It took place in "the world". As you imply, there's a degree of subjectivity about what happens in "each" world that later disappears (or is "pushed out" into the otherworlds, essentially). These are not so much separate places, as separate perceptions, though: in each native version, the others also appear (e.g., Meksornmali in the eastern version).
> My (developing) theory is that the msystics had no need for a special place
> to store their most powerful secrets and no need to separate their
> deities/powerful beings from "ordinary" people. The Grey/Silver age after
> the LBQ (and equivalent world defining events, was the period when the Gods
> world split itself in two.
I think this happens much earlier, really: when Humakt finds Death, when Noruma is slain by Trickster, etc.
Greg's explanation was that the eastern "otherworld" disappears when it comes into contact with the others, or is seen to be the same as them all along. That's in the sense that mystical traditions generally see the "other side" as something to be transcended, and is therefore more of a source of error than anything else. (Some forms of mysticism do, I think, have "domains" on the other side where they are "more native" (or at least, more familiar) than anyone of a non-mystical tradition would be, whether they see it strictly as a place of temptation, or of powers that aid one in one's mystical progress.)
> The ordinary people took their part and integrated it into the mystical
> otherworld (the mundane/middle world to be) while the deities stayed in
> their own piece.
It's an interesting question of (at least) semantics as to "where" the Vithelan gods reside (the obvious answer would be the God Plane, which would be a little odd, in "misapplied worship/four worlds" terms...
But I don't see in what sense the lack of gods makes the _inner_ world a mystical otherworld. For a start, why is it an otherworld? Plainly it's not, in the usual sense. And secondly why it it mystical? Some mystical traditions do aver that it provides the means of achieving their ends -- but equally, some would not, and some would say that about this or that otherworld, too (or instead).
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