A Burning Brandon (Mythical Astronomy of Ice and Fire)

[LmL]

On 3/5/2017 at 9:24 PM, Isobel Harper said:

She, along with her son, are placed into the sky.  Callisto was transformed into a bear (by Hera?) and had been a bear for quite some time.  One day, her son (who was grown at this point) went hunting and hunted down Callisto-as-a-bear, not knowing it was his mother.  Just before he slew her, Zeus averted the tragedy by placing Callisto and her son Arcas into the sky as Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, respectively.  

Could this be in use with Tormund, who says he mated with a she bear, and also hid inside a giant who thought he was her child? Giants and bears are often symbolically equivalent, so Tormund's sleeping with a bear could imply the giant as a bear, but that giant bear is also his mother in sense. 

[LmL]

On 3/8/2017 at 5:08 PM, Isobel Harper said:

@ LmL Back on topic...  You mention the Saga of the Volsungs in the latest podcasts.  According to one source (About 20 minutes in to: https://www.mythpodcast.com/57/3a-volsungs-the-norse-and-the-furious-bredis-drift/), Signy tested a total of 3 children to see if they were "true Volsungs."  The first 2 (with her husband Siggeir) were "failures," whereas the 3rd (the son Signy conceived through her brother, Sigmund) succeeded.  I looked up the tale myself, and only found that "she tested her other sons," although, admittedly, I only checked Wikipedia.  However, 3 is an important number in Norse mythology, so I don't doubt that the 3 children were just coincidence in the story.  The 3 children as attempted hero-making reminds me of Rhaegar's attempts to make a "prince that was promised," so I thought this worth mentioning.  

Oh very cool, it's like a reflection of Gram's forging. It again aligns the sword and the wielder as having the same origins, being one in the same.

[LmL]

On 3/9/2017 at 11:23 AM, Pain killer Jane said:

Sansa and Arya both get compared to bear cubs. Arya's scene is when she is with the brotherhood without banners, if I remember correctly. And perhaps you are right, since Ursa Minor is connected to Polaris and Arya is compared to a bear and she carries Needle. And we need to remember that the comet was called the dragon's tail which links the constellation Draco with the other name I mentioned above for Polaris is the Dog's Tail. 

Polaris kind of has to be the blue eye of the ice dragon (or it's rider, tales vary), doesn't it? And the ice dragon is "the ice wagon" in another Martin book (which carries the souls of the dead to the afterlife).  Associating the ice dragon with the sea star / star of the sea might work, because Shierra had one blue eye and one green. We also have all this about Maris the Fair Maid, Pretty Maris, etc. 

In The Hedge Knight, Baelor Targaryen's helm is damaged in the fight, and right before he take sit off, only to have his skull fall apart, Dunk notes the helm - it's lose one of it's three heads, both wings, and had its tail shortened. Very similar to the puppet scene, now that you point it out. Not sure about the correlation to the three locations of the dragon eggs, but it certainly might be right.  

Equating needle with the weirwood's bleeding face and then Jon's smile implies a red smile for Jon, kinda creepy. Also, Arya punched ghost Jon in the crypts.. and Jon's stabbing is also a punch in the gut in ADWD. After Jon is resurrected and does his duty, will Arya help him find final rest or something? I've wondered about this before

[Isobel Harper]

14 hours ago, LmL said:

Could this be in use with Tormund, who says he mated with a she bear, and also hid inside a giant who thought he was her child? Giants and bears are often symbolically equivalent, so Tormund's sleeping with a bear could imply the giant as a bear, but that giant bear is also his mother in sense. 

Hmm, I'm not familiar with the concept of giants and bears being symbolically equivalent. 

I can sort of see a similarity between Tormund as Sansa, with regard to his tale of sleeping inside a giant.  The "sleeping inside a giant" is the dormant phase of rebirth.  The returning to the womb.  Sansa is also going through some sort of dormant phase of rebirth as Alayne with her Idunn inspired "chestnut" hair, etc.  Sansa, as Alayne, is also a "giant's (titan's) babe" like Tormund.  (And she will surely go from "giant's babe" to "giant's bane" soon or later.)

