Astronomy of Ice and Fire: Children of the Dawn, Part Two

[Knight and Dayne]

Great work as always. Nothing significant to add really, it's so nicely done.

Can't wait for the Andal part, you what I think of Faith of the Seven and Andal/Sarnor connection.

I'd love to see what you think about the Faith of the Seven and Andal/Sarnor connection!

[Mithras]

Great work as always. Nothing significant to add really, it's so nicely done.

Same here.

One thing I also discussed with LmL in PM's which might be worth keeping in mind.

The bones of men, the bones of horses, the bones of giants and camels and oxen, of every sort of beast and bird and monster, all can be found amongst these savage peaks.

This reminds me of the flood myths and Noah’s Ark. Was there some sort of great flooding event that forced the living things to seek shelter at the peaks of the Bone Mountains? Both east and west side of the Bones, we see shrinking seas and lakes. This is an ongoing process. Is the land returning to normal or are the high sea levels the default state?

[LmL]

I might be wrong, but it seems to me we do not have many swords like Dawn. And since these swords are so good and valuable, I expect people should try to save them for future generations. While this symbolism you mentioned might be right, I'd rather think about this event being literal. I.e., that there was a fallen star (meteorite) which was used to make sword.

Yeah I tend to agree. It's like "Chekov's giant inexplicable magic sword."and doesn't it have to fire? (see what I did there)

[LmL]

Same here.

One thing I also discussed with LmL in PM's which might be worth keeping in mind.

The bones of men, the bones of horses, the bones of giants and camels and oxen, of every sort of beast and bird and monster, all can be found amongst these savage peaks.

This reminds me of the flood myths and Noah’s Ark. Was there some sort of great flooding event that forced the living things to seek shelter at the peaks of the Bone Mountains? Both east and west side of the Bones, we see shrinking seas and lakes. This is an ongoing process. Is the land returning to normal or are the high sea levels the default state?

That's a good point Mithras, I had kind of forgotten about that. There is evidence of large-scale flooding in some places, the dark tide that comes after the mono is drowned. I think the strongest evidence for this in this passage os the bit about the bones of very kind of beast. I pointed out that this seems like a migration of an entire people - which would explain dogs, horses, livestock, etc, but not really so for wild animals. I've also thought about the idea that there firestorm incinerated whatever was living in the mountains, but that's doesn't account for the quantity of bones, as not many should be living in the mountains at any given time. It does seem like people were fleeing, heading east.

I mightdoa whole essay on climate at some point, it definitely seems like the Dawn Age was an ice age that we are coming out of, just as earth was coming out of an ice age at 10,000 BCE. The arm of Dorne, plus the meteor impacts, changed the climate forever. And yes, I'd say all the shrinking seas are indicative of this.

[LmL]

I'd love to see what you think about the Faith of the Seven and Andal/Sarnor connection!

They totally ARE connected!

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Oh, you guys were expecting a bit more...

[Jojen Dayne-Reed]

Good lord man. Slow down. Some of us are trying to work.

Seriously though. Fun stuff. Good to have new thoughts on the boards.

[LmL]

Good lord man. Slow down. Some of us are trying to work.

Seriously though. Fun stuff. Good to have new thoughts on the boards.

I got bad news for you.

:devil: Dark Lightbringer is coming. :devil:

[Alequo Adarys]

A pleasure reading as always LmL! I'd love to hear the Dawn theory, and I could see that getting interesting considering Ned had both Dawn and 'Ice' at one point. I'm sure your analysis is something I could never start to conjure though haha

Even in the GEotD era and the BSE/AE=AA/NN thing which I agree with there is still a mention of whatever came to stop the LN. I believe in the GEotD thread it still says Azor, Kyrkoon, Eldric Shadowchaser, etc. stops the LN. I am curious as to how you interpret that as AA seems to have two roles. That could mean 'he' was both the cause and cure of the long night of course, but I don't quite like that. Of course it could be misinterpreted, and probably is to some extent. I know the magic of asoiaf is widely assumed to go hand in hand with natural phenomenon, so the moon being struck by a comet whatever boom goes moon. Would a volcano be what fights of the long night, or an earthquake perhaps?

