Astronomy of Planetos II: The Bloodstone Compendium

[LmL]

With all the talk of Morning stars I decided to search the books for "morningstars" to see if there are any hints there. Morningstars where very popular weapons and with rise of the plate armor they became even more popular, especially among knights combating other knights because of the great blunt force for bludgeoning enemy combined with plate piercing spikes. For such useful weapon morningstars gets few mentions, 19 in all the books combined (ASOIAF, D&E, TWOIAF, Princess and Queen and Rogue Prince). In Westeros lots of examples involve morningstars on chain which were so uncommon in Middle Ages that some historians suspect they didn't exist, museum items being 18th century creations based on imagination like iron maidens and chastity belts. So we get flails (very different then morningstar on chain) and morningstars sometimes used interchangeably even on same scene, and sometimes even maces appear but whole group is notoriously underrepresented.

Notable examples of characters interacting with morningstars are

- Brienne, yes she won the melee against Loras with morningstar, but she also defeated Shagwell armed with morningstar using Oathkeeper.

- Dunk too fought against morningstar wielded by Aerion Brightflame.

- Tyrion, he almost died by it on two occasions. First, Harrenhal knight almost struck him by accident in fight on the way to Eyrie, and second Northman wounded him in Battle of Green Fork. When in Second Sons armory he pick up morningstar but leaves it because it is too heavy.

- Arya, Eddard said that if he took Needle away from her he would soon find morningstar under her pillow. Also Jon describes her flailing with doll as with morningstar which he compares to Wun Wun flailing with dead knight.

- Dontos hits Sansa with "morningstar" with melon for a head

- Loras rushed through dragon's mouth at siege of Dragonstone wielding morningstar. Tommen wants to learn to fight like Loras and mentions morningstar

- Jon arms villagers at Castle Black with weapons from armory morningstar mentioned.

- Little Sand Snake Dorea knocks oranges from trees with her morningstar (not blood-oranges to my great disappointment)

- Characters mentioned as good with morningstar Artys Arryn (Andal one), Balon Swan, and Criston Cole mentioned as such two times with additional mention how he knocked Dark Sister from Daemon Targaryen at tourney with ms.

- Daeron Targaryen one from the first Dance is maybe killed by morningstar.

- And lastly get this there was Gardner king Garth VI Morningstar

Oh and another thing which relates to first theory and is hilariously coincidental is weapon from ancient Far East called meteor hammer which consists of two balls connected by chain used for striking, there is also fire meteor with bowls of fuel at each end which are then set ablaze making it look like two meteors.

Thanks for pulling all those quotes Equilibrium! I'd say at least half of those references seem to be significant. The one that really leaps out: Criston Cole knocking DARK SISTER (hello bloodstone moon) out of the hand of Daemon Targaryen with a Morningstar. That's exactly what happened in the sky - a Morningstar comet sent Dark Sister flying to the ground.

The Garth reference is great, I'll read that whole part for more clues.

[Mychel_Redfort]

That makes sense, as it's "in the Moonmaid" and I assume the Moonmaid, despite its name, is a constellation, and so as the planet appears to move through the sky, it goes "into" constellations just like our own astrology.

Try as I might, I can't quite make the Seven fit the seven classical "wanderers." I always end up with some bad fits, if I try to make them match archetypally:

Sun: Probably the Father, but the Father could also be Jupiter

Moon: Either the Maid or the Mother

Mercury: Most likely the Smith

Venus: Either the Maid or the Mother

Mars: Warrior, but the quote suggests it might be the Smith instead

Jupiter: See Sun

Saturn: Crone or Stranger

So no matter what I do with them, I end up with either the Sun or Jupiter having to be the Crone or Stranger, and to me they just don't fit there at all. So if the seven gods are the seven wanderers, they may not match the associated archetypes from Earth.

Personally I go with :

Father and Mother : Sun and Moon

Maid and Warrior : Venus and Mars

Crone : Mercury, for the wisdom

Stranger : Saturn

That leaves the Smith for Jupiter, as the quote implies

[Equilibrium]

Thanks for pulling all those quotes Equilibrium! I'd say at least half of those references seem to be significant. The one that really leaps out: Criston Cole knocking DARK SISTER (hello bloodstone moon) out of the hand of Daemon Targaryen with a Morningstar. That's exactly what happened in the sky - a Morningstar comet sent Dark Sister flying to the ground.

