letting that impression bleed across eras.
Unless he looks like a bleary John Travolta, yeah, definitely.
Published sources haven't statted up Odin or Jupiter Greatest and Best either. Maybe they're also beyond the ability level of a Hermetic Magus.
I prefer to keep religious "truths" undefined in a game about wizards. Hermetic magic can't analyze the Divine or determine the fate of dead souls. I like it that way -- keeping some things unknowable contributes to a diverse environment, both in and out of game.
It also keeps them outside any unpleasantness that could be attributed for religious bias. The divine is completely outside the realm of magical perception and power. Better still - you are free to determine for your own troupe what exactly the divine is and what he does.
I read, 'in short, if religion is an issue to you have no fear for tyours is represented here and it is beyond all possible interference'. If you don't like that there isthe handy - 'but he only gets involved when he wants to and his motives are unfathomable'.
You have try really hard to be offended by that. And if you are in a different camp, it doesn't have to affect your game at all.
I think Atlas have done a top job in this one which is the kind of middle road often very hard to find.
d'oh, brain failure on my part -that'll teach me not to skim thorugh and then reply!
I suppose it might include circumstances when he might be temporarily 'out of grace' for reasons of epic story proportions. Possible, but unlikely.
Which is exactly what civil and more precisely canon lawyers were doing in the early thirteenth century: try to define what kind of magic was evil and what kind of magic wasn't. I'd direct anyone interested towards Edward Peters' The Magician, the Witch, and the Law (U of Pennsylvania P, 1978). In a nut shell, lawyers arguments, like all scholastic arguments, are based on former arguments. During the mass translation of Arabic and Greek texts in the 11th century, magic, especially Arabic astrology, divination, augury, and sorcery, were incorporated into the Mechanical Arts or Practical Sciences, a poor brother to the trivium and the quadrivium. In 1140 the archdeacon of Toledo legitimized magic as "worldly vanities that are neither to be praised or condemned," (page 65). Quickly following that, however, Hugh of St. Victor condemned all magic as "the mistress of every form of iniquity and malice."
This trend continues, with some theologians saying that all magic is bad and others saying that some magic is good. Some magic is merely the understanding of the secret powers that God placed in various substances (the original meaning of "occult") and that using this knowledge to produce magic was entirely noble. In 1220 the debate is ongoing but soon to change, with more and more kinds of magic being found evil. The main problem with magic is that it leads to temptation and is demonic, or at least learned from demons and influenced by demons. The tide against magic starts to turn in 1228 when William of Auvergne, as bishop of Paris, condemned a bunch of books that could be found in the university of Paris as magical and heretical. He had the power to condemn these books in Paris, and we should note that there seemed to be quite a lot of them floating around. We should also note that Aristotle was among the authors condemned, but that might be besides the point.
So, that's what happened in Europe. My reading of this is that rather than trying to outlaw magicians, canon law was trying to outlaw magic and hunting for an appropriate definition (all of it, all of it except astrology, only necromancy, etc.). In Mythic Europe, the list of beneficial magic that wasn't influenced by demons would be considerably larger, I think, and would actually extend the debate of what is considered evil magic and what is good magic. I could see a handful of eloquent Tytalus magi taking this debate all the way to the papal curia.
Now, that's magic. The other topic, worshiping false gods, is clearly heretical. Big difference between a heretical magus and a Christian magus.
Matt Ryan
The worshipping of false Gods is not a heresy by default. To qualify as a heresy one has to pervert the message of Christ (in the west). Odinists are not heretics, the are pagans, unbelievers, witches, heathens and all manner of other perjorative terms: whatever you like, but to be a heretic you have to be a follower of a religion and then try to change it.
Simply renouncing a religion is not usually defined as heresy either, that is apostacy.
Nice and really informative debate. Thanks all. In our next session Severin is having a debate with a bishop, so it is rather important what we decide in the end: it can mark the whole saga tone when it comes to religion. After all Mann still recognizes norse religion as official IMS (and it will until 1235) but the church is there in strength as well. Quite a few things to consider here 
Thanks.
Cheers,
Xavi
Well, being an archangel this ain't that bad since only one copy of "him" can be fought off, and there are an infinity of them...
Still, broadly speaking I agree with you. However, I think the proper solution is the reverse - lowering magi's power level, so that a level 30 or 40 spell, which is presented as significant, will actually be so. This kinda takes care of the bulk of the MR problem, too.
While the conventional wisdom here seems to be that angels are always on a Mission From God, I prefer things the other ways around - Divine beings are never on a mission from god, and god never interferes directly. Of if he does, he does so subtly, in ways that are mysterious and support free-will rather than laying down what's what. Even angels are left only doing what they think is right (hence the Fall), and so God remains mysterious.
Bringing up the players against Infinite Power is just not fun - I much prefer to always leave them a way out, and to have God serve as an incomprehensible figure that leads in tantalizing ways rather than as a super-powerful magus.
