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The Three Hallows in ASOIAF?


WitteRaaf

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                                                                                                    The Three Hallows in ASoIaF?

The following info can be found here 

(......In general terms, the ancients saw the universe divided up into the three worlds......The Heavens (or Upperworld) is the place of order, where the shining ones dwell.....

......The Midworld is the world in which we live, the place of the Spirits of the Land and of life as we know it. And here also are the Otherworlds, the mythic/spiritual counterparts to our common world, existing unseen all around us......

......The Underworld is the shadowy land of the Dead and of the chthonic deities.   Here, below the surface of the Midworld, the dead, or at least their bones, are buried, and this is wheretheir spirits dwell.   

.....The Sacred Center is that place, created in ritual, where all the Worlds meet, and where a “hole” can be forged allowing communication between these cosmic planes......

......In order to re-create the sacred center of the Worlds, we need first to connect to those Worlds. In ritual, we bless the symbols of the Well, Fire and Tree (our triple hallows) in our ritual spaces to create gateways to these spiritual places......

......The Well represents a connection to the underworld and the ancestors.  The Well is an ancient place of offering. The ancient Celts used to offer weapons, precious objects and even household goods to water. The Well connects with the earth power beneath us, and with the fresh, ordered waters of the earth. It corresponds with the Sacred Dead and with the chthonic deities, and is our connection to the Underworld. The Well can also be seen as a shaft, pit or chasm..... 

.....Fire – The Fire is the ancient focus of ritual. It is the transmuter and transformer, which can take something..... and change it into something else, something possibly more accessible to the Gods. The Fire corresponds with the Shining Ones and with order, and is our connection to the world of the Heavens......

......Tree – The Tree is the axis mundi or axis of the world. It is the cosmic pillar that holds up the sky and connects, through its roots, with the lands below our feet. Thus the Tree, while existing in the Midworld, connects all the Worlds above and below. It can be a tree, a mountain, an omphalos or even a pillar or boundary stone. But the Tree always stands at the center.....

...... once we have re-created the Center of the Worlds and consecrated the Hallows, we call upon a special, liminal God or Goddess to “join their magic with ours” so that we might open those gateways to the Three worlds that have taken form in our Hallows. We call these deities Gatekeepers......

...... Liminality is the condition of being neither one thing nor another. In the physical world, liminal objects can be boundaries of all kinds, such as walls, hedges, and sea shores or even a place like a crossroads...... Liminal times include  dawn and dusk (neither day nor night) or even, for the Celts at least, the hinge days of Beltane and Samhain (neither summer nor winter).  The veils between the Worlds are thinnest at liminal times and places......

......Sacrifice comes from the Latin words sacer (sacred; to set apart) and facere (to make or to do). Thus its true meaning is “to make sacred, to set apart.....

There are a number of reasons for making sacrifice:

.....1. Reciprocity – I give so that You may give. This is one of the most common forms of sacrifice.   We make offerings to the Kindreds in order to receive blessings or wisdom in return.

2. Apotropaic Offerings - Averting evil or bad luck. Here, the sacrificer makes an offering to say, in effect, “Take this and go”, rather than to form a relationship with that Power. The removal of any ritual pollution would also come under this heading.

3. The Shared Meal – Here we take food and eat some while giving the rest to the Kindreds. This act enhances the unity of the People through celebration, and allows communion with the Kindreds.

4. Maintaining the Cosmic Order – When we give offerings that the unity of the people beenhanced, or the earth may be healed and strengthened, we are re-affirming the cosmic order.

5. Chaos Mitigates Cosmos – Too much order can cause brittleness.   Think of a tree that cannot bend in the wind, and therefore breaks. In our rites, we have Praise Offerings, which cannot be totally controlled. Spontaneity in prayers, actions and praise can keep a ritual from becoming too lifeless. 
 

(end of link)

Ok.... Where am i going here?   We are given plenty of these symbols in the books.  The weirwood and pool in the godswood in Winterfell, and the well, weirwood tree and gate at the Night Fort to name a couple.  There is also an abundance of fire.   The fires of the nights watch, the 14 flames of old valyria, dragons= fire made flesh.   Here is an early example I think weare all familiar with:

(The following quotes from A Game of Thrones,  pulled from a search of ice and fire)

" The slaves erected Khal Drogo's tent beneath a jagged outcrop of black rock whose shadow gave some relief from the heat of the afternoon sun."

"Eroeh, the timid girl Dany had rescued outside the mud walls of the Lamb Men, set up a brazier."

