Astronomy of Ice and Fire: Black Hole Moon

[LmL]

No, I follow your line of thinking LordImp. I think the wielder of Dawn (Ice) came south to Battle Isle and defeated AA with Ice, possibly even breaking Lightbringer. There are a lot of clues and metaphors about broken swords, including the idea that the Lh's first sword broke, and the metaphor always seems to show an icy sword breaking a fire sword (think of Beric's due, for example - the Hounds sword is called "the cold one" repeatedly in that fight. So, what I am seeing (this is highly speculative) is that AA clashed with the wielder of Ice, was defeated, and then his sword was reforged, this time adding dragon glass to the mix. Before, it was steel with black sun drinking bloodstone added - think about this bloodstone as frozen shadow fire, as opposed to frozen fire. To make a "balanced" fire weapon, we should have both light and shadow. Radio Westeros's idea is that the cotf helped the LH add dragonglass to his broken sword to make it true dragonsteel, and I think that is true and fits with this scenario.

As for how Dawn was made, who it's maker was.... ? Still working on that.

[LmL]

Voice of the First Men has some interesting ideas about a cold forging process that would a kind of opposite of the hot forge.

[LordImp]

A little crackpot: Ice was forged in the breath of the ice dragon. Unlikely , but would have been awesome.

[LmL]

A little crackpot: Ice was forged in the breath of the ice dragon. Unlikely , but would have been awesome.

Not really unlikely, from a certain perspective. George has made ice a bit more active, like an opposite to fire. The cold breath of the ice dragon (real or not) is a prime example - it breathes a cold so cold that it burns ("nothing burns like the cold"). The Others have blue stars eyes which burn - stars are suns after all - but with cold, blue light. What I am seeing here is an active form of ice which acts almost like cold fire. If dragonsteel swords were forged with dragon fire, forging a sword with ice dragon cold breath isn't absurd at all. Similarly, your idea could be symbolically true - perhaps its the cold winds of winter that power the others that was used, which is like the breath of the ice Dragon. The ice dragon could simply be those cold winds which burn and freeze. But I am one who thinks we may see an ice dragon (though I'm not into the idea of Bran being evil, etc. I tend to see the ice dragon as identified with Jon, but who knows. Martin obviously has a thing for ice dragons, its almost hard for me to believe that he will end the books without whipping one out.

[IceFire125]

A little crackpot: Ice was forged in the breath of the ice dragon. Unlikely , but would have been awesome.

It's possible, especially what Martin said what the Others could do...

Question: Do you know what substance an Other sword is made from.

Martin: Ice. But not like regular old ice. The Others can do things with ice that we can't imagine and make substances of it.

http://web.archive.org/web/20051103091500/nrctc.edu/fhq/vol1iss3/00103009.htm

**And it isn't a far fetched imagination if an Ice Dragon helped forge a 'certain' sword.

[LmL]

No, not at all. That quote from Martin is one of the things I was thinking when I was talking about how ice acts in his world. It's actually very revealing, considering how tight lipped he usually is. The Others can make "things" out of Ice. Anything made out of "ice" that we should examine? I can think of a couple.

[Nozlym]

i keep seeing the 2 moons as 2 wives.

rhaegar had 2 wives. a lot of ppl in the books see him as the bad guy, son of an evil king, kidnapping lyana and fighting against our chief characters in Game of Thrones, Ned and Robert. as u relate Azor Ahai as not being the hero.

but he made one of the moons(wife) hatch a dragon but at the cost of her life(nissa nissa).

thus lightbringer was born (jon).

Rhaegar thought he was the one to fullfil the prophecy, but was mistaken. I think the same thing can be said about Azor Ahai being the saviour.

[LmL]

Oh absolutely - that's exactly my thinking. The sun king has an ice bride and a fire bride. If you look at the symbolism around Rhaenys and Visenya, you'll see that Visenya is all ice symbolism, and Rhaenys the fire. Aegon of course is THE dragon, a solar king. Rhaegar had a fire bride (Elia of Dorne & Sunspear) and Lyanna Stark. The pattern is, impregnate the fire bride first, then the solar bride. Rhaenys has the first child, as did Elia, and then the ice bride comes last, as did Visenya and Lyanna.

