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Garth of the Gallows (Mythical Astronomy of Ice and Fire)


LmL

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1 hour ago, GloubieBoulga said:
2 hours ago, Pain killer Jane said:

Hmm.... I think Petyr is playing the a side of Durran that is advised by the little boy, Brandon the Builder. LmL noted that Elenei's story is subsequently alluding to Helen of Troy and Helen was already married to Menelaus, the king of Sparta. During the marriage scene of Sansa and Tyrion, Joffrey makes fun of Tyrion because he has to step on the back of a fool in order to reach up to kiss her husband. This is exactly what Petyr does when he uses Ser Dontos, the fool knight to steal away Sansa. 

That association is furthered because Petyr is planning on marrying her off to Harry the heir and he wants to teach Sansa to manipulate him for his plans. Which would mean that Harry the heir is the fool knight manipulated by the clever boy.

After the war, Helen turns back to Menelaus, as Elenei with Durran. So the part of Petyr can't be Durran's, but the one who is looking for breaking the marriage. With his grey-green eyes and his familiarity with the sea he reveals his true nature, for example during the sea travel throw storms, from KL to the Fingers : 

Quote

Lord Petyr came up beside her, cheerful as ever. "Good morrow. The salt air is bracing, don't you think? It always sharpens my appetite." He put a sympathetic arm about her shoulders. "Are you quite well? You look so pale." (Sansa VI, ASOS)

But he is also linked to a storm's deity, as prospiring on chaos, or with the same thematic as Euron Crow-Eye (Sansa also remarks that LF's mouth smile but not his eyes, like Euron show a smiling eye and hide the other which doesn't smile at all). LF is an false and a-magic version of a singing greenseer, and he play the part of a false Bran the Builder who won't help Elenei, but betray her (and betray Durran) to keep the maid for him, under his influence, married to husband he choose himself, like a father. To say shortly, he is a real sea and storm god disguised as a little kindly boy.  

Just remember that Martin isn't pulling any myth in its entirety, just the parts that are convenient. Just because Helen returns to mMenelaus doesn't necessarily rule anything out imo. I'm sure you'd agree that the ASOIAF archetypes are more important than the mythical archetypes from which they are constructed in patchwork fashion, and the relevant over-arching archetype at play here is "moon-breaker / moon-stealer," and Petyr definitely qualifies. Now, you've started to explore subdividing the roles a bit further, which I would applaud and encourage, and there are different flavors of moon breakers (which may be different aspects of one dude or different phases or several people in a group), but I just wanted to say that Petyr does steal Sansa quite famously and is certainly a moon-stealer (you''ll recall him offering the pomegranate to Sansa in true Persephone fashion). The mockingbird also is one who can use his mimicking call to lure unwary travelers to their doom, and this fits with your analysis above. The Titan's head sigil seems an obvious moon meteor, so the implication could be something like he's a trickster who lured in the moon meteors - that's exactly what Sansa is when she flies from KL and the death of the sun to become a stone that lodges in the ice. Petyr lures her, with the help of a fool as @ravenous reader aptly compares to Tyrion's wedding. Also, one implication of being the money man is that he breeds dragons, you know? He calls down meteors. So in many ways, he aligns with Durran... though in a different scenario or 'configuration,' I could see Durran as a dupe manipulated by a Petyr figure. Maybe Durran is like Hodor, like the weirwood, a tool being manipulated by a child-like figure. 

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2 hours ago, Pain killer Jane said:

Hmm.... I think Petyr is playing the a side of Durran that is advised by the little boy, Brandon the Builder. LmL noted that Elenei's story is subsequently alluding to Helen of Troy and Helen was already married to Menelaus, the king of Sparta. During the marriage scene of Sansa and Tyrion, Joffrey makes fun of Tyrion because he has to step on the back of a fool in order to reach up to kiss her husband. This is exactly what Petyr does when he uses Ser Dontos, the fool knight to steal away Sansa. 

That association is furthered because Petyr is planning on marrying her off to Harry the heir and he wants to teach Sansa to manipulate him for his plans. Which would mean that Harry the heir is the fool knight manipulated by the clever boy. 

Is Petyr the clever boy or the horned lord? Is Durran the fool being manipulated by BtB?

