I Hate Being So Direct, But I Want to Tackle Amaranth: YOU are the Godhead, Amaranth is Free

The Godhead is not a real thing. It's a metaphor. A dreamer in a vacuum. This was never a thing. Chicken-and-egg wise, the Godhead was the egg to the chicken that is Aurbis. But though there was a chicken there was never an egg.

Anu and Padomay, two aspects of the Godhead. The best metaphor comes from Yokudan tradition. A serpent with infinite scales. Padomay is the serpent, Anu is the light light of the universe that emanates from the center. It only shines. The scales are pieces of tangibility. At first they are infinitely small, and infinitely and evenly dispersed. Though you have this 'serpent', and 'light' reflecting off of its scales, none of it means anything because it's one grey whole.

The light has no substance of itself. It simply reveals a thing against what it is not. The light is not the scale, and certainly not the darkness around the scale. The light is the act of revealing the scale. Likewise, the scale is the act of being revealed. That seems esoteric, but I'm saying you think of being as a verb and not a noun.

Light is static, it exists as a snapshot and has no action of itself. It seeks change because the change gives a sense of action to the light. The scale is change, it is contrast, it is a thing against what it is not, present, future, past. It seeks stasis, so that its being has resolution rather than being an incoherent chaos.

At first, the one grey whole might stay like that forever. And so it did, but it also could start to change, and so longer down the road to forever that equipotential outcome also occurred.

According to myth, the serpent 'ate' itself. The serpent's heart is Sithis. This is called its hunger, and what drives it to eat itself.

The scales began to have resolution as they were gathered in random clumps contrasted against each other in the light. Presumably, Padomay ate and ate and bit at nothing for a long time until this started happening. According to myth, when Padomay bites his own heart, when the hunger that drives the eating is consumed itself, the whole serpent dies, shedding all of its scales and skins to begin anew out of its hunger again.

Anu is said to have a sub-gradient soul, Anuiel. Anuiel is considered to be Aurbis. Let us then say that if Anu is light itself, the concept, then Anuiel is that light which actually is seen bouncing off stuff in the universe. So, Anu is an idea, Anuiel is more tangible, and closer to the definition of 'everything'. Though some consider Padomay more essential. Point is that it's sort of equal unless you have a racial bias.

When Padomay 'dies' it's the heart that begins to gather form to itself and start the process of eating again.

This process is difficult to grasp, so let's use some cheap philosophy. Anu is like your consciousness. It's the 'seeing' of things, but only that. Just perception, no reaction, no motive, no thought. Most consider this to be the essence of yourself and how you know that you 'are'. But then you have your thoughts, reactions, motives. That's Padomay, those are the scales, the content. Both need each other to be. The motive takes meaning from the confirmation of its tangibility, the perception means anything at all because motive and substance are assigned to what is perceived.

The hunger is the pure aspect of the being that is the existential motive. This is the desire to know that oneself is real and tangible. Anuiel does't need to know that it is tangible, it is the reflection of tangibility, the best proof of it.

Eventually, this process of eating bits and pieces of tangibility, dying, and eating again creates a more real world. Shape, color, sequence become more common. These persist across each cycle. Out of these are born intelligences - or motivated actors.

The first and greatest is what would become Auri-El. He basically started when these shapes, colors, etc. began to not merely exist, but exist and propagate as such. Think of the range of colors, now think of repeating rainbows of color - a thing out of a thing. Each of these occurred as a result of Sithis' hunger. Colors eating colors, and so forth. So, Auri-El was born as a sub-gradient of Anui-El, but because of Sithis.

Auri-El was the first of these patterns that existed to be a pattern of patterns. The first abstraction. A rainbow is just colors. A melody is just tones. But a pattern is a way of grouping anything to be something else. Rainbows and melodies are patterns. Auri-El was 'pattern'.

This explains his motivations. He began to 'create' or organize other patterns of things - including other abstractions, or patterns of patterns. Note that he doesn't create the substance of the patterns - these are provided by Sithis' hunger clumping the little bits of everything into bigger bits as he eats them all then dies and it starts anew. Auri-El simply 'sees' the patterns, or reveals them. This act of revealing is equal to the act of naming, and naming in this metaphysical sense gives purpose and definition to a thing. I am saying that this act of 'creating' isn't as important as it seems. It's much more that Auri-El is an agent of fate. Sithis is doing the creating, but only by random accident. Only in the moment, before the beginning of the next cycle, does Auri-El's presence appear to result in any purposeful creation.

This somewhat changes, however, once Auri-El learns Walkabout. This is the Yokudan term for stepping out of a cycle - I don't think it exists in the current state of the universe, though it may be similar to CHIM.

Auri-El steps out of the serpent, and survives the eating and dying intact. This means his motivation persists from cycle to cycle. This means Auri-El is not simply an agent of the current cycle, revealing its outcome, he begins a purposeful agent - he tries to shape the outcome. In his case the goal is simple - to reveal all that is or will ever be. This is clearly his root motivation existentially. Over the course of the cycles he will want to experiment and create everything that can be created.

