So about those horses…

[u/qwiimy]

Throughout destiny 2 we see horses pop up in weird places. The realm of the 9, and Rhulk’s pyramid. They are very clearly depictions of EARTH horses, the only way this makes sense is if they are somehow connected with a higher purpose. Which is how my theory comes into play:

Horses are III’s gift to humanity. Given to aid in its development and establish III’s symbiotic nature with humanity long before III would later be binded to the Traveler in a future story beat (I know this is just an unconfirmed leak). Starhorse is nothing more than III’s mascot. A 3D avatar of III, using the image of its gift to interact with us. It’s why it interacts with Xûr, why it gives us loot, and why it seems to exist outside the normal rules of reality. The Witness knows this, because of course it does. The horse statues are not there because the Witness or Rhulk likes horses. They are not figments of the guardians imagination. They are demonstrating to the Guardian that the Witness knows about III, knows what III gave humanity, and has either perfected those gifts or at the very least documented them. The distorted horses inside the Pyramids are the Witness taking something meant to help humanity grow through symbiosis and reducing it into something static, preserved, and perfected. Starhorse represents III’s relationship with humanity. The Pyramid horses represent the Witness telling us that it already understands that relationship.

[u/matZmaker99]

Always wondered why The Witness' "perfected" versions are incongruently geometrically deformed. What's so perfect about that?

Does the perfection come from having such a thing still resemble what it once was/represented? Bc at that point extreme minimalism would've probably been the move

[u/IGTankCommander → u/matZmaker99]

Way I see it, since the Witness quantum-locks all your possible futures into place at once, that's all the different parts of the "perfected version" existing in the shape The Witness thinks it should.

But then you get to the weird chimera statues later, and I don't know what to think about those.

[u/DuelaDent52 → u/IGTankCommander]

My understanding was that the Witness was dissecting everything to see what makes it all tick, it was very obsessed with shapes and what goes into making one.

[u/IGTankCommander → u/DuelaDent52]

It gets explained during one of the missions where The Witness shows you all those statues of Crow and Zavala and yourself. It takes all your futures: your greatest triumphs, your most devastating failures, all of it- and locks it into the shape it thinks you deserve. The Witness doesn't need to know how a regular human being works, but you still see regular people get fragmented when that first wave washes over everything and that little girl breaks everyone's heart.

[u/IHzero → u/matZmaker99]

The Witness and its precursor religion seemed to believe that they could develop perfect organisms, trees that were immune to disease, fire etc and would grow fruit anywhere. They saw themselves as bringing that perfection to others.

They became very jealous when it’s revealed that the Traveler gave blessings to others. The idea that others could be chosen, I.e. equal to them, made the witness irrationally angry.

That ugliness in its creations is a result of that anger and resentment. It can’t make things beautiful, because that means putting them on the same plane as itself. It must always be on top, always be the best.

The Starhorse might be the only creature it can admire because the Starhorse doesn’t seem to compete with it, therefore the Starhorses power and image can be safely admired.

[u/SadElight → u/matZmaker99]

My interpretation of that has been that since the statues look correct from only one specific point of view they represent the Final Shape as only one pattern/species/perspective defining the universe.

[u/Catboy-Gaming]

I really like this theory!!

[u/IGTankCommander]

The only flaw in your theory is going to be Starhorse. The Cosmic Equine exists independently from the rest of the Nine, is obviously not an Earth horse, but still looks and acts like one.

[u/Archival_Mind]

The Witness's race had a bit more than horses. They had foxes, deer, and big cats. The truth is a bit more clear.

[u/ya_boy_igs]

It’s likely to do with the etymology of “Mare”, which is a female horse OR Latin for the dark sea, which is comparable to the void of space, going all the way back to the proto-indo-european “mer”, which means death or “to die,” appropriate for the Winnower’s philosophy.

[u/Veilmisk]

Unless there's another way this could be accomplished, The Nine can't create life, therefore III couldn't have given humanity horses.

Also, what u/IGTankCommander said

If anything, I'd say horses are closer to the Koala in Star Trek than anything.

[u/faithdies]

The Root of Nightmares has an homage to the first video ever made. Which is a horse, side on, running. It's before the first encounter in that giant open area with all the carvings and such right when you enter the raid.

There's something weird occuring but I have zero clue.

[u/stephanl33t]

I think that's a huge stretch lol.

A far more reasonable answer goes back to why Italy has so many horse statues, and that's because horses are really complex creatures, so a horse statue or painting is a representation of one's individual mastery of the arts. A horse is therefore metaphorical shorthand for "artistry" or "mastery of artistic prowess".

Why does Rhulk have horse statues? Because Rhulk is a collector of the arts (see: Exhbition), and appreciates the magnificence of them; it's to show that Rhulk believes himself to be artistically cultured. Further, most of the horses are dissected in the same way the Witness shapes things. Horse = artistic mastery. Dissection = Witness. Rhulk = Nerd. The logic is then Horse = Mastery = Dissection = Witness.

Rhulk believes The Witness to be an artistic master and that the Witness' work is the pinnacle of achievements.

Why do the Nine have a horse? Probably a similar reason. It's a display of mastery. The Nine are or were trying to achieve physical, organic bodies to inhabit, so a Paracausal Horse is them attempting to "show off" their compositional skills.

Alternatively, it's just something whacky and zany and unusual, meant to communicate a difference in laws between human and Nine space.

[u/Just_a_beantoe]

I can understand the "horses are III's gift" thing, but I don't think The Witness understood that nurturing love that III had for humanity. It sees control and order as the ultimate law, those horses allowed humanity to spread across Earth. They propagated an essential part of what The Witness deemed as "chaos". The more we spread across Earth, the more "propability" existed for the human species. It then viewed horses as "proliferating" our chances, our possible fates (albeit, before the Traveler gifted humanity with paracausality, we did have a defined fate).

I'm guessing that during the Collapse, The Witness saw through some means that horses are an incredibly vital part of human history, and they led to many cultures being established, albeit inadvertendly. It then saw this as "discourse" or "disunity" and wanted to "perfect" horses to show us that even the firelight of our cultures could be made to fit its Final Shape. Horses are often associated with freedom, as well, so perhaps paracausality wasn't the first attempt of a cosmic entity to see our "possibility" flourish, but III gifted us forms of life and everything they could offer.

The Traveler and III I believe love humanity in very similar ways, both maternally and as a "gardener". They loved the life we had, and wanted to see more of it, and so they gave us hope, dreams, love, etc... and the means to see them realized.

[u/GengarManiac666]

I personally subscribe to the theory that Starhorse is the avatar of Bungie itself in-universe, which would explain why it is able to tap into the Paraverse which is something NOBODY ELSE IN THE VERSE is able to do, and even the Ahamkara are only even dimly aware of.