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7 hours ago, Jak Scaletongue said:

Definitely look into Hecate!  She's fascinating!  She was variously associated with crossroads, entrance-ways, light, magic, witchcraft, knowledge of herbs and poisonous plants, ghosts, necromancy, and sorcery (Wikipedia). The necromancy and sorcery part caught my eye the other day (I was bored and went down a wiki hole...) and dogs are considered her familiars. She's akin to the Roman Janus, what with guarding doorways and entrances (though her Roman equivalent was considered to be Trivia [of the three ways; tri + via. Not the "trivia" we use today!).  On that note, Janus might worth a look into also, for similar reasons; he's the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings (according to Wikipedia).  He also had some influence in war and peace, being the deity of beginnings and endings he was often invoked (along with others) when declaring war (the beginning) and peace treaties (the end; as well as his association with boundaries, which were often spelled out at the end of a conflict).

This quote about Hecate stuck out to me the other day, too: As a goddess expected to avert harmful or destructive spirits from the house or city over which she stood guard and to protect the individual as she or he passed through dangerous liminal places, Hecate would naturally become known as a goddess who could also refuse to avert the demons, or even drive them on against unfortunate individuals.[79]

It's something that's often overlooked, but ALL the Greek deities (and Roman) weren't guaranteed to help you, no matter how well you worshipped or what you gave them.  Not only Hecate, but ANY deity could simply refuse to grant protection.  That's something most Christians* don't think about....the idea of a god hearing but ignoring your pleas is NOT something we like to think of but it was a very common idea in polytheistic religions.  The gods have no obligation to help, even if you do everything "right." 

*Basically anyone who hasn't specifically practiced another religion.  Even if you've never gone to Church, chances are REALLY good you've learned the religious reasons behind Christmas and Easter and stories like Noah's Ark and David and Goliath, even if it was just from your childhood friend who DID go to Church!   Christianity goes far deeper into our subconscious as a society than we assume.  Just look at how people treat sexual assault victims; they're either perfect, pure virgins who must be protected or dirty whores who got what they deserved. And the whole "you won't have sex with me, so you must be a whore" namecalling some asshats feel is necessary (I never understood how that worked....unfortunately the last time I got called a whore for NOT having sex with a guy was before I'd really grasped the hypocrisy of the statement.  Only unfortunate because I'd REALLY like to tell that asshat off now!)

The thing that jumped out to me here is that the heart tree borrows from European traditions of a guardian tree. If NN became a part of the tree, as I believe to be the case in some sense, it would make sense to use Hecate symbolism. But the ww's are also a prison and a trap too... there seem to be a lot going on. :) But the guardian role and gatekeeper role really rings true. The weirwood is the gate and gatekeeper, I think, or perhaps the keeper is the consciousness in the tree. 

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17 hours ago, LmL said:

The thing that jumped out to me here is that the heart tree borrows from European traditions of a guardian tree. If NN became a part of the tree, as I believe to be the case in some sense, it would make sense to use Hecate symbolism. But the ww's are also a prison and a trap too... there seem to be a lot going on. :) But the guardian role and gatekeeper role really rings true. The weirwood is the gate and gatekeeper, I think, or perhaps the keeper is the consciousness in the tree. 

Hecate would be the perfect fit! She's a goddess of liminal spaces, the in-betweenness. Guardian and Warden are cognates as well. The idea of Hecate is basically the idea that opposites aren't necessarily an either/or relationship. One can have a guardian who serves as a prison warden. A gatekeeper is there to open the gate...but the gatekeeper can also refuse entry. Hecate's herbs can help or harm. She can point you in the right direction or the wrong direction at a crossroads. Same with her dogs, they can warn against danger or be the danger. I don't see why the weirwood can't be both a prison and a gate for the consciousness inside it. They're trapped in one sense, but it opens up an entire new world in another. 

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37 minutes ago, LmL said:

Is Petyr the clever boy or the horned lord? Is Durran the fool being manipulated by BtB?

He is both the clever boy and the horned lord. Especially when whispering in someone's ear can equate to skinchanging someone. i.e. Orelle's shade going from the eagle to Varamyr and Varamyr recognizing that his hatred towards Jon is born from Orelle's shade whispering to him. The whispering shade is a thorn that takes root inside the greenseer. 

I would say yes that Durran is the fool being manipulated by Bran the Builder. 