And where tf is a flood. Every religion like ever has a flood.

[LmL]

Alequo, the flood thing happened too. I've posted some of my notes on this in the CotD Part One thread, somewhere around page 11-15 iirc. Basically, the moon controls the tides. When the moon drowned in the ocean, it created a huge tide. This is referred metaphorically as a dark tide, a black tide, a blood tide, or black blood. Storms End mythology has this tsunami built in, as does the Ironborn myth. I will be doing an essay on that at some point, but I have dropped a lot of stuff about that in the comments of the last couple threads if you're curious to look.

There's certainly a lot of evidence for earthquakes - all that waking giants from the earth stuff sounds a lot like an earthquake to me, for one. It's likely the meteors striking the planet set off multiple disasters - earthquakes, floods, and perhaps volcanoes.

[Equilibrium]

I'd love to see what you think about the Faith of the Seven and Andal/Sarnor connection!

Same here.

It's not like it is kept secret, I talked about it in Fingerprints of the Dawn thread. http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/127025-astronomy-of-planetos-fingerprints-of-the-dawn/page-32

Basically Huzhor Amai and Hugor Hill are the same guy. Besides the name and role in the leading of their people, they have bunch of other similarities, both represent the shift from matriarchy to patriarchy, both started expansionist cultures with loose central leadership, both are attributed the introduction of iron or steel, both fought Hairy Men.

Further food for the thought, in Hugor's story, Warrior gave him his sword, and in system of Seven celestial wanderers, it is logical for Warrior to be the red one, so he got his sword from the comet, like from the piece of the comet or the moon comet brought to earth, does that look familiar with certain family sword. And Maid gave him the bride with deep blue eyes, in Seven celestial wanderers system Maid can only be moon, ie. remaining moon, ie. ice moon, so he got his wife with deep blue eyes from ice, that sounds like Night's King. So Hugor can be LH/NK/Eldric guy who defeated AA and made pact with Others.

[Knight and Dayne]

Ah thanks for bearing with me. There's a learning curve to these threads...

The Celestial Wanderers bit dovetails nicely. It's making a lot more sense now.

The thing that's bothering me is the dearth of magic/prophesy/supernatural practice in general associated with Andals and the Faith of the Seven. The function of that religion seems almost Confucian, even if its practice is clearly Catholic. Fo7 describes a dominant social order that's been really successful in stamping out all the (much cooler) religions in Westeros.

[LmL]

Yep.. not much I can say without launching into the Fot7 part of the essay, but yeah... it's pretty rich. The more you look at it, the worse it gets.

[Jojen Dayne-Reed]

I got bad news for you.

:devil: Dark Lightbringer is coming. :devil:

Can't wait.

So where do you stand on the cotf as cause of or participating in the fall of the second moon? If the falling moon cause the breaking of the arm of dorn and the children caused that. Then is the bse/ae a coincidence?

Did the cotf just take credit? A sort of "yeah look what we can do" bluff?

And if the bse is the last hero where does that leave Bran the B and the wall? I always figured the Wws were the ones who built the wall since they were the ones on retreating. Humanity had no reason to stop the war since we had the fire sword and we're winning. But if if the bse is aa who is TLH...bahhh.

[Lord_Pepsi_Cupps]

It's not like it is kept secret, I talked about it in Fingerprints of the Dawn thread. http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/127025-astronomy-of-planetos-fingerprints-of-the-dawn/page-32

Basically Huzhor Amai and Hugor Hill are the same guy. Besides the name and role in the leading of their people, they have bunch of other similarities, both represent the shift from matriarchy to patriarchy, both started expansionist cultures with loose central leadership, both are attributed the introduction of iron or steel, both fought Hairy Men.

Further food for the thought, in Hugor's story, Warrior gave him his sword, and in system of Seven celestial wanderers, it is logical for Warrior to be the red one, so he got his sword from the comet, like from the piece of the comet or the moon comet brought to earth, does that look familiar with certain family sword. And Maid gave him the bride with deep blue eyes, in Seven celestial wanderers system Maid can only be moon, ie. remaining moon, ie. ice moon, so he got his wife with deep blue eyes from ice, that sounds like Night's King. So Hugor can be LH/NK/Eldric guy who defeated AA and made pact with Others.

