This is my submission to the Amaranth Hunt. I'm pretty sure I've got it right, and if not, I'm closer than I've ever been. Although I do recognize that I've said that before about other things. Still, these links seem solid. I'm putting it in its own thread because I don't want to clog up the already busy Amaranth Hunt threads, and also to hopefully save Kirkbride some time by putting all my evidence in one place. Assuming I'm right. Otherwise, yeah. Big waste of time.

Mostly, I'm following a congruence of metaphor. But at the same time, I think there are a few questions left by this suggestion, and I'll address them in a later reply.

First, I'm going to start explaining the key metaphors in the Amaranth. Here's what we know, in part:

• The Amaranth is a dreamer of reality, but not the dreamer of our Aurbis. One or more will come in the future to help us avoid Landfall, but one is already here, hidden by Kirkbride, waiting to be found.
  
• The Amaranth is the Witness to the original enantiomorphic event.
  
• The Captive Sage's number, 29, is the Witness.
  
• The Dreamer is not Nirn, nor the Anu / Padomay enantiomorph.

Stars

In the 36 Lessons, a Star symbolizes a being of immense power, like a God. The Et'Ada who became Aedra were unable to flee Mundus and became stuck in the skies, becoming planets, which resemble their et'Ada counterparts who did flee and were able to become stars. Dagoth Ur refers to himself using this symbol:


Thus implying that he is a new God, who has come to bring salvation to his House. Mortals are encouraged to "follow" this Star, the symbol of their God, and aspire to become as it is. And as much as I'd like to keep my references within the context of Morrowind, C. J. Jung phrased this concept well in his http://gnosis.org/library/7Sermons.htm:


If you take nothing else from this, just keep in mind that a Star is a God, shining from a great distance.

Echoes

The next concept we're going to discuss is the phenomena that results from the act of creation. Every entity and event in the creation of the Aurbis is echoed on progressively smaller scales as time goes on.

After the original creation, when Anu and Padomay create Aurbis, the known universe, similar interactions between echoes of Anu and Padomay produce the rest of the universe. The echo of the Void, Oblivion, becomes the gradient within which the echo of Aetherius, Mundus, is created. Anu and Padomay become echoed as well in the forms of Anuiel and Sithis, and again as Auri-El and Lorkhan.

This plays to one of the underlying philosophical messages of the Elder Scrolls lore, the idea of improving and discovering new things about yourself by being forced into restriction. Because mortals are forced to perceive darkness and death, they can also perceive light and joy. Unlike the creatures of higher gradients (Aetherius, Oblivion), mortals can fully experience love and hate, joy and pain. This is considered a Padomaic philosophy, and is shared in varying amounts between most Men (Nords, Imperials) and the Dunmer.

Unfortunately they are also "cursed" because they no longer enjoy the complete freedom of power granted by existence in higher gradients. They are trapped by their constraints, and are unable to fully perceive the true nature of the Aurbis. It could well be that Mundus offers more constraints than freedoms, more pain than joy. This is an Anuic philosophy, and championed largely by the Altmer.

Sensory Deprivation

I think it might be worthwhile to discuss the concept of sensory deprivation. It's not a well-known phenomena.

The fastest way of explaining it is that Sensory Deprivation removes all forms (or as many as possible) of stimulus from a human being. Deprived of their senses, the human mind starts to hallucinate, to create its own, because it cannot function properly without some form of input.

For example: encased in a room without light, a person will start to "see" lights and colors. This is called the "Prisoner's Cinema," and its cause is not well documented, at least nowhere that I can find.

A quick session of sensory deprivation can be quite pleasant, once you get used to it. It's a lot like deep meditation: very restful, and as close to sleep as you can get while you're still awake. But stay in that suspension pool for too long and you start to hallucinate as your mind becomes starved for input.

This is what happens to the Captive Sage. The poor sod is encased in the Ruddy Man's armor from head-to-toe and only given holes to breathe through. He starts to hallucinate, and in the process he spits out numbers that are used to write Sermon 29.

Numbers

Numbers are important in the Lessons, and not just as a means to deliver Vehk the Mortal's http://www.imperial-library.info/content/thirty-six-lessons-obscurity-and-deception. They show up often as a metaphor used to describe the act of creation, as though any concept is the result of mathematics. This could be a concept specific to the Dunmer, as they sometime insult other cultures by insinuating that "they have no math." And when Vivec defeats his child Moon Axle, he proclaims "You are solved" before delivering the final blow. All illustrations of the importance of numbers and mathematics in the Dunmeri concept of numerology. And let us not forget that the Captive Sage is created by loyal mystics in the "Number Room."

So, to sum up, a Captive Sage hallucinates numbers which are the building blocks of concepts and belief, and because of the mythopoetic forces in Mundus, belief can directly influence reality.

Putting It Together

It all comes down to metaphor:


We have learned from the 36 Lessons and the Loveletter that the future Amaranth is a dreamer, an entity that exists inside a void, alone and deprived of its senses. It is like Sermon 28's Captive Sage, trapped in a state of sensory deprivation. And in its loneliness it becomes so desperate for stimulus, for love, it starts to hallucinate.

This is a point that any entity can reach, God or Man. But the Dreamer is an entity of such tremendous power that its dreams become reality, a reality that it loves completely.

There are a number of metaphors you can use to describe such an entity. Kirkbride hinted that the Enantiomorphic Witness is "blinded or maimed," killed in order to collapse the waveform, to which Lady Nerevar added "Sensory Deprivation?" But as we've already discussed, a person might hallucinate after enough time in a sensory deprivation tank, and floating in water can be creatively thought of as drowning. Drowning leads us to Sensory Deprivation which leads us to the Captive Sage.


Take a hallucinating subject in sensory deprivation and scale that subject all the way up the gradients and you see the result of Lorkhan's "failure." What does a supremely powerful being do when he hallucinates in a state of sensory deprivation?

A Star is a distant light which shines brightly in the night sky. It shines without heat, like a lamp, because it is so far away, and so it is phosphorescent. The sky reflected in the sea at night is like an image reflected in a mirror, so the sea can be considered a mirror of the sky. A light below the surface is drowning, immersed in water.

If this drowned lamp is our Amaranth, then it is dreaming, and so it is also smiling because it is in love with its dream. From the http://www.imperial-library.info/content/loveletter-fifth-era-true-purpose-tamriel:


Perhaps a http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070126014943/oblivion/images/c/cc/Sithis.jpg will be of some use. Examine the statue of Sithis in the Dark Brotherhood hideout in Oblivion. Notice its heart is missing? This is because SITHISIT is indivisibly joined with Lorkhan, and when Lorkhan's heart was removed, so was Sithis'. Its head is wrapped tightly because it is in a state of sensory deprivation, like the Captive Sage in Sermon 28 and 29.

The drowned lamp known as SITHISIT is our missing witness. The Captive Sage hallucinates in numbers, the building-blocks of reality. A higher being would dream numbers on such a scale that it would dream its own reality, as is the Amaranth's onus. And in so doing, I'm thinking that SITHISIT acts as the echo of the Godhead, his mirror image.