On 3/9/2017 at 1:23 PM, Pain killer Jane said:

Sansa and Arya both get compared to bear cubs. Arya's scene is when she is with the brotherhood without banners, if I remember correctly. And perhaps you are right, since Ursa Minor is connected to Polaris and Arya is compared to a bear and she carries Needle. And we need to remember that the comet was called the dragon's tail which links the constellation Draco with the other name I mentioned above for Polaris is the Dog's Tail. 

 

15 hours ago, LmL said:

Polaris kind of has to be the blue eye of the ice dragon (or it's rider, tales vary), doesn't it? And the ice dragon is "the ice wagon" in another Martin book (which carries the souls of the dead to the afterlife).  Associating the ice dragon with the sea star / star of the sea might work, because Shierra had one blue eye and one green. We also have all this about Maris the Fair Maid, Pretty Maris, etc.

"Wayn" is an old term for "wagon." 

So, within this ice dragon constellation, we know there's Polaris (the eye leading north), a dragon, and (apparently) the Wayn.  Polaris is part of Ursa Minor.  Then there's Draco.  And the Wayn (Big Dipper) is part of Ursa Major.  Perhaps the ice dragon constellation includes Ursa Minor, Draco, and Ursa Major?

15 hours ago, LmL said:

In The Hedge Knight, Baelor Targaryen's helm is damaged in the fight, and right before he take sit off, only to have his skull fall apart, Dunk notes the helm - it's lose one of it's three heads, both wings, and had its tail shortened. Very similar to the puppet scene, now that you point it out. Not sure about the correlation to the three locations of the dragon eggs, but it certainly might be right. 

Never noticed that!

15 hours ago, LmL said:

Equating needle with the weirwood's bleeding face and then Jon's smile implies a red smile for Jon, kinda creepy. Also, Arya punched ghost Jon in the crypts.. and Jon's stabbing is also a punch in the gut in ADWD. After Jon is resurrected and does his duty, will Arya help him find final rest or something? I've wondered about this before

Jon also thinks "stink them with the pointy end" before he dies.  I have a (crackpot?) theory that Bloodraven inhabits Jon's body, not Jon, when/if he's resurrected.  And Jon will be trapped inside Ghost unable to stop him.  Arya frees Jon, but does so by killing Ghost.  I don't know how Bran wouldn't notice though...  Either way, I have wondered myself if Arya might play a role in "putting Jon to rest" one last time.

[Unchained]

On 3/5/2017 at 1:45 PM, LmL said:

Oh sheeeett.... Europa. She's not just a Greek goddess. She's a Greek moon goddess, and she's also the most famous ice moon in the solar system. One of the premises of my upcoming moons of ice and fire series which will lay out the evidence for an ice moon and a fire moon is that George has used two of the most famous moons in the solar system, Io and Europa, as models for his ice and fire moons. Here's the page on Io. Europa is basically a version of Persephone the abducted moon maiden, a myth referenced heavily and specifically in ASOIAF, and Io's myth is also clearly referenced in the tale of Uthor Hightower and Maris the Most Fair, daughter of Garth the Green. 

Here's why this is so cool. Euron's face is like a sky map. His covered eye is either called his Crow's Eye or his Blood Eye, and he wears either a black or blood red eye patch over it. That is the fire moon, the Io moon, which has been put out to bring us waves of night and blood. That fire moon also was the black pupil in the Gods Eye, and this is Euron's sigil, a red eye with a black pupil. But his other eye is the smiling eye, and it is blue as can be. That is the ice moon, shining brightly still, the one he shows to the world. Euron is like Horus, essentially, in that his eyes are the sun and moon (blood eye represents the dark sun aligning with the dark fire moon). 

You'll notice the prologue mimics this. One eye is put out by a rain of needles that comes from the broken sword, and the other eye opens blue. I believe the message here is that something about the destruction of the fire moon triggered the rise of the Others, and I have tracked this to my idea about a fire moon meteor in the ice moon, animating it with cold / frozen fire. The show even mimics this when (show spoiler season 6)

 

  Reveal hidden contents

they shove the dragonglass in the man's chest to make him the Night's King

 

Sp, Euron's europa eye (cool that the etymology for Europa also includes 'eye') symbolizes the Others and the ice moon. The whole idea of the comet returning, and of the 'other moon' cracking and the dragons returning is that the comet will return and hit the ice moon, triggering a new long night and god knows what else. Euron figures to be at the center of this, as you and others suggest, so it makes sense to see all this symbolism with him. He is showing us the last moon disaster and also foreshadowing the next one, in other words. 