@GloubieBoulga I haven't forgotten about you. I will answer in depth in a bit. But I think you and I are saying the same thing just looking at it from different perspective. 

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On 3/29/2017 at 7:57 PM, LmL said:

Hey there forums friends and family! (silent lurkers included - we love you too :) ) This is the latest offering in my Weirwood Compendium series, which is just a dorky way to say I am talking about greenseers and weirwoods! This episode consists of two parts.  The first will be all about Durran and Elenei and Storm King ideas in general, and what that has to do with Garth and the green men and the idea of horned lords. The second part will be covering the hanging on the tree aspect of Odin and Yggdrasil, but the goal won't be to wank off on Norse myth - we'll be spending most of our time talking about how the hanged man on the magical tree idea manifests in ASOIAF.  Basically, it's about the death transformation / transcendence aspects of hooking up to the weirwoods, or at least, that's the starting point.  The path leads into the heart of the weirwoodnet, and this will be the general thrust of my next couple of essays - trying to drill down into what exactly is going on with the freaky-ass sentient trees-with-bleeding-faces-and-psychedlic-seed-paste phenomena. 

What's really fun about the hanged man (or woman) as a metaphor is that Martin can use all those hanged people in the Riverlands to tell some interesting stories.  We'll be spending a fair bit of time at the Inn of the Crossroads (also called the Gallows Inn), the Riverlands, Oldstones, and Riverrun. We'll even hang a Frey before we are through.  

We will also be talking a bit about the Hammer of the Waters, and the alternate timeline suggested by my hypothesis that the Hammer was a moon meteor that fell at the time of the Long Night, not thousands of years before as the legends say.  

Thanks for taking a look everyone, and as always, there is a matching podcast linked near the top of the page (which you can also find on iTunes), so if you prefer to listen rather than read, you have that option. 

Cheers, LmL

https://lucifermeanslightbringer.com/2017/03/29/garth-of-the-gallows/

I just finished reading.  I have seen the spoilers for a lot  of this, but seeing in its natural habitat was something else.  I cannot stay long tonight, but I will try to come back with some coherent thoughts later.

 

Is this really the first essay where you have mentioned your alternative timeline?  It seem like I saw that a long time ago, must have been another spoiler.  The part you put forward makes total sense, but timelines are like everything else, if you break it you bought it.  What do you think about the official timeline having two hammers of the waters?  Its kinda (very) tinfoily right now, but I think there were two important rituals  One broke the moon and the other fixed things.  The second 'hammer of the waters' ritual did not break a moon, unless something crazy shows up where to fix things they had to doom everyone to face another long night later or something like that, but it resembled the ritual that did and was remembered as a similar event.  I see two different possibly equally important types of rituals.  One is the ritual sacrifice, alchemical weddings (where people are set on fire making them 'so hot right now' (I call you Zoolander reference), and the other is a ritual trial by combat, Tower of Joy scenes.  I will try to find the link the the essay about the ToJ scenes on this forum tomorrow.

 

I can kinda connect the ritual trial and combat scenes to what @ravenous reader and @Pain killer Jane were talking about with Will the failed lookout being killed.  There is a very popular belief around where I live, and Other places, that when you see a murder of crows, that one is the designated lookout.  If a crow dies under their watch, the other crows kill it for being 'derelicte' in its duties (and raise another Zoolander reference).  That jumped out at me as important because we see it twice so early.  Two of the first three people we see are crows who die after failing to keep their watch.  I combine that with one of the possible explanations for why a group of crows is called a murder.  I have seen written multiple places online (its on the internet so it must be true) that there is an Engish folktale of three ravens holding court on another raven to decide its fate.  I am having a terrible time finding the actual story, but I admit I have not been looking long.  Anyway, after the crow on trial is condemned all the other crows fall on it and kill it.  This smacks of Tyrion's trial by three followed by a trial by combat, and several of the important trial by combats we see involve kingsguard (Others) including the ritualistic AGoT prologue.  The Others fall on Royce with their blades, in one of the ToJ scenes Jamie's people fall on Jory in a similar way.  If you take the Kingsguard logo and flip the swords around backward pointing toward the crown I think that is the thing I am talking about.  I promise I have not tinfoil ideas as well, but they are not as fun.  I have to wrap up now,   Great stuff as always.

