For the more obsessed in the avatar crowd

If you’re consciously following an avatar path, you can mystically consecrate yourself to your chosen archetype. Then your avatar skill becomes your obsession, and you’re allowed to raise it beyond the value of your Soul, up to the usual limit of 98 (or 99 for godwalkers).

The Consecration Ceremony
The ceremony is an improvised ritual, not so different from Tilts, in which you identify yourself with your chosen avatar. You should probably spend a while – a month? two game sessions? – going through ritual purification, during which you have to make sure not to violate avatar taboos, and should also refuse to flip-flop any rolls for your current obsession skill.

The ceremony might be actual magick, but it’s just as likely to be a psychological trick, justifying and formalizing the character’s new obsession skill. If the GM wants it to be magick, and/or wants to make a big deal of the ceremony (playing out your acquisition of ceremonial items associated with your path), you may get a couple free points in your avatar skill after performing it. But I don’t see this as necessary: the listed benefits are sufficient and anyone who does it will probably drop some x.p. into the skill as soon as they can, anyway.

Why the change?
Obviously, this tweak allows PC avatars to get the higher channels more quickly: by the rules, it takes one-third the number of sessions. It becomes possible for a character who started at the global or even street-level to get to the fourth channel and participate in an assumption conflict.

We can also expect that most godwalkers and other high-level avatars are going to be obsessed with their path, rather than having preternaturally high Soul stats.

I think those changes are good things; if you disagree, you probably don’t want to tweak the rules as written.

Personally, I don’t think high-level avatars should necessarily have a high Soul. As a concrete example, look at the description of Agnes Flynn from Hush Hush, who is explicitly obsessed with being the best Executioner she can be. Going by the list of Soul level descriptions on pp. 37-8 of the rules, I’d say her Soul ought to be around 40, but her Avatar: the Executioner should be in the 71-90 range, and probably toward the high end.