Dark Tower cosmology statements

Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
Alright
I have my more important quotes gathered. However, I'm sure Aeyu has a good few quotes that are basically the same as some of the ones I have, so I'll have her post up some things first.
(Hey Matt. Lookee here.)
Animah01/14/2019
What do you want me to post?
First, I mean.
Like what needs clarification first
We should preferrably do this in order
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
First off, the quote of Roland describing the "void of possibility beyond all physical worlds"
Or something like that.
I know you have it.
Animah01/14/2019
Oh, ye
Before I post it (and I can prove this with quotes too, or MrKing can), Roland already knew about the stories of the Macroverse and the Songs of the Beam Guardians from his teacher, Vannay, who even knew and taught about Todash. The context is that in the second book, Roland enters doors which can transport him "anywhere and anywhen" (different areas in space and time), which lead him inside different peoples' consciousnesses. While inside of of them, the guy is in in danger of dying, which makes Roland consider this:
"Mort had not died of fright; the gunslinger felt with a deep instinct which was the same as knowing that if Mort died, their kas would be expelled forever, into that void of possibility which lay beyond all physical worlds. Not dead—fainted. Fainted at the overload of terror and strangeness, as Roland himself had done upon entering the man’s mind and discovering its secrets and the crossing of destinies too great to be coincidence."
@Captain Buzzkill Now what?
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
Now the one where It is described as being beyond time and space.
Animah01/14/2019
Kay
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
...
Animah01/14/2019
Hold on!!!
Crimson Azoth01/14/2019
Holding
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
What he said.
Animah01/14/2019
"Then Beverly was shrieking, clinging to Bill, as It raced down the gossamer curtain of Its webbing, a nightmare Spider from beyond time and space, a Spider from beyond the fevered imaginings of whatever inmates may live in the deepest depths of hell.
No, Bill thought coldly, not a Spider either, not really, but this shape isn't one It picked out of our minds; it's just the closest our minds can come to
(the deadlights), whatever It really is."
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
Thanks.
(also, FYI, this would most likely be the form that crash-landed on the planet, as well as the form that caused the earthquake upon its death. This exact form would have its stats scale to those feats, and I have proof for that which I'll outline later.)
Crimson Azoth01/14/2019
Sweet
Animah01/14/2019
Well, it came from beyond time and space, its form while in the physical isn't necessarily
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
I was referring to the physical form that was "the closest our minds can come to [...] whatever It really is."
Anywho
Animah01/14/2019
Also, it should be mentioned that it's said to be beyond time and space AFTER they enter the Macroverse, proving that the Macroverse itself is beyond time and space
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
Yeah
Crimson Azoth01/14/2019
Exactly
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
The next one is something I can field myself.
Supporting the idea that the Macroverse is beyond time and space are two details.
Animah01/14/2019
Well, it can already be inferred in that the Tower's conceptual form lay on Maturin's back, while the physical one lay in the Keystone World
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
I'll get to that in a moment.
The first is Roland's statement that Gan created time as a concept, by literally setting the multiverse rolling with his finger:
Animah01/14/2019
Are you going to mention that while in the Macroverse, IT is explictly called non-geometric?
As well as formless and unshaped?
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
One thing at a time
Anyway
“Gan created time,” Roland said. “This is what the old legends say. Gan rose from the void—some tales say from the sea, but both surely mean the Prim—and made the world. Then he tipped it with his finger and set it rolling and that was time.” -The Dark Tower
The second is something Richie observes when he's pulled (mind and soul) into the void; There are no directions in the Macroverse to speak of:
Richie, no! Go back! It’s the edge of everything up here! The deadlights!
souns like what you turn on when you drivinn you hearse at midnie, senhorr . . . and where is you, honeychile? smile, so I can see where you is!
And suddenly Bill was there, skidding along on
(the left? right? there was no direction here)
one side or the other. And beyond him, coming up fast, Richie could see/sense something that finally dried up his laughter. It was a barrier, something of a strange, non-geometrical shape that his mind could not grasp. -IT
Animah01/14/2019
I think this segues into the argument for Gan
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
(And yes, there's your mention of It being non-geometrical.)
I'll get to Gan in a moment.
Animah01/14/2019
Well, it ties into the "formless, unshaped" thing along with the "void beyond this one" and the "author of all that is" statements
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
I haven't forgotten about those. Trust me...
Animah01/14/2019
I hope we can sift through this chat easily when the time comes to do the CRT
Well
actually, if all goes well it might be like TES where you can just do the tiers yourself bc they're already solid
SORRY ;-;
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
Anyway
(again)
We know that the Macroverse is where Maturin lives, particularly because (among other statements) when we see Bill pulled out of the universe by It, we actually see him fly past Maturin on the way towards where It is located. I'll get that quote (or have Aeyu do it) later.
As for Maturin himself, there are several quotes that state he's carrying the entire multiverse on his shell.
For example, Mia states as much here:
Mia states that "the world" rests on Maturin's shell