The Garth reference is great, I'll read that whole part for more clues.

You're welcome, it was relatively easy with ebooks and search function, hard part was making something out of it, but apart from morningstars being mentioned usually only in general vicinity of major characters there was not much to deduce from it. Great catch with Dark Sister. Criston Cole was famous for his virginity and was perfect knight, maybe that ties him to Brienne.

This Brienne vs Shagwell thing seems important too, he has morningstar with three heads (I really don't know why I haven't mentioned this) but this time dark sword wins, maybe this time catastrophe will be averted, maybe with Brienne's help.

Maybe Daenerys will be the bad guy, Loras will help Brienne (rushed in dragon's mouth with morningstar) Tyrion will stand aside and thus avoid getting killed (dropping the morningstar but surviving two times) and Jon and Arya will figure in somehow.

Only thing we know about that Garth is that he died in combat

[Ygritte]

Personally I go with :

Father and Mother : Sun and Moon

Maid and Warrior : Venus and Mars

Crone : Mercury, for the wisdom

Stranger : Saturn

That leaves the Smith for Jupiter, as the quote implies

Yeah, that works better than any version my brain could conjure up! Thanks.

[LmL]

You're welcome, it was relatively easy with ebooks and search function, hard part was making something out of it, but apart from morningstars being mentioned usually only in general vicinity of major characters there was not much to deduce from it. Great catch with Dark Sister. Criston Cole was famous for his virginity and was perfect knight, maybe that ties him to Brienne.

This Brienne vs Shagwell thing seems important too, he has morningstar with three heads (I really don't know why I haven't mentioned this) but this time dark sword wins, maybe this time catastrophe will be averted, maybe with Brienne's help.

Maybe Daenerys will be the bad guy, Loras will help Brienne (rushed in dragon's mouth with morningstar) Tyrion will stand aside and thus avoid getting killed (dropping the morningstar but surviving two times) and Jon and Arya will figure in somehow.

Only thing we know about that Garth is that he died in combat

If Daenerys listens to Quaithe and embraces “fire and blood,” she will be the bad guy. But I don’t think she will, at the end. I think she is ABOUT to, right now in the story, but my prediction for Dany is that she will pull back from the brink of embracing “fire and blood,” aka “might makes right,” and become a good ruler. She has it in her to do so, and I think she will. But NOT through fire and blood. The people who think everything will be ok if Dany just embraces her inner violent destroyer are really missing the major themes of ASOIAF, in my opinion.

Two quotes from ASoS:

Blood and fire, thought Dany. The words of House Targaryen. She had known them all her life. “The blood of my enemies I will shed gladly. The blood of innocents is another matter. Eight thousand Unsullied they would offer me. Eight thousand dead babes. Eight thousand strangled dogs.”

“Your Grace,” said Jorah Mormont, “I saw King’s Landing after the Sack. Babes were butchered that day as well, and old men, and children at play. More women were raped than you can count. There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs. The scent of blood is all it takes to wake him.

“Do you remember Eroeh?” she asked him.

“The Lhazareen girl?”

“They were raping her, but I stopped them and took her under my protection. Only when my sun- and- stars was dead Mago took her back, used her again, and killed her. Aggo said it was her fate.” “I remember,” Ser Jorah said. “I was alone for a long time, Jorah. All alone but for my brother. I was such a small scared thing. Viserys should have protected me, but instead he hurt me and scared me worse. He shouldn’t have done that. He wasn’t just my brother, he was my king. Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves?”

“Some kings make themselves. Robert did.”

“He was no true king,” Dany said scornfully. “He did no justice. Justice … that’s what kings are for. ”

[LmL]

Yeah, that works better than any version my brain could conjure up! Thanks.

So... is this a good time to mention that if there used to be a second moon, there would have been EIGHT wanderers? Was “The Seven” originally “the Eight?” Makes me think of that one kooky Ironborn king who tried to say the drowned god was an eight member. Maybe he wasn’t crazy.

