When I said you could texture map it on the sphere, I of course didn't mean that you would see no seems in it, but if you subdivide the triangles in the sphere enough, then that shouldn't matter too much. And of course, I got reminded by others just now about the Displacement Map Filter. I think that this will be your only alternative, but for rotation you'll have to work with moving the actual texture around in x/y's...

P.