There are six Beams, as you did say, but there are twelve Guardians, one for each end of each Beam. This—for we’re still on it—is the Beam of Shardik. Were you to go beyond the Tower, it would become the Beam of Maturin, the great turtle upon whose shell the world rests. -Song of Susannah
It's later confirmed that "world", in this case, is referring to all of creation, as Gan made it. After Gan made creation and moved on, Maturin caught it on his back to prevent it from falling into the abyss:
“Gan bore the world and moved on,” Roland replied. “Is that what you mean to say?”
“Aye, and the world would have fallen into the abyss if not for the great turtle. Instead of falling, it landed on his back.” - Song of Susannah
Animah01/14/2019
Speaking of the Beams
It is them that maintain the existence of physicality and the alignment of space, time, size and dimension, not the Tower itself, the Tower is more the nexus of all worlds and the spaces between, regardless of the dimensionality.
Quotes:
The Great Old Ones didn’t make the world, but they did re-make it. Some tale-tellers say the Beams saved it; others say they are the seeds of the world’s destruction. The Great Old Ones created the Beams. They are lines of some sort . . . lines which bind . . . and hold . . .”
“Are you talking about magnetism?” Susannah asked cautiously.
His whole face lit up, transforming its harsh planes and furrows into something new and amazing, and for a moment Eddie knew how Roland would look if he actually did reach his Tower.
“Yes! Not just magnetism, but that is a part of it . . . and gravity . . . and the proper alignment of space, size, and dimension. The Beams are the forces which bind these things together.”
This also implies that before the Great Old Ones, everything was made of magic, and not physical matter
This is later confirmed by the following:
“How many Beams do there be, Susannah of New York?”
“Six,” Susannah said. “At least, there were. I guess now there are only two that—”
Mia waved a hand impatiently, as if to say Don’t waste my time. “Six, aye. And when the Beams were created out of that greater
Discordia, the soup of creation some (including the Manni) call the Over and some call the Prim, what made them?”
“I don’t know,” Susannah said. “Was it God, do you think?”
“Perhaps there is a God, but the Beams rose from the Prim on the airs of magic, Susannah, the true magic which passed long ago. Was it God that made magic, or was it magic that made God? I know not. It’s a question for philosophers, and mothering’s my job. But once upon a time all was Discordia and from it, strong and all crossing at a single unifying point, came the six Beams. There was magic to hold them steady for eternity, but when the magic left from all there is but the Dark Tower, which some have called Can Calyx, the Hall of Resumption, men despaired. When the Age of Magic passed, the Age of Machines came.”
This leads us to the Prim, which is not actually a realm per se, but the primordial magic of Gan that existed before the world:
“Eddie, we’re going to run into the core of the light,” Roland said. “It’s not a door of the old people but of the Prim—that is magic, do ye ken. It’ll take us to the place we want, if we concentrate hard enough.”

“Yes! Magic doors—like the one Eddie found and you took me through to New York—go both ways. The doors North Central Positronics made to replace them when the Prim receded and the magic faded . . . they go only one way. Have I got that right?”
This power of the Prim used to be ubiquitous in the Macroverse, which, although beyond space and time as concepts and being a void with no directions, geometry or physicality, contains all of existence within it (in particular, on Maturin's back)
"Maybe once, just after the Prim withdrew and Gan’s voice still echoed in the rooms of the macroverse, the Beams were smooth and polished, but those days are gone. Now the Way of the Bear and the Turtle is lumpy and eroded, full of coves and cols and bays and cracks, plenty of places to get your fingers in and take hold, and sometimes you drag at it and sometimes you can feel yourself worming your way into it like a drop of acid that can think. All these sensations are intensely pleasurable. Sexy."
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
Relevant to that
Stephen King's (in-universe) writer's notes include this golden nugget of information:

November 18th, 1984
I had a dream last night that I think breaks the creative logjam on It. Suppose there’s a kind of Beam holding the Earth (or even multiple Earths) in place? And that the Beam’s generator rests on the shell of a turtle? I could make that part of the book’s climax. I know it sounds crazy, but I’m sure I read somewhere that in Hindu mythology there’s a great turtle that bears us all on his shell, and that he serves Gan, the creative overforce. Also, I remember an anecdote where some lady sez to some famous scientist, “This evolution stuff is ridiculous. Everyone knows that a turtle holds up the universe.” To which the scientist (wish I could remember his name, but I can’t) replies, “That may be, madam, but what holds up the turtle?” Scornful laugh from the lady, who says, “Oh, you can’t fool me! It’s turtles all the way down.”
Ha! Take that, ye rational men of science!
Anyway, I keep a blank book by my bed, and have gotten so I write down a lot of dreams and dream elements w/o even fully waking up. This morning I’d written Remember the Turtle! And this: See the TURTLE of enormous girth! On his shell he holds the earth. His thought is slow but always kind; he holds us all within his mind. Not great poetry, I grant you, but not bad for a guy who was three-quarters asleep when he wrote it!
Tabby has been on my case about drinking too much again. I suppose she’s right, but … -Song of Susannah (Coda)
This not only strengthens the idea that Maturin is holding more than just the mainstream SK universe on his back, but also implies that the entirety of the Beams' power source also rests there.

The Beams' power source is none other than the Tower itself:

“There is a Tower, lady and gentlemen, as you must know. At one time six beams crisscrossed there, both taking power from it—it’s some kind of unimaginable power-source—and lending support, the way guy-wires support a radio tower. Four of these Beams are now gone, the fourth very recently. The only two remaining are the Beam of the Bear, Way of the Turtle— Shardik’s Beam—and the Beam of the Elephant, Way of the Wolf—some call that one Gan’s Beam. -The Dark Tower
Animah01/14/2019
More proof of this:

Susannah ignored this. “And the Dark Tower? Is it some kind of generator? A central power-source for these Beams?”
“It’s slow work, because the Tower is bound in place by crisscrossing force beams that act on it like guy wires. The Beams have held for millennia, and would hold for millennia to come, but in the last two hundred years—that’s speaking of time as you count it, Jack; to you, Sophie, it would be Full-Earth almost five hundred times over—”

"Yes, there it is, a dusty gray-black pillar rearing on the horizon: the Dark Tower, the place where all Beams, all lines of force, converge. In its spiraling windows he sees fitful electric blue fire and hears the cries of all those pent within; he senses both the strength of the place and the wrongness of it; he can feel how it is spooling error across everything, softening the divisions between the worlds, how its potential for mischief is growing stronger even as disease weakens its truth and coherence, like a body afflicted with cancer; this jutting arm of dark gray stone is the world’s great mystery and last awful riddle."

"Because of the Beam, the boy who was now only a pair of floating eyes replied, and because of the Tower. In the end, all things, even the Beams, serve the Dark Tower. Did you think you would be any different?"
The Tower existed before the Beams, within the Prim, as well as being a conceptual item within the minds of multiple beings:
And the Dark Tower? Stephen King’s version of the Dark Tower? Or Gan’s version, or the Prim’s version? Lost forever, all of them. And that sound you hear? Why, that must be the Crimson King, laughing and laughing and laughing from somewhere deep in the Discordia. And maybe Mordred the Spider-Boy, laughing along with him.
@Captain Buzzkill I think that the Talisman is going to play a large role in properly tiering the Tower
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
Well, you're more familiar with it than I am, so I'll let you field whatever comes from that.
Animah01/14/2019
As it's confirmed to be "more than" the axle of all possible worlds
The Talisman:

Here was enough transcendentalism to drive even a cavedwelling Tibetan holy man insane. Jack Sawyer was everywhere; Jack Sawyer was everything. A blade of grass on a world fifty thousand worlds down the chain from earth died of thirst on an inconsequential plain somewhere in the center of a continent which roughly corresponded in position to Africa; Jack died with that blade of grass. In another world, dragons were copulating in the center of a cloud high above the planet, and the fiery breath of their ecstasy mixed with the cold air and precipitated rain and floods on the ground below. Jack was the he-dragon; Jack was the she-dragon; Jack was the sperm; Jack was the egg. Far out in the ether a million universes away, three specks of dust floated near one another in interstellar space. Jack was the dust, and Jack was the space between. Galaxies unreeled around his head like long spools of paper, and fate punched each in random patterns, turning them into macrocosmic player-piano tapes which would play everything from ragtime to funeral dirges. Jack’s happy teeth bit an orange: Jack’s unhappy flesh screamed as the teeth tore him open. He was a trillion dust-kitties under a billion beds. He was a joey dreaming of its previous life in its mother’s pouch as the mother bounced over a purple plain where rabbits the size of deer ran and gambolled. He was ham on a hock in Peru and eggs in a nest under one of the hens in the Ohio henhouse Buddy Parkins was cleaning. He was the powdered henshit in Buddy Parkins’s nose;
he was the trembling hairs that would soon cause Buddy Parkins to sneeze; he was the sneeze; he was the germs in the sneeze; he was the atoms in the germs; he was the tachyons in the atoms travelling backward through time toward the big bang at the start of creation.
His heart skipped and a thousand suns flashed up in novas.
He saw a googolplex of sparrows in a googolplex of worlds and marked the fall or the well-being of each.
He died in the Gehenna of Territories ore-pit mines.
He lived as a flu-virus in Etheridge’s tie.
He ran in a wind over far places.
He was . . .
Oh he was . . .
He was God. God, or something so close as to make no difference.
No! Jack screamed in terror. No, I don’t want to be God! Please! Please, I don’t want to be God, I ONLY WANT TO SAVE MY MOTHER’S LIFE!
**Said about the Talisman, which is relevant to the Tower's tiering and that of Todash Space itself:**
"It was some time before Jack became aware that the Agincourt was shaking itself to pieces around him, and this was not surprising. He was transported with wonder. In one sense he was not in the Agincourt at all, not in Point Venuti, not in Mendocino County, not in California, not in the American Territories, not in those other Territories; but he was in them, and in an infinite number of other worlds as well, and all at the same time. Nor was he simply in one place in all those worlds; he was in them everywhere because he was those worlds. The Talisman, it seemed, was much more than even his father had believed. It was not just the axle of all possible worlds, but the worlds themselves—the worlds, and the spaces between those worlds." (Todash)
The Talisman is said to contain a "dimensional macrocosm of worlds"
That was it, all right; that was the Talisman. The axle of all possible worlds. How many worlds? God alone knew. The American Territories; the Territories themselves; the hypothetical Territories’ Territories; and on and on, like the stripes coming ceaselessly up and out of a turning barber pole. A universe of worlds, a dimensional macrocosm of worlds—and in all of them one thing that was always the same; one unifying force that was undeniably good, even if it now happened to be imprisoned in an evil place; the Talisman, axle of all possible worlds. And was it also Phil Sawyer’s folly? Probably so. Phil’s folly . . . Jack’s folly . . . Morgan Sloat’s . . . Gardener’s . . . and the hope, of course, of two Queens.
The Talisman is alive and not just a physical construct:
No, Jack, the Talisman whispered, and he understood why it had yielded to the gentle pressure of his hands. It was alive; of course it was. No, Jack: All will be well . . . all will be well . . . and all manner of things will be well. Only believe; be true; stand; do not falter now.
Peace in him—oh such deep peace.
Rainbow, rainbow, rainbow, Jack thought, and wondered if he could ever bring himself to let this wondrous bauble go.
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
I think this is the point where we can move on to Gan.
Animah01/14/2019
You can do the honors
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
I'll need your help, since some of the quotes I thought I'd saved seem to be missing from my notes.
But, anyway:
Animah01/14/2019
Just tell me which ones
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
Start by giving me the quote where It is described as being 'the smallest mote" in Gan's mind.
Actually
First, give me the quote that says It exists in a void beyond the Macroverse. Because that is important as well.
Animah01/14/2019
It all sort of blends. There's multiple quotes in one.
It begins like this:
"...and exploding outward into utter blackness, the blackness was everything, the blackness was the cosmos and the universe, and the floor of the blackness was hard, hard, it was like polished ebonite and he was skidding along on his chest and belly and thighs like a weight on a shuffleboard. He was on the ballroom floor of eternity, and eternity was black.
(against the posts)
— stop that why do you say that? that won't help you, stupid boy and still insists he sees
the ghosts!
—  stop it.' he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts!
—  stop it! stop it! I demand, I command, that you stop it! Don't like that, do you? And thinking: If I could only say it out loud, say it without stuttering, I could break this
illusion —
— this is no illusion, you foolish little boy — this is eternity, My eternity, and you are lost
in it, lost forever, never to find your way back; you are eternal now, and condemned to
wander in the black . . . after you meet Me face to face, that is..."
Then:
in it, lost forever, never to find your way back; you are eternal now, and condemned to
wander in the black . . . after you meet Me face to face, that is
But there was something else here. Bill sensed it, felt it, in a crazy way smelled it: some large presence ahead in the dark. A Shape. He felt not fear but a sense of overmastering awe; here was a power which dwarfed Its power, and Bill had only time to think incoherently: Please, please, whatever You are, remember that I am very small —
He rushed toward it and saw it was a great Turtle, its shell plated with many blazing colors. Its ancient reptilian head slowly poked out of its shell, and Bill thought he felt a vague contemptuous surprise from the thing that had cast him out here. The eyes of the Turtle were kind. Bill thought it must be the oldest thing anyone could imagine, older by far than It, which had claimed to be eternal.
This is where Bill meets the Turtle.
After this:
What are you? —
I'm the Turtle, son. I made the universe, but please don't blame me for it; I had a bellyache.
Help me! Please help me!
—  I take no stand in these matters. My brother —
—  has his own place in the macroverse; energy is eternal, as even a child such as yourself must understand
He was flying past the Turtle now, and even at his tremendous skidding speed, the Turtle's plated side seemed to go on and on to his right. He thought dimly of riding in a train and passing one going in the other direction, a train that was so long it seemed eventually to stand still or even move backward. He could still hear It, yammering and buzzing, Its voice high and angry, not human, full of mad hate. But when the Turtle spoke, Its voice was blanked out utterly. The Turtle spoke in Bill's head, and Bill understood somehow that there was yet Another, and that Final Other dwelt in a void beyond this one. This Final Other was, perhaps, the creator of the Turtle, which only watched, and It, which only ate. This Other was a force beyond the universe, a power beyond all other power, the author of all there was. (Gan)

