The 'image of the Goddess' and the real Soh.

To follow up my posts on 'Heaven' and 'Cursed Soh antagonizing Yoshiro', I want to look at the endings as they both contain 'Heaven' and the 'image of the Goddess'.

In every ending, an image of the Goddess awaits us in Heaven. A shining Soh and a Cursed Soh.

In the normal ending, Yoshiro arrives in 'Heaven' and meets Soh, who is glowing with white light.

Shining Soh

She waves her hand, not touching Soh, and receives the mask as Soh's face is revealed. The face of the Goddess. This is the Goddess that sent Soh and acted through Soh.

Soh's head posture...she looks at Yoshiro's hand as it comes to her face

Yoshiro is then left alone in Heaven, holding the mask and descends as 'Soh' in the next cycle. 

She now becomes the new Agricultural Goddess/Soh, the one who will descend wearing the mask of the Goddess. (She descends merged with the agricultural Goddess who is the descended Goddess)

The Maiden's job is to bring prosperity to the villagers through sacrificing herself as a living katashiro, cleansing the land and becoming a spirit stone to ward off evil.

Her becoming the next Agricultural Goddess, bringing prosperity and abundant lands, is thematically appropriate.

(I call the descended version of the Goddess the Agricultural Goddess. It's the same Goddess in myth but she descends as the Goddess of Rice Fields.)

'Now that we're fully one, the mask is yours'.

The Soh she meets in Heaven is the Heavenly Goddess/Mountain Goddess. There is no 'spirit state' when she leaves. But in the true ending there is.

These two are now connected by spirit, so no words are needed. The mask is hers and she must be the next Soh. 

But why does she leave?

I wonder if this is when the Goddess becomes 'merged' fully with Yoshiro? The entanglement that's said to have happened?

After this ending, we receive this message:

"The pact with the Mountain Goddess - its blessings, its calamity- a world in a cycle and fortune and woe. These constants have been broken. The world after awaits."

If something in this ending caused such a big change, what was it? We see Yoshiro remain in Heaven, the Goddess's domain. It might not be the ending itself but the number of times this has happened. After happening 7 times, the constants have been broken.

(About the number 7...

We receive Cursed Soh after completing 9 cycles. I've been counting canon cycles from NG+. We must defeat Cursed Soh 8 times to get her skin so I've been going with '8 canon cycles'. Especially since Nanamagari(7 curves) and 'Seven Woes'.) Which means on the 8th cycle, 7 Maidens have already passed. Yoshiro is lucky 8.)

The next time we're here, it is Cursed Soh who awaits us. 

Is her mask symbolic of her relationship to Yoshiro, just like Soh's mask?

It's said Cursed Soh is an image of the Goddess that's become entangled over time with man's impurity. Man's impurity is held within the Maiden. 

Cursed Soh is very clearly an image of Yoshiro + Soh.

Yoshiro, during her journey while holding the impurity of humanity, became entangled with the Goddess. The merging begins when she turns into a spirit stone, as that is when she must be carried in the mikoshi: a god being transported to another shrine.

The normal ending serves to show us a normal cycle.

In the true ending, when Soh defeats Cursed Soh, she is glowing with light just as she did in the normal ending.

Shining...

The image of Soh in Heaven that merged with Maidens

So this heavenly image of Soh is the one that became entangled and turns into Cursed Soh. 

After defeating Cursed Soh, the impure version of herself, Soh regains her power but this time purifies Yoshiro completely. There is now no need for the Ceremony of Purification. The villagers keep a piece of the spirit stone in every village, warding off evil.

When Soh disappears, this time she 'breaks' like a mirror/reflection and the spirit state is there. The spirit then ascends.

So there are two images. The first is the Goddess, who has no spirit state when she departs. (Mountain Goddess)

The second has a spirit state. (Agricultural identity of the Goddess fused with a Maiden)

The cycle might've broke because our Soh is 'Maiden + Agricultural Goddess'. When she defeats Cursed Soh, there's a chance the Maiden became the dominant consciousness because the 'Goddess' had been defeated and purified, that power now belonging to her.

Upon gaining the full power of the Goddess, she purifies Yoshiro.
(If the Shining Soh had this power, why did she not purify the Maiden and stop the cycle as done in the true ending? Is it because the Goddess wants to keep the pact, but Soh(Maiden + descended Goddess) wants to end it?)

