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

[Unchained]

8 hours ago, LmL said:

So here's the thing - I've realized the moon was wrong for a while now - in particular someone brought up the fact that it always rises after sunset, seemingly. Do you remember when we were looking for examples of a day moon and could not find one? In a way, you could infer that because the moon is breaking the rules, that he is in fact choosing the appearance of the moon purely based on symbolism. It shows he isn't just making moons to fit different parts of the month, diff parts of the globe, diff seasons. This reinforces my general line of interpretation - the moon's descriptions should be interpreted symbolically. However, it's obviously more satisfying to have things make a bit of sense. And one line of symbolism that I have been unable to really get a firm grip on is the half moon symbol. Think of the doors of the HOBAW - they are showing us a yin yang moon. The chairs do not - they have black chairs with white moon faces and white chairs w black faces. 

My theory actually has a good way to incorporate this idea, potentially, because I have been talking for a while now about some part of the fire moon, a fire moon meteor, being lodged in the ice moon. It's not much different that the idea of two moons merging. 

One thing is that this scenario precludes an eclipse, at least for the moon we have left. Perhaps the first moon was in the opposite lagrange position, between us and the sun at all times. In fact, the corpse of that moon could still be floating in between us and the sun and we would never see it unless it moved exactly into eclipse position. 

 

It makes sense, but does it always rise in the east as well as at sunset?  Do the tides rise and fall with the sun and moon? I am not really asking you these things, just thinking out loud.  I am going to run with it for a second anyway.  

 

Point L2 is an unstable equilibrium, so unless George doesn't care about different types of mechanical equilibriums, which is possible, it would have to have been put there after the long night.  It also means that it would eventually either fly off into space or get sucked into the planet, which makes all kinds of possibilities where moon breaker 2.0 is either trying to cause or prevent this in some sense.  

 

This makes me think of the Hound.  He has a half burnt face from the Mountain that Rides moon meteor.  He is afraid of the fire, possibly like the moon that retreats to a position farther away from the sun.  It terms of the prologue as recently discussed, the Hound would be Gared, the surviving haunted ice moon running away.  Now that I think about it, they both have holes for ears having been kissed by fire or ice.  His face was burned because he was caught with his brother's possession.  Moon breaking trickster candidate Lann turned the Casterly brothers against each other by stealing their stuff and planting on their siblings.  

[Durran Durrandon]

7 hours ago, LmL said:

• The Saturnian moon Tethys has two smaller moons in its L₄ and L₅ points, Telesto and Calypso. The Saturnian moon Dione also has two Lagrangian co-orbitals, Helene at its L₄ point and Polydeuces at L₅. The moons wander azimuthally about the Lagrangian points, with Polydeuces describing the largest deviations, moving up to 32° away from the Saturn–Dione L₅ point. Tethys and Dione are hundreds of times more massive than their "escorts" (see the moons' articles for exact diameter figures; masses are not known in several cases), and Saturn is far more massive still, which makes the overall system stable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point

So, I'm not trying to give you a hard time here, but if you go down the list of celestial objects at La Garnge point given in the article. They are all at L4 and L5, which makes sense these are object left over from the formation of a planet or moon. They are in the same orbit, so they get caught at these two gravitationally  stable point within the orbit. By contrast an object when have to get captured at L2, which seems unlikely.

The point is probably moot, The fire moon/ice moon theory was never scientific. I don't think the explanation is ever going to be super scientific, which I think why this doesn't sit well with me. It kind of add in too much science, while simultaneously not being scientifically plausible. an interesting side note though, is that it seems likely that a destroyed moon at a La Grange point, might just reform, allowing for a few bits to break off and potentially strike the earth, without the whole moon come crashing down.

My bigger problem is that I think there is some evidence that George is just playing it by ear with astronomy. It seems likely that the symbolism is just way more important than the physics to him. As I was saying earlier. I was completely ignorant of the fact that there was a relationship between the moon phases and the position of the moon at sunrise or sunset, until about a year ago, when I got into a big conversation about it on the forums. It is actually possible that George just flubbed this. He seems to have flubbed the idea that a planet that does not have a consistent axial tilt can't have a consistent pole star.