Following this:

Suddenly he thought he understood: It meant to thrust him through some wall at the end of the universe and into some other place
(what that old Turtle called the macroverse)
where It really lived; where It existed as a titanic, glowing core which might be no more than the smallest mote in that Other's mind; he would see It naked, a thing of unshaped destroying light, and there he would either be mercifully annihilated or live forever, insane and yet conscious inside Its homicidal endless formless hungry being.
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
Thank you.
Animah01/14/2019
This is relevant as well:
Little Friend . . . tell me, do you love all the cold dark out here? are you enjoying your grand
tour of the nothingness that lies Outside? wait until you break through, Little Friend! wait
until you break through to where I am! wait for that! wait for the deadlights!
There is only Chüd, the Turtle had said. And suppose this was it? Suppose they had bitten deep into each other's tongues, not physically but mentally, spiritually? And suppose that if It could throw Bill far enough into the void, far enough toward Its eternal discorporate self, the ritual would be over? It would have ripped him free, killed him, and won everything all at the same
—   skidding, he was skidding, and there was a wall up ahead, he sensed it, sensed it in the dark, the wall at the edge of the continuum, and beyond it the other shape, the deadlights —
Note that "shape" in this case does not refer to any kind of dimensional shape, the being is called "non-geometric"and "directionless" after this as well as "unshaped" and "formless" before this
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
One more quote for you to find that's related to It, for now.
Actually, nevermind. We don't need it.
Animah01/14/2019
What is it?
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
Was thinking of the one where It (in its internal monologue) view the universe as a "puny egg".
Animah01/14/2019
Note also that IT thinks Maturin is dead, but that's not actually the case
That's a misconception some people have
When the Turtle is stated to be above IT in power
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
Yah
Anyway
Animah01/14/2019
When It had burst up into the house on Neibolt Street, meaning to kill them all, vaguely uneasy that It had not been able to do so already (and surely that unease had been the first new thing), something had happened which was totally unexpected, utterly unthought of, and there had been pain, pain, great roaring pain all through the shape it had taken, and for one moment there had also been fear, because the only thing It had in common with the stupid old Turtle and the cosmology of the macroverse outside the puny egg of this universe was just this: all living things must abide by the laws of the shape they inhabit. For the first time It realized that perhaps Its ability to change Its shapes might work against It as well as for It. There had never been pain before, there had never been fear before, and for a moment It had thought It might die — oh Its head had been filled with a great white silver pain, and it had roared and mewled and bellowed and somehow the children had escaped.
IT comprehends Gan's existence for just a second, but can't rationalize it, proving Gan's scale is beyond IT's comprehension:
And so a last new thing had come to It, this not an emotion but a cold speculation: suppose It had not been alone, as It had always believed?
Suppose there was Another?
And suppose further that these children were agents of that Other?
Suppose . . . suppose . . .
It began to tremble.
Hate was new. Hun was new. Being crossed in Its purpose was new. But the most terrible new thing was this fear. Not fear of the children, that had passed, but the fear of not being alone.
No. There was no other. Surely there was not. Perhaps because they were children their imaginations had a certain raw power It had briefly underestimated. But now that they were coming, It would let them come. They would come and It would cast them one by one into the macroverse . . . into the deadlights of Its eyes.
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
As we see above:
-The macroverse is (yet again) outside of the boundaries of creation, and is where Maturin/the Turtle lives.
-It exists, in some vague way, beyond a boundary at the edge of said void where the Turtle lives, and is.
-Maturin, despite not actually existing beyond the Macroverse the way It does, is implied to be the more powerful of the two.
