A Burning Brandon (Mythical Astronomy of Ice and Fire)

[LmL]

8 minutes ago, hiemal said:

I had similar thoughts recently about Bran and Icarus and these followup questions:

Will Bloodraven be his Daedalus? Is his cave the Labyrinth?

Seems straightforward enough. Those wings unseen come from practicing riding The Gallows horse. The weirwood cage is a trap and a set of wings both.

[LmL]

1 minute ago, Pain killer Jane said:

@LmL and @Isobel Harper you know I think we may need to examine the dream where Bran sees the dead dreams that have fallen. That could be a labyrinth of sorts especially considering that the original labyrinth was probably littered with dead bodies from the sacrifices every few years.  

You just reminded me of a random thought that I had recently. I've talked a lot about fire transformation, and how that is expressed by having the fire inside you. I've noticed there's also a parallel with cold - the prologue in particular talks about having the cold inside you twice, and that's a scene where Nights Watch Brothers get turned into cold White's, and we also see the Others. So, dreamers who are impaled on icy Spears have the cold inside them, just like the moon got the fire inside her when it ate the lightbringer comet, when it was stabbed by lightbringer. In other words, those impaled dreamers are the others. They are the greenseers who turned into Others.

Kind of a big deal if true - Martin was showing us the origin of the Others way back in the first book. He's doing that in the prologue anyway, with his tree anthropomorphism leading up to the shadows that emerge from the dark of the wood. The others come from the weirwoods, and from greenseers.

[Wizz-The-Smith]

17 hours ago, Isobel Harper said:

On a more serious note, I find it odd that I've never seen mention of Icarus.  So I'll bring him up.

Icarus and his father, Daedalus, escaped from a labyrinth by wearing wings that Daedalus had constricted out of wax and feathers. Icarus flies too high, melting the wax, and he falls to his death.

Hi Isobel Harper. 

I love the Icarus connection.    Adding to the wax, the structural element of the wings were made from branches of osier trees.  Varieties of these willows such as the red osier, have tough, flexible twigs or branches that are used for 'wickerwork'.  My thoughts instantly turned to Bran's wicker basket/wickerman connections.  Great work @LmL 

7 hours ago, Pain killer Jane said:

Wax is probably beeswax, so we may have to look at Elyn ever sweet and Beric did die from Amory Lorch at Rushing Falls because he went to save a beekeeper and his wife. Amory decided they belonged to Beric, which is an interesting
turn of phrase.

 Hey PKJ. 

 If wax is probably connected to beeswax then perhaps all things 'honeycomb' are worth considering? 

Quote

But the Cracklaws knew their bogs and forests as no outsider could, and if hard pressed would vanish into the caverns that honeycombed their hills. 

The caverns/tunnels are honeycombed, currently home to Bran and potentially many greenseers from the past.  The Eyrie and the House of Black and White are also described as having honeycombed passageways and lower levels.  There are also quite a few references to people eating honeycomb in the text.  Perhaps a link to be found? 

Talk of beekeepers, wax, honeycombs and the like reminds me of the 'Hive mind' we find in weirwoodnet, and some of George's other work.  Anyway, I'm thinking out loud having just caught up. 

Really enjoyed this one @LmL, and thanks for the mention. [Love the pointy hill catch too ]

[cgrav]

23 minutes ago, LmL said:

You just reminded me of a random thought that I had recently. I've talked a lot about fire transformation, and how that is expressed by having the fire inside you. I've noticed there's also a parallel with cold - the prologue in particular talks about having the cold inside you twice, and that's a scene where Nights Watch Brothers get turned into cold White's, and we also see the Others. So, dreamers who are impaled on icy Spears have the cold inside them, just like the moon got the fire inside her when it ate the lightbringer comet, when it was stabbed by lightbringer. In other words, those impaled dreamers are the others. They are the greenseers who turned into Others.

Kind of a big deal if true - Martin was showing us the origin of the Others way back in the first book. He's doing that in the prologue anyway, with his tree anthropomorphism leading up to the shadows that emerge from the dark of the wood. The others come from the weirwoods, and from greenseers.

Does this mean that the Others have a bizarro myth in which an ancient hero descended into the earth and retrieved the ice of the gods?

[Pain killer Jane]

1 minute ago, Wizz-The-Smith said:

If wax is probably connected to beeswax then perhaps all things 'honeycomb' are worth considering? 

Quote

But the Cracklaws knew their bogs and forests as no outsider could, and if hard pressed would vanish into the caverns that honeycombed their hills. 

