FB, I like where you're going with the birds. Wonder who the Falcons represent in this theory?
ETA: one problem with your theory I have. If Koringhus uses the stones to "blind" the gods, it doesn't match up with how he came to the realization of the Zero God/Absolute. Didn't he deduce this through Mimara's JE and how it showed him that which come before determines what comes after to be false? He didn't understand this until his interactions with Mimara, right? Well, "the Singers" also proved it wrong too, I believe.
Question. Do any of you actually believe that Mimara truly forgave him and absolved him of his sins?
I'm basically convinced that Koringhus was genuinely absolved and became one with Oblivion (which is also the Darkness That Come Before, and Onkis, and the Head on the Pole...)
In fact I think many characters attain Absolution throughout the series (Inrau, for example), and I actually think Kellhus is systematically absolving as many people as possible. But of course, not all can escape Damnation.
If you mean whether Mimara, herself, actually absolved him -- I would also say yes, with the disclaimer that Mimara's ability to absolve someone (or do anything else for matter) is indistinguishable from the will of the God, because God is everything. Truly everything. The great war of the series is the God warring with itself (or fucking itself, whichever you prefer, as I think they are one and the same on a metaphysical level).
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In regards to the strange and fragmentary nature of Koringhus: I don't believe he's "literally" fragmented into many portions (although given the nature of Earwa's metaphysics, the notion what is or is not literal kinda gets weird, and I actually could get into a whole diatribe on this but that's for another thread). Koringhus, as a result of his Dunyain genetics, training, and then the extended challenge of the Siege of Ishual, was sort of primed to understand what God is and how Absolution works. Is he insane, broken by his trials? Of course. But madness in Earwa is fundamentally different from our own understanding of it. Being insane (or "broken") is how people grasp the true nature of Earwa's reality, or part of it anyway. Madness opens ones mind to the Outside, as we've been told repeatedly.
The "fragments" of Koringhus are competing thoughts -- and where do thoughts come from? The darkness that comes before. Koringhus's trials have already pushed him to the limit, and having existed for so long in a life of utter survival has nearly severed his sense of Self, the illusion that he (or anyone or anything else) is somehow separate from the rest of reality. This ties in with real world accounts of people who spend long periods of solitude in the wilderness experiencing a degree of dissolution of the Self, and one even link the Boy to the historical notion of a "feral child" -- only he's a Dunyain feral child.
So, the reason Koringhus is having these bizarre sensations of being in another spot, or when HE feels the grass brushing against his SON's skin, are all because he is coming to terms with an understanding of how he is but a part of the Whole. And the Absolute is the Whole. It's all of existence (and non existence, which are the same or, rather, codependent aspects of same thing)...which is the God.
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H. - Good thoughts on the bird symbolism. Falcons definitely make more sense as vessels for Husyelt, whereas vultures could perhaps be vessels for gods like Famine and Disease -- "scavengers" taking the scraps that Husyelt (falcons) and Gilgaol (crows) leave behind.
I definitely think dove's symbolize peace (groundbreaking concept there, right?) and crows equate to war -- the offhand remark near the end of the TGO about the "feud" between them finally ending" is a sign of the Apocalypse because in the fucked up reality of Earwa, war and peace are one and the same, just as death and oblivion is one with enlightenment.
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Monkhound - I didn't catch it the first time, but I fully agree that the repetition of "Cuts and cuts and cuts..." is not only a foreshadowing of the Cnaiur reveal at the end, but the entirety of the final Achamian/Mimara POV section is a cipher for understanding the nature of the God and how Damnation works in Earwa.