"Irri, have the tub brought at once. Doreah, Eroeh, find water, cool water, he's so hot." He was a fire in human skin.   The slaves set up the heavy copper tub in the corner of the tent."

The Tree represented by the jagged black outcrop, the well represented by the copper tub, and the fire represented by the brazier.

" It looked old; hammered red bronze, leaf-shaped, its blade covered with ancient glyphs. The maegi drew it across the stallion's throat, under the noble head"

"Mirri Maz Duur had no use for the carcass. "Burn it," Dany told them. It was what they did, she knew."

"Braziers were lit. Mirri Maz Duur tossed a red powder onto the coals. It gave the smoke a spicy scent, a pleasant enough smell, "

" Once I begin to sing, no one must enter this tent. My song will wake powers old and dark."

"Mirri Maz Duur was dancing, and not alone."

Here we are shown a sacrifice, the life of the horse.   We are also given more fire.   There are at least two, possibly three and maybe more braziers burning.   We also have a sacrifice and more fire with the burning horse.   More sacrifice is offered with the inscense, and finally we have the liminal deities. The powers old and dark dancing.

This is a  ritual enacted in the first book.   The outcome was not what was expected but there was definitely magic involved.   My thoughts?   To work magic within the realm that GRRM has given us, do the three "hallows" have to be present?

A search for the symbol of the three hallows yields, among other things, the symbol for the deathly hallows of Harry Potter.

 

https://sweetsantuary.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/deathly_hallows2_copy.jpg


The symbol for fire is a triangle, the well is the circle, and the tree is the line through the middle.   Im reaching I know, but consider this:

The triangle represents fire, and the inverted triangle represents water. If you put the two together to form a diamond, add the tree and well you get:

 

http://i.imgur.com/wp7An8W.jpg

 

Zoom in on this one if you can.   I believe that it is also a representation of the hallows.   There appears to be a tree in the center, with the triangle of fire, and the circle of the well.   It also incorporates the inverted triangle of water. 

What do you think?

For more on the hallows see here 

Is it possible that these "hallows" are  what is implied in the Meera/Jojen oath?  

Earth and Water: could symbolize  the tree and its connection to the nature spirits.
 

Bronze and Iron: could symbolize the well and its connection to  the ancestors.
 

Ice and Fire: could symbolize water and fire, or the connection to deities.
 

The three hallows may also be represented by three prominent people's.

The Starks and the north are associated with winter but through their wolves could represent the tree and nature spirits.  Winter is coming.  The cycle of seasons.

The Ironborn, The Krakens are seafaring.  This could represent the well and the underworld.   What is dead may never die.

The Targaryans and dragons.  Fire made flesh, fire and blood. Connection to the deities.

If you need the hallows to work high magic,  If these families represent the hallows,  What would be possible were they to unite?

 

Thoughts?

 

 

 

 

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22 minutes ago, WitteRaaf said:

Ive been wondering, could the cosmogony of Planetos (who coined that term?)  include a "Janus" deity?

The Maiden and the Lion are the same?   serve god or die?

the challenge....all men must die

the response....all men must serve

seems backwards.....could the maiden/lion and her progeny...the god-on-earth down to the opal emperor be the original HoBaW?

the most common colors for the first emperors are:

Pearl, white

Jade, pale green, but white is common

Tourmaline, black

Onyx, black with white bands

Topaz, colorless

Opal, white with green bands

all of these can be just about any color but these are the most common.  its not until Amethyst and Bloodstone that we see a gem that can be only one color, or a variation of that color.

if the original house of black and white indicates the gods then all men must die= the long night

and all men must serve= the cure

 

I posted this in heresy but it occurs to me that it fits here as well

the common colors of the gemstone emperors being black white and green

black, the well, underworld and ancestors

white, the fire, and the heavens/deity

green, the tree and nature spirits

I think the original god was a solar goddess worshipped through druidic ritual with elements of monism

Jojens statement about the land being one.

the lion of night came forth to punish the world of men, not man as in mankind, but men

what did men do?   as in a lot of early cultures patriarchal replaced matriarchal, that is they replaced or forgot the solar goddess and and worship instead predominately male deities

The Maiden made of Light has turned her back on the world

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17 minutes ago, WitteRaaf said:

what did men do?   as in a lot of early cultures patriarchal replaced matriarchal, that is they replaced or forgot the solar goddess and and worship instead predominately male deities

The Maiden made of Light has turned her back on the world

The closest example I can find of that kind of goddess-subjugation/transformation imagery is Tiamat motif present both in the Ironborn Nagga myths and the threat to Dany from the Ghiscari.

