I've been doing a fair bit of reading on the West, and as I've been studying the Guide, Revealed Mythologies, and the Middle Sea Empire book, I've run into a bit of a snag in my understanding of the central concepts of Joy and Men of All. In order to explain, let me first elaborate my own understanding, and then ask a couple of questions.
So, Hrestol is the first to experience Joy, and he creates the Man-of-All caste by teaching it to others. At this stage the two seem inextricably linked: having Joy is what makes one a Man-of-All. Being able to experience Joy also seems to come from having been a member of every caste first, though of course it was spontaneous for Hrestol himself. Presumably he either changed caste membership several times on his accidental Heroquest, or was just particularly primed for this mystic-ish enlightenment through luck, his own philosophizing, what have you. The Glorantha wiki entry on Joy seems to agree that Joy is what makes someone a Man-of-All, and though I can't find an exact citation in the Guide or Revealed Mythologies, my own reading of the passages on Hrestol and Arkat seems to line up with this idea.
So, question one: How exactly did Hrestol lay out how to achieve Joy, and am I correct in thinking that Joy was necessary to be a Man-of-All in his time?
Skipping over the second age and the God Learners, we wind up in Loskalm, who have their own Man-of-All caste. The Loskalmi promote someone to a Man-of-All straight from the Guardian caste, and before someone has been a Wizard or Noble. In fact, membership in the M-o-As is a necessary prerequisite for becoming a Wizard as well as a Noble. So, there's an issue here, because the concepts of Joy and Men-of-All are now decoupled a bit, leading me to believe that a Loskalmi Man-of-All is not the same thing as a first age M-o-A. Which would make sense to me, as a Loskalmi Wizard is different from a Zzaburi, etc. If it's necessary to experience every caste before achieving Joy (which is my understanding), then a Loskalmi Man-of-All is someone who is preparing themselves to achieve Joy, but has not actually experienced it yet. It may also be the case that my understanding of Joy is incorrect, and Joy is actually what allows you to change caste in the first place. In that case though, a Loskalmi M-o-A has already changed caste once before, from a Dronar/Worker to a Holiri/Guardian. In that case they would all have already achieved Joy a good time before becoming Men-of-All, which just seems absurd and also would mean that Loskalm has tens of thousands of enlightened mystics running around in it, which is Lunar Empire levels of crazy.
Question two: When exactly in the procession of castes do Loskalmi expect to experience Joy, if it can be expected at all?
Then, we have Ascended Masters. The Guide blurb on them simply defines them as people who have "achieved complete unity with the Invisible God." Now, Joy is defined as a union with the Invisible God, which would seem to imply that anyone who has received Joy is an Ascended Master, but that feels wrong to me. Ascended Masters seem rather rare, and more on the level of Gods or Heroes. The wiki even calls them the Malkioni equivalent of heroes, and though I can't find any support in the Guide for this it makes more sense to me. My own guess is that while Joy is a unity with the Invisible God, it's not a complete unity. We know that Solace is related to the 3rd action and Joy to the 2nd, so that would imply that there is an as-of-yet unknown mental state/revelation connected to the First Action (Illumination?). Maybe the Ascended Masters are people who have experienced that.
Which brings me to my third question: what separates an Ascended Master from a Man-of-All from someone who has experienced Joy?
Laying it all out, I think my confusion is caused by the fact that we have two names for things: Man-of-All and Ascended Master, but three different things. There's someone who is seeking Joy, someone who has experienced Joy, and someone who is beyond the world. The term Man-of-All seems to overlap the first two, and Ascended Master the last two. It really makes me want to bring back the word Knight, which I understand was cut from the game line for having too many real world connotations, but it would make a lot more sense to me though if Knight was the Loskalmi word for their not-yet-Joyful mounted warrior/wizard caste and if Man-of-All was specifically a term for someone who had experienced Joy. It would fit with how the Loskalmi simplified the other caste names, presumably an effort by Siglat to modernize their language. Still that's based on a lot of assumptions that - as I've already outlined - may be wrong.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and hopefully you can help me clear this up.