 

   

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6 hours ago, GloubieBoulga said:

With his grey-green eyes and his familiarity with the sea he reveals his true nature, for example during the sea travel throw storms, from KL to the Fingers : 

Quote

Lord Petyr came up beside her, cheerful as ever. "Good morrow. The salt air is bracing, don't you think? It always sharpens my appetite." He put a sympathetic arm about her shoulders. "Are you quite well? You look so pale." (Sansa VI, ASOS)

But he is also linked to a storm's deity, as prospiring on chaos, or with the same thematic as Euron Crow-Eye (Sansa also remarks that LF's mouth smile but not his eyes, like Euron show a smiling eye and hide the other which doesn't smile at all). LF is an false and a-magic version of a singing greenseer, and he play the part of a false Bran the Builder who won't help Elenei, but betray her (and betray Durran) to keep the maid for him, under his influence, married to husband he choose himself, like a father. To say shortly, he is a real sea and storm god disguised as a little kindly boy.  

That's actually quite a good description of a psychopath.

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11 hours ago, Durran Durrandon said:

How is it that I check my podcast updates every morning and still missed this?

Not sure. Are you using iTunes? I put it out night before last. It seems like most people listen the following day, so most people must have been notified. 

Anyway, come back when you are done. Did you comment on the last thread about the Bran episode? I recall looking for you but not finding :)

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11 hours ago, Unchained said:

I just finished reading.  I have seen the spoilers for a lot  of this, but seeing in its natural habitat was something else.  I cannot stay long tonight, but I will try to come back with some coherent thoughts later.

I was just saying to Ravenous reader that it is sometimes hard to impress you hard core form people because we talked about most everything before it makes its way into a podcast. That process makes the podcast much better, but it means people who are regulars on our threads won't be blown away by a ton of new info. Still, it is much different to freestyle chat about something vs. organizing all the ideas and symbols in a coherent presentation. I always go into writing a script with fair idea if what its going to say, but in the process of drilling down I always make new discoveries and then have to go back and see the entire essay in a slightly different context. A lot of times, it's not until I've drilled all the way down into the nitty-gritty that I find that one thought that conceptualizes the theme just perfectly.  Then you can zoom out and see the bigger picture. Hopefully I am doing a good job of organizing the ideas into a bigger picture... I really feel like it takes a 20000 word essay to really try to follow Martin's train of thought. Theres so much. I didn't even get in Dunk and Egg, with his Gallows Knight sigil (saving it for Sleipnir episode). 

11 hours ago, Unchained said:

Is this really the first essay where you have mentioned your alternative timeline?  It seem like I saw that a long time ago, must have been another spoiler.  

No but it was time to check in with the idea now that I have provided more corroboration for the Hammer being a meteor that fell at the LN. I feel like sometimes I stay too long in the realm of metaphor and forget to say what any of it means for the real story.

And also, I feel like the details of the durran story really support the idea that he's talking about storms and floods that are a Fallout of the breaking of the arm of Dorne. So once I had shown that stealing Elenei was a moon theft, we have a whole new line of inquiry that points to the Hammer of the waters being the result of a moon meteor impact. 

11 hours ago, Unchained said:

The part you put forward makes total sense, but timelines are like everything else, if you break it you bought it.  

Haha, indeed

11 hours ago, Unchained said:

What do you think about the official timeline having two hammers of the waters?  Its kinda (very) tinfoily right now, but I think there were two important rituals  One broke the moon and the other fixed things.

I am actually pretty open-minded on this, because I still have no idea how we ended a long night, apart from some level of human sacrifice and Magic. I don't know how you clear away clouds of smoke dot dot dot we speculated about wind a couple of times, but I really haven't locked on to whatever metaphor George is using for that.

I have not found signs of two separate impact events, but that's hardly definitive.

11 hours ago, Unchained said:

 The second 'hammer of the waters' ritual did not break a moon, unless something crazy shows up where to fix things they had to doom everyone to face another long night later or something like that, but it resembled the ritual that did and was remembered as a similar event.  I see two different possibly equally important types of rituals.  One is the ritual sacrifice, alchemical weddings (where people are set on fire making them 'so hot right now' (I call you Zoolander reference), and the other is a ritual trial by combat, Tower of Joy scenes.  I will try to find the link the the essay about the ToJ scenes on this forum tomorrow.