You'll notice that in the Aeron Damphair TWOW spoiler chapter that (and this is not a spoiler for anything) Euron's face is directly equated with the moon.

Great find @Isobel Harper, I shall be crediting you once again in a future podcast. 

@Isobel Harper

 

While on the topic of Io and Europa as the fire and ice moons and Ursa Major and minor as Sansa and Arya as well as the moon Castillo.  This is the first thing on Castillo's wiki page

 

Callisto's anti-Jovian hemisphere imaged in 2001 by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. It shows a heavily cratered terrain. The large impact structure Asgard is on the limb at upper right. The prominent rayed craterbelow and just right of center is Bran.

 

There is also a crater named after Heimdall aka the Night's watch and Jon Snow in particular.  

[Pain killer Jane]

4 hours ago, LmL said:

In The Hedge Knight, Baelor Targaryen's helm is damaged in the fight, and right before he take sit off, only to have his skull fall apart, Dunk notes the helm - it's lose one of it's three heads, both wings, and had its tail shortened.

Losing a head and having a tail is shortened would be a combination of Theon the Hungry Wolf and the Lord Reaper of Pyke. Theon mounted heads on spikes/pikes and sailed across the narrow sea, and then a tail has been used to refer to a penis. As well as pikes.  

[LmL]

37 minutes ago, Isobel Harper said:

"Wayn" is an old term for "wagon." 

So, within this ice dragon constellation, we know there's Polaris (the eye leading north), a dragon, and (apparently) the Wayn.  Polaris is part of Ursa Minor.  Then there's Draco.  And the Wayn (Big Dipper) is part of Ursa Major.  Perhaps the ice dragon constellation includes Ursa Minor, Draco, and Ursa Major?

Yes, I think so. That makes the most sense. 

Also, the Waynwood's have a broken axle - 1 broken out of 8 - which I believe could allude to the second moon we used to have (which would have been the 8th wanderer). 

[Pain killer Jane]

4 hours ago, LmL said:

I can almost see what you're getting at... a little more explanation please? As usual. Your kink, darling.

lol

Well. Dany asks the question whether or not the gods of burned cities can answer prayers. If the cities burned then the gods would have burned as well. You have suggested that the trees have burned so technically they would be burned gods which is what we are shown in the Aeron vision in The Forsaken. So I have to wonder if Martin is saying something to us because in the next scene he has the gods impaled on the Iron Throne which is connected to Mel burning the gods on Dragonstone and pulling out the faux LB. 

[Jon Ice-Eyes]

I'm just gonna leave this here....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_the_birds

AKA The Green Language. Not to derail the thread, but it's linked to the broader topic. 

[LmL]

2 hours ago, Jon Ice-Eyes said:

I'm just gonna leave this here....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_the_birds

AKA The Green Language. Not to derail the thread, but it's linked to the broader topic. 

Alright, so the first part is more or less widely known:

In Norse mythology, the power to understand the language of the birds was a sign of great wisdom. The god Odin had two ravens, called Hugin and Munin, who flew around the world and told Odin what happened among mortal men.

But then there's a really interesting bit, check this out, and this is pertaining to Norse myth:

The ability could also be acquired by tasting dragon blood. According to the Poetic Edda and the Völsunga saga, Sigurd accidentally tasted dragon blood while roasting the heart of Fafnir. This gave him the ability to understand the language of birds, and his life was saved as the birds were discussing Regin's plans to kill Sigurd.

There's an awful lot of heart eating in the books, and it refers to the moon eating a comet (a bleeding star). Dany eats the horse heart, for example, that's her eating the comet. Then she starts talking about the Stallion Who Mounts riding inside her, that's her Lightbringer child. So, thing is, we've recently figured out that Nissa Nissa can be = to the weirwoods, so really this is the moon eating the comet to transform into a burning tree, in possession of the fire of the gods.  The weirwoodnet ate the dragon's heart, and that's also true because AA went into the weirwoodnet. 

