I've outrun myself here so I'm winging it.
I don't think I have the exact mechanics of magic in Earwa down but as I understand it sorcery sort of represents any kind of meaning manipulation.
Math, art, philosophy and religion are tools we use to manipulate meaning in our world. In Earwa matter follows meaning to such a potent degree that the equivalents of the ways we manipulate meaning can burn armies.
Sorcery is like Wittgenstein's conception of language games except it goes beyond language. Meaning games and truth games. We like to think that when we inquire into truth we are doing something something objective but we aren't. Truth is up for grabs and we manipulate it with whatever tools are at our disposal for selfish animal reasons. Science, philosophy, religion and common sense are all the same. They are just sets of rules for the games we play with truth.
Again, the specific mechanics are beyond me but we know some of the things that are connected with being good at wielding these powers in Earwa. Will, intellect, emotion, and sight are all tied up with it.
I'm specifically interested in more of what you think the No-God's subjective experience is like, if you'd indulge me...
Someone mentioned the no god being a god of anosognosia but I think it's more likely to be the opposite. I can see the mechanics of the no god somehow working through hyper self awareness.
What I was thinking here was that the gods are these blind, illusory sources of meaning and the no god is an inward looking antithesis to their meaning.
Our intuition tells us that if the no god is asking for help seeing it follows that he can't see. Bakker thinks that intuition is dangerously misleading though. When we can't see, we don't know we can't see, and we are unconcerned. As we gain access to more information we become more aware of our own ignorance. Moreover, the world is a place without inherent meaning, and possibly a place without truth. Because of that it's our ability to lie to ourselves that creates truth.
The ineffable but all important thing we call “meaning” is actually a direct product of informatic deficits wired into our brains. Our ability to experience love, hate, beauty, time, consciousness, is the direct product of our blindness to the truth of our own nature. If we could see our thought processes clearly the illusion would be broken. Our soul is our capacity for illusion and the gods are a concentration of that. They just believe and feel their certain truths, thereby providing anchors of truth for us to exist downstream of.
D because C, C because B, B because A, A because? A because the gods know and feel it to be true. That kind of belief (wrong word?) has power. Power that is similar to sorcery. They are big powerful agencies. Souls more deluded and willful than a human could ever hope to be.
I'm just throwing stuff around here. I think that this self-delusion, illusion stuff is critical but its tangled. There seems to be power in both sight and blindness. Look closely enough and illusion collapses. Sometimes that's a good thing. They mandate are skeptics and that makes them powerful. The Cish are zealots who literally have blind faith, and that makes them powerful. Mimaras clearly on the power from sight side of things. Sight is definitely associated with destruction and illusion with creation.
Anyway, the No God begging to know what people see makes me think his vision is too good. Plus it's a cool parallel to the blind gods.
Theres a few ways this could work but what I'm imagining is that the No God is a big soul and a big “lens”. Under his powerful gaze all the beautiful lies and illusions whither. Horrifyingly I suspect the lens may be mostly focused on itself. He is a lens and a consciousness leashed together for the singular purpose of experiencing the worlds and his own meaninglessness. Thus the desperate mantra. He exists only to perceive the illusory-ness of that his existence. He experiences consciousness as robustly as we do, but he can see the neural or digital circuits that generate that consciousness doing so as they do it. His sensorium is taken up by a never-ending lesson in nihilism.
Because of the way magic is tied up in sight and will and soul, his torment changes the rules for everyone. He is a god of nihilism and materialism. Meaning is shut out from the world.
When I finish writing these they seem hopelessly speculative. Way fun though.