Dany herself is strange at first she is clearly a moon queen with a solar husband, but Drogo doesn't take two wives. Instead, he dies, Dany births dragons from his seed, and then Dany becomes herself a dragon solar king - she puts on the white lion pelt to signify this. She becomes a leader, a khal-eesi with bloodriders of her own, and wanders like the comet, even following the comet. So, looking at dany, she took a fire husband, Drogo, and then an ice husband - Hizdahr, he of the frozen cock and tepid kisses.

Consider Lightbringer. The first Lightbringer is symbolized by the union of sun comet and fire moon. Dany plays the fire moon, and her dragons are symbolic of Lightbringer. That's HER Lightbringer - she gets dragons, not a sword. Brienne is also a mix of comet and moon - she's the Morningstar / Evenstar, and also a "cow" with "moon eyes" (cows being symbolic of horned moons and sacrifice). The Monringstar is Venus, and Brienne is "the beauty," but Geroge has transferred Morningstar lore and symbolism on to the comet. as I discussed in my essays. Brienne has a manifestation of Lightbringer - Oathkeeper, the red and black sword which is making blood sacrifice to wierwoods and which I expect to light up with red and black fire at some point in the next book.

Jon is the son of the sun comet and the ICE moon, however, so he's not symbolic of the old Lightbringer. He is symbolic of something that actually has not happened yet - the comet's fertilization of the ice moon. This is where the ice dragon may come in to play. :devil: :devil: :devil: That may be his Lightbringer. Or maybe he will be himself the new Lightbringer - his magic will be his manifestation of the sword.

Although i think Ned's sword was the actual old LB of AA, it may be possible that it merely symbolizes what happened to the OG LB, and it may be that ANY V steel sword can become a Lightbringer with the right magic and the right wielder. These ideas are similar in terms of how they appear in metaphor, so its hard to say what is being foreshadowed exactly. Valyrian steel swords reek of LB symbolism - the sword Nightfall, for example, as I mentioned - but it's hard to interpret specifically what that means sometimes.

[LordImp]

No, not at all. That quote from Martin is one of the things I was thinking when I was talking about how ice acts in his world. It's actually very revealing, considering how tight lipped he usually is. The Others can make "things" out of Ice. Anything made out of "ice" that we should examine? I can think of a couple.

I belive in an ice dragon too. I have long speculated that the ice dragon is what drives the Others . I also belive that Bran will be somehow allied with the Others , but not evil. I think Bran may use the Others to save the North. I belive dragons and fire poses just a big threat as the Others and ice.

[LmL]

I belive in an ice dragon too. I have long speculated that the ice dragon is what drives the Others . I also belive that Bran will be somehow allied with the Others , but not evil. I think Bran may use the Others to save the North. I belive dragons and fire poses just a big threat as the Others and ice.

I feel like everyone should agree on this bit, at least.

I am also interestd in the idea of someone trying to use the Others as a weapon... I don't know about "reconciling" with the Others, but I think they may have been created as a weapon originally - at least, that's one of several plausible ideas in my head. So the idea of Bran or Jon trying to "use" them seems possible... not necessarily my leading hypothesis, but it makes a certain amount of sense.

Loving your new sigil there, LordImp, where'd you get that?

[Nozlym]

and it may be that ANY V steel sword can become a Lightbringer with the right magic and the right wielder.

i do tend to believe this.

jon claimed the sword (longclaw) from the fire (when he set the white on fire).

[LmL]

right - but the question always is, "does that mean Longclaw is now or was LB? Or is this simply a metaphor, replaying the AA / Lightbringer forging pattern? In the latter case, it might be a clue that Jon is Azor Ahai - Jon does AA things all through the books, because that's the archetype he is cast into. It's the same question for Ned's sword - it could be that it is merely symbolizing all the things that happened to Lightbringer for various reasons.

The thing I keep coming back to about Ned's sword is the weird way it acted when Tywin had Tobho Mott split it and color it. There's a bunch a weirdness there that's very hard to explain. Remember, that sword "drinks the light," and has one layer which does not even appear to be steel (the black layer that won't take any coloring). The layer which takes the red color but darkens the crimson to blood by drinking the light must be a steel alloy, because it takes the coloring (it's specifically a steel-coloring process Tobho employs), but it must be infused with something that enables it to drink the light. I take that to indicate the presence of bloodstone meteorite iron. The layer which is black and takes no coloring must not be steel at all, I am thinking. What's as black as night and should be a component of Lightbringer? Dragonglass. That's what I think we are seeing in the two layers - bloodstone alloy steel, and obsidian.