[Isobel Harper]

20 hours ago, LmL said:

Alright, so the first part is more or less widely known:

In Norse mythology, the power to understand the language of the birds was a sign of great wisdom. The god Odin had two ravens, called Hugin and Munin, who flew around the world and told Odin what happened among mortal men.

But then there's a really interesting bit, check this out, and this is pertaining to Norse myth:

The ability could also be acquired by tasting dragon blood. According to the Poetic Edda and the Völsunga saga, Sigurd accidentally tasted dragon blood while roasting the heart of Fafnir. This gave him the ability to understand the language of birds, and his life was saved as the birds were discussing Regin's plans to kill Sigurd.

There's an awful lot of heart eating in the books, and it refers to the moon eating a comet (a bleeding star). Dany eats the horse heart, for example, that's her eating the comet. Then she starts talking about the Stallion Who Mounts riding inside her, that's her Lightbringer child. So, thing is, we've recently figured out that Nissa Nissa can be = to the weirwoods, so really this is the moon eating the comet to transform into a burning tree, in possession of the fire of the gods.  The weirwoodnet ate the dragon's heart, and that's also true because AA went into the weirwoodnet. 

Perhaps (and I'm sure some of yall thought of this) the Heart of Winter that Bran sees is a comet/meteor.

In another thread, I mention that Sansa's "chestnut" hair is a play on "chest nut," a potential for growth within her "chest," her heart.  Lady is dead, but a part of Lady still lives within Sansa.  The death/rebirth cycle that Sansa (as Alayne) is in the middle of has something to do with Lady's death and Sansa's "death" as a warg/skinchanger.  Her dormant phase in the Vale is the apex of this "death."  Somehow, she will (or rather her warging/skinchanging ability will) be reborn when she emerges as Sansa once again. Sansa isn't only the fire moon that is stuck in the ice moon (Sansa hidden in the Vale); she is the ice moon with a piece of fire moon herself (Sansa with a piece of Lady/potential to warg/skinchange). 

Additionally, this rebirth will somehow entail her "breaking away her crust" symbolically and becoming the fire moon/piece of fire moon again: Oathkeeper.  Oathkeeper-comet promises to destroy the moon.  The "moon" she destroys will be no literal moon, but the "moon" symbol within her arch: The Titan's Head/Petyr Baelish.  The babe/bane wordplay that I discussed earlier reasserts this imagery.  Alayne/Dormant-Sansa is the giant's babe; her transformation will turn her into giant's bane.  (Jon jokingly calls Tormund "Giantsbabe" after hearing the story behind his nickname "Giantsbane.")

[LmL]

1 hour ago, Isobel Harper said:

Perhaps (and I'm sure some of yall thought of this) the Heart of Winter that Bran sees is a comet/meteor.

In another thread, I mention that Sansa's "chestnut" hair is a play on "chest nut," a potential for growth within her "chest," her heart.  Lady is dead, but a part of Lady still lives within Sansa.  The death/rebirth cycle that Sansa (as Alayne) is in the middle of has something to do with Lady's death and Sansa's "death" as a warg/skinchanger.  Her dormant phase in the Vale is the apex of this "death."  Somehow, she will (or rather her warging/skinchanging ability will) be reborn when she emerges as Sansa once again. Sansa isn't only the fire moon that is stuck in the ice moon (Sansa hidden in the Vale); she is the ice moon with a piece of fire moon herself (Sansa with a piece of Lady/potential to warg/skinchange). 

Additionally, this rebirth will somehow entail her "breaking away her crust" symbolically and becoming the fire moon/piece of fire moon again: Oathkeeper.  Oathkeeper-comet promises to destroy the moon.  The "moon" she destroys will be no literal moon, but the "moon" symbol within her arch: The Titan's Head/Petyr Baelish.  The babe/bane wordplay that I discussed earlier reasserts this imagery.  Alayne/Dormant-Sansa is the giant's babe; her transformation will turn her into giant's bane.  (Jon jokingly calls Tormund "Giantsbabe" after hearing the story behind his nickname "Giantsbane.")

