As I've been reading through lore, I've been building up a... theory? Hypothesis? No, a vague idea... of a possibility of the nature of the Dragon Age setting. I'm going to write it down and post it, simply to organize my thoughts, and to solicit feedback.
Please note that I don't believe that any of this is capital-C Canon, nor do I believe that Bioware, as a group, has had this in mind since the beginning. I don't believe this stuff myself! These ideas are, at best, dorm-room philosophizing. Sophomoric bullshit. If any developer has thought about them, they did so to amuse themselves after work over too many drinks. But, you know, considering this stuff is fun.
We cannot say what the world was like in the beginning. We know that, right now, the world is split into two sides - Thedas and the Fade. One natural and one supernatural, one sacred and one profane. However, the split is not complete, not now nor in the past. The two can intermix to a large degree, with the most powerful entities being the most complete melding of the two. When the two mix, they harmonize, which is to say, they sing. As the two become more and more a part of each other, the Song they sing becomes more beautiful, and that drives the urge to mix even more.
Old elven writing found in the Arbor Wilds speaks of a time when a group prepared "to hunt the pillars of the earth" and that they "will make the earth blossom with their passing", and this comes with an image of two overlapping spheres, whose centers bloom with unknown flowers. Some structure kept the two seperate, and those who could remove even a small part of it were the rulers of the age.
In a world like this, it's not useful to have concepts like "I am human" versus "I am a spirit". or "I am mortal" versus "I am a god" - if you can be both, you are effectively neither. You are something entirely new. (Anders is no longer Anders after he joins with Justice/Vengeance, but he's not the spirit, either - the resulting person has the memories and abilities of both. He's something new, an unknown flower blooming in Kirkwall.)
Later, a firm boundary is created between Thedas and the Fade, or perhaps the boundary always existed but its pillars are merely shored up. This structure is the Veil. The boundary is firm but not impervious, and it can be made thin, but when it exists, it gives the world different shapes. It creates Thedas, which is a world with people, with choice, with time. It also creates the Fade, which is a world of concepts, of spirits and gods. They exist outside of time.
(OK, let's go seriously off the rails! Everything below this is... probably not right. It's also not very well thought-out.)
In either place, there is a substance that still sings the Song of the two spheres, joined. That is lyrium. It's a remnant, a physical memory of that joining. It's in both places, where the two spheres overlapped.
Here's the thing : everyone remembers the Song, and when they hear it, they want to connect to the other side. People want to connect to spirits, spirits want to connect with people, and : they all want to connect with each other, too. It's not just the Veil breaking down, it's everything, all boundaries, between people and spirits and everything alive. When it breaks down completely, you will, like Dagna, 'think all the thoughts'. And everything that's connected to you will think all the thoughts and yours, too.
What happens when a person, who can choose, works with an eternal concept? That is the definition of magic. That is willing a concept into the world. In a larger sense, that is the definition of power. How do you cast a magic spell? You draw spirits to you and ask them to do something, and you do by singing to them. How do you remember what to sing? Use lyrium, and you'll remember the Song. Harmonize with it, and they will come. Mages are simply better singers of the Song. (Worse, they have a habit of singing the Song in their sleep.) When the spheres intermix, magic is easier and power is at the fingertips of both people and spirits, and together, they can sing. When Solas mentions that some spells took decades to complete, I imagine an army - people, spirits, all singing in lockstep, a perfect harmonic mechanism that can raise a cathedral in a day, build a city in a year, and build a new land in a lifetime.
I want to say that Templars sing the inverse of the Song to block magic, because that would be cool! Cole contradicts that. "Their bodies want to connect to something older, bigger than they are. That's why they block magic, they reach for that other thing and magic has no room to come in. Like when I listen to Varric." OK. So we're back to the Song and connecting.
Pure headcanon : the song of the blight (or the song of red lyrium) is the Song played backwards. Have you heard of the urban legend where, if you can play a certain record backwards, you'll hear someone say SATAN SATAN KILL YOUR GRANDMA? Well, the blight's like that. Except it's catchy, too, it's an earworm that you can't stop singing. Everything that hears the song of the blight will start repeating it sooner or later - and I mean everything, down to the atomic level - and that will either corrupt it or turn it into red lyrium.
I'm hoping to find a way to find parallels between the Invisibles' vescia pisces/overlapping universes thing and Mircea Eliade's theory of eternal return. Also how the way Solas paints his mural may imply that his whole come-back-and-kill-Mythal thing may be cyclic...
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