The Old Gods are the obvious druidic analogies (entrails in the tree branches). The Maiden-Made-of-Light seems to me to be Amaterasu, the shinto solar goddess.

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the more i think of this the more it makes sense to me

black as the color of the underworld, was also the traditional color of chthonic sacrifice

Black brothers black blood-  sacrifices to the darker side of deity

the long night gets stronger and stronger because it is being fed, while the Day grows shorter because it isnt.

if black is night and white is day, the sacrifices made to the lighter side are weaker......The Kingsguard, white cloaks, are losing their purity for  example

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10 minutes ago, hiemal said:

The closest example I can find of that kind of goddess-subjugation/transformation imagery is Tiamat motif present both in the Ironborn Nagga myths and the threat to Dany from the Ghiscari.

The Old Gods are the obvious druidic analogies. The Maiden-Made-of-Light seems to me be Amaterasu.

The Sun and Moon are often seen as the twin children of various deities, but in fact the sun and moon were deified several times and are often found in competing forms within the same language. The usual scheme is that one of these celestial deities is male and the other female, though the exact gender of the Sun or Moon tends to vary among subsequent Indo-European mythologies. Here are two of the most common PIE forms:

*Seh2ul with a genitive form *Sh2-en-s, Sun, appears as Sanskrit Surya, Avestan Hvara; Greek Helios, Latin Sol, Germanic *Sowilo (Old Norse Sól; Old English Sigel and Sunna, modern English Sun), Slavic Solntse, Lithuanian Saulė, Latvian Saule, Albanian Diell.[17] The original Indo-European solar deity appears to have been female,[18] a characteristic not only supported by the higher number of sun goddesses in subsequent derivations (feminine Sól, Saule, Sulis, Solntse—not directly attested as a goddess, but feminine in gender—Étaín, Grían, Aimend, Áine and Catha versus masculine Helios, Surya, Savitr, Usil and Sol; Hvare-khshaeta is of neutral gender), but also by vestiges in mythologies with male solar deities (Usil in Etruscan art is depicted occasionally as a goddess, while solar characteristics in Athena and Helen of Troystill remain in Greek mythology).

*Meh1not Moon, gives Avestan, Mah; Greek Selene (unrelated), although they also use a form Mene; Latin, Luna, later Diana (unrelated), ON Mani, Old English Mona; Slavic Myesyats; Lithuanian, *Meno, or Mėnuo (Mėnulis); Latvian Meness; Roman Minerva. In Albanian, Hane is the name of Monday, but this is not related. (Encyclopedia of IE Culture, p. 385, gives the forms but does not have an entry for a moon goddess.) The original Indo-European lunar deity appears to have been masculine,[18] with feminine lunar deities like Selene, Minerva and Luna being a development exclusive to the eastern Mediterranean. Even in these traditions, remnants of male lunar deities, like Menelaus, remain.

WIKI

We are given the male moon in the god-on- earth.....the pearl palanquin.   moon=pearl

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55 minutes ago, FuzzyJAM said:

The "song" has two elements, not three.

I'll be honest, I don't see anything of anything in what was written here.  George isn't drawing inspiration from druidic ritual.  

I wasnt implying that they WERE the song, only questioning if they (the hallows) were required to work higher magic. 

you may have missed as well the larger implication of monism....that being that there arent two elements at all.  just the one

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Well, I'm not sure your example of Mirri holds up.  We're explicitly told it's "blood magic", and she uses a fire.  Two elements, if you want to call them that.  This is the same as Valyrian magic, which is about blood and fire.  The Rhoynish used water magic.  R'hlorr uses fire and shadow magic.  The First Men and Children don't seem to draw on any element, they just do stuff.  And so on.  I don't see any connection to hallows or triads or whatever.  

Now you're totally right, there do seem to be some basic human psychological ideas that circulate in different cultures about shadows and fire and blood and earth and so on which George is playing on.  But I think druidic ideas (along with other superstitions and ideas about magic and power) are an outworking of the same source rather than George being inspired by it.  

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I can see your point on blood magic, and yet all the hallows were represented.

If the Long Night is magical in nature, its defeat must be as well

Will these hallows be present?   All we can do is wait

as for the First men and children just doing stuff.....they do it naturally......because they are attuned to nature?

If youll pardon the pun, im not sure that holds water.

The children, as I see it are a different matter entirely.  not human and not bound by the same rules.

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