So from Pension of the Ancestor Moth I gather that the Moth Priests tell the future. Is this right? So basically they are just future tellers? Is that all they do?

Seers might be a more appropriate term. Fortune teller sounds like the read your palm and tell you that you will soon come into money.

They're priests and monks. I think there's plenty that priests and monks do. They fulfill a religious function and contemplate theological mysteries. They venerate the ancestor moths that contain the souls of their ancestors and produce a special silk. This silk is woven into garments that have religious signficance to the Cyrodiils because of the association with their ancestors. Unforunately you never see either moth or silk in the game.

On the contrary, there are quite a few moths flying around near the Temple of the Ancestor Moths.

Not just there, There's also moths in Deepscorn Hollow and in the Terentius Family Mausoleum. The Ancestor Moths also worship The Nine, Work in the elder scrolls library, Guard relics of the nine and, Yes, Tell the future.

Talk-back underwear with my grandma's voice. Just what I needed.

Where do you think the silk garments were made from?

Spider Daedra Silk. Hehe... :dance:

Those are some amazing insects.

They don't "tell the future", the Elder Scrolls themselves do that... and even then, what is on an Elder Scroll may change until its event has passed, due to the volatile nature of what may come. Moth Priests only interpret what the Scrolls say.

What I want to know is... why exactly is using the Moth Priest ritual to divine the scrolls so detrimental to one's eyesight?

In absence of an actual explanation, I will say that in Nirn you seem to make your own magic, and this group is two thousand years old. Maybe they have codified reality into suitable theatrics.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlindSeer.

Hyuuuuuuuck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave#Plot

So they see beyond reality as mortals know it through the Scrolls and can't stand the thought of re-acclimating?

As well as the whole zany contradistinction of "they're blind but they can see some things better than we do", I interpret it as a "higher truth makes them blind". This has various implications or possibilities, like the immediate world isn't real, the truths they see are too brilliant, and so on and so forth, because I don't think it's meant to have a clear answer, it's just meant to be something to mull over.

That or they ritually try and gouge out their eyes after each reading

I believe there is some dialogue on the subject of their blindness during the Theives Guild questline in OB.

What's even more amusingly absurd is that the blind moth priests... wear blindfolds.

Maybe they do that so their eyes don't have to re-acclimate to "Reality"?

Or, possibly, they wear blindfolds for the same reason that the blind beggars on television wear dark glasses. Occaisionally, someone who has complete blindness has discolored or "milky" eyes. This is usually a very shocking and visually disturbing feature on an otherwise "normal" face, so they choose to cover up that part of their anatomy, especially since there's no reason to leave it uncovered. After a while the dark glasses (or in this case blindfold) become a symbol for being visually impaired. Think of it more like a badge than a fashion choice.


After all, what do you think was used instead of glasses before glasses were invented? That's right. Blindfolds. It never gave me pause. As a matter of fact, the only thing that gave me pause was how small the temple of the ancestor moth was in the game. Then again, when you consider how everything else shrank, it's more than likely gameplay instead of lore. Whatever. Later.