[LmL]

29 minutes ago, Durran Durrandon said:

So, I'm not trying to give you a hard time here, but if you go down the list of celestial objects at La Garnge point given in the article. They are all at L4 and L5, which makes sense these are object left over from the formation of a planet or moon. They are in the same orbit, so they get caught at these two gravitationally  stable point within the orbit. By contrast an object when have to get captured at L2, which seems unlikely.

The point is probably moot, The fire moon/ice moon theory was never scientific. I don't think the explanation is ever going to be super scientific, which I think why this doesn't sit well with me. It kind of add in too much science, while simultaneously not being scientifically plausible. an interesting side note though, is that it seems likely that a destroyed moon at a La Grange point, might just reform, allowing for a few bits to break off and potentially strike the earth, without the whole moon come crashing down.

My bigger problem is that I think there is some evidence that George is just playing it by ear with astronomy. It seems likely that the symbolism is just way more important than the physics to him. As I was saying earlier. I was completely ignorant of the fact that there was a relationship between the moon phases and the position of the moon at sunrise or sunset, until about a year ago, when I got into a big conversation about it on the forums. It is actually possible that George just flubbed this. He seems to have flubbed the idea that a planet that does not have a consistent axial tilt can't have a consistent pole star.

Good points - I haven't thought the idea through by any means, I just came across it and it made a certain amount of sense. You're right that L4 and 5 seem to be the spots mons hang out it. L2 is for satellites - it gives them a clear view fo the rest of the galaxy without the sun and moon in the way. 

As for the amount of science added in... I think what George is doing is taking scientific ideas and using them as the basis for creating fantasy. Like dragonglass - it's cooled magma, so you can spin that into "frozen fire" which has fire essence locked inside. Comets and meteors can create impact winters, so the Long Night starts with this idea and runs with it. The Gods Eye symbol is what makes me confident enough to start talking more specifically about how things were positioned, but you know I am pretty cautious to go further than saying there was an eclipse. The L@ thing could be similar - George might have read something about lagrange points and then had an idea about a weird moon that was locked on the outside, and then run with it. How did it get there? Probably doesn't matter, if that's what he's doing. It's just an idea he might have run with.

To sum up, it's probably most likely that he's just making the moon do what he wants for symbolism. But, this idea is tempting enough to consider. The part that really gets me is that the new moon does not appear at night. What's all this stuff about the moon being a black hole? Obviously I know what it means as far as symbolism - they are talking about the moon becoming a dark star that brought darkness, and about the moon meteors drinking the light. But it should not exist. It's not something George has ever seen, but he made it kind of a prominent feature. 

And as Unchained suggests, the symbolism has potential.

53 minutes ago, Unchained said:

It makes sense, but does it always rise in the east as well as at sunset?  Do the tides rise and fall with the sun and moon? I am not really asking you these things, just thinking out loud.  I am going to run with it for a second anyway.  

Well, if you read the Reddit post, they talk about the tides - they do seem to be at sunrise and sunset, I think, but I did not focus on that part so I do not recall.

53 minutes ago, Unchained said:

Point L2 is an unstable equilibrium, so unless George doesn't care about different types of mechanical equilibriums, which is possible, it would have to have been put there after the long night.  It also means that it would eventually either fly off into space or get sucked into the planet, which makes all kinds of possibilities where moon breaker 2.0 is either trying to cause or prevent this in some sense.  

True, although like I said above, it might not matter. It could just be an idea which George found useful and ran with.

 

53 minutes ago, Unchained said:

This makes me think of the Hound.  He has a half burnt face from the Mountain that Rides moon meteor.  He is afraid of the fire, possibly like the moon that retreats to a position farther away from the sun.  It terms of the prologue as recently discussed, the Hound would be Gared, the surviving haunted ice moon running away.  Now that I think about it, they both have holes for ears having been kissed by fire or ice.  His face was burned because he was caught with his brother's possession.  Moon breaking trickster candidate Lann turned the Casterly brothers against each other by stealing their stuff and planting on their siblings.  