-Gan created and is beyond both of them, to the point that they are "no more than the smallest mote" in his mind.
Now, we go back to a concept that's central to the Dark Tower storyline as a whole:
Stories
Bring up the relevant quotes about writers being the "prophets of Gan". I think it also has a bit that says "to peak inside Gan's navel does not make one Gan" or something like that, which is slightly important as well.
(You're still here, right?)
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
Nevermind. I found it myself.
“Are you deep asleep now?”
“Deep.”
“Are you under the pain?”
“Under it, yes. I thank you.”
The billy-bumbler howled again. Roland looked around, terribly afraid of what it might signify. The woman had gone to Jake and was kneeling beside him. Roland was relieved to see Jake put an arm around her neck and draw her head down so he could speak into her ear. If he was strong enough to do that—
Stop it! You saw the changed shape of him under his shirt. You can’t afford to waste time on hope.
There was a cruel paradox here: because he loved Jake, he had to leave the business of Jake’s dying to Oy and a woman they had met less than an hour ago.
Never mind. His business now was with King. Should Jake pass into the clearing while his back was turned . . . if ka will say so, let it be so.
Roland summoned his will and concentration. He focused them to a burning point, then turned his attention to the writer once more. “Are you Gan?” he asked abruptly, not knowing why this question came to him—only that it was the right question.
“No,” King said at once. Blood ran into his mouth from the cut on his head and he spat it out, never blinking. “Once I thought I was, but that was just the booze. And pride, I suppose. No writer is Gan—no painter, no sculptor, no maker of music. We are kas-ka Gan. Not ka-Gan but kas-ka Gan. Do you understand? Do you . . . do you ken?”
“Yes,” Roland said. The prophets of Gan or the singers of Gan: it could signify either or both. And now he knew why he had asked. “And the song you sing is Ves’-Ka Gan. Isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes!” King said, and smiled. “The Song of the Turtle. It’s far too lovely for the likes of me, who can hardly carry a tune!”
The second bit I mentioned:
Feemalo paid no heed. “In this world, the Tower is itself. In the world where you, Roland, have most lately been, most species still breed true and many lives are sweet. There is still energy and hope. Would you risk destroying that world as well as this, and the other worlds sai King has touched with his imagination, and drawn from? For it was not he that created them, you know. To peek in Gan’s navel does not make one Gan, although many creative people seem to think so. Would you risk it all?”
As we see here, Gan is the writer of all stories within the context of the setting. Which, as evidenced both in-series and through the "writer's notes" at the end of Song of Susannah, includes Stephen King's entire bibliography, including IT as a novel.
The first quote above also states that Gan is also the source of all songs. Which is also relevant, as both Maturin and Mir/Shardik have songs written about them.
Animah01/14/2019
(I'm still here, yes, though I had to do something really quick)
Captain Buzzkill01/14/2019
Maturin's is mentioned above. Shardik/Mir's is mentioned here:
“And Urs-Ka Gan, the Song of the Bear,” King interrupted him. Then he shook his head, although this clearly hurt him despite the hypnotic state he was in. “Urs-A-Ka Gan.”
The Cry of the Bear? The Scream of the Bear? Roland didn’t know which. He would have to hope it didn’t matter, that it was no more than a writer’s quibble.
Because of this detail about Gan being the source of all forms of fiction, the idea that Gan views everything (including It, Maturin and all of the other cosmic entities) as fiction becomes plausible, as every last being in the verse's cosmology exists as a character in Stephen King's bibliography, which is itself contained within the story's setting and even read by in-universe characters such as Randall Flagg. In other words, everything that we see in the verse, even beyond the physical multiverse, exists as merely characters in stories that were created by Gan.
It's also shown that Stephen King was granted the ability to change reality itself with what he was writing in his stories, as seen by quite a few moments after the MCs meet him where he writes "clues" into the story for said characters to find.