I will consider your idea that these two are separate types of scenes, but my first instinct is to say that they are not, that they are the same scene. Tons of sacrifice at the ToJ and tons of battle and slaughter mixed in with sex and copulation symbolism. However, perhaps they are different, just contain the same elements. The solution should mirror the problem, perhaps in an inverse fashion, so that could work. What would you say is the defining difference between the two types of scenes?

Two parallel your idea to mythical astronomy, we could be talking about the two moons here, because both were impregnated. The ToJ type scenes would have to correlate to the ice moon, because of Lyanna. But the scene at Mirri's tent of dancing shadows mirrors the TOJ scene, and that is Dany giving birth, so that does not fit. Dang giving birth is actually both scenes, if you see what I mean. It's ritual sacrifice in the tent and ToJ fighting outside. Same at ToJ - Lyanna is dying inside the tower. 

Let me ask you this - are you seeing the scene at the tent of dancing shadows as being different or the same as Dany waking her dragons a chapter later?

11 hours ago, Unchained said:

 

I can kinda connect the ritual trial and combat scenes to what @ravenous reader and @Pain killer Jane were talking about with Will the failed lookout being killed.  There is a very popular belief around where I live, and Other places, that when you see a murder of crows, that one is the designated lookout.  If a crow dies under their watch, the other crows kill it for being 'derelicte' in its duties (and raise another Zoolander reference).  That jumped out at me as important because we see it twice so early.  Two of the first three people we see are crows who die after failing to keep their watch.  I combine that with one of the possible explanations for why a group of crows is called a murder.  I have seen written multiple places online (its on the internet so it must be true) that there is an Engish folktale of three ravens holding court on another raven to decide its fate.  I am having a terrible time finding the actual story, but I admit I have not been looking long.  Anyway, after the crow on trial is condemned all the other crows fall on it and kill it.  This smacks of Tyrion's trial by three followed by a trial by combat, and several of the important trial by combats we see involve kingsguard (Others) including the ritualistic AGoT prologue.  The Others fall on Royce with their blades, in one of the ToJ scenes Jamie's people fall on Jory in a similar way.  If you take the Kingsguard logo and flip the swords around backward pointing toward the crown I think that is the thing I am talking about.  I promise I have not tinfoil ideas as well, but they are not as fun.  I have to wrap up now,   Great stuff as always.

 

   

That's an interesting line of inquiry! One of the worst sins in Norse myth is oathbreaking, and this is clearly ported over to A Song of Ice and Fire. The prologue and the first chapter at Winterfell are heavily wrapped up in that theme, as is the running discussion of knights and honor and black knights and white knights. Obviously a ton of emphasis is placed on what happens to a Night's Watch brother if he flies down from the Wall. This makes you think that oath breaking must be right at the heart of the original sin in the story, and that has to be referring to the Night's King, correct?

That's another timeline change that I have always wanted to make - the Night's King lived at the time of the long night because he was the king of the long night. The story about him making others with the nights queen is probably the story about the original creation of the Others in some sense, I've always thought. That's the oldest tale we have of oath breaking connected to the North and the Nights Watch, so I don't really see how that could have happened later, not being a part of the original series of events. 

Oath-breaking lead to Earth-breaking? It's possible. What a great bit of puntastic wordplay! I always love a bit of punnery and wordplay, don't you? ;)

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@LmL

Oh yes, I imagine you have stacks on stacks of Arya stuff correlating with many different myths and folklore. I just couldn't get passed the Ratatoskr:Arya similarities. Plus, posting something on here early forces me to keep up on reading this thread before it hits 10 pages and I fall behind. 

27 minutes ago, LmL said:

Oath-breaking lead to Earth-breaking?

Kind of like how the monsters cannot pass so long as the Wall stands and the men of the Night's Watch stay true?

@GloubieBoulga

I liked your post on LF. Euron and LF parallel in many ways. Both seem to prosper from chaos. Euron obviously has many storm/sea god qualities. Euron's crow compares with LF's mockingbird. Both killed a king while keeping there hands clean. 

Do you see Euron representing anything from the Durran/Elenei tale, or any other for that matter? He is sending a brother into a storm to fetch a maid. I mean, there has to be something there, right? (struggling to think emoji).

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4 hours ago, LmL said:

Not sure. Are you using iTunes? I put it out night before last. It seems like most people listen the following day, so most people must have been notified. 