The Hound one is pretty interesting. What other half and half symbols do we have? I think of Davos and Mel discussing the half-rotten onion. We have Jon the man in black with a white shadow, and Drogon the black shadow dragon ridden by a shining pale and silver queen. The doors on the HOTU. 

Thematically, this is interesting - the combination of ice and fire was a bad thing. As separate moons, all was chill, but when the comet knocked one into the other, I guess you can say (which is not much different from a black meteor getting eaten by the ice moon), we got ice demons that burn. 

What other half and half things do we have?

@ravenous reader, if I could get your eyes on this going back to the comment above where I pasted the bit from reddit...

[Durran Durrandon]

So, the other problem I have is that it does not seem at all that the moon is rising consistently at sunset. I remember noticing this on my second read. "Wow, these people pay an awful lot of attention tow hen the moon rises." With Tyrion there are couple of times when he plans to do things at moonrise. I think there are two take aways from that. These people use the moon as a night time timer, because they don't have clocks, and they pay attention to the cycle of the moon to the extent that they know roughly at what point of the night the moon should rise that evening. This totally makes sense, as the moonrise time shifts in a predictable cycle throughout the month, shifting by about an hour each night. Moonrise obviously doesn't always take place right after sunset, Otherwise, people would plan to do stuff after sunset, instead of at moonrise.

 

Also, there seems to be some textual evidence that the moon is often rising quite a bit later than sunset.

"That night she lay on her narrow bed upon the scratchy straw, listening to the voices of the living and the dead whisper and argue as she waited for the moon to rise."

Arya X Clash of Kings

"I imagine she will be safely asleep by moonrise."

Tyrion hopped down from the chair. "Moonrise, then."

Tyrion II.

[LmL]

34 minutes ago, Durran Durrandon said:

So, the other problem I have is that it does not seem at all that the moon is rising consistently at sunset. I remember noticing this on my second read. "Wow, these people pay an awful lot of attention tow hen the moon rises." With Tyrion there are couple of times when he plans to do things at moonrise. I think there are two take aways from that. These people use the moon as a night time timer, because they don't have clocks, and they pay attention to the cycle of the moon to the extent that they know roughly at what point of the night the moon should rise that evening. This totally makes sense, as the moonrise time shifts in a predictable cycle throughout the month, shifting by about an hour each night. Moonrise obviously doesn't always take place right after sunset, Otherwise, people would plan to do stuff after sunset, instead of at moonrise.

 

Also, there seems to be some textual evidence that the moon is often rising quite a bit later than sunset.

"That night she lay on her narrow bed upon the scratchy straw, listening to the voices of the living and the dead whisper and argue as she waited for the moon to rise."

Arya X Clash of Kings

"I imagine she will be safely asleep by moonrise."

Tyrion hopped down from the chair. "Moonrise, then."

Tyrion II.

True, it's not right after sunset. It's a little after... maybe like 10:00? That doesn't line up with L2. Still, they talk about it like it's a fixed time. I mean maybe everyone just keeps track of the changing moonrise... but it is weird we never see a day moon, ever. 

[ravenous reader]

1 hour ago, LmL said:

@ravenous reader, if I could get your eyes on this going back to the comment above where I pasted the bit from reddit...

I'll have a look -- after brushing up on my astronomy!  

[Tom Cruise]

A night moon is always going to be a day moon somewhere else on the planet. 

[Tom Cruise]

Also, in our world, during a similar time period, people didn't refer to specific times of day, as time pieces were rare.  You would break the day up (typically this was done in 6th's or 12th's - for the same reasons that base 12 number systems were common in earlier times) and reference those divisions.  A simple example would be to tell someone to meet you at high noon, not 12:00pm. 