The caverns/tunnels are honeycombed, currently home to Bran and potentially many greenseers from the past.  The Eyrie and the House of Black and White are also described as having honeycombed passageways and lower levels.  There are also quite a few references to people eating honeycomb in the text.  Perhaps a link to be found? 

Talk of beekeepers, wax, honeycombs and the like reminds me of the 'Hive mind' we find in weirwoodnet, and some of George's other work.  Anyway, I'm thinking out loud having just caught up. 

Really enjoyed this one @LmL, and thanks for the mention. [Love the pointy hill catch too ]

@ravenous reader mentioned that with you in mind. I tend to think so since honey is the food of the gods. And when a creature too large to be carried out from the nest dies within it, the bees will cover it in propolis (a mixture of beeswax and saliva)  to mummify the carcass. I figure it would be similar to amber (tree resin) in terms of preservation like ice. 

[LmL]

9 minutes ago, cgrav said:

Does this mean that the Others have a bizarro myth in which an ancient hero descended into the earth and retrieved the ice of the gods?

Haha, I like how you think.  No, I'd say it works as an opposite to the idea of a falling moon meteor setting fire to a tree. Bran shows us that the falling moon meteor can be like a greenseer struck down by lightning, and the burning tree represents the integration of the greenseer and the weirwood upon landing. The dreamers who fell to hit ice spires instead of flaming trees, only to become one with the ice and have the cold inside them instead of becoming one with the fire of the gods. Something like that. 

 

24 minutes ago, Wizz-The-Smith said:

Hi Isobel Harper. 

I love the Icarus connection.    Adding to the wax, the structural element of the wings were made from branches of osier trees.  Varieties of these willows such as the red osier, have tough, flexible twigs or branches that are used for 'wickerwork'.  My thoughts instantly turned to Bran's wicker basket/wickerman connections.  Great work @LmL 

Right on, very cool. Wicker wings, that works well as the "scarecrow" seems a merging of straw man and bird. 

24 minutes ago, Wizz-The-Smith said:

 Hey PKJ. 

 If wax is probably connected to beeswax then perhaps all things 'honeycomb' are worth considering? 

The caverns/tunnels are honeycombed, currently home to Bran and potentially many greenseers from the past.  The Eyrie and the House of Black and White are also described as having honeycombed passageways and lower levels.  There are also quite a few references to people eating honeycomb in the text.  Perhaps a link to be found? 

Talk of beekeepers, wax, honeycombs and the like reminds me of the 'Hive mind' we find in weirwoodnet, and some of George's other work.  Anyway, I'm thinking out loud having just caught up. 

Really enjoyed this one @LmL, and thanks for the mention. [Love the pointy hill catch too ]

The piercing creech that went through Bran like a knife! Yeah, that's a fun one ay? I noticed the "from the well came a whale" line after staring at the scene long enough, and 'creech' was such a weird word that I had to look it up. I was like "oh, a sharply pointed hill, you don't say." It went through Bran like a knife! A moon-mountain knife that is like a scream. It's the shivering hot scream of dragonbinder which split the air like a sword thrust. It's Widow's Wail, both a cry of agony and ecstasy AND a sword of night and blood. I didn't want to harp on this too much because we are going to talk about horns and the sound that broke the moon pretty soon here. 

9 minutes ago, Pain killer Jane said:

@ravenous reader mentioned that with you in mind. I tend to think so since honey is the food of the gods. And when a creature too large to be carried out from the nest dies within it, the bees will cover it in propolis (a mixture of beeswax and saliva)  to mummify the carcass. I figure it would be similar to amber (tree resin) in terms of preservation like ice. 

Yes, when the fire of the gods goes underground into caverns, the honeycomb metaphor makes a lot of sense. A ton of sense, as honey is one of the classic "food of the gods" substances. It also brings in the hive mind idea, which is clearly present in the weirwoodnet. I am not sure this honeycomb stuff relates to Icarus anymore, but the honeycomb - weirwood cave correlations seem outstanding.  

[LmL]

1 hour ago, TreeFaces said:

Lovely and fun to read. Had a jaw dropping moment with this reveal:

"lt looked as if the tree were trying to catch the moon and drag it down into the well. Well, you don’t say.  The weirwood tree is the old gods, as Bran says, and the Old Gods are really the greenseers – and now we can see that the greenseers apparently like to bring down the sun and the moon, to reach up from the underworld and break a hole in the dome of the sky."

