Aurbis 2: Colorful Boogaloo

Introduction

In keeping with the spirit of writing esoteric extrapolations late at night, I present to you the sequel of my previous post concerning the Gods as Tones: the synæsthesia of Gods, Tones, and Colors. We know that the Magne-Ge are colors, and given that synæsthesia seems to be a profound mechanic of the universe (Tonal Architecture is the synæsthesia of Sound and Touch, for instance), I arrived at the conclusion that the Tones and Colors are merely two physical translations of the Gods.

Foundation

Firstly: a quick recap. Go back to the front page of the subreddit, scroll down until you find my post on Music, and open it. The list of Gods and Tones is going to be the most important part. (Feel free to open up the song in the Foreword again, by the way)

Now, follow these links.

• Sonochromatic scale originally developed to translate color into tone for those who could not perceive color.

• 24-Tone Wheel is an image I created to serve as a visual representation of the list of God-Tones that I wrote previously. It lacks labeling, but C is at the top, and the scale ascends clockwise. Take a minute to study it and get a feel for which sections are which notes and gods.

• Colored Wheel. I used the same three fundamental points (C#, F, A) and colors (red, green, blue), as the sonochromatic scale, but moved the colors to better suit the TES God-Scale.

Theory

Lorkhan, the Beat

Before I delve into the meat of this post, I want to quickly cover one thing. Look at the blank Wheel. See how the Aedric Tones are long, the 7 Prominent Daedra are middling, and the 10 Lesser Daedra are the shortest?

Circles are defined as a function of two variables: r (radius) and θ (angle). The Gods are arrayed using θ, but their status is determined by r. The Gods most associated with Lorkhan, the Aedra, have the highest r-values. The next level of Lorkhanic association (the Reclamations are strongly associated with him, and the House of Troubles are also tied into the kalpic nature of the world, but all are Daedra) are weaker, but still strong. Lastly, the ten remaining Daedra are associated with the tones with least commonality and power. As with my Music post yesterday, Lorkhan continues to be utterly different from, yet equally necessary, as the rest of the pantheon.

Color and Tone

I apologize for data-spam, but this is the unified Tone/Color/God table and I’m going to base the rest of this post off of it. For ease of reading, the Aedra are in bold and the Prominent Daedra in italics.

If you remember my definition of the color wheel, you’ll see that C#, Red, happens to land on a Daedric Prince, whereas the other two are on Aedra (Kyne and Julianos). This may seem a little strange, considering that one of the tenets of my Musical Theory of Mundus is that the Aedra are the key Tones and the Daedra are less important. But look again at just who the pillar is: MALACATH. Malacath is formerly Trinimiac, an Aedra, who was changed (transposed, if you will) later on.

As an aside, the number 3 in TES is extremely significant in a few different overarching ways. One of these, the Triune House, is composed of two extremes and an intermediary. Trinimalacath is a primarily Elven deity, and Kyne is primarily human. Julianos, however, is revered by both Elves and Men and his sphere (magic and intellectualism) is relevant to both.

So. Let’s talk physics and theory (and also terror. blackens hands).

While human hearing in our world begins at ~20Hz and extends to ~16kHz, human sight ranges from 4x10^{14 Hz to 8X10}14 Hz. This is a much smaller window and there are much less color combinations possible than there are musical combinations. And while both sound and color are linear, they can be mapped onto a circle. With color, this creates non-spectrum colors (the cyan family). Also, whereas color is a linear/circular set, musical tones are arrayed in a logarithmic pattern.

However, TES physics are not necessarily identical to those of our own world, and we would all do well to remember this.

I want you to visualize a helix. It’s a screw: as a point rotates in a circle, the center moves along an orthogonal axis, creating a twist rather than a closed loop. If you look at it from the side, you see a sine wave, but if you look at it head-on, it makes a circle.

The Color and Tone wheels are, in fact, this helix. Each revolution is one octave. While we can perceive many turns of the Tone Helix, we only see one turn of the Color Helix. We can, however, assume that the Color Helix extends beyond our perception in the same manner as Tones do, and that the Gods are associated with their periodic Colors as they are with periodic Tones (the Octaves).

Synæsthesia

The mixture of "discrete" senses into single fields is one that features strongly in TES lore. Pure Song is perceived as all of the mortal senses, since this Song is what creates the world. Tonal Architecture reshapes the Song and sculpts matter. The Thu’um translates Voice into Color and Force. Color and Tone are intertwined in many regards and it is no stretch at all to unify them. Furthermore, the use of cross-sensory perception in the mythos of Mundus further illustrates the nature of the Dream state that Godhead, Anu, the Captive Sage, and perhaps more to come experience.

Summary

Not only can the world be described through Tone, but also Color. Furthermore, the two are intimately related and may be two aspects of the same fundamental concept.

Post-Script:

Oct 18 00:26:34 <MK> Can you see the admixture of color and sound yet?

That line is pretty much why I wrote this.

Post-Post-Script:

20131030061649 <MK> Dat thread about colors and sounds on reddit
20131030061709 <!Dovahkiin> That was myrrlyn. Man
20131030061807 <MK> mrlyyn did the lay up, that other dude slamdunked
                    it doing airborned cartwheels
20131030061819 <!Dovahkiin> this one? (link)
20131030061825 <MK> y
20131030061832 <!Dovahkiin> that was also myrrlyn
20131030061847 <MK> I don’t even

Those lines are DEFINITELY why I wrote these.