I like the direction, but the "red wanderer" is sacred to the Smith, according to Jon, not to the Warrior.

It could still work. The red Smith gave Hugor the sword; if the "red" represents a connection with AA (through all that Red Priest imagery), who was a smith of sorts since he forged Lightbringer, it can still work. Hugor might then represent the LH character (potentially AA's son).

That the wildlings say the Smith is really the Thief... in a literal sense, AA "stole" Nissa Nissa's life to make the sword, if her sacrifice was unwilling. When the Thief is in the Moonmaid is the best time to steal a woman: the image of the Smith plunging into the Moonmaid to forge his sword (stealing her life in the process, like the thief he is) is quite interesting.

This brings up an interesting question: which wanderer is associated with the Stranger? It can't be the comet, since Jon says there are seven wanderers sacred to the Faith.

[LmL]

I think the sun, which is usually one of the seven wanderers, might be left out of the Fot7. The stranger isn't a wanderer - he is space itself. a black oval with stars for eyes. The Great Other also = space. The great cold dark, blue stars for eyes.

[LmL]

The stranger is called the "wanderer from far off places," which sounds like a comet, but comets come from deep space, so the ideas are actually compatible.

Catelyn studied the faces. The Father was bearded, as ever. The Mother smiled, loving and protective. The Warrior had his sword sketched in beneath his face, the Smith his hammer. The Maid was beautiful, the Crone wizened and wise. And the seventh face … the Stranger was neither male nor female, yet both, ever the outcast, the wanderer from far places, less and more than human, unknown and unknowable. Here the face was a black oval, a shadow with stars for eyes. It made Catelyn uneasy. She would get scant comfort there.

[Lord_Pepsi_Cupps]

I like that, very nice. The Stanger. The Stranger holds the key. Stars for eyes. Blue as the eyes of death. Something about Symeon Star-eyes.

Illuminati.

It feels like the worship of the Stranger as part of the godhead is out of place, when considered against the Six, from its description to what it does. Almost like it was snuck in at a later stage (like if Christians decided that the personification of death was the fourth aspect of god, along with father, son and holy ghost; it signals certain things that make one uncomfortable).

The Stranger is the personification of death; referring to it as a "stranger" suggests an underlying belief that death does not belong, it's foreign. If you kick the intruder out, you presumably would have an argument for eternal life. This is what the Red Priests promise those who die fighting for Dany. When you consider what we've seen, promising immortality is not the calling card of any religion you'd want to belong to.

The Stranger's wives are the Silent Sisters; another embodiment of patriarchy: the silenced wife (also associated with sister-wife imagery). BSE/AE.

Astronomically, the "defeat" of death (the casting out of the Stranger) would be represented by the destruction or hiding of the corresponding celestial body.

[LmL]

Another passage from The Seven- Pointed Star came back to him. “The Maid brought him forth a girl as supple as a willow with eyes like deep blue pools, and Hugor declared that he would have her for his bride. So the Mother made her fertile, and the Crone foretold that she would bear the king four- and- forty mighty sons. The Warrior gave strength to their arms, whilst the Smith wrought for each a suit of iron plates.” (ADWD, Tyrion)

This sounds like the warrior gave the strength, but the Smith actually made the plate, and likely whatever swords existed as well - it just doesn't say anything specific about a sword in Hugor's story.

But the Smith has been busy making stuff:

The long ranks of man and horse were armored in darkness, as black as if the Smith had hammered night itself into steel. There were banners to her right, banners to her left, and rank on rank of banners before her, but in the predawn gloom, neither colors nor sigils could be discerned. A grey army, Catelyn thought. Grey men on grey horses beneath grey banners. As they sat their horses waiting, Renly’s shadow knights pointed their lances upward, so she rode through a forest of tall naked trees, bereft of leaves and life. Where Storm’s End stood was only a deeper darkness, a wall of black through which no stars could shine, but she could see torches moving across the fields where Lord Stannis had made his camp. (ACOK, Catelyn)

And who is this lord Stannis with specks of fire against a field of darkness?