 

I am still processing everything and will need to reread but so far this has me pondering how the Moonsingers play into everything. An allegory to seeking divine knowledge and ability?  OR are they seeking to bring down the light of the moon/fire/dragons which would tie in the historical relevance of the Moonsingers and Braavos. 

Yeah, that's definitely one of the best scenes showing the greenseers breaking the moon... been leading up to it for a while now.  Such vivid symbolism! That's why I do this podcast, first and foremost, because this shit is just too cool for everyone not to enjoy. The thought of Martin having created such amazing symbolism, only to have most readers breeze right past it, is unfathomable for me, and I am sure I speak for all the other analysts out there who feel like they have grabbed a hold of one of Martin's threads. 

I *think* the moonsingers are just a metaphor, not critically important themselves. Singing to the moon is obviously something the wolves do, and essentially, I am saying Nissa Nissa's scream was the sound that broke the moon. I have a feeling that was actually a hornblast from a magical horn, as well as a reference to the deafening sound of meteor strikes. Moonsinging in particular would seem to refer to the idea of using song to cast spells which ave something to do with the moon. Now the actual moonsingers of Bravos helped everyone HIDE from the dragons, which is weird.  According to my interpretation, singing to the moon summons the dragons... but then they hide people from the dragons? I am not really sure what that is about. Bravos has a lot of great symbolism which I haven't looked at in a long time. The thing I am most familiar with is the Titan, a green, broken-sword warrior who calls out morning and night and appears to have star eyes that start as one star and then appear to split in two.  Tons of symbolism as they sail into the harbor, I think a metaphor about making Others. I need to revisit to say with any confidence what is going on there overall. 

[cgrav]

2 minutes ago, LmL said:

Haha, I like how you think.  No, I'd say it works as an opposite to the idea of a falling moon meteor setting fire to a tree. Bran shows us that the falling moon meteor can be like a greenseer struck down by lightning, and the burning tree represents the integration of the greenseer and the weirwood upon landing. The dreamers who fell to hit ice spires instead of flaming trees, only to become one with the ice and have the cold inside them instead of becoming one with the fire of the gods. Something like that. 

 

Although it is interesting that Bran is the only character who inverts the Icarus myth by finding divine knowledge below. Or maybe, being a "burning brand", he is the one bringing that knowledge into the cave, sort of enlightening Plato's imaginary ignorant cave dwellers. 

in a way it's almost Jungian rebuke of religious thought: Bran is shown very early the horrors of seeking knowledge from "above", that is, outside of ones self, and from then his journey is a trek downward, or inside himself. To quote Westworld, Bran's is a journey inward, not upward.

 

[LmL]

paging @Durran Durrandon... gave your monumentalRed queen Blue Queen essay another shoutout...

[Pain killer Jane]

3 minutes ago, LmL said:

19 minutes ago, Pain killer Jane said:

@ravenous reader mentioned that with you in mind. I tend to think so since honey is the food of the gods. And when a creature too large to be carried out from the nest dies within it, the bees will cover it in propolis (a mixture of beeswax and saliva)  to mummify the carcass. I figure it would be similar to amber (tree resin) in terms of preservation like ice. 

Yes, when the fire of the gods goes underground into caverns, the honeycomb metaphor makes a lot of sense. A ton of sense, as honey is one of the classic "food of the gods" substances. It also brings in the hive mind idea, which is clearly present in the weirwoodnet. I am not sure this honeycomb stuff relates to Icarus anymore, but the honeycomb - weirwood cave correlations seem outstanding.  

And it makes sense when we think about Elyn Ever-Sweet making a deal with the King of Bees for honey in exchange for caring for his children for eternity. Sounds like she got immortality and became queen of bees.
The Pythia, snake priestess oracle of Apollo, was also called a bee.

Btw, Melessa Florent, wife of Randyll Tarly, her name [Melissa] means bee. Her name implies Elyn Ever-sweet but she is a descendant of Florys the Fox. 

[LmL]

Just now, cgrav said:

Although it is interesting that Bran is the only character who inverts the Icarus myth by finding divine knowledge below. Or maybe, being a "burning brand", he is the one bringing that knowledge into the cave, sort of enlightening Plato's imaginary ignorant cave dwellers. 

in a way it's almost Jungian rebuke of religious thought: Bran is shown very early the horrors of seeking knowledge from "above", that is, outside of ones self, and from then his journey is a trek downward, or inside himself. To quote Westworld, Bran's is a journey inward, not upward.