[Equilibrium]

So... is this a good time to mention that if there used to be a second moon, there would have been EIGHT wanderers? Was “The Seven” originally “the Eight?” Makes me think of that one kooky Ironborn king who tried to say the drowned god was an eight member. Maybe he wasn’t crazy.

Symbol of Ishtar is eight-pointed star. And she is presented as resurrecting Tammuz, another bull harvest god, every year by descending into underworld. She also was the divine personification of the planet Venus. Her love is great corrupting force

[LmL]

There were 8 gemstone emperors (or 8 dynasties) before the Bstone E. Giben that the Church of Starry wisdom has existed from his time all the way to the present day... the conspiracy theory part of my brain is screaming out that the Seven is a fragmented version of the original worship of the 8 wanderers, perhaps the religion of the Great Empire? They seem to like astronomy, and especially the Bstone E. His power comes from the destruction of the 8th wanderer, that seem significant.

In the Dany chapter I quoted from above, there are 8 slave masters she is bargaining with, and she end up killing one with a dragon. She makes three progressively better offers - all her goods, then her 3 ships, then Drogon. Before she offered Drogon, George says that Dany “knew what she must do now” - which set off Azor Ahai bells in my head. Then the bit about 8 slave masters, and I remembered that she kills one.. and then it hit me - if there used to be another moon, there used to be 8 wanderers. Makes sense there might be a religion about that... and I just keep noticing these connections between the COSW and the Faith of the Seven. Starry Sept, Starry Wisdom. The Faith are big on crystals, reminds me of gemstones. Both are potentially tied to Oldtown. The BSE’s power comes from “casting down the true gods and worshipping a black stone that fell from the sky” (paraphrasing), so it sounds like the god he cast down was the 8th wanderer.

Anyone have any ideas? It’s very much an early hypothesis, I’m saying it’s probable, just worth of investigation. If the COSW has been around since the time of the LN, it’s possible the idea of the Seven goes back that far. The Andals are said to either come from the area of the Axe, or close to the Silver Sea Kingdom of the Fisher Queens which eventually becomes Sarnor (the First Men are also rumored to have come from the Silver Sea area, it’s a major dispersal point). I’m seeing many signs of an eastward migration out of the Yi Ti / Great Empire of the Dawn area following the LN, as well as many statements to that effect in the Wordbook. It’s overwhelmingly likely that some of the survivors trekking across the Bone Mountains after the LN would have carried their old religion with them - the hypothetical worship of the 8 - to the new lands. I can see the faith of the Seven arising from such a legacy.

[Ygritte]

So... is this a good time to mention that if there used to be a second moon, there would have been EIGHT wanderers? Was “The Seven” originally “the Eight?” Makes me think of that one kooky Ironborn king who tried to say the drowned god was an eight member. Maybe he wasn’t crazy.

Oh, good point! Maybe the ironborn have a folk memory of this lost moon but characterize it as male. Perhaps a large chunk of it was even seen falling into the sea.

In the Seven cosmology we came up with, it would probably be an Other Mother kind of thing!

[LmL]

Symbol of Ishtar is eight-pointed star. And she is presented as resurrecting Tammuz, another bull harvest god, every year by descending into underworld. She also was the divine personification of the planet Venus. Her love is great corrupting force

That fits together very nicely! You’re on a roll, Equilibrium. Folks like you and comments like yours are exactly what I was hoping for when I posted these. Most sane people realize they aren’t the smartest person in the world, and I consider myself somewhat sane. My hope was that others like yourself would take my theory and run with it.. :cheers:

Anyway, this makes a lot of sense. Ishtar / Astarte symbolism seems to match with the bloodstone moon, especially the divine feminine / motherhood connection with bloodstone that I found last night. It also fits with the whole ‘grandmother moon’ and 'mother of dragons’ concept. So, the 8th wanderer or 8th god is cast down, and her flesh is drained of its life force (remember Nisaa Nissa’s strength and life and soul etc all went into the sword, leaving her empty). The resulting bloodstone worshipped by the emperor is a fallen god, a dead god. Therefore, his fire magic is twisted, and the normal healing and vitality associations with bloodstone and the mother goddess are inverted. He eats the dead, raises the dead, genetic engineering (maybe), etc etc, and probably himself grows corpselike (Part 3 material). It matches with Azor Ahai as well, slaying his wife and forging a weapon from the power of her death. The BSE, betraying the Amethyst Empress and likely doing something similar (Part 3 material). They’ve both murdered the mother goddess, or a mother goddess, a abomination of incalculable magnitude. :ack: :stillsick:

[LmL]

Oh, good point! Maybe the ironborn have a folk memory of this lost moon but characterize it as male. Perhaps a large chunk of it was even seen falling into the sea.