[Scorpion92]

Yet when she slept that night, she dreamt the dragon dream again. Viserys was not in it this time. There was only her and the dragon. Its scales were black as night, wet and slick with blood. Her blood, Dany sensed. Its eyes were pools of molten magma, and when it opened its mouth, the flame came roaring out in a hot jet. She could hear it singing to her. She opened her arms to the fire, embraced it, let it swallow her whole, let it cleanse her and temper her and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam, and yet there was no pain. She felt strong and new and fierce.

Of course the whole dream foreshadows Drogon, but I always felt metaphorically this part foreshadowed the black dragon as Jon and this fire cleansing her as the process of making another Lightbringer,or in other words, Jon conceiving a child with her and Dany dying with happiness,"finally finding home" that alluded her whole life. I strongly believe that the dream she had about sex with a corpse with a cold manhood referred to Jon in his resurrected form,as King of Winter or the Ice Dragon.

Its scales were black as night, wet and slick with blood. Her blood.

Notice that it is HER blood on him. I interpret this as the dragon and she are related. The only living dragons related to her by blood are Jon (I mean,black scales here are direct reference to him) and Jaime (yes,I am a believer of A+J=C+J,but it is another topic). I dunno,might be wrong.

Your essays actually persuade me more and more that the wielder of Lightbringer (Oathkeeper) and Dawn are going to clash in an epic battle in the end. The only two candidates who come to mind are Jon and Jaime. Who is going to wield either Lightbringer or Dawn I am not sure,but I definitely see Jaime fighting Jon till he proves that he is trueborn heir Targaryen.

But I don't believe they are going to kill each other,Jaime will still need to acknowledge Jon as his king and Rhaegar's heir and play the role of Kingmaker,Criston Cole. Probably they would be interrupted,where Jon will take on Dany and Drogon,while Jaime deals with Bran and the ice dragon. Jaime will slay the ice dragon,while Jon will tame Drogon and prove to Dany and everyone in the battlefield that he is her nephew. But it is total speculation of course...

Another amazing essay LmL. Your topics are the few here I am most looking forward to. Keep it coming!

[LmL]

I took the black blood on the dragon's scales as indicating the dragon was her child - all these scenes are foreshadowing Dany's immolation on the pyre to birth dragons, an event which symbolizes the destruction of the fire moon. Drogon is indeed her child. I can see how you interpret Jon in there, but I do think Drogon represents her child.

Jon is actually symbolic of the child of the ice moon and the comet, an event which hasn't happened yet, as I was saying. I generally don't get too much into predicting things unless its staring me in the face, like the ice moon's impending demise, but your predictions don't seem implausible. I stay away from predicting how Jon and Dany will interact, it's just really hard to say..

As for Jaime. I personally think Jamie and Cersei Targ was ruled out by TWOAIF, while Tyrion Targ was strengthened greatly. But regardless of that, Jaime DOES have LH and AA symbolism about him - so do Davos and Brienne - so I do think he is destined to play a crucial role. What, I cannot say. But don't overlook Brienne the Beauty - she may actually be the final wielder of Oathkeeper, one half of Lightbringer. She's a Morningstar person in her own right. I think she will be central to the ending.

[LordImp]

I feel like everyone should agree on this bit, at least.

I am also interestd in the idea of someone trying to use the Others as a weapon... I don't know about "reconciling" with the Others, but I think they may have been created as a weapon originally - at least, that's one of several plausible ideas in my head. So the idea of Bran or Jon trying to "use" them seems possible... not necessarily my leading hypothesis, but it makes a certain amount of sense.

Loving your new sigil there, LordImp, where'd you get that?

Thats the personal sigil of Bloodraven , found it on google.

[Julia H.]

Another great essay, LmL! :bowdown: I enjoyed every word of it. (I haven't read the linked essay yet, but I'm going to.) Thanks for sharing all this with us!