I love your analysis about being a giant's babe or a giant's bane as it pertains to Sansa and Tormund, that's very good. I have a feeling that sense of might end up slaying Peter in order to get out of the Vale, if only because I suspect the liberation of the black meteor from the ice Moon  ( the thing that needs to happen) will cause damage to the ice moon. We'll see though.

As for Sansa representing the fire inside the ice, but also an ice queen with fire inside her, that's pretty much consistent with how Martin seems to do things. Things tend to be somewhat fractal. 

I like the idea of her skin changing abilities coming back into use, although I'm not sure what animal or even what type of animal she would be using.

[cgrav]

Little aside on Tormund: his name is two German words, Tor and Mund, which mean Gate and Mouth respectively. Together, the Gate's Mouth.

[Bluetiger]

2 minutes ago, cgrav said:

Little aside on Tormund: his name is two German words, Tor and Mund, which mean Gate and Mouth respectively. Together, the Gate's Mouth.

It's similar to Tormod as well:

From Behind The Name:

Quote

From the Old Norse name Þórmóðr, which meant "Thor's mind" from the name of the Norse god Þórr (see THOR) combined with móðr "mind, mood".

Gate's Mouth sounds a lot like the Weirwood Gate at Nightfort.

[Isobel Harper]

I have no idea what animal she'll skinchange either.  Maybe bats, like Danelle Lothston supposedly used to?  Maybe birds?  Maybe even a dragon?  I dunno. 

I have a feeling that her renewed skinchanging ability will occur at or near Castle Darry, where Lady was executed, but it might potentially be at any godswood.  We'll just have to wait for Winds to see.  

[cgrav]

35 minutes ago, Isobel Harper said:

I have no idea what animal she'll skinchange either.  Maybe bats, like Danelle Lothston supposedly used to?  Maybe birds?  Maybe even a dragon?  I dunno. 

Her association with the Eyrie leads me to lean towards a bird. And it was to Sansa who Lady Olenna told the story of Luthor who rode off a cliff while hawking, a description that sounds suspiciously like he was skinchanging the hawk. Plus, she's "Little Bird".

[LmL]

1 hour ago, cgrav said:

Little aside on Tormund: his name is two German words, Tor and Mund, which mean Gate and Mouth respectively. Together, the Gate's Mouth.

That's really terrific, outstanding even. Will be sure to hat tip you on that one! Makes a ton of sense. 

[Pain killer Jane]

13 hours ago, LmL said:

Alright, so the first part is more or less widely known:

In Norse mythology, the power to understand the language of the birds was a sign of great wisdom. The god Odin had two ravens, called Hugin and Munin, who flew around the world and told Odin what happened among mortal men.

But then there's a really interesting bit, check this out, and this is pertaining to Norse myth:

The ability could also be acquired by tasting dragon blood. According to the Poetic Edda and the Völsunga saga, Sigurd accidentally tasted dragon blood while roasting the heart of Fafnir. This gave him the ability to understand the language of birds, and his life was saved as the birds were discussing Regin's plans to kill Sigurd.

There's an awful lot of heart eating in the books, and it refers to the moon eating a comet (a bleeding star). Dany eats the horse heart, for example, that's her eating the comet. Then she starts talking about the Stallion Who Mounts riding inside her, that's her Lightbringer child. So, thing is, we've recently figured out that Nissa Nissa can be = to the weirwoods, so really this is the moon eating the comet to transform into a burning tree, in possession of the fire of the gods.  The weirwoodnet ate the dragon's heart, and that's also true because AA went into the weirwoodnet. 

I read something interesting that made me think of this and the heart eating being another reference to the stealing the fire of the gods.

Quote

Arya noticed the first grave that same day; a small mound beside the road, dug for a child. A crystal had been set in the soft earth, and Lommy wanted to take it until the Bull told him he'd better leave the dead alone. 

-Arya II, aCoK

Lommy is nicknamed greenhands which would suggest the green man stealing the crystal that brings forth colors from a dead child. And Gendry, the son of a Stormlord green man, and horned lord himself acts like a guardian of the dead. 