In the Seven cosmology we came up with, it would probably be an Other Mother kind of thing!

Yeah I was trying to figure that myself last night - I was thinking it would be an opposite of the stranger, since the other 6 seem to be pairs. The... un-stranger? The.. “helpful elf” maybe? :cool4:

The iron born are good candidates to have a memory that old, as there is much evidence of ancient origins. The fact that no other First Men have any seafaring skip, but the Ironborn are defined by it, is a big red flag. The Grey King stuff has a lot of connections to Lightbringer and the BSE, imo (Part... 4?)

[Equilibrium]

Oh, good point! Maybe the ironborn have a folk memory of this lost moon but characterize it as male. Perhaps a large chunk of it was even seen falling into the sea.

In the Seven cosmology we came up with, it would probably be an Other Mother kind of thing!

Well, yes the Drowned god, incidentally they carved Seastone Chair from the body of Drowned god by that line of thought

[Ygritte]

Well, yes the Drowned god, incidentally they carved Seastone Chair from the body of Drowned god by that line of thought

Right--I'm thinking that the ironborn see the lost god/moon as the Drowned God while other cultures may have seen it as a different god, a female one. (Much like the Yi Tish have a female sun goddess.) And yes, that would make the Chair part of the deity.

[Equilibrium]

That fits together very nicely! You’re on a roll, Equilibrium. Folks like you and comments like yours are exactly what I was hoping for when I posted these. Most sane people realize they aren’t the smartest person in the world, and I consider myself somewhat sane. My hope was that others like yourself would take my theory and run with it.. :cheers:

Anyway, this makes a lot of sense. Ishtar / Astarte symbolism seems to match with the bloodstone moon, especially the divine feminine / motherhood connection with bloodstone that I found last night. It also fits with the whole ‘grandmother moon’ and 'mother of dragons’ concept. So, the 8th wanderer or 8th god is cast down, and her flesh is drained of its life force (remember Nisaa Nissa’s strength and life and soul etc all went into the sword, leaving her empty). The resulting bloodstone worshipped by the emperor is a fallen god, a dead god. Therefore, his fire magic is twisted, and the normal healing and vitality associations with bloodstone and the mother goddess are inverted. He eats the dead, raises the dead, genetic engineering (maybe), etc etc, and probably himself grows corpselike (Part 3 material). It matches with Azor Ahai as well, slaying his wife and forging a weapon from the power of her death. The BSE, betraying the Amethyst Empress and likely doing something similar (Part 3 material). They’ve both murdered the mother goddess, or a mother goddess, a abomination of incalculable magnitude. :ack: :stillsick:

Thanks man, it means a lot to me, I'm just happy to contribute.

Somehow I get the vibe the Ishtar is somewhat evil figure, she raises the dead, her love enslaves and corrupts, she is connected to both fertility and motherhood on one side and war and destruction on the other not to mention poor Gilgamesh I don't know how that figures out, since your first post I contemplated idea of moon entering long eclipse and comet really bringing light back but your theory is way more solid then anything that can be conjured to justify that hypothesis.

[Mychel_Redfort]

Yeah, that works better than any version my brain could conjure up! Thanks.

It works good for most planets (though the Stranger looks more like Uranus than Saturn astrologically), except Jupiter / the Smith that comes by default. The Smith talks about manual work (Mars) and gain after a work (Saturn). Jupiter would have worked better with a notable.

So... is this a good time to mention that if there used to be a second moon, there would have been EIGHT wanderers? Was The Seven originally the Eight? Makes me think of that one kooky Ironborn king who tried to say the drowned god was an eight member. Maybe he wasnt crazy.