 

Yes, BUT, the journey inward will lead him upward, ultimately. His journey into the weirwood cage / honeycomb will end with him growing the ultimate wings and flying higher than anyone ever has before. Basically, Bran's fall from the tower is a symbolic depiction of climbing too high to reach for the fire. Bran didn't actually do that, he just fell from a tower and went into a coma. It created the image of reaching for the fire of the gods, but he does not really do that himself until he begins to be a greenseer, or actually until he achieves full greenseer status (which is yet to come). So, he's flying toward the sun like Icarus, but doing so underground. The weirwood is also like Jacob's ladder.  It's a gallows horse which allows the rider to travel the cosmos. It allows one to climb tot the stars. 

@ravenous reader, I am singing your song here...

[LmL]

1 minute ago, Pain killer Jane said:

And it makes sense when we think about Elyn Ever-Sweet making a deal with the King of Bees for honey in exchange for caring for his children for eternity. Sounds like she got immortality and became queen of bees.
The Pythia, snake priestess oracle of Apollo, was also called a bee.

Btw, Melessa Florent, wife of Randyll Tarly, her name [Melissa] means bee. Her name implies Elyn Ever-sweet but she is a descendant of Florys the Fox. 

Do you think Elyn's tale alludes to a female player in this dawn age drama? Where is this woman? Is she the mother of the Others, the NQ? If the bees are some part of the hive mind - the greenseers in the net - the "queen of the bees" should rule over weirwoodnet, or some part of it. 

[DarkSister1001]

Quote

And dicks – it’s a little bit about dicks.  Lightbringer stuff always is.

Quote

“Fly or die!” cried the three-eyed crow as it pecked at him. He wept and pleaded but the crow had no pity. It put out his left eye and then his right, and when he was blind in the dark it pecked at his brow, driving its terrible sharp beak deep into his skull. He screamed until he was certain his lungs must burst. The pain was an axe splitting his head apart, but when the crow wrenched out its beak all slimy with bits of bone and brain, Bran could see again.

This passaged solidified the idea that BR would use any means necessary to open his 3rd eye. 

Quote

She was holding one of his hands.  It looked like a claw.  This was not the Bran he remembered.  The flesh had all gone from him. His skin stretched tight over bones like sticks.  Under the blanket, his legs bent in ways that made Jon sick.  His eyes were sunken deep into black pits: open, but they saw nothing.  The fall had shrunken him somehow.  He looked half a leaf, as if the first strong wind would carry him off to his grave. 

Bones like sticks, aye?  Looks like a leaf, you say?  When Bran wakes from his coma dream to Summer’s bright golden eyes, it says that “he reached out to pet him, his hand trembling like a leaf.”  He’s also being described like a bird: he has a claw here, and a moment later when Jon holds his hand, Bran has “fingers like the bones of birds.”  

Nice catch! 

I'm still reading; I'll reply when I have more time to finish and digest.  So far, so good!

[LmL]

Just now, DarkSister1001 said:

This passaged solidified the idea that BR would use any means necessary to open his 3rd eye. 

Nice catch! 

I'm still reading; I'll reply when I have more time to finish and digest.  So far, so good!

Right on! Don't hesitate to comment as you go if you feel the need; it's only reasonable with essays so long. Cheers!

And once again a ton of credit to @Wizz-The-Smith, @Blue Tiger, @ravenous reader, and everyone on the Bran's growing powers thread, who had already done a lot of helpful analysis on Bran. Once given a scent, however, I always track it to the lair. @ravenous reader is still waiting to see what exactly I have wrought with her green sea / greenseer pun, muah ha ha ha

[Pain killer Jane]

6 minutes ago, cgrav said:

Although it is interesting that Bran is the only character who inverts the Icarus myth by finding divine knowledge below. Or maybe, being a "burning brand", he is the one bringing that knowledge into the cave, sort of enlightening Plato's imaginary ignorant cave dwellers. 

in a way it's almost Jungian rebuke of religious thought: Bran is shown very early the horrors of seeking knowledge from "above", that is, outside of ones self, and from then his journey is a trek downward, or inside himself. To quote Westworld, Bran's is a journey inward, not upward.

Unless we take the perspective of Freud in his use of this quote:

 'If I cannot bend the will of Heaven, I shall move Hell.' 

Which is Juno saying that she will move the Acheron but Freud uses this quote in his Interpretation of Dreams book, to signify that the unconsciousness mind will bubble up from underneath and therefore we see dreams. Bran dreams. Bran is the weirwood tree growing twisted from inside out through the whole at Queenscrown. Bran wades into the river of time through the trees underneath in hell. 