And then I read this in Bran's chapter 

Quote

After that, oddly, Rickon decided he liked the Walders. They never played lord of the crossing again, but they played other games—monsters and maidens, rats and cats, come-into-my-castle, all sorts of things. With Rickon by their side, the Walders plundered the kitchens for pies and honeycombs, raced round the walls, tossed bones to the pups in the kennels, and trained with wooden swords under Ser Rodrik's sharp eye. Rickon even showed them the deep vaults under the earth where the stonemason was carving father's tomb. "You had no right!" Bran screamed at his brother when he heard. "That was our place, a Stark place!" But Rickon never cared.

-Bran I,aCoK

And isn't one of the Walder's transformed into a bull by fire? 

And with these two scenes in mind I thought of this 

Spoiler

The cave proved much deeper than any of them had suspected. Beyond the stony mouth where her company had made their camp and hobbled their horses, a series of twisty passageways led down and down, with black holes snaking off to either side. Further in, the walls opened up again, and the searchers found themselves in a vast limestone cavern, larger than the great hall of a castle. Their shouts disturbed a nest of bats, who flapped about them noisily, but only distant echoes shouted back. A slow circuit of the hall revealed three further passages, one so small that it would have required them to proceed on hands and knees. “We will try the others first,” the princess said. “Daemon, come with me. Garibald, Joss, you try the other one.”

The passageway Arianne had chosen for herself turned steep and wet within a hundred feet. The footing grew uncertain. Once she slipped, and had to catch herself to keep from sliding. More than once she considered turning back, but she could see Ser Daemon’s torch ahead and hear him calling for Elia, so she pressed on. And all at once she found herself in another cavern, five times as big as the last one, surrounded by a forest of stone columns. Daemon Sand moved to her side and raised his torch. “Look how the stone’s been shaped,” he said. “Those columns, and the wall there. See them?”

“Faces,” said Arianne. So many sad eyes, staring.

“This place belonged to the children of the forest.”

“A thousand years ago.” Arianne turned her head. “Listen. Is that Joss?”

It was. The other searchers had found Elia, as she and Daemon learned after they made their way back up the slippery slope to the last hall. Their passageway led down to a still black pool, where they discovered the girl up to her waist in water, catching blind white fish with her bare hands, her torch burning red and smoky in the sand where she had planted it.

“You could have died,” Arianne told her, when she’d heard the tale. She grabbed Elia by the arm and shook her. “If that torch had gone out you would have been alone in the dark, as good as blind. What did you think that you were doing?”

“I caught two fish,” said Elia Sand.

“You could have died,” said Arianne again. Her words echoed off the cavern walls. “…died… died … died…”

Am I right to connect these together?

[Isobel Harper]

13 hours ago, Blue Tiger said:

It's similar to Tormod as well:

From Behind The Name:

Gate's Mouth sounds a lot like the Weirwood Gate at Nightfort.

Either the "mouth of a gate," or the "protection of a gate."  Mund is the modern German term for mouth, but in Old German it meant "protection."  Also note that Rosamund means "horse protection," and that if Rosamund and Myrcella were swapped, Rosamund (not Myrcella) would have been protected by a horse that shied when Darkstar slashed at her.

[Pain killer Jane]

15 hours ago, LmL said:

Alright, so the first part is more or less widely known:

In Norse mythology, the power to understand the language of the birds was a sign of great wisdom. The god Odin had two ravens, called Hugin and Munin, who flew around the world and told Odin what happened among mortal men.

We get an interesting depiction of the language of the birds from Littlefinger. A mockingbird's scientific name is Mimus polyglottos which literally means 'mimicking language'. In Baelish's case the bird is grey or silver. I think the mockingbird is a part of the theme of the White/Black Ravens mimicking speech.

And in regards to speech there is the story of the Tower of Babel, that was used to explain the difference in language. Apparently we all spoke the same language and then we decided to build a Tower to Heaven and so God punished humans by shattering the tower then making multiple languages so they wouldn't be able to cooperate fully in order to  breech Heaven.