In the Dany chapter I quoted from above, there are 8 slave masters she is bargaining with, and she end up killing one with a dragon. She makes three progressively better offers - all her goods, then her 3 ships, then Drogon. Before she offered Drogon, George says that Dany knew what she must do now - which set off Azor Ahai bells in my head. Then the bit about 8 slave masters, and I remembered that she kills one.. and then it hit me - if there used to be another moon, there used to be 8 wanderers.

You make a lot of sense, and your hint with Dany is just brilliant. Note also that when Aegon I begins his conquest, there were not eight kingdoms but seven, because Harren the Black was King of the Isles and the Rivers !

[Equilibrium]

Yeah I was trying to figure that myself last night - I was thinking it would be an opposite of the stranger, since the other 6 seem to be pairs. The... un-stranger? The.. “helpful elf” maybe? :cool4:

Maybe morally questionable female deity, Ishtar type, I would have called it say Mistress, opposite of Stranger, name evokes familiarity :D, gender defined and rich in gender attributes where Stranger lacks any, beautiful where Stranger is hideous.

Makes gender imbalance in the pantheon which ushers era or patriarchal Andal culture the same as decline of the Earth mother type goddesses and yearly sacrificed bull kings/gods ushered the era of patriarchate in ancient world.

I have maybe taken it too far but maybe someone can use it to construct something less outlandish

[LmL]

Right--I'm thinking that the ironborn see the lost god/moon as the Drowned God while other cultures may have seen it as a different god, a female one. (Much like the Yi Tish have a female sun goddess.) And yes, that would make the Chair part of the deity.

That makes loads of sense - “The Drowned God” - that’s a god that fell into the sea. And I definitely think at least one of the pieces of moon rock did that. I’m actually wondering whether the underwater moon rock didn’t cause the original fish people / deep ones / selkies to mutate, or to come out of the sea and mate with mankind somehow. If the moon rocks are a magical equivalent to radioactive, which they really seem to be, then an underwater rock may cause some kind of magical mutations.

I also (Part 4 spoiler alert) think that the Hammer of the Waters was an impact site. There’s a lot of evidence for that one - a Stepstone Island called Bloodstone, even. But I am not certain about how many impact sites there were. I think it was 2 big ones and a meter shower, with one big one striking the arm of Dorne and either another big rock or the meteor shower (which could still contain smaller rocks that reach the surface, doing a whole lot of damage, or could have been one big rock airbrushing over the ground like a bigger Tunguska event) striking Asshai. The third one is still up for grabs, or there could have been more than one. This is all based on textual symbolism, such as this:

The city had seemed like one big island from where the Titan stood. But as Yorko rode them closer, she saw that it was many small islands close together, linked by arched stone bridges that spanned innumerable canals. Beyond the harbor, she glimpsed streets of grey stone houses built so close they leaned one upon the other. To Arya's eyes, they were queer looking, four and five stories tall, and very skinny, with sharp peaked tile roofs like pointed hats. She saw no thatch, and only a few timber houses of the sort she knew in Westeros. "They have no trees," she realized. "Bravos is all stone, a grey city in a green sea." Yorko swung them north of the docks and down the gullet of a great canal, a broad, green waterway that ran straight into the heart of the city. They passed under the arches of a carved stone bridge, decorated with half a hundred kinds of fish and crabs and squids. A second bridge appeared ahead, this one carved in lacey, leafy vines, and beyond that a third, gazing down on them from a thousand painted eyes.

The canal going to the heart of the city is a Lightbringer forging clue. When we see a triplet following a Lightbringer clue, it is either the three forgings, or the (hypothetical) three impacts. The first one has sea creatures, which I believe to be the Hammer of the Waters. This is a potential spot for an underground meteor radiating / mutating sea creatures. Vines could refer to the Hightower / The Reach, or the jungles of Sothoryos (although ’lacey’ is an odd word in that case). A thousand eyes is the meteor shower for sure - that’s actually a mythology reference to Io and Argus the many-eyed giant, which George also references in the story of Maris the Maid, daughter of Garth the Green, and Argoth Stone-skin, who won her hand at a tourney but was denied her by the first Hightower, Uthor. In any case, my next essay will link the Bloodstone moon to Io, both the Jupiterian moon Io and the legend of Io.

Just a reminder, my hypothesis is that the Dawn / Starfall meteor was part of the comet, not the destroyed moon.