The “seven celestial wanderers” is a very old concept: the five planets visible to the naked eye (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) and the sun and moon all move against the cosmic backdrop of stars, which rotate in an orderly fashion. The planets appear to be very bright stars to the naked eye, but don’t move with the other stars – hence the idea of “wandering stars” (although this can also be applied to comets). These seven wanderers have been interpreted as gods and goddesses by countless cultures through countless centuries all around the world. The Faith of the Seven associates each of the seven celestial wanderers with one of the Seven:

The last night fell black and moonless, but for once the sky was clear. “I am going up the hill to look for Ghost,” he told the Thenns at the cave mouth, and they grunted and let him pass.

So many stars, he thought as he trudged up the slope through pines and firs and ash. Maester Luwin had taught him his stars as a boy in Winterfell; he had learned the names of the twelve houses of heaven and the rulers of each; he could find the seven wanderers sacred to the Faith; he was old friends with the Ice Dragon, the Shadowcat, the Moonmaid, and the Sword of the Morning. All those he shared with Ygritte, but not some of the others. We look up at the same stars, and see such different things. The King’s Crown was the Cradle, to hear her tell it; the Stallion was the Horned Lord; the red wanderer that septons preached was sacred to their Smith up here was called the Thief. And when the Thief was in the Moonmaid, that was a propitious time for a man to steal a woman, Ygritte insisted. “Like the night you stole me. The Thief was bright that night.”

“I never meant to steal you,” he said. “I never knew you were a girl until my knife was at your throat.” (ASOS, Jon)

If Planetos used to have a second moon, that moon would have been the eighth wanderer. We’ll come back to this idea in a bit. Taking a closer look at this scene, we have Jon “probable Azor Ahai reborn in some sense” Snow in the role of the Thief, the red wanderer, and the Smith. Azor Ahai was certainly a smith, “the Smith of Smiths” you might even say, since he made the world’s ultimate sword sometime in the Dawn Age. The red wanderer in this case is certainly Mars, the red planet and Roman God of War, and the moon maiden is a constellation (probably Virgo / Astraea), but the term “red wanderer” is also easily applied to the red comet, which is Azor Ahai’s sword, while the term “moon maiden” can certainly be applied to Nissa Nissa and the moon itself. The association of procreation (potentially violent procreation – “stealing” a woman) with the red wanderer being “in” the moon maiden certainly calls to mind Azor Ahai’s “bloody sword” impregnating Nissa Nissa moon with dragonseed. Jon’s knife was at Ygritte’s throat, just to drive home the point. The fact that Jon did not cut the moon maiden’s throat is hopeful, although for the purposes of symbolism, implying death is enough to make the metaphor.

Jon in the role of the Smith - that's referenced by his residence behind the armory, is that right?

As I was reading the above, at first I had difficulty picturing Ygritte as a moon maiden, but then I remembered that the Nissa Nissa moon was a fire moon in your theory, and then I could totally see it. Then, if I understand you correctly, the other (still existing) moon is an ice moon. Jon appears here as the Thief who (unwittingly) stole Ygritte the Fire-moon Maiden.

In ADwD, Jon appears once again as the Thief, this time stealing the Ice-Moon Maiden.

It is when Jon sends Val beyond the Wall to look for Tormund. He was supposed to guard her for Stannis ("the king's prize"), but instead he "stole" her (again, without realizing it). The scene is marked by moonlight and cold.

Val glanced at the sky. The moon was but half-full. "Look for me on the first day of the full moon."

Later:

The light of the moon turned Val's honey-blond hair a pale silver and left her cheek as white as snow. She took a deep breath "The air tastes sweet."

"My tongue is too numb to tell. All I can taste is cold."

"Cold?" Val laughed lightly.

Her parting words are:

"The first night of the full moon, then."

When Jon returns to his chambers, he has breakfast.

He ate the bread and half an egg. He would have eaten the bacon, too, but the raven made off with it before he had a chance. "Thief," Jon said, as the bird flapped up to the lintel above the door to devour its prize.

"Thief," the raven agreed.

To reinforce the symbolism, in the previous Jon-chapter Jon actually thinks of the Thief and the Moonmaid again, so that the reader is reminded:

Jon glimpsed the red wanderer above, watching them through the leafless branches of the great trees as they made their way beneath. The Thief, the free folk called it. The best time to steal a woman was when the Thief was in the Moonmaid, Ygritte had always claimed.

