Recently I have been going over old volumes of texts I found at the Imperial library and have come across a few old texts that I vaguely remember so I desided to take a gander at the information contained within. to my most pleasant surprise the text contained some fundamental concepts that sparked a new revolutionary idea in me. Since then I have spent many a nights up late tracking down obscure text and crossreferenceing many different ideas until I finally came up with as solid of a theory as I could. I give you my theory on the nature of souls and magicka.
Every person whether man or mer is born, lives, dies, and is recycled in the dreamsleave. This we can all agree on. But just what is this dreamsleave? Some may believe it is like a recycling plant to where the souls are taken and wiped clean and then start over. while this may be true I believe it is a fundamentally flawed idea. I believe the dreamsleave is the same as the waters of oblivion or magicka tides. So it is my idea that souls are nothing more than the purest form of magicka. Now takeing an idea from the ayleids that light is the purest form of magicka then light equals souls. This explains why soul gems work the way they do to recharge magical equipment and even leads to some clues to how varla stones are made. This may also contain the clues for some other mysteries of the univerese such as how the birthsigns effect everyone and even may lead to the answer on how to acheive chim.
I'll begin with the birthsigns since it is the one I am most sure of. As we all know you are born under the sign that the sun rises near and it can have a profound effect on your life. It is my belief that there are many different streams of magicka one for each birthsign, 13 in all whether they converge I do not know. My belief comes from an event that took place near the very end of the second era. Cyrus the restless went to the island of stro's m'kai and one of his acomplishment there was helping an old yucundan woman help her son's soul pass into the dreamsleave bypassing the soul snare of n'gastas.She was haveing trouble doing this because his sign was that of the serpent. This lead me to believe that his soul had to return to the dreamsleave through the serpent most likely where it came from. This would mean that the magicka flow from the serpent was directly connected to the dreamsleave and quite possibly be the same thing.
*The next paragraph is my attempt to describe chim with my theory. This is my first time attepting to understand chim so please bear with me.
I believe that the way to achieve chim can be described with my theory. My theory is that everything is magicka so the whole universe is made of the same thing. The way I percieve it the way to achieve chim would be to first die. Once you are dead your soul will rejoin the dreamsleave/magicka stream. If you realize that you are magicka and that everything else in the world is magicka and still realize that you are still you then you would achieve chim. At this point of being pure magicka and still being yourself you could change the universe to your likeing if you like because everything would be an extention of you because you are magicka and magicka is everything.
Now sorry for the long post about something that is probably going to be debunked but I just wanted to show you good folks what 2 nights of no sleep and too much time on your hands can do to you. Thank you for your time

What/where are the Waters of Oblivion and the Magicka Tides? Or are those adjectives rather than proper nouns? I tend to capitalize stuff like that.
I like your theory; reminds me of translucent dreaming. I need to go see that movie Inception.

Okay, first up: grammar, spelling, punctuation. Then, invest in some organization and formulate a clear thesis and supports. It doesn't have to be a standard 5 paragraph school paper, but stream of consciousness "first i thought this and then i read this which made me think that" is really hard to follow. I think your viewpoint has some validity, but honestly I don't yet know exactly what you're trying to say or how far you're taking your interpretation.

He posted that about 3 weeks ago so I'm hoping he comes back on to clear up things as he might be on to something. I'd like to see links to sources he is using, too, as that helps out the rest of us. Like someone posted a link to the Tamrielic calendar system in one of the other threads..... (checks) oh! it was you Lady N!

His research kinda reminds me of Steven Hawking's attempt at piecing together the creation of the universe. But throwing CHIM in here is just opening up a big o' can o' woims (that's right, I spelled it the New Joisey way)

d'oh, should have payed attention to the original date. In my humble opinion CHIM is one of those things that really shouldn't enter into discussion unless absolutely necessary, and yet it tens to find a place in just about every tangentially relevant thread.