[Pain killer Jane]

Quote

let’s talk timeline for a quick second, because that is a very important component of the Hammer of the Waters event.  By now we have laid out enough evidence to show that the Hammer of the Waters might have been a moon meteor that it’s appropriate to consider the major adjustment to the timeline of ancient Westeros it would necessitate, if true: namely, that the Hammer of the Waters fell at the time of the Long Night, with the famous Pact between First Men and children of the forest likely being signed during or after the Long Night.  If this is the case, the mystery of why the First Men signed the Pact and switched religions when they were clearly winning the greater struggle for domination of Westeros is solved – the children helped to save mankind from the Long Night and the Others, as the story of the last hero suggests.  The Long Night disaster provided the cultural reset button and clean slate that would certainly have helped to facilitate a group of people taking up the religion of their former enemy en masse, and the help the children provided supplies the motivation.

So I have been thinking of your timeline reckoning. This may be somewhat off topic but I thought I would mention this since you mentioned Long Night timeline

Quote

Littlefinger smiled. "Leave Lord Varys to me, sweet lady. If you will permit me a small obscenity—and where better for it than here—I hold the man's balls in the palm of my hand." He cupped his fingers, smiling. "Or would, if he were a man, or had any balls. You see, if the pie is opened, the birds begin to sing, and Varys would not like that. Were I you, I would worry more about the Lannisters and less about the eunuch."

Ned did not need Littlefinger to tell him that. He was thinking back to the day Arya had been found, to the look on the queen's face when she said, We have a wolf, so soft and quiet. He was thinking of the boy Mycah, of Jon Arryn's sudden death, of Bran's fall, of old mad Aerys Targaryen dying on the floor of his throne room while his life's blood dried on a gilded blade. 

-Eddard IV, aGoT

I was thinking that this maybe the bare backbone timeline for the events that proceeded the Long Night.

As side note: Mycah/Micah is the name of the prophet who gave the prophecy stating that the messiah would be born in the town of Bethlehem.

[LmL]

2 minutes ago, Pain killer Jane said:

So I have been thinking of your timeline reckoning. This may be somewhat off topic but I thought I would mention this since you mentioned Long Night timeline

I was thinking that this maybe the bare backbone timeline for the events that proceeded the Long Night.

As side note: Mycah/Micah is the name of the prophet who gave the prophecy stating that the messiah would be born in the town of Bethlehem.

Dammit PKJ, you always do this. Explain yourself!!! LoL. How does that paragraph symbolize a timeline?

[Pain killer Jane]

10 hours ago, LmL said:

Dammit PKJ, you always do this. Explain yourself!!! LoL. How does that paragraph symbolize a timeline?

The way Ned sees it, the events that led the Lannister and the Starks to each other's throats can be traced to the moment Jaime killed Aerys. But if we take the events Ned and think about them as bare archetypes.

Arya - a wild girl was found (I think this refers to the Tiger woman bride)

Queen demanding a sacrifice - in our version of events its Lady but since Sansa is a warg, than they are one in the same. That tiger woman bride being sacrificed on the orders of the queen.

Mycah- I have two guesses for this. Since Mycah is the name Micah than perhaps we are looking for a prophet, that is sacrificed as well. Or a scapegoat.

Jon Arryn's death - for me this looks like either the murder of a father, or the cutting off the hand of a pickpocket. 

Bran's fall - In terms of a timeline this looks like the acquisition of the power of greenseeing

Aerys's Death - this is the start of the Long Night 

eta: does this make sense or am I barking up the wrong tree? 

I forgot up that what peeked my interest was that when we look at the sequence of events in relation to the story events of Game, the events are out of order with Aerys being first and Mycah being murdered last. While the events can be looked at as being related to each other and thus not having a sequence but Ned presents it in a linear fashion meant as a timeline that led to the beginning of war between the Starks and the Lannister.

My thinking is that this timeline refers to something else and my bet is that it is the Long Night. 

[Darry Man]

On 4/3/2017 at 9:56 AM, LmL said:

That's pretty good - I wonder if this could be the meaning behind that very weird story. Why is the person who might represent all three (white, green, black) a dwarf?