The story is of a Maiden who's merged with the Goddess's descended self, defeating and purifying the Goddess who had become impure, and replacing her. Thus making the Mountain Goddess now an ancestral deity...

If so, Yoshiro becomes a descendant of the Goddess. Her lineage becomes related to the Goddess.

In 'Eternal pool of sunlight', we see a descendant(?) of the Maiden side by side with the Seethe, who were once the underlings of the Goddess. They are friendly and getting along, hinting that the Maiden's lineage is now related to the Goddess. The Seethe are her friend. Perhaps she now understands impurity for what it is and the Seethe for what they are?

The spirit stone that grew from within Yoshiro is kept safe in each village to ward off evil.

In Soh under the Moonlight, Soh's title is 'gozen'(female samurai) yet in most of the game, Soh being inhuman is made clear, even having a gender-neutral pronoun so as to say she's not human(or to hint at many Maidens being a part of the agricultural goddess?)

Why in this image is her human identity acknowledged?

Her body faces Yoshiro, Yoshiro looks up at her the same way the little girl did at her mother in 'Pestilence'.
The implication might be that Soh is her ancestor and in this particular moment, the Maiden wearing the mask is here with Yoshiro and not just the Goddess within the mask.

This could support my 'the previous Maiden merged with the descended part of the Goddess absorbed the Goddess's power and replaced her' but maybe that's too simple.

But I do know that the shining Soh we see in the normal ending is the Goddess herself.

This game is said to be a 'new tale of the Goddess'...

I'm still curious about Cursed Soh being a heavenly deity and who the 'kunitsukami' in the game is. BUT she's said to rule from the heavens. It could just be the 'heaven' I talked about in the past post. Meaning, she's not a heavenly deity.

The Mountain Goddess is called Kunitsukami but I wonder if the Shining Soh is a Heavenly Goddess and the 'Mountain Goddess' is actually the descended version of her and gets called a Kunitsukami because of that.

Basically...what if the Sun Goddess descends as the Mountain Goddess/Agricultural Goddess(Kunitsukami)? There's so many references to the sun...it's why I keep wondering about this.

This photo is still very mysterious to me. Who is the kunitsukami receiving light, becoming tainted by the human world? It must be Soh.

Is to receive light a way of saying 'appears'? Or is created?

Then the Kunitsukami version of the Goddess is created every cycle...only to be tainted? Is tainted referring to the merging of her and the Maiden?

In the very end, the logo is purified. Yoshiro is purified. The Goddess is purified.

A little about the logo...

Director Kawada appeared on Capcom TV!! Talk broadcast on 7/26/2024

Listener: "Why does Kunitsukami/kami change to Kunitsugami/gami?"

Kawada: "The voiced consonants have a meaning. God doesn't use voiced consonants, but I added them on purpose... I think you'll understand if you play to the very end."

Crab said this about the name:

・KAMIではなく複数であるKAMIGAMIの意味を含めた⇒宗+咒（+または世代）

・濁点をつけることによって濁り＝穢れを表現したかった　←たぶんこっち

真エンド後のタイトル回収は旧エンドタイトルの文字が浄化されたような演出が入りスッキリする。この感覚外国人に伝わるかな。宗咒＝国津神設定ならば以下も成り立つ

・国津神「Kunitsu-Gami」だった「宗咒 / SOUJYU」が浄化され「宗 / SOU」が国津神「Kunitsu-Kami」になった

・Included the meaning of KAMIGAMI, which is plural, not KAMI ⇒ SOUJYU (+ or generation)

・By adding a voiced consonant mark, they wanted to express the cloudiness = impurity ← Probably this

The title recovery after the true ending is refreshing with a performance that makes it seem like the characters of the old end title have been purified. I wonder if this feeling will be conveyed to foreigners. If SOUJYU = Kunitsukami, the following also applies

・The Kunitsukami "Kunitsu-Gami" was "SOUJYU", but "SOU" became Kunitsu-Kami

If you look at the the characters:

くにつかみ/kami⇒くにつがみ/gami

That's very creative! Those parts get purified in the true ending! This game had a lot of thought put into it.

Indeed, Soh must be the Kunitsukami.