Therefore it appears that Jon has met and "stolen" two Moonmaids, the Fire-Moon Maid and the Ice-Moon Maid. The passage where Val leaves also seems to be full of the typical key-words ^_^ of your essays, for example we have the sword, the torch and the dragon together:

I am the sword that guards the realm of men, Jon reminded himself, and in the end, that must be worth more than one man's honour.

The road beneath the Wall was as dark and cold as the belly of an ice dragon and as twisty as a serpent. Dolorous Edd led them through with a torch in hand.

Later, I came to this post:

Oh absolutely - that's exactly my thinking. The sun king has an ice bride and a fire bride. If you look at the symbolism around Rhaenys and Visenya, you'll see that Visenya is all ice symbolism, and Rhaenys the fire. Aegon of course is THE dragon, a solar king. Rhaegar had a fire bride (Elia of Dorne & Sunspear) and Lyanna Stark. The pattern is, impregnate the fire bride first, then the solar bride. Rhaenys has the first child, as did Elia, and then the ice bride comes last, as did Visenya and Lyanna.

The pattern seems to be repeated with Jon, although with obvious twists. What do you think?

[LmL]

That's all terrific, Julia!! I had certainly identified Val as the potential "Ice Bride" (symbolically at least), due to that scene you're taking about where she is a kind of ice priestess or Winters Queen (contrast her to Alys Karstark at her wedding, another ice queen marrying a solar king), but I had not put together any of that with the Thief as a common link, that's freakin outstanding! I see I've given you starry eyes ! ;)

I'll have to give you a very large hat tip in my two moons essay - I could really just lift your analysis here wholesale, it's dead on the money.

[oneandonlypostguy]

eh.. in lue of the thinking... if true might be too spoilerish... rather save the goods so to speak

But LmL, someone needs to get you a job being a highly respected historian or future author :P

[LmL]

eh.. in lue of the thinking... if true might be too spoilerish... rather save the goods so to speak

But LmL, someone needs to get you a job being a highly respected historian or future author :P

I got ideas, man! Send me those publishing agents!

Look at it this way - either I am right, and I will get tons of credit for being right (enough people have heard my theory by now) - or I have hallucinated all of this, and in that case... I have the seeds for an AWESOME fantasy novel with TONS OF SYMBOLISM ay? Of course Westeros users will know what I'm up to...

I did sort of wonder if the theory was too spoilerish when I first saw it - I had so much fun putting it all together for myself that I didn't want to rob anyone of the joy. But, George really has been trying very hard to clue people into this thing - the astronomy metaphors have gotten more and more vivid as the series has gone on, almost as if he is trying to see how far he needs to go before people get it. I just want everyone to be in on the joke, so to speak. I mean, it's a whole different book when you read through just looking for symbolism, specifically astronomy symbolism. It's a whole. new. book. Dance with Dragons in particular becomes totally psychedelic. Love that book. The Watward Bride might be my favorite chapter in the whole series... it's so surreal, with the tide of trees swarming over the Ironborn by moonlight... awesome.

[Julia H.]

That's all terrific, Julia!! I had certainly identified Val as the potential "Ice Bride" (symbolically at least), due to that scene you're taking about where she is a kind of ice priestess or Winters Queen (contrast her to Alys Karstark at her wedding, another ice queen marrying a solar king), but I had not put together any of that with the Thief as a common link, that's freakin outstanding! I see I've given you starry eyes ! ;)

I'll have to give you a very large hat tip in my two moons essay - I could really just lift your analysis here wholesale, it's dead on the money.

Thanks! :)

I feel honoured to have been able to call your attention to something "starry" after all the fascinating ideas I have read in your essays. I don't know how much of the credit I deserve though... Others' posts and ideas on this forum constantly inspire me and sometimes it's hard to pinpoint what was my original idea and what may be just the continuation of what I read here. Anyway, the Ygritte/ Val - Thief/Moonmaid motifs have a whole new meaning for me now that they are linked to the larger cosmic history / mythology of Planetos as well as to Azor Ahai and other things.

As for the "starry eyes", you know, I have always loved the "starry" descriptions in the novel, together with some landscape descriptions, especially those of the North. They are very atmospheric. It's good to see the astronomical-mythological complexity behind them now. I can also understand it better why Martin is taking such a long time writing these books.