[Pain killer Jane]

7 minutes ago, LmL said:

Do you think Elyn's tale alludes to a female player in this dawn age drama? Where is this woman? Is she the mother of the Others, the NQ? If the bees are some part of the hive mind - the greenseers in the net - the "queen of the bees" should rule over weirwoodnet, or some part of it. 

I do think so since we see Lady Barbrey turn into a fox via firelight and then she is a snowy commander on the battlements of Winterfell. I think she is the NQ because while Bran is a Vega/Icharus character, the real world mythology indicates that Vega is a woman, the weaving goddess. It makes sense if you think of the Wall as a Silver River which the NK crossed to chase her down. And by the way Vega is the brightest star in Lyra which is the lyre of Orpheus that played his lyre to open up a path into Hades to get back his dead wife. 

 

[cgrav]

18 minutes ago, LmL said:

Yes, BUT, the journey inward will lead him upward, ultimately. His journey into the weirwood cage / honeycomb will end with him growing the ultimate wings and flying higher than anyone ever has before. Basically, Bran's fall from the tower is a symbolic depiction of climbing too high to reach for the fire. Bran didn't actually do that, he just fell from a tower and went into a coma. It created the image of reaching for the fire of the gods, but he does not really do that himself until he begins to be a greenseer, or actually until he achieves full greenseer status (which is yet to come). So, he's flying toward the sun like Icarus, but doing so underground. The weirwood is also like Jacob's ladder.  It's a gallows horse which allows the rider to travel the cosmos. It allows one to climb tot the stars. 

@ravenous reader, I am singing your song here...

Oh yes, I think we're talking about the same sort of thing, just with directional metaphors. I like to think that the Others can be explained in part by thematic/symbolic inversion, so I spitball inversions whenever possible.

[LmL]

2 minutes ago, cgrav said:

Oh yes, I think we're talking about the same sort of thing, just with directional metaphors. I like to think that the Others can be explained in part by thematic/symbolic inversion, so I spitball inversions whenever possible.

I agree 100%. Are you hip to the fact that both the KG and the Warrior's Sons are elaborate, direct analogs to the others?

[LmL]

11 minutes ago, Pain killer Jane said:

I do think so since we see Lady Barbrey turn into a fox via firelight and then she is a snowy commander on the battlements of Winterfell. I think she is the NQ because while Bran is a Vega/Icharus character, the real world mythology indicates that Vega is a woman, the weaving goddess. It makes sense if you think of the Wall as a Silver River which the NK crossed to chase her down. And by the way Vega is the brightest star in Lyra which is the lyre of Orpheus that played his lyre to open up a path into Hades to get back his dead wife. 

 

Barbrey seems like a big clue that NQ has a fiery heritage of some kind.  If we see Mel somehow transform over to ice - to pale lady with white fire hands of Euron's / Aeron's vision - then we have our answer. The way I have been seeing it is that a piece of black fire moon meteor, a black dragon, lodged in the ice moon. NK impregnating NQ, Rhaegar impregnating Lyanna. In this scenario, the black dragonbrings the fire, and the ice queen freezes it. But sometimes this is depicted by a female who starts as the fire moon - Sansa at KL - then becomes a moon meteor - Sansa "Stone" flying from KL - only to lodge in the ice (the Vale) and then imitate the NQ (making snow castles and child's snow knights). This is a piece of the fire moon becoming part of the ice moon, and it comes out as Sansa transforming from fire moon maiden to ice moon maiden. That fits Lady Babs, whose eyes are afire in the crypts and whose sigils suggest fire, but she also shows us NQ symbolism (love the snowy watchers on the walls). 

So how does Elyn, given the gift of the nectar of the gods, become the icy woman with blue star eyes? The fire moon does not compare well with Elyn, because the fire moon wasn't given a gift, it was sacrificed to make a gift. The ice moon or the earth are the receivers of gifts who do not die, but transform upon receipt. 

 

We also have Rowan Gold-Tree, who wrapped an apple in her golden hair and grew a golden apple tree. Shades of the golden fleece, no? The golden hair and the golden apples are fire of the gods symbols (think of Lann stealing the sun's fire for his hair). And they grow a tree? I talked about how the apple tree / Adam and Eve myth also seems to be in use with the weirwood mythology. 

[LmL]

Muah ha ha, the only thread labelled HOT!! on the front page is "A Burning Brandon."

The talking head of Bran the Blessed is burning down the house!