-edited-
This is a response to your earlier post Madness.
Colour me unconvinced, dragharrow.
- Titirga was blind as a child... no idea what that means. Does he see like the Cishaurim? (child's skull, maybe, instead of snakes, or "Third Sight") Did he grow or make artifice eyes?
I don't think so. The Cishaurim are blind for life. The False Sun gave me the impression that Titirga can actually see again. There are no indications that his vision is at all stunted in adulthood whereas the snakes are a poor replacement for natural human sight (I think Moengus says its like looking through a pinhole or something).
Noshainrau is rumored to have found Titirga begging on the streets. I assumed that Titirga's blindness was medically curable once he was raised out of poverty. Specifically, I was thinking of cataracts because I remembered reading ancient civilizations in our own world could treat them using surgery.
- Blindness/Sight/Mark correlation: We don't know what the Mark is (is it a moral measure or a physical one?); we don't if the relation between "degrees of sightedness" and the Mark even exists - it seems to but I can't think of a thought-out reason as to why?; How are you ranking Mark/Inward Mark/No Mark? What is/are the orienting rule/s you use to establish hierarchy between them?
Food for thoughts.
We don't have anything concrete but we've been given some speculation on the Mark and its relationship to sight.
Kellhus claims that sorcery is speaking with the voice of god. All souls are fragments of the god soul and the Few are fragments that can recall the voice of the god soul. However, mundane existence apparently carries an overwhelming immediacy for souls. Intoxicated by mundane existence, the Few are generally unable to recall the voice of god with a high degree of clarity. Someone argues (and I think it's still Kellhus that proposes this) that the Cish's blindness reduces the overwhelming immediacy of the Inside. It separates them from the mundane world, making them more remote. The absence of this distraction allows them to recall the voice of god with greater clarity.
The exact mechanics of the Mark are unclear. I think Kellhus suggests that mages accrue it because they use the voice of god but there is dissonance. This kind of explains why, assuming Kellhus is right about sorcery and the Cish, they don't get the Mark, but it doesn't explain what the Mark actually is. That said, going by Kellhus' assumptions about sorcery, the Cish and the Mark, we can understand why Titirga would have a muted Mark. When he was young he had the remoteness of the blind but he doesn't anymore.
Mark/Inward Mark/No Mark?
I absolutely could be missing something but I looked through my books and The False Sun, and I wasn't able to find a reference to the "inward Mark" as you use that term. If you could point me to where that comes from awesome but my understanding is that there is the Mark (of varying intensities), the muted Mark (which we have only seen on Titirga), and no Mark. I'm trying to be careful about not rehashing but I do think that's a clear hierarchy. No sight=no Mark/Experience of no sight=some or "muted" Mark/No sight=zero Mark.
Why is that? I don't exactly know. According to Kellhus, I guess sorcerers without sight are more able to understand gods plan and act in line with it but that doesn't really make sense to me. I think it is because the Onta exists behind sight. The Few can see the Onta. Take their regular sight away and they can only see the Onta. That makes them understand the Onta much more accurately. So by my understanding, the Cish, who are totally blind and can only really see the Onta can speak in line with it very accurately. Titirga was one of the Few but when he was blind he became familiar with it. He relied on it. So that even when his blindness was cured he remembered the nature of the Onta and was more able to speak without dissonance.
Blindness/Sight/Mark correlation: We don't know what the Mark is (is it a moral measure or a physical one?);
I wish I had a theory on this but I don't at all. Here is my best guess but it is total speculation: There is a hard difference between the Inside and the Outside. The beings of the Outside created the Inside using the voice of god. Using the voice of god within the inside, which, again, was created by the voice of god, creates dissonance for some reason. There is some kind of nesting problem with the voice of god. Somehow, inherently, using the voice of inside the voice of god creates dissonance. Again though I don't know and I feel like that butts up against what I was just saying about blindness and the Mark.
I can't decipher what you said after this but I'm trying. Help me out I'm not trying to be belligerent.
Well, that is the established mythology (I don't use this term as a mark of "fiction," aside) of a number of human conceptions.
What mythologies? Not fiction but religious or like Parfit?
Edit: I misinterpreted you. By not fiction you meant not necessarily false?
Hmm I guess I want to think of these things less as agencies than as forces. Isn't Oblivion fundamentally the "Ground of Grounds"? That was your term and I think it perfectly encapsulates the Solitary God. Everything ultimately must rise from the void.
But it's interesting because I've always used that metaphor internally to distinguish Absolution/Redemption states (attributed to the Solitary God specifically) from Oblivion states (they, again, might have similar characteristics - "bowing to God forever" & "sleeping forever" are equally appalling to me as much as I think they are unlikely - but are dissimilar in actual experience).
Edit, I keep rereading this and I think I get it now:
So absolution/redemption is connected with the Solitary God and that's what you're describing as bowing forever. Whereas Oblivion is sleeping forever. That makes sense.
Is there an alternative that you wouldn't find appalling? This is a big jump but I'm given to suspect -for both Earwa and our own world- that existence is bondage. Freedom and existence appear to be antithetical to each other.