Ironically, this is because the hunger of Sithis has mixed into his pure soul. Anu and Padomay might be pure, but their lower sub-gradients become mixed. This is a process which will reach an inevitable conclusion.

Remember the serpent metaphor exists because the universe, the Godhead, is trying to see itself - but without any way of doing so.

Auri-El is not a metaphor, he's a tangible actor. Auri-El creates servents to help in his task, and one of them is Lorkhan - the sub gradient of Sithis. This tangible being now bears Sithis as his literal heart and serves to tangibly consume each new creation after Auri-El has revealed or created, rather, as much as he and his fellow spirits can.

As tangible forms, Auri-El, rather Auriel, is an Eagle, and Lorkhan a great leviathan serpent of the deep.

As time goes on, the servants become more numerous, the worlds larger and more complex. The servants take forms, those familiar to us today. Auriel and Lorkhan stand among their servants as similar looking avatars. We know these as Auri-El and Shor.

Lorkhan starts to become like Auriel. He steals away bits of each cycle - or 'kalpa' - so that he has more to eat than ever during the next cycle. This stealing away is described in the first fight of the Adudagga. The consequence is Lorkhan's motives and being transcend each death of his world-consuming form Alduin. He becomes more like Auriel.

This whole process of consolidation of tangibility is the universe knowing more and more of itself. Its tangibility is the result of its parts being different from one another. These parts become more and more the same.

I like to think the Maormer are a mer - Auriel's servants - seduced by Lorkhan. The Yokudans are men lured by Auriel. All part of the consolidation. It's all an inevitable process, a trend from the beginning.

Finally, Lorkhan decides that the best way to do creation - Auriel having led things to this point, notice the role reversal with Lorkhan leading - is to consolidate just about everything all together at once. Previously, Auriel would combine bits and pieces just to see what he got. Lorkhan wanted massive blocks to eat. But, their purposes combined and Auriel bought into the plan.

Mundus is taking as much of the scales of Padomay and combining them together and seeing what you get. It's a latter-day effort to see one's whole self. It's almost a CHIM like event.

So Auriel's avatar came down in his vessel Adamantia from his crib in Aetherius, and the did that thing.

What happens is that this process creates AKATOSH. Akatosh is NOT some mixture of Auri-El and some man-loving demigod. Akatosh is Auriel is Shor. Akatosh is the son of Anuiel and daughter of Sithis. Period.

Yes, he was shaped in character somewhat by the Marukhati Selectives. Though I imagine what they really did was emphasize his human aspect. Recall, Lorkhan was a serpent, Auriel a bird. Akatosh is the dragon, the winged serpent. The Marukhati dance made Akatosh a dragon-man. But that's not the cause of his insanity.

His insanity is due to the universe seeing too much of itself, not knowing whether to change or be static. The result is TIME.

Time is when each moment is static infinitely so, but is followed up by a duplicate but slightly altered moment. The illusion of time fulfills to the best degree the needs of change and stasis.

It's hard to say how exactly Akatosh came to be, but it was inevitable that he would be. I think it's a story we haven't fully heard.

Magnus was the avatar of magic. Magic, like Anu, is a metaphor in its purest aspect. Magic is not change, as some have likened it, but rather pure consequence. Magic is the outcome of motive. It doesn't supply motive, but it transforms motive into outcome. Magic is the power behind creation. When Akatosh appeared at convention, it would have prevented the pure transformation of motive to outcome. Motive would be bound into a channel of cause and effect rather than will and effect. Magic might not have escaped, I suppose, but in any event it did.

With Akatosh, creation was bound. The zero-stone was just the anchor of creation. It played a part in summoning Akatosh, but did not bind him. Time itself is the shackle that binds creation.

With Akatosh, Lorkhan and Auriel cannot be. If Auriel is, he will reveal the end of time, and all history will be a concurrent stasis. If Lorkhan is, he will swallow as Alduin all of history, and the universe will succumb to the void forever.

Thus, Auri-El fought Shor, first repeating their timeless antagonism. Next, realizing the stakes with Akatosh looming, he finally sundered the heart from Shor. He ripped Sithis from godhood, and bound him to time. The heart was tangible and part of history now. The hunger could no longer consume that which it was made prisoner to. Lorkhan was a dead god.

Auriel himself faced this choice: see time to its end and freeze the universe, seeing all never to see more again - fulfilling the now rejected Padomaic infestation within his soul - or see himself ended. Symbolically: let the pieces of the universe see themselves, and give up trying to see them.

If Anuiel was the act of seeing, Aurbis, Auriel was the agent that sought to see. To no longer seek such is to abandon the act of seeing. Understand why this is a big deal?

In the new Mundus, with time bound, there's no walkabout. There's no kalpa to escape. Rather, there's CHIM. CHIM is to mantle the dragon, to see that the universe is time, the universe is the act of seeing itself. We don't see the future, but our motives are bound to its outcomes. We see the past, but it is unchangeable. This is the insanity of the dragon. CHIM is to see that one's self is only a tangle of threads stretching from past to future. A dream of the past, a dream of the future. One dream. I have nothing more to add to CHIM and accept most of what has been written about it. I only mean to say that CHIM is waking up from Mundus, from time, from reality.