 

That I did notice! The list of NN women with connections to ash trees is growing:

• Melisandre vis the Meliai and because she's from ASHai (with its river Ash, ha ha)
• Asha Greyjoy
• Osha
• Rowan Gold Tree (Rowan is just another word for "Mountain Ash")
• Rowan the spearwife with Mance who has red kissed by fire hair and tries to seduce Theon who is like a grey king at that point

 

Ash wood also makes up the shaft of Areo Hotah's longaxe, which he took to wife. Not sure of the NN relationship, but it's a female ash.

[Darry Man]

On 3/29/2017 at 6:57 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/

Love these essays.

A couple of comments. First, you brought up the similarities between the House sigils of Greyjoy and Durrandon/Baratheon, with the alternating emphases of gold and black, which could point to a relationship between the Houses and/or their origins.

It came to me listening to your podcast again that the sigils are also visually connected through their animals. If the stag (and crown, for that matter) can be representative of the branches of a weirwood tree, then perhaps the kraken, with its long tentacles, could be representative of a weirwood's roots. You have your Horned Lord above and the Grey King below, together making up two parts of the whole tree.

Second (and this is just me being picky), but the pronunciation of the red stag Duraþrór is a bit off. The "þ" is not the letter "p" but is actually a "thorn", the Germanic letter used to pronounce the "th" sound. (Think "Ye Old Shoppe", which came about when English typesetters used a "Y" instead of a "Þ" to write out "The" because the thorn glyph wasn't included in their font cases.)

I only bring up the latter point because you and your followers seem like the sort of people who would find something like this to be interesting.

Keep up the great work.

 

 

[LmL]

1 hour ago, Darry Man said:

Ash wood also makes up the shaft of Areo Hotah's longaxe, which he took to wife. Not sure of the NN relationship, but it's a female ash.

Boom! For sure. That's a great one - I have it grouped with Oberyn's ash wood spear and those three ash spears with the severed NW heads on them. All three are telling the same story! Can you think of any other ash wood of significance? 

 

1 hour ago, Darry Man said:

Love these essays.

A couple of comments. First, you brought up the similarities between the House sigils of Greyjoy and Durrandon/Baratheon, with the alternating emphases of gold and black, which could point to a relationship between the Houses and/or their origins.

It came to me listening to your podcast again that the sigils are also visually connected through their animals. If the stag (and crown, for that matter) can be representative of the branches of a weirwood tree, then perhaps the kraken, with its long tentacles, could be representative of a weirwood's roots. You have your Horned Lord above and the Grey King below, together making up two parts of the whole tree.

Second (and this is just me being picky), but the pronunciation of the red stag Duraþrór is a bit off. The "þ" is not the letter "p" but is actually a "thorn", the Germanic letter used to pronounce the "th" sound. (Think "Ye Old Shoppe", which came about when English typesetters used a "Y" instead of a "Þ" to write out "The" because the thorn glyph wasn't included in their font cases.)

I only bring up the latter point because you and your followers seem like the sort of people who would find something like this to be interesting.

Keep up the great work.

 

 

Thanks a lot, I knew I was fouling those up. It's tedious to figure out pronunciation and sometimes I get last. The proper pronunciation is better for ASOIAF too - it sounds like a combination of Duran and Baratheon kinda.

Glad you're enjoying the most recent podcasts, and thanks for saying so and for helping with the pronunciation

Oh and I love your idea about the roots and the Kraken! That makes a ton of sense. There is a line somewhere in the third or fourth book I think about some trees which have been overturned, and now their roots are sticking up out of the river and reaching for the sky - I'll have to try to look for that quote and post it a bit later. It also fits with the idea of the great king being a former green person who became transformed and more aligned with winter and death as they came to sit underneath the trees. It fits with the nidhogg dragon underneath the roots. @Blue Tiger, @ravenous reader, @Pain killer Jane, what do you think?

