Here's a question for you:

If arcane/Eldritch magic is reviled nearly universally in human lands (and is hunted by Ymandrakes) why does it persist? One explanation I've infered from Henry and Team PCI is that some people are born with the latent power and it "struggles to manifest" as they get older. Regardless of if "you want it" or not. Another is that Ymandragore (and presumably the Sanctorum) have ways to find the potential and either harvest it or nurture it against being harvested. So people who have the potential tend to be found and trained (or taken to Ymandragore).

But I was thinking, what if you don't want to be a wizard? Since you can't combine arcane Magic with divine spell casting it seems to me that you could (if you had the means to do so) enter a seminary and become a priest. Once you are casting divine spells you ought to be "safe." Your arcane potential would be sealed away.

I think if some crazy "untrustworthy" wizard showed up on my door telling me I had an arcane gift that my logical response would be to join my favorite temple.

Do other people think that could work? Would there be consequences for suppressing arcane potential in this way?

If it is true that you can be born with arcane ability...lets say your archetype, then that would likely prevent you in some way from accressing divine magic. Not saying a person couldn't enter a church and train to become a priest, but their access to arcane energy (trained or not) must somehow block them from accessing the divine power of the cants.

I think its more of a philisophical thing.

You are rending the fabric of the universe and the gods say, "We don't like you doing that." *yoink*, they stop sharing divine power with the heretics.

Divine magic is not granted by Gods or valinors ... its learned (ahem...just like sorcery). Cants are memorized and (perhaps as a safe guard) fuelled/triggered by faith. So no one sitting on a celestial cloud can go "yoink." The bias against arcane magic predominantly seems to be a "modern" cultural thing.

The idea that someone is born with "the arcane archetype" is an interesting one. But while useful to capture heroes development I don't think the average proto sorcerer NPC has one. If anything they have the arcane template attached to their stat block...but still it seems to me that before they are actually casting spells they wouldn't have that either ... just a lot of untapped potential.

If a young proto-sorcerer *couldn't* effectively learn Cants because their body is somehow hardwired for a different kind of magic that would be really really interesting! And a bumber for a small slice of seminary students who might have a latent "gift" they don't know about...But would still potentially leave the temple of Sarish open to them.

I have always assumed (based on Henry's assertions that one 'can not' access both arcane and divine--other than psionic of course) that there was some metaphysical reason. For instance, arcane and divine magic are from two completely different sources, and like oil and water you can't mix them.

The Sarishan church suggestion is very interesting though. Makes me wonder if:

a) Ymandragorans will harvest Sarishan priests
b) If the answer to 'a' is no, whether the Church of Sarish is overwhelmed with applicants in areas hard hit by the Ymandragorans.

I suppose the other consideration is whether a church will accept a potential priest if their reason for joining is self-preservation rather than true faith in the deity. I think that looking at the mechanics of the system, there is some evidence that you need faith to utilize the cants...it isn't just a matter of rote memorization of a series of words and movements.

Arcane and Divine magic are essentially the same source as I understand it. Both access residual energy left over from creation. The teachings of Divine magic is a gift prepackaged from the Gods and you have to do it "as is." And have real faith. Arcane magic is DIY. You play with the building blocks of creation in a high stakes game of Tetris and if you don't kill yourself then you reshape the universe around you (in small ways).

You are definitely right that you need real faith to power divine spells. If the only thing you can muster is self preservation then you probably fail...on the other hand you know what they say: there are no atheists in foxholes...

I like val Holryn's description it is simple in it's explanation. Real faith powers Divine Magic as the module In Darkness Light has shown.
To bring that back to acurrier's questions though. Henry has said that Sorcerer Priests of Sarish are considered to be the same as Divine casters when it comes to Harvester targets.

To answer acurrier's second question, probably not. This should mean that a Sorcerer Priest of Sarish must have real faith in Sarish to cast their spells, but unlike the rest of the clergy they don't have to use the pre-packaged spells. They can alter them to a much greater extent, hence why mechanically they get Arcane Spell Casting.