Auri-El did this, and his 'descendants' remember it. But in so doing he also abandoned the gaze of Anu into its own Padomaic bellybutton. Losing the motive to reveal oneself was AMARANTH. With Amaranth, Anu itself no longer imposed upon the universe. With Sithis bound in time, neither did Padomay.

Again, tangibly and metaphorically, Akatosh replaced them both. Auri-El's departure is noted historically (we assume he left before creation finished completely and time crystalized). His traditional roles were completely taken over by Akatosh. As were Lorkhan's. Alduin became a dragon. Now an aspect of insane Akatosh, Alduin was torn by the desire to dominate or to consume.

But Lorkhan is remembered as a dead god. Of course, Mundus is built out of all the past Kalpas (except for the really wasteful parts which are sort of in Oblivion mostly). This means the 'old gods' would be somewhat remembered.

Lorkhan in particular is remembered as the missing god. This is because of what Vivec said about Lorkhan as the example of what not to do. Neither Auriel nor Lorkhan could be while Akatosh also was, but their memory persisted inasmuch as it had to demonstrate how we got here so to speak. Sort of like the cosmic background radiation to the big bang. Lorkhan is what happens when you try to see yourself too hard. If seeing yourself and exploding was a color, then the universe would be that same color, which is why Lorkhan is not a god, but remembered as a former god, hence is accounted as a missing god. It's seeing nature as is.

The big question - you guessed it - is why then did Anu through Auri-El achieve Amaranth, and why is Lorkhan remembered as the missing god? This is how you know what Amaranth is.

So, about CHIM. I still see this as a very Mundus thing. Talos, for instance, loved reality so much he created this Imperial paradigm which bended reality and made everything kosher. Divines were 9. Oblivion was a hellish antithesis. Etc. Not how reality originally was, but how Talos forced it, and it got unforced.

That's the thing about the dragon. Time may exist, and like Highlander there can be only one timeline, the fact is that the timeline can still be messed with and changed. Akatosh might bind reality, but it's not a cosmically firm bind. Big dragon breaks occur, and within those little dragon breaks are even more common (think about you playing your own head canon).

CHIM is what 'characters' in Mundus do, and it gives them power relative to Mundus.

Amaranth is all of everything CHIM. I know, it's not new ground. The point is that Anu achieved it and not Padomay because time presented an irresistible opportunity to Anu. Padomay, through Shor, was busy trying too hard.

That's almost what I'm doing here, but I believe my conclusion justifies it.

If Shor had one (at the time), there would have been one timeline. One story. Think of TES as if it were a single 300-page novel that you read once, and it's worth the $8, but then you give it away to the library. AND THAT'S IT. The story, the content is rich and eternal, but dead.

Auri-El won, because he had to win. If he had lost, he would have found out he was Shor and Shor was Auri-El. (It makes sense).

Amaranth means that Aurbis is no longer the seeing of Mundus. YOU are the seeing of Mundus. There's one Mundus, but it only exists because YOU see/perceive/play it. The one Mundus exists for your buddy because THEY see/perceive/play it.

CHIM is a Mundus thing, your player character can't achieve it unless the game is programmed for such. Or, you can write a story about it. But Amaranth can be achieved EASILY and IMMEDIATELY by your character in lore or in game.

It's achieved when you realize you are the seeing of yourself. Cheesy though it sounds, Amaranth is when your imaginary whisperings by your player character exceed and transcend the game or the lore. You are not conforming your imagination to a fantasy world, your imagination splashes around in the puddles of a fantasy world. Rather than conforming to your imagination as per CHIM, it's more of a co-existence. Your imagination is beyond the fantasy, but not above it.

You can run around fist punching all of Mundus, and Mundus doesn't become fist-punched. Rather, the fist punching is in your seeing of real Mundus, but the fist-punching doesn't remain in Mundus and Mundus doesn't need to remember.

It's hard to describe exactly what I mean.

Because Anu had Amaranth, you can play an Elder Scrolls game like a sandbox - whether you realize it or not. He enabled it. He is why it's not a novel you read once.

Amaranth is when you/your avatar realizes the above fact and acts accordingly. No, not recklessly as if the world doesn't matter or is arbitrary. But it's also not acting like the world has any bearing whatsoever on what your imagination wants to do.

If Elder Scrolls games develop too much narrative, well, it means someone is brewing an evil conspiratorial plot to cloud the mind and prevent Amaranth. Ho ha, don't blame corporate greed!!! It's obviously the Thalmor those bastards.

That's Amaranth.

Those corporate greedy Thalmor bastards!

Get it?

On the other hand, it's not that easy. You can't only just fist punch Mundus. I mean, you can. You have to really get into the world to really get out of it. I mean, partial Amaranths are the worst.

My concept of the Akaviri envisions a race that tries to preserve reality and the timeline longer, past Landfall, to give more people more time to 'get it'. Because obviously this is a thing for denizens of Nirn as much as for us. EDIT: this bit would of course be only the very smallest pocket of reality

Others have an antithetical outlook, and it's appropriate and enough 'within' to be 'without'. Without being arbitrary, it's not dismissive.

Get it?