Sansa had never seen the sept so crowded, nor so brightly lit; great shafts of rainbow- colored sunlight slanted down through the crystals in the high windows, and candles burned on every side, their little flames twinkling like stars. The Mother’s altar and the Warrior’s swam in light, but Smith and Crone and Maid and Father had their worshipers as well, and there were even a few flames dancing below the Stranger’s half- human face … for what was Stannis Baratheon, if not the Stranger come to judge them? (ACOK, Sansa)

Does he have more than shadow armor, this Stranger / Stannis?

“I beg you in the name of the Mother,” (oops - wrong deity) Catelyn began when a sudden gust of wind flung open the door of the tent. She thought she glimpsed movement, but when she turned her head, it was only the king’s shadow shifting against the silken walls. She heard Renly begin a jest, his shadow moving, lifting its sword, black on green, candles guttering, shivering, something was queer, wrong, and then she saw Renly’s sword still in its scabbard, sheathed still, but the shadowsword … “Cold,” said Renly in a small puzzled voice, a heartbeat before the steel of his gorget parted like cheesecloth beneath the shadow of a blade that was not there. He had time to make a small thick gasp before the blood came gushing out of his throat. “Your Gr— no! ” cried Brienne the Blue when she saw that evil flow, sounding as scared as any little girl. The king stumbled into her arms, a sheet of blood creeping down the front of his armor, a dark red tide that drowned his green and gold. More candles guttered out. Renly tried to speak, but he was choking on his own blood. His legs collapsed, and only Brienne’s strength held him up. She threw back her head and screamed, wordless in her anguish. The shadow. Something dark and evil had happened here, she knew, something that she could not begin to understand. Renly never cast that shadow. Death came in that door and blew the life out of him as swift as the wind snuffed out his candles.

(ACOK, CATELYN)

Anyone else have a shadowsword that's cold?

Even inside fur- lined gloves, Theon’s hands had begun to throb with pain. It was often his hands that hurt the worst, especially his missing fingers. Had there truly been a time when women yearned for his touch? I made myself the Prince of Winterfell , he thought, and from that came all of this . He had thought that men would sing of him for a hundred years and tell tales of his daring. But if anyone spoke of him now, it was as Theon Turncloak, and the tales they told were of his treachery. This was never my home. I was a hostage here. Lord Stark had not treated him cruelly, but the long steel shadow of his greatsword had always been between them. He was kind to me, but never warm. He knew that one day he might need to put me to death.

(ADWD, The Prince of Winterfell)

Ned actually loves shadowswords - he hangs out with people who wield them all the time:

Ned’s wraiths moved up beside him, with shadow swords in hand. They were seven against three. “And now it begins,” said Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. He unsheathed Dawn and held it with both hands. The blade was pale as milkglass, alive with light. “No,” Ned said with sadness in his voice. “Now it ends.” As they came together in a rush of steel and shadow, he could hear Lyanna screaming. “Eddard!” she called. A storm of rose petals blew across a blood- streaked sky, as blue as the eyes of death.

[LmL]

Alirght guys, I for a real motherfucker for you. The story of the Dothraki's destruction of Sarnor in TWOAIF is a long metaphor for the astronomy in my theory. Khal Mengo is the great khal who unifies three score khalasars into one. Uniting three things into one is a reference to the sun and the planet with two moons in a triple eclipse alignment. The Khal is of course the sun. He is counseled by his mother, the witch queen Doshi. I'm not going to get into the whole metaphor right now, but his son takes the unified army to Sathar, burns it down, puts the men "to the sword" and takes the women as slaves (making them widows) and renames it "the place of the wailing children." And so on and so forth.

But who is this witch queen Doshi, I've been wondering forever. Well, Doshi is a common surname win India, and one of its meanings is:

2. Another one is a popular Gujarati story which Narsinh Mehta mentions the Hindu deity Krishna appearing as a doshi vanio. A doshi was somebody who carried a dosh, or a sack of grocery/clothes, to sell as he wandered. This is similar to another translation of doshi as a rough cloth seller. Most Gujaratis believe this is the true story behind the last name "Doshi"

The stranger is the wanderer from far off places, but also space