[ravenous reader]

1 hour ago, LmL said:

I love your idea about the roots and the Kraken! That makes a ton of sense. There is a line somewhere in the third or fourth book I think about some trees which have been overturned, and now their roots are sticking up out of the river and reaching for the sky - I'll have to try to look for that quote and post it a bit later. It also fits with the idea of the great king being a former green person who became transformed and more aligned with winter and death as they came to sit underneath the trees. It fits with the nidhogg dragon underneath the roots.

There's also the serpentine figure twining under Sleipnir's hooves-- two parts of a whole.

Need I remind you: we see my brilliant SEA:SEE pun in action once more -- the gift that never stops giving..!  

@Crowfood's Daughter might enjoy the visual of the sigils too, since it fits with the grey-green continuum she's been describing.

The quote you were looking for:

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Arya IX

Arya did as she was told. The big iron brazier was glowing red, filling the room with a sullen suffocating heat. It felt pleasant to stand beside it, to warm her hands and dry off a little bit, but as soon as she felt the deck move under her feet she slipped back out through the forward door.

The two-headed horse eased slowly through the shallows, picking its way between the chimneys and rooftops of drowned Harroway. A dozen men labored at the oars while four more used the long poles to push off whenever they came too close to a rock, a tree, or a sunken house. The bent-backed man had the rudder. Rain pattered against the smooth planks of the deck and splashed off the tall carved horseheads fore and aft. Arya was getting soaked again, but she didn't care. She wanted to see. The man with the crossbow still stood in the window of the roundtower, she saw. His eyes followed her as the ferry slid by underneath. She wondered if he was this Lord Roote that the Hound had mentioned. He doesn't look much like a lord. But then, she didn't look much like a lady either.

Once they were beyond the town and out in the river proper, the current grew much stronger. Through the grey haze of rain Arya could make out a tall stone pillar on the far shore that surely marked the ferry landing, but no sooner had she seen it than she realized that they were being pushed away from it, downstream. The oarsmen were rowing more vigorously now, fighting the rage of the river. Leaves and broken branches swirled past as fast as if they'd been fired from a scorpion. The men with the poles leaned out and shoved away anything that came too close. It was windier out here, too. Whenever she turned to look upstream, Arya got a face full of blowing rain. Stranger was screaming and kicking as the deck moved underfoot.

If I jumped over the side, the river would wash me away before the Hound even knew that I was gone. She looked back over a shoulder, and saw Sandor Clegane struggling with his frightened horse, trying to calm him. She would never have a better chance to get away from him. I might drown, though. Jon used to say that she swam like a fish, but even a fish might have trouble in this river. Still, drowning might be better than King's Landing. She thought about Joffrey and crept up to the prow. The river was murky brown with mud and lashed by rain, looking more like soup than water. Arya wondered how cold it would be. I couldn't get much wetter than I am now. She put a hand on the rail.

But a sudden shout snapped her head about before she could leap. The ferrymen were rushing forward, poles in hand. For a moment she did not understand what was happening. Then she saw it: an uprooted tree, huge and dark, coming straight at them. A tangle of roots and limbs poked up out of the water as it came, like the reaching arms of a great kraken. The oarsmen were backing water frantically, trying to avoid a collision that could capsize them or stove their hull in. The old man had wrenched the rudder about, and the horse at the prow was swinging downstream, but too slowly. Glistening brown and black, the tree rushed toward them like a battering ram.

It could not have been more than ten feet from their prow when two of the boatmen somehow caught it with their long poles. One snapped, and the long splintering craaaack made it sound as if the ferry were breaking up beneath them. But the second man managed to give the trunk a hard shove, just enough to deflect it away from them. The tree swept past the ferry with inches to spare, its branches scrabbling like claws against the horsehead. Only just when it seemed as if they were clear, one of the monster's upper limbs dealt them a glancing thump. The ferry seemed to shudder, and Arya slipped, landing painfully on one knee. The man with the broken pole was not so lucky. She heard him shout as he stumbled over the side. Then the raging brown water closed over him, and he was gone in the time it took Arya to climb back to her feet. One of the other boatmen snatched up a coil of rope, but there was no one to throw it to.

 

2 hours ago, Darry Man said:

sigils are also visually connected through their animals. If the stag (and crown, for that matter) can be representative of the branches of a weirwood tree, then perhaps the kraken, with its long tentacles, could be representative of a weirwood's roots. You have your Horned Lord above and the Grey King below, together making up two parts of the whole tree.

Great observation!  So the greenseers perched on or rather cleaving to the roots in Bloodraven's cavern are like drowned men dragged under by the tree-- 'seamen' are seemen' (and @Isobel Harper even suggested 'semen'!)

[Darry Man]

This story is just amazing. You hypothesize some obscure reference like the kraken = weirwood/tree roots, and then someone immediately shows you how it's supported somewhere else in the text. I've read that awesome flood crossing scene a half-dozen times now, and never saw the ironborn references until now.

[ravenous reader]

18 minutes ago, Darry Man said:

This story is just amazing. You hypothesize some obscure reference like the kraken = weirwood/tree roots, and then someone immediately shows you how it's supported somewhere else in the text. I've read that awesome flood crossing scene a half-dozen times now, and never saw the ironborn references until now.

Indeed.  And now you'll never look at Patchface's ominous riddles prefaced by 'under the sea' in the same way again!

What do you think about 'Under the sea, no-one wears hats'..?

P.S.  And welcome to the forum!    (you know that the sigil you've chosen as your avatar is also related to oak trees and ice dragons...)

[Darry Man]

14 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

Indeed.  And now you'll never look at Patchface's ominous riddles prefaced by 'under the sea' in the same way again!

What do you think about 'Under the sea, no-one wears hats'..?

P.S.  And welcome to the forum!    (you know that the sigil you've chosen as your avatar is also related to oak trees and ice dragons...)

I had no idea. Seven hells.

[LmL]

43 minutes ago, Darry Man said:

This story is just amazing. You hypothesize some obscure reference like the kraken = weirwood/tree roots, and then someone immediately shows you how it's supported somewhere else in the text. I've read that awesome flood crossing scene a half-dozen times now, and never saw the ironborn references until now.

Yeah that was some shit huh! I had forgotten about the kracken reference in that line - I just remembered the bit about the upturned roots clutching for... something. And look! They are in fact like a kraken.  Looks like your instinct was right on the money

And actually, this is a great example of why the kind of analysis that we all like to do on the forums as possible. It's the answer to the question that people ask me sometimes, which is a natural one: "that's really cool and all, but how do you know XYZ symbol or idea is intended by the author?" The answer is simply that Martin has left a consistent and thorough trail of breadcrumbs on most any idea that he wants us to figure out. It's not enough to just say that the roots look kind of like a kraken, and so that must be what Martin is thinking - that conclusion would be shaky by itself. But then he reinforces it with a very clear reference like this - and other research that we have all done provides the context to make the comparison make sense. Because of @ravenous reader's Unda da See find, it makes sense to compare the roots of a tree to a kracken living under the ocean and pulling things down into it.  That's essentially the standard I have before accepting any idea into my head cannon - it has to be corroborated from multiple lines of inquiry, because Martin always seems to work that way, always provides them for us to find. That's why this is not some Hall of Mirrors that is driving us all insane. 

 anyway, great find!

 

[Durran Durrandon]

4 hours ago, Darry Man said:

Love these essays.

A couple of comments. First, you brought up the similarities between the House sigils of Greyjoy and Durrandon/Baratheon, with the alternating emphases of gold and black, which could point to a relationship between the Houses and/or their origins.

It came to me listening to your podcast again that the sigils are also visually connected through their animals. If the stag (and crown, for that matter) can be representative of the branches of a weirwood tree, then perhaps the kraken, with its long tentacles, could be representative of a weirwood's roots. You have your Horned Lord above and the Grey King below, together making up two parts of the whole tree.

 

 

Oooh, new crackpot. The Seastone Chair is actually the petrified roots of one of the inverted Weirwood trees we see outside of the House of the Undying.. Euron is drinking the Shade of the Evening, made from their blue leaves, to activate its power.