Heresy 201 and onward we go...

[Black Crow]

8 hours ago, SirArthur said:

So Azor Ahai reborn is literally the soul movement of Azor Ahai to an infant. Quite possibly even the movement of the soul to a stillborn baby ? Like Ashara's ? This theory lights so many candles.

( I never believed in reborn as a synonym for brought back to life. Because it is reborn, not reanimate )

edit: In the prophecies it is "come again" and "born again".

Its ambiguous. It might be and there are certainly plenty who interpret it that way, but the term is also used more widely. Khal Drogo at one point is described as Aegon the Conqueror come again; not, obviously, a reincarnation [far less a transferring of souls] but like him, as powerful as him etc etc.

I think the movement of souls requires the soul to be present in a living human, whether skinchanging or transferring to a magical host such as a white walker or a dragon. I don't see the soul of Azor Ahai waiting for thousands of years in the darkness for a new body to come close enough.

[Melifeather]

9 hours ago, SirArthur said:

So Azor Ahai reborn is literally the soul movement of Azor Ahai to an infant. Quite possibly even the movement of the soul to a stillborn baby ? Like Ashara's ? This theory lights so many candles.

( I never believed in reborn as a synonym for brought back to life. Because it is reborn, not reanimate )

edit: In the prophecies it is "come again" and "born again".

Was just discussing this topic on another forum in another thread reviewing the Bael story and how "waking the dragon" from "stone eggs" could be a parallel to resurrecting the dead Starks from their "stone eggs" - the crypts. Recall that fire consumes and ice preserves, that the sun and it's light is associated with life, and the moon and moonlight associated with the undead. Assuming there is a dragon, or maybe Targaryen, life inside a dragon egg, the parallel is a preserved soul inside the bones of the dead Starks inside their tombs. The right type of blood sacrifice ritual brings them both to life. If it's possible for Targaryens to be born again as dragons, then the Starks are resurrected to a different sort of life.

[Black Crow]

1 hour ago, Feather Crystal said:

Was just discussing this topic on another forum in another thread reviewing the Bael story and how "waking the dragon" from "stone eggs" could be a parallel to resurrecting the dead Starks from their "stone eggs" - the crypts. Recall that fire consumes and ice preserves, that the sun and it's light is associated with life, and the moon and moonlight associated with the undead. Assuming there is a dragon, or maybe Targaryen, life inside a dragon egg, the parallel is a preserved soul inside the bones of the dead Starks inside their tombs. The right type of blood sacrifice ritual brings them both to life. If it's possible for Targaryens to be born again as dragons, then the Starks are resurrected to a different sort of life.

Broadly speaking I'd tend to agree, but with a couple of caveats. First we know that the soul appears to belong to the bones and that destruction of the bones is necessary for "complete" death. The iron swords in the Winterfell crypts are there to keep the Starks in their tombs until the bones themselves decay.

Secondly, this would in turn suggest that its only the more recent Starks who might be capable of awakening if the swords were removed from their tombs, but then that would raise the twin questions as to whether they themselves know that and whether someone is capable of performing such rites as may be necessary to say turn the late Lord Eddard Stark into a white walker.

Bran, warned against speaking to the dead, might be a candidate.

In the meantime, lacking such a process I'd suggest that Craster's sons are stand-ins to keep the numbers up - after all Craster and Karstark are close to being anagrams if K and C are interchangeable.

[SirArthur]

 

4 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I think the movement of souls requires the soul to be present in a living human, whether skinchanging or transferring to a magical host such as a white walker or a dragon. I don't see the soul of Azor Ahai waiting for thousands of years in the darkness for a new body to come close enough.

 

The only being that would prolong over this time would be a weirwood tree or the bones of something that does not rot. Possibly frozen bones (although they are not living).

On a side note: If there are frozen Stark bones anywhere .... it would have interesting consequences. Just imagine the bones of the Night's King somewhere far north.

 

edit: And then there are the crypts Mance opened. Time for tinfoil.

[Matthew.]

On 9/10/2017 at 11:23 PM, JNR said:

We must read different threads. 

Perhaps, but it's not as though "Hey, what would happen if Bran skinchanges a dragon?" is unexplored territory. It has lead to a variety of interpretations, eg "Bran will become an ice dragon," "Bran combines fire and ice," and, yes, "Bran is one of the three heads of the dragon," which comes up on occasion.

I believe that the SSM where GRRM says that the three heads "need not be Targaryens" is one of the most well-known, and has probably influenced such conclusions.
 