Anyway, come back when you are done. Did you comment on the last thread about the Bran episode? I recall looking for you but not finding :)

I use a cheap little app called Podcast Addict and Sticher for more mainstream podcasts. I think I just got side tracked by Stitcher Thursday morning. It's up in my feed for Podcast Addict now.

Yeah, I was swamped when the Burning Brandon episode came out. I didn't have time to comment on it. You know I usually try to check in. I probably won't get to hit this one until the Monday commute..

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Before I forget, and I know this is the wrong place for this. I did appreciate the whole thing you were doing with the tree pulling down the moon in the Nighfort, in the Burning Brandon episode.

So, I got a chance to listen to about 20 minutes of the new one earlier. I'm not far enough into it, to have much to say, but I did have a random thought. You were running through the evenstar associations with Brienne and the Tarths, and it occurred to me that  since she adopted Dunk's arms for her shield, she is literally running around with a falling star on her shield. I know the tree is an elm, but it is still a falling star over a tree.

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35 minutes ago, Durran Durrandon said:

You were running through the evenstar associations with Brienne and the Tarths, and it occurred to me that  since she adopted Dunk's arms for her shield, she is literally running around with a falling star on her shield. I know the tree is an elm, but it is still a falling star over a tree.

Nice catch!

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12 hours ago, LmL said:

I was just saying to Ravenous reader that it is sometimes hard to impress you hard core form people because we talked about most everything before it makes its way into a podcast. That process makes the podcast much better, but it means people who are regulars on our threads won't be blown away by a ton of new info. Still, it is much different to freestyle chat about something vs. organizing all the ideas and symbols in a coherent presentation. I always go into writing a script with fair idea if what its going to say, but in the process of drilling down I always make new discoveries and then have to go back and see the entire essay in a slightly different context. A lot of times, it's not until I've drilled all the way down into the nitty-gritty that I find that one thought that conceptualizes the theme just perfectly.  Then you can zoom out and see the bigger picture. Hopefully I am doing a good job of organizing the ideas into a bigger picture... I really feel like it takes a 20000 word essay to really try to follow Martin's train of thought. Theres so much. I didn't even get in Dunk and Egg, with his Gallows Knight sigil (saving it for Sleipnir episode). 

No but it was time to check in with the idea now that I have provided more corroboration for the Hammer being a meteor that fell at the LN. I feel like sometimes I stay too long in the realm of metaphor and forget to say what any of it means for the real story.

And also, I feel like the details of the durran story really support the idea that he's talking about storms and floods that are a Fallout of the breaking of the arm of Dorne. So once I had shown that stealing Elenei was a moon theft, we have a whole new line of inquiry that points to the Hammer of the waters being the result of a moon meteor impact. 

Haha, indeed

I am actually pretty open-minded on this, because I still have no idea how we ended a long night, apart from some level of human sacrifice and Magic. I don't know how you clear away clouds of smoke dot dot dot we speculated about wind a couple of times, but I really haven't locked on to whatever metaphor George is using for that.

I have not found signs of two separate impact events, but that's hardly definitive.

I will consider your idea that these two are separate types of scenes, but my first instinct is to say that they are not, that they are the same scene. Tons of sacrifice at the ToJ and tons of battle and slaughter mixed in with sex and copulation symbolism. However, perhaps they are different, just contain the same elements. The solution should mirror the problem, perhaps in an inverse fashion, so that could work. What would you say is the defining difference between the two types of scenes?

Two parallel your idea to mythical astronomy, we could be talking about the two moons here, because both were impregnated. The ToJ type scenes would have to correlate to the ice moon, because of Lyanna. But the scene at Mirri's tent of dancing shadows mirrors the TOJ scene, and that is Dany giving birth, so that does not fit. Dang giving birth is actually both scenes, if you see what I mean. It's ritual sacrifice in the tent and ToJ fighting outside. Same at ToJ - Lyanna is dying inside the tower. 

Let me ask you this - are you seeing the scene at the tent of dancing shadows as being different or the same as Dany waking her dragons a chapter later?

