Alright, this is a dangerous topic for a new forum member to discuss, given it's complexity, but here I go.

I will also note that I wrote this post at two AM while getting over a cold, so while I tried to maintain coherence, I may have . . . slipped in places. So feel free to ask for any clarifications if needed.

Since I was familiarized with the Amaranth, I have developed a number of ideas that I want to finally write down and get critiqued. Hopefully leading to a better understanding of the idea, or at least good conversation.

First, before I talk about Amaranth, I need to render my thoughts clear about Amaranths precursor state, CHIM. In my view, CHIM seems to be the result of someone undergoing buddhist enlightenment, realizing the immaterial, conditional nature of the univierse and all thats in it, and fully knowing, in their bones, that all they feel of existence is an falsehood now easily escaped. . . before deciding that they rather prefer existence, thankyouverrymuch, even though the whole construct of existence is now clearlya farce in their eyes. They know that nothing is real, desire is meaningless . . . yet don;t give a [VEKH]. By making the concious decission to persist in a patent absurdity, by desiring and willing their own existience, they achieve CHIM. To use a game anology, they are a player who uses every cheap code, exploit, and immersion breaking loop-hole and mod, yet still wracks up thousands of hours playing their game anyway. A CHIMsters ability to create their own stories and amusemant is, like this player, vital to their continued existence within a now intrinsically meaningless world. Now, what seperates CHIM and Amaranth, in my view, is a desire to go and create something . . . not new, since anything created must be a derivation on what had come before / was possible before . . but to create something in a context. To use an anology, a Chimster is somebody who creates mods for Skyrim, while an Amaranth has become a developer of their own fantasy game influenced by Skyrim, but very much its own thing. This is probably a state that has to be grown into, I will add.

Now, regarding Amaranth itself. I see the state of being an Amaranth as having several primary traits. The first of these is that an Amaranth's existence is conditional only upon their own desire to exist: no outside force can unmake them, or change them, or affect them if they do not will it within themselves. They have seperated themselves from the godhead of which CHIMsters are still part of, and are truly completed beings within themslelves. That is not to say that they couldn't interact with things outside of their own being (in my model at least), but that nothing outside of their own being can affect them without them allowing it to do so for their own reasons. (Which, since it would include emotions, is a bit alien, isn't it? An amaranth would be so self-controlled by nature that anything they feel or experience would only be an affectation, or act, as the external forces that cause mortal emotions pale before the singular power and unity of the amaranth.)

Since they are immune to external influences, an amaranth is thus free to craft a new, internal universe as they see fit: like an author binding all the influences and experiences of their life into a new work of fiction, or more aptly, a dreamer synthesizing the experiences of the day into a new dreamworld (except in this case the dream never ends, and the dream can start dreaming its own dream until the dreamer no longer needs to dream it). Part of me wonders if the creation of an a new universe/aurbis conditional on the amaranth for existense is a critical step in the amaranth stepping away from being conditional itself on the previous dreamer-iteration. That the link between the amaranth and its creation takes the place of the link between the dreamer and the amaranth (I have the mental image of a jacobs ladder toy, if that helps). Now, the previous dreamer would not cease existing when the amaranth leaves because the amaranth is not so much removing itself copy/pasting itself as a new instance (like copying a computer file on a new computer or cells dividing): the original system is maintained, its just a new one based on it has calved off. Now, critically, since no universe is ever destroyed in creating an amaranth, an infinite number of amaranths can, and do, originate from any given iteration of the aurbis. Thus, fractal creation.

It is through this process of creation that I believe that an Amaranth gains a definite purpose: it is a way of reconciling being and not being without having to resort to entropy and the destruction of an existing order. In this way, I see Amaranth as a sort of fractal expansion of divinity and creation.

At the start of the process, a given universe gives rise to an Amaranth, who ,through their apotheosis, becomes the the creator/seed of a new universe... which will itself give rise to new amaranths, who will create new universes, which will develop new amaranths, etc., etc. Each universe thus created is a representation of some facet of what can possibly exist, and taken together, the infinite creations of the amaranth, universes calving new universes like ever growing glaciers, allows the full representation of all that can possibly exist in all possible forms in all possible ways.

Finally, I want to talk about love. In my view, the way in which love is treated is what leads one to desire the Amaranth in the first place, as opposed to simply maintaining CHIM. To begin, I think that a Crowlien view on love, as has been discussed before in the Amaranth thread (and correct me if I'm off base here, I may not of got the full gist of what was being said), is appropriate for one seeking CHIM, but I don't see how it provides motivation to move further other than a possible selfish desire to continue to refine ones own nature to be free from external dependencies. That seems more like the Kind of love Dagoth-Ur would have, to be frank, wheras I think Amaranth needs a different kind of love, a love defined by the desire for, maybe more fixation on, something external to oneself that the amaranth would see exalted along with themselves: the part of the old mundus the amaranth takes with them into the new (and importantly, has to care enough about to take with them). Because, without an external focused love, why would an entirely self-sufficent god-mind deign to create anything? The impulse to create, to love something enough to take it up as part of your own being for a time, and then set it frree to grow on its own, has to come from somewhere within the amaranths previous mortal life, otherwise that mortal would have never desired to take the path to be an amaranth in the first place, they would have stalled out or taken a different path.

Thus in sum, I see the Amaranth as process based on a love for creation, or at least aspects of it, that would see it continued and expanded without end, and results in the fractal expression of existence as an ever-expanding infinite set of infinites.

Thank you again for reading. I've been meaning to get these ideas flesh out for a while, and I couldn't think of a better place to do it than in this forum (tip: discussing CHIM at 7:00 am while eating breakfast at a Bob-Evans only results in odds looks from the wait-staff, not enlightenment).