This leaves the Divine Realm with power comparable to that of other Realms - beings of Might and so on. The key difference, God, influences more the flavor than the way the Realm functions.
Satan, on the other hand, does precisely that:
And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.
Job 1:7
There can be a problem with players, who are themselves atheists/humanists/secularists/agnostics/relativists, having difficulty absorbing the mediaeval paradigm, and understanding that belief in One-True-God was an unquestioned norm. Not being a historian, I am unsure how much actual atheism there was in 1200, but I take it as read that it would be practically unheard of, even in very learned circles, for someone to mock avowals of Faith, and to react to them with incredulity as though they are 'weird ideas'. Players who are tempted to do this can be 'headed off at the pass' by the insistance that in this game believers in God are right, and if you don't believe then you are just wrong. So I tend to insist rather strongly upon the absolute truth of Christianity in my Saga - even if the practical effects are negligable.
Hi,
Not even in learned circles, but especially not in learned circles. In this period, the more you know, the more you know that God exists.
Anyway,
Ken
Fair point.
As an atheist/humanist/secularist/agnostic - I agree. I do like to play pagan or even atheistic characters, but they are clearly outside the norm and, unless the SG decides to change the metaphysics - deluded.
[By playing an "atheist" character I mean not someone that denies the Divine, but rather someone that denies that the Divine is the true God - basically, someone saying the Divine is lying just as much as the demons do, only better. Denying the existence and power of the Divine is sheer insanity in Mythic Europe.]
Hmm, of course you do whatever you want in your saga - but in the official ArM setting, Christianity isn't absolutely true; all monotheistic religions are sort-of-true, with the details of what precisely is true left intentionally fuzzy.
All good points.
Another important point to bear in mind is that what canon lawyers thought may not be entirely representative of what individual parish priests thought (or what the congregation thought). Individual priests could be very tolerant of magic or very intolerant --- whichever works for your saga, I guess.
And this of course is not a particularly medieval view. I think it's safe to say that there were a heck of a lot more Cathars, Odinists, and shamanistic type pagans in medieval Europe than there were people who held such a modern relativistic view. That's not to say it's such a bad idea for a game, but let's not exaggerate the fidelity of it to any particular "Medieval Paradigm"
I take Jabir's sentence as describing part of the definition of the game world of Mythic Europe, parallel to the assertions "Hermetic magic is real and powerful, although it cannot affect things above the Lunar Sphere" ... as opposed to a description of what the inhabitants of Mythic Europe (or medieval Europe) believed.
Err... what? I got lost there, gerg 
What do you mean?
Xavi
As gerg says, you are absolutely right that the ArM5 perspective (which the players know is that "[in the game world] Christianity isn't absolutely true; all [game world] monotheistic religions are sort-of-true") isn't very medieval. But that is the perspective of the players. It isn't meant to be the perspective of the characters in ArM5 --- characters in ArM5 believe what is appropriate to their role, i.e. most of them believe that their religion is absolutely right and everyone with a different religion is a heretic, or a lunatic.
Paganism is fine, from the perspective of normality, there is plenty of that in medieval eurpe, it is atheism that is plainly wierd. That there is no true God whatever you may ascribe Him and His particular characteritics to be is an extremely modern viewpoint. The medieval mindset does not look out at the world and question it - it looks at the world and accepts it. The intellectuals only question it by looks at the existing argumenst and refining them very slightly. Take the 'how many angels can dance on the head of the pin?'.... the argument was not rapidly concluded with 'why would that matter?'.
In more general terms it was suggested that many people would hold non-cannoncial views in ME. I suspect that is true. I am equally certain that they do not realise this fact. Your common or garden variety dirt scraper has only the most meagre insight into the works and ways of God. He has a priest to do the spiritual things for him. If someone actually spent the time to explain things to him and he actuallly had the inclination to listen he might realies what his beliefs are do not conform to cannonical doctrine. However, his reaction to that fact is more likely to be one of horror than a desire to join some heretical cult.
friairs, flagellants and saints caused a great many problems historically because theydid what the church as an organisation did not. Exlplain things to the common man and encourage him into personal acts of spiritualism and faith. This generally scared the church because it was a change form he norm. The church's concern with flagellants for example was not about the mass scourgings of its flock - its concern was a gowig interest among the ordinary folk in personal acts & expressions of faith.
Actually what's being called "athiest" in this quote sounds like it would fit within some variety of medieval gnosticism.
I agree with your larger point that there should be a whole lot of unorthodox and downright weird religious views in ME. I would rather the truth or untruth of these viewpoints be unverifiable, especially if the alternative option is to have a game "truth" that's not actually medieval anyway. Otherwise you get weird cross-cultural situations like Lithuanians who are apparently too stupid to realize they worship "gods" that aren't divine at all or, worse, magi who can ping spells off rival claimants to the papacy to see which one has the Might score. It ends up making Mythic Europe seem less like Medieval Europe, at least IMO.