That's an interesting line of inquiry! One of the worst sins in Norse myth is oathbreaking, and this is clearly ported over to A Song of Ice and Fire. The prologue and the first chapter at Winterfell are heavily wrapped up in that theme, as is the running discussion of knights and honor and black knights and white knights. Obviously a ton of emphasis is placed on what happens to a Night's Watch brother if he flies down from the Wall. This makes you think that oath breaking must be right at the heart of the original sin in the story, and that has to be referring to the Night's King, correct?

That's another timeline change that I have always wanted to make - the Night's King lived at the time of the long night because he was the king of the long night. The story about him making others with the nights queen is probably the story about the original creation of the Others in some sense, I've always thought. That's the oldest tale we have of oath breaking connected to the North and the Nights Watch, so I don't really see how that could have happened later, not being a part of the original series of events. 

Oath-breaking lead to Earth-breaking? It's possible. What a great bit of puntastic wordplay! I always love a bit of punnery and wordplay, don't you? ;)

My instinct is to say there is a degree of separation between the ToJ like fight outside the tent/the shapes dancing and the dragon hatching although I think it is very likely they are at the least two parts of a whole.  That is only because of the grouping of symbols.  While a whip cracking like thunder and dancing are present at both that fight and the dragon hatching making me doubt this, there seems to be an important duel with an Other at ToJ ritual scenes.  There are three crows at in the AGoT prologue, three bloodriders outside the tent, and three Kingsgard at the ToJ with real fight at each.  I do not see any of that at Stannis' forging, the Red wedding, Purple wedding, or the burning of the tower of the hand.  Also, I doubt there were any Others around to be doing any dueling while the moon was being broken.  They seem to have appeared after.

 

The three crows idea is something I just thought of a couple days ago, and I do not know where it will go yet.  It does seem to be a thing however.  I have still not found the 'Parliament of Crows' folktale, where three crows preside over one in a trial, that Wikipedia says exists.  Even without it you have the AGoT prologue with three crows and ritual combat, Tyrion's trial with three judges followed by the same, and, my favorite Tuatha de Danaan, Morrigan provides a couple more.  She and her sisters make up an Irish triple goddess all associated with crows and death.  They fly over battlefields as crows choosing the dead like Irish Valkyries.  Arya is a Valkyrie with all her naming the dead and cup-bearing, she may be a crow through Morrigan s well.  With Morrigan being three crows by herself, we have three crows in ritual combat at the Blackwater and Maegor the Cruel's trail by seven via people from house Morrigen.  What the trail is about seems to be related to oath breaking or maybe kinslaying like you said because that is what a crow who does not keep watch is guilty of.  There is a story in Greek Mythology that a crow did not obey Apollo like he was supposed to and his glare burnt the crow from white to black.  Maybe all black crows are attoning for a crime against the sun.  I want to go back to Morrigan for a second.  She is interesting already, but becomes much more so if we consider that GRRM may be combining and using different versions of her throughout history.  Original Morrigan was what I already said triple godess of death and war, but in a neutral not evil way.  Of course the Tuatha de Danaan were defeated and driven into the hollow hills to become Fays.  Then you have Morigan Le Fay in Authurian myth that seems to be based on her at least in name.  In one story she heals Authur in Avalon effectively bringing the secret dragon King back to life.  Then, as a ready made triple goddess, she shows up in neopaganism resurrecting horned gods.  

 

All the discussion about the trickster that got the fool knight to break the moon was, in hindsight, something that was spelled out for us already.  Ned is a better than I realized moon person being brought down from the north by a horned lord.  Then Varys tells us exactly what to think about his death.  Who really killed the Ned moon?  Was it Joffery the sun?  Was it Ilyn Payne the king's comet sword weilding black ice? Or was it another in the the form of Littlefinger the grey-green eyed trickster?  I think this all goes back to the death of Balder.  Littlefinger and Loki are obvious parallels and have been compared before.  Putting mistletoe on the arrow may be the same as turning the comet red.  Loki got a blind fool to kinslay his brother.  That blind fool almost shares a name with Hodor the simple who is taken advantage of by an unintentional trickster greenseer Bran.