[LmL]

Maybe morally questionable female deity, Ishtar type, I would have called it say Mistress, opposite of Stranger, name evokes familiarity :D, gender defined and rich in gender attributes where Stranger lacks any, beautiful where Stranger is hideous.

Makes gender imbalance in the pantheon which ushers era or patriarchal Andal culture the same as decline of the Earth mother type goddesses and yearly sacrificed bull kings/gods ushered the era of patriarchate in ancient world.

I have maybe taken it too far but maybe someone can use it to construct something less outlandish

No I agree 100%. Earlier human cultures were far more matriarchal, and far more egalitarian. We’ve had out of control violent male energy and patriarchy going on several millennia now. The idea that the Andal culture epitomizes this fits in well with what we’ve put together in the last couple of pages. We lost a female deity, and now things are out of balance.

I like your idea about “the Mistress.” Because she’s a real woman, we have plenty of them in Westerns. “Mother, maiden, crone” kind of reflects a bit of patriarchy - women are virgins, baby-makers, or old ladies. Where’s the virile, sexually empowered Ishtar woman?

She’s dead. And now we have the 7. (BTW, I don’t totally hate the 7, there’s a lot of good philosophy wrapped up there, so this shouldn’t be taken as a total anti-7 rant.)

[LmL]

One more Arm of Dorne clue: when Alleras the Sphinx splits the second apple in half (the one where splitting one worm makes two worms), one half disappears, and the other strikes three things - the top of the tower, an adjoining roof, and then lands at the foot of someone named “Armen.” By itself it’s not much but when you are already looking for corroboration that one part of the moon rock was the Hammer of the Waters, landing at the ‘foot’ or ‘Armen’ is notable. The Broken Arm of Dorne looks like a foot. The apple landed right in front of Armen’s foot, just like the comet landed where the land bridge used to be, right next to the Arm of Dorne.

[Equilibrium]

No I agree 100%. Earlier human cultures were far more matriarchal, and far more egalitarian. We’ve had out of control violent male energy and patriarchy going on several millennia now. The idea that the Andal culture epitomizes this fits in well with what we’ve put together in the last couple of pages. We lost a female deity, and now things are out of balance.

I like your idea about “the Mistress.” Because she’s a real woman, we have plenty of them in Westerns. “Mother, maiden, crone” kind of reflects a bit of patriarchy - women are virgins, baby-makers, or old ladies. Where’s the virile, sexually empowered Ishtar woman?

She’s dead. And now we have the 7. (BTW, I don’t totally hate the 7, there’s a lot of good philosophy wrapped up there, so this shouldn’t be taken as a total anti-7 rant.)

Yeah, I know it was not that simple but I was trying to simplify it to illustrate the point and shoot closer to the Martin's possible explanation here, as you have said about astrology it's not his goal to write scientific tractate

That makes loads of sense - “The Drowned God” - that’s a god that fell into the sea. And I definitely think at least one of the pieces of moon rock did that. I’m actually wondering whether the underwater moon rock didn’t cause the original fish people / deep ones / selkies to mutate, or to come out of the sea and mate with mankind somehow. If the moon rocks are a magical equivalent to radioactive, which they really seem to be, then an underwater rock may cause some kind of magical mutations.

I also (Part 4 spoiler alert) think that the Hammer of the Waters was an impact site. There’s a lot of evidence for that one - a Stepstone Island called Bloodstone, even. But I am not certain about how many impact sites there were. I think it was 2 big ones and a meter shower, with one big one striking the arm of Dorne and either another big rock or the meteor shower (which could still contain smaller rocks that reach the surface, doing a whole lot of damage, or could have been one big rock airbrushing over the ground like a bigger Tunguska event) striking Asshai. The third one is still up for grabs, or there could have been more than one. This is all based on textual symbolism, such as this:

I am proponent of all things magical but for some reason I am not great fan of fish people, I always tended to explain them away with seafaring conquerors/raiders than actual extra race but I is possible too. Iron Islands could be impact site, greater landmass wrecked into islands, as is maybe hinted in Worldbook

in the Iron Islands, the castle of Pyke sits on stacks of stone that were once part of the greater island before segments of it crumbled into the sea.