On 9/11/2017 at 6:02 PM, SirArthur said:

Is Viserys "waking the dragon" a reference to some soul movement ?

It may be, as GRRM has conveniently left out the actual "text" of The Prince that was Promised prophecy, so we mostly have context clues based on how individual characters are interpreting the prophecy. 

That multiple Targs believed they might die and be reborn as a dragon, and that this seems to have actually happened to Rhaego (I'm thinking specifically of Dany's fever dream where she briefly sees an adult Rhaego, before he's consumed from the inside out by fire), is all highly suggestive. 

[Matthew.]

3 hours ago, SirArthur said:

edit: And then there are the crypts Mance opened. Time for tinfoil.

At the least, I'm with you on this tinfoil.

While Mance's search for the Horn eventually became one of desperation, I think it could have begun under different circumstances, with different motivations--that he may have originally been seeking the Horn for the purpose of destroying the Wall, and had been seeking it before the Other attacks began.

Edit: For clarity, in the present story, we meet Mance under circumstances in which he wants the Horn for leverage to negotiate safe passage for the Wildlings (though some, like Ygritte, would have him destroy it anyway).

However, Mance has a history that is alluded to, and we're told some of how he came to love the Free Folk as a people, and chose them over the NW--I think that, before the Others created a more dire scenario, he was seeking the Horn for the sake of those like Ygritte that hate the Wall, rather than as a desperate bid to escape the Others.

In that case, I think it's possible that Mance and a smaller set of followers were already poking around in the Frostfangs before the far larger scale operation we see in ACOK.

[JNR]

3 hours ago, Matthew. said:

and, yes, "Bran is one of the three heads of the dragon," which comes up on occasion

A lot of those occasions are anti-occasions, apparently.  These were the first two that came up for me:

Quote

I'm more leaned to think that the three heads of the dragon are three actual "dragons"

Quote

Bran Stark: if he wargs a dragon, although there's no chance that he has Targaryen blood

Sure enough, in your Google search, what we see is the overwhelming tendency to pair the "heads of the dragon" with Targs.

But naturally one can find some sort of thread to suggest virtually anything; it doesn't mean the fandom saw it coming in a broad sense.

I'm pretty sure I could find, with a bit of effort, a thread in which it was suggested that in a future book, Bran would conduct an unholy rite that would raise Ned as a white walker.   But should this event come to pass in the canon, the vast majority of the fandom would still never have seen it coming. 

The subject of Jon's parents is a particularly interesting one in this area.  The polls have been so overwhelming, for so long -- 95% a typical result -- that it's plain the fans just don't see anything but Rhaegar and Lyanna.  They just don't.   Scattered threads  on other possibilities have come nowhere near altering that tsunami of fan belief. 

[Melifeather]

15 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Broadly speaking I'd tend to agree, but with a couple of caveats. First we know that the soul appears to belong to the bones and that destruction of the bones is necessary for "complete" death. The iron swords in the Winterfell crypts are there to keep the Starks in their tombs until the bones themselves decay.

Secondly, this would in turn suggest that its only the more recent Starks who might be capable of awakening if the swords were removed from their tombs, but then that would raise the twin questions as to whether they themselves know that and whether someone is capable of performing such rites as may be necessary to say turn the late Lord Eddard Stark into a white walker.

Bran, warned against speaking to the dead, might be a candidate.

In the meantime, lacking such a process I'd suggest that Craster's sons are stand-ins to keep the numbers up - after all Craster and Karstark are close to being anagrams if K and C are interchangeable.

 

You know I was actually thinking more along the lines of resurrecting the dead to an undead life like Coldhands more so than white walkers, but creating a white walker does seem more like the equivalent of hatching a dragon though.

[SirArthur]

8 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

 

You know I was actually thinking more along the lines of resurrecting the dead to an undead life like Coldhands more so than white walkers, but creating a white walker does seem more like the equivalent of hatching a dragon though.

Is it possible to resurrect a 5000 year old dead like Ötzi the Iceman in the same way as Lady Stoneheart (who was dead only 3 days) ?

[LynnS]

10 hours ago, JNR said:

The subject of Jon's parents is a particularly interesting one in this area.  The polls have been so overwhelming, for so long -- 95% a typical result -- that it's plain the fans just don't see anything but Rhaegar and Lyanna.  They just don't.   Scattered threads  on other possibilities have come nowhere near altering that tsunami of fan belief.

He introduced a bias in the narration that became magnified by the internet and mass media marketing. Now he's a victim of his own success.  RLJ has turned into Frankenstein's monster; not something he can easily correct ,without being torn to pieces.  Unless it becomes patently obvious after the fact; he will have to point out his own clues in the text.    

Although RLJ is a very good real life example of the way in which the bards/singers operate in the story itself. 

When you think you have the answer, all you have to do is double down.  Invariably all the arguments for RLJ have to do with the popularity of the thing, rather than the accuracy of the thing. 

If this were high school, Rhaegar would be voted in as head boy based solely on his silver hair and dark purple eyes; the most handsome kid in school.  Which seems to be the major appeal exploited by HBO.  Well, that and boat sex. 

It seems to me that D&D have cut and run;  turning the whole business over to someone who has his face firmly planted in the trough and could care less what reader's think. 

Now the internet is flooded with tabloid style YT click-bait on the the Real Reasons for this or that; so that high-schoolers can say they were smart enough to figure it based on the proof that everybody else said so and I want to be popular too .  (See Beardy's hilarious rant on 8th grade book reports.)  

[Matthew.]

10 hours ago, JNR said:

A lot of those occasions are anti-occasions, apparently.

It's both. For every one person that might ask "what if Bran is one of the three heads of the dragon," there will be plenty of others with their own head canon of who the heads are (or even what they are). I didn't say it's a theory where there's consensus, I said it comes up semi-regularly in ASOIAF discussion...and it does, primarily because Bran skinchanging a dragon comes up semi-frequently.

I suspect that this particular discussion is also influenced heavily by the time at which one began reading the series--for example, I don't seriously consider Aegon VI a potential dragonrider because I had 11 years to mentally dismiss him as the "Cloth Dragon," a fraud, before Martin finally got around to pushing out ADWD. It may be that readers that have come into the series more recently would be more inclined to give dragonbinder and Aegon VI a lot of weight in their expectations, and not even consider Bran 
 

18 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Secondly, this would in turn suggest that its only the more recent Starks who might be capable of awakening if the swords were removed from their tombs, but then that would raise the twin questions as to whether they themselves know that and whether someone is capable of performing such rites as may be necessary to say turn the late Lord Eddard Stark into a white walker.

I wish I could recall what AddictedToSnow's theories were on this issue, although I was only a lurker at the time that he was here, rather than an active poster.

In any case, whatever happened to Eddard's 'soul' at the end of AGOT, I suspect that it was outside the scope of his knowledge, and perhaps the general scope of House Stark's knowledge, though there's no telling what sorts of family secrets Rickard might have passed to Brandon, rather than Eddard, with an expectation that the former would be the eventual Stark in Winterfell.

I'm being repetitive in this regard, but as always, I'm inclined to look at the Brandon the Breaker and NK era as a turning point for House Stark--I suspect that, if House Stark has a more insidious connection to winter, this is the point where House Stark began to bury its own history.

[JNR]

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

I didn't say it's a theory where there's consensus, I said it comes up semi-regularly in ASOIAF discussion

And I didn't say no one has ever suggested it; I said:

I would just find it delightful if someone as unexpected as Bran (by the fanbase) became a head of the dragon

The fanbase does not, by and large, expect Bran to become a head of the dragon.  It would be an interesting poll question, and if 10,000 or more fans answered it, I would expect No to get at least five times as many votes as Yes.   In political terms, that would be a complete landslide.

Now how did that come to happen?  IMO, the usual way.  The association of the phrase "head of the dragon" with Rhaegar (who uttered it) and Targaryens is powerful in the fan imagination, even though Rhaegar never said only Targaryens, or only his children, qualified.  

And it's augmented by the idea that the heads of the dragon will be literal dragonriders, which is a thing that Rhaegar never mentions in that passage.  It's just that the original Aegon and his sisters rode dragons, and so the fans see three of X (dragonriders in the Conquest), and then three of Y (heads of dragon).   As usual, a symbolic thing; I don't think there's any actual logical foundation to it at all.  

And as you say, according to a fan account anyway, GRRM explicitly suggested it might be wrong.  The fans don't care.  GRRM has also said for years and years that the show and books would get further and further apart, culminating in huge changes, and the fans don't care about that either.  They continue to think they must be the same story on all the important points, where "important" is undefined and undefinable.

4 hours ago, LynnS said:

RLJ has turned into Frankenstein's monster; not something he can easily correct ,without being torn to pieces.  Unless it becomes patently obvious after the fact; he will have to point out his own clues in the text.    

Yes, if RLJ isn't the answer, there's going to be quite the cataclysm in the fanbase.  

You could even say that is just as predictable as the Doom of Valyria or the fall of Babylon, both prophesied in advance.  GRRM, in this context, would be the prophet who could see the cataclysm coming, as the only one who knows for sure what TWOW will include.

If RLJ is not the answer, then I'd think GRRM will provide quite a good walkthrough of the truth in TWOW, but if he doesn't, someone else... no doubt... will provide the walkthrough for him.  An in-world walkthrough can't possibly discuss GRRM's various touches in various books, because nobody in-world has read GRRM's books.

[Melifeather]

5 hours ago, SirArthur said:

Is it possible to resurrect a 5000 year old dead like Ötzi the Iceman in the same way as Lady Stoneheart (who was dead only 3 days) ?

When I was thinking about the parallel inversion to waking dragons from stone eggs, I was thinking about the dead Stark corpses in their stone crypts awakening, but I was also thinking about Coldhands. Obviously when Coldhands was resurrected he couldn't have been dead very long or he'd look like Otzi there! Then after his resurrection the cold is what's preserved his appearance, but again you'd expect him to look a lot worse if he was hundreds of years old, which brings me to my second thought, that Coldhands is actually Ned's brother Brandon. Recall that Brandon was strangled while trying to save his father Rickard from roasting in his own armor and Coldhands covers his throat with a scarf. King Aerys had Brandon put in a strangulation device purchased from Tyrosh and had a sword placed just out of reach. Brandon didn't have to strangle himself, but he did, because he saw his father suffering so. The only obstacle to this would be how his whole body was transported back to Winterfell. Who would have done that? If he was placed in the hands of the Silent Sisters, they would have boiled his flesh from his bones like they did Ned, but if he was sent back home "whole", then he could have arisen from the crypts if the traditional sword wasn't placed on his crypt to keep him there. BUT - another "but" - Black Crow reminded me of the white walkers, which should be the parallel inversion to dragons. How do you make a white walker? BC suspects that Craster's sons become white walkers, but what if the babies are only the blood sacrifice, and the spirit of some old dead bones are what gets resurrected into the icy white walkers? 

[SirArthur]

I don't know how blood sacrifice magic works and especially if it needs a physical connection to to bones or the host or a distance. If it needs no distance then there is no need to transport the bones places. Same goes for Craster's Keep although it is still closer to the Wall then say WInterfell.  

And in the case baby sacrifice -> Winterfell there is still a magic wall in between. I think it is a very local event the same way Dany hatched the dragons or Lady Stoneheart was resurrected.

And if Coldhands comes from the crypts there has to be another exit and a way through the wall.

There are two possibilities I can think of. The stone in the prologue where the wildlings lean against combined with the edgy cold. To this day I do not understand the prologue no matter how often I read it. It always seems like a lot of information is hidden there but my knowledge is missing to interpret it.

Or literally a reverse with a snow storm or total freezing with Winterfell as the best location.

[Black Crow]

I think we still have the dual problems of knowledge here and who knows what?

Turning back for a moment to the Targaryens there is clearly a tradition, for lack of a better word, that they can become dragons.

Something has interrupted that. We're told its thought that the Maesters killed off the dragons last time around, but it may have been something simpler and yet more fundamental in killing off whoever knew how the transfer of soul from Targaryen to Dragon was accomplished. By whatever  means and whatever assistance/intervention along came Danaerys Stormborn and its all kicked off again.

By the same token the Starks may have known that the old lords' true allegiance was to Winter, but have long forgotten how to do it. The fact that the swords are used to hold the lords in their graves suggests that at some point long ago that allegiance changed and we could be talking here about the battle for the dawn and or the Nights King.

As to the latter the story says he was overthrown by his brother and that might well mean that the brother put an end to the creation of white walkers by placing the swords on the tombs.

Whatever the details, the point being that the lords themselves have long forgotten and no-one living knows how the trick is done, so even if a sword is stolen from a tomb full of "viable" bones, Lord Eddard or whoever is not going to yawn, stretch and stumble blinking into the daylight . Somebody needs to wake him and right now Bran would appear to be the likeliest candidate, given his thinking and his circumstances.

[Melifeather]

1 hour ago, SirArthur said:

if Coldhands comes from the crypts there has to be another exit and a way through the wall.

It's an old Heretical theory that there is a tunnel from the Winterfell crypts all the way to the Wall, so theoretically Brandon could have been resurrected and walked there, or someone came and got his corpse, brought him north, and resurrected him there.

There is an interesting discussion on that other forum (again) that Bael was actually a singer, as in one of the Children of the Forest - those who sing the songs of earth - otherwise how did Lord Stark know to compel the Nights Watch to "fly down from their castles" to search for his missing daughter north of the Wall if he believed Bael was just a regular ole minstrel singer? If Bael was actually one of the Children, then he used the tunnel via the crypts to spirit the maid of Winterfell away, and used the tunnel again to deposit the plucked "rose" and her child.

[SirArthur]

Quote

Something has interrupted that.

If we mix the Targaryen/Stark problem we can find the death ritual of the Faith of the Seven displaying dead bodys with their hands crapsed around swords pointing towards the feet. Iron swords on legs seems to be the explanation here.  I do not know if this is legit or a TV adaptation. What is clear from interviews is that the Targs cremate the dead. So I would look there for the problem.

 

5 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

It's an old Heretical theory that there is a tunnel from the Winterfell crypts all the way to the Wall,

I don't know about a tunnel but if the dragon Vermax truly laid eggs under Winterfell he must have had a way to get in. Given that Vermax was 15 at the time of his visit to WF it is questionable if he would be able to lay eggs. However with 15 he should be huge enough to require a better entrance. And I doubt he would fly to the Wall to fly back through a dark underground tunnel. Flying in a tunnel seems ... just off.

 

 

[Matthew.]

9 hours ago, JNR said:

And I didn't say no one has ever suggested it; I said:

Then I apologize for misinterpreting the meaning of Bran being unexpected, as I was interpreting the context to be in reference to awareness rather than belief; eg "everyone is missing the obvious possibility of Bran as a Head of the Dragon," vs. "people are aware of Bran's potential, but find other candidates more plausible."

Though this does feel like it's overemphasizing the value of belief, as though leaning toward some candidates over others is a problem, or that it's particularly important to tally who ends up being right and who ends up being wrong as a percentage of "the fandom."

In practice, for many readers, I don't think the answer to "is Bran one of the Heads of the Dragon," is either yes or no, but rather, "maybe, but here's some other people I've considered."

I find it, in general, a bit odd to attempt to define the fandom and their beliefs when we're talking about a series that has sold at least 60 million copies, as of the 2015; such an approach seems narrow and reductive, and all but ensures strawman arguments.

[Matthew.]

2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Whatever the details, the point being that the lords themselves have long forgotten and no-one living knows how the trick is done, so even if a sword is stolen from a tomb full of "viable" bones, Lord Eddard or whoever is not going to yawn, stretch and stumble blinking into the daylight . Somebody needs to wake him and right now Bran would appear to be the likeliest candidate, given his thinking and his circumstances.

In addition to Bran possibly mucking things up by attempting to call back his father, this is a good time to give a shout out to Sly Wren's theory about how the spirits of the crypts might be sprung into action:

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/139034-a-horn-no-a-wolf-jon-ghost-and-the-horn-that-wakes-the-sleepers/

Not an identical theory, but I think a lot of these idea could overlap, or be reconciled with one another.

[Melifeather]

2 hours ago, SirArthur said:

If we mix the Targaryen/Stark problem we can find the death ritual of the Faith of the Seven displaying dead bodys with their hands crapsed around swords pointing towards the feet. Iron swords on legs seems to be the explanation here.  I do not know if this is legit or a TV adaptation. What is clear from interviews is that the Targs cremate the dead. So I would look there for the problem.

 

I don't know about a tunnel but if the dragon Vermax truly laid eggs under Winterfell he must have had a way to get in. Given that Vermax was 15 at the time of his visit to WF it is questionable if he would be able to lay eggs. However with 15 he should be huge enough to require a better entrance. And I doubt he would fly to the Wall to fly back through a dark underground tunnel. Flying in a tunnel seems ... just off.

 

 

 

You've lost me here, because I never mentioned any dragons under Winterfell. 

 

1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

In addition to Bran possibly mucking things up by attempting to call back his father, this is a good time to give a shout out to Sly Wren's theory about how the spirits of the crypts might be sprung into action:

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/139034-a-horn-no-a-wolf-jon-ghost-and-the-horn-that-wakes-the-sleepers/

Not an identical theory, but I think a lot of these idea could overlap, or be reconciled with one another.

 

Not trying to start any trouble, but if we're going to give credit for that theory it should go to Snowfyre's theory Joruman and the Horn of Winter posted two months earlier.