 

Something unrelated to this topic I wanted to say is that I think I found something regarding the morning light that slashes through the window in the scene where Cersei finds Tywin and Shae's bodies.  We both mentioned on my thread a while ago and I think I got it.  I think Tyrion's escape from King;s Landing and being stuffed in a box sent across the sea is Perseus being born then he and his mother are set adrift in the sea in a box.  That would make the morning light painting golden bars on the wall Zeus's fertile golden shower.  The gold bars bring to mind Garin the Great Greenseer in his golden (rib)cage calling the hammer of the waters to smite the dragon people who wronged him.  Gold cages aside, this is exactly what you would expect.  The white hot sword of the morning is plunged into the burning tree symbol tower of the hand.  It kills the escapee's symbolic parents Shae and Tywin like all dragons whose parents are dead.  The dragon in its wooden egg escapes in the see to be released soon after.      

 EDIT:  I also wanted to say regarding my mind not being blown enough because I follow the pre release discussions, that I read the whole Boodstone Compendium back to back.  I got the experience of getting my mind blown and it was before I had finished the books.  I didn't really care about spoilers because I wanted to get caught up on the hidden story ASAP as soon as I realized how big it was.  The books are much better that way, and I am having much more fun where I am now compared to reading in ignorance which was fixed by a lot of posts I read.  I regret none of it.  

 

On wordplays, GRRM is possibly the punniest person who ever lived.  The part of the brain that finds wordplays is underdeveloped in my head, but they have elegance to them I can appreciate when I see one for the first time.  I may have a secret poetry lover inside me somewhere I will need to look at after all the ASoIaF mysteries are solved in 75 years.  

 

 

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5 hours ago, Unchained said:

My instinct is to say there is a degree of separation between the ToJ like fight outside the tent/the shapes dancing and the dragon hatching although I think it is very likely they are at the least two parts of a whole.  That is only because of the grouping of symbols.  While a whip cracking like thunder and dancing are present at both that fight and the dragon hatching making me doubt this, there seems to be an important duel with an Other at ToJ ritual scenes.  There are three crows at in the AGoT prologue, three bloodriders outside the tent, and three Kingsgard at the ToJ with real fight at each.  I do not see any of that at Stannis' forging, the Red wedding, Purple wedding, or the burning of the tower of the hand.  Also, I doubt there were any Others around to be doing any dueling while the moon was being broken.  They seem to have appeared after.

 

The three crows idea is something I just thought of a couple days ago, and I do not know where it will go yet.  It does seem to be a thing however.  

 

There are also the three Kingsguard outside guarding King Robert before he dies where Ned thinks about the TOJ as soon as he counts the third Kingsguard.

Three men in white cloaks, he thought, remembering, and a strange chill went through him. Ser Barristan’s face was as pale as his armor. Ned had only to look at him to know that something was dreadfully wrong. The royal steward opened the door. “Lord Eddard Stark, the Hand of the King,” he announced.

Going back to what you are saying about oathbreaking, I was looking at a website that discusses symbolism of certain blazes and charges, and it mentions that the symbolism of a raised hand like the one shown with House Gardener is "a pledge of Faith" for what it is worth.  Maybe there is something to this oathbreaking idea you are mentioning, definitely something that needs exploring.  

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@Unchained the example of Peter manipulating Robert and Ned works very well for this hypothesis, I am impressed. George even draws attention to this idea with Varys riddle about who really holds the power, and power being a shadow on the wall.  So two main questions: how does this translate in mythical astronomy terms, and how does this manifest in terms of the original deeds of our Long Night heroes?  I have some ideas but I'll just put the question out there first. :)

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11 minutes ago, LmL said:

@Unchained the example of Peter manipulating Robert and Ned works very well for this hypothesis, I am impressed. George even draws attention to this idea with Varys riddle about who really holds the power, and power being a shadow on the wall.  So two main questions: how does this translate in mythical astronomy terms, and how does this manifest in terms of the original deeds of our Long Night heroes?  I have some ideas but I'll just put the question out there first. :)

Which hypothesis are we supposed to be considering exactly?

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2 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

Which hypothesis are we supposed to be considering exactly?

Oh just the general notion of the horned lord / giant figure as a dupe of some trickster figure, or something along those lines. 

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6 hours ago, LmL said:

Oh just the general notion of the horned lord / giant figure as a dupe of some trickster figure, or something along those lines. 

Right.  Like PK pointed out, Tyrion mounting the fool to cloak/marry the moon/Sansa.

@Unchained seemed to be saying there were four players involved -- one on trial vs. a panel of three.  However, I'm finding three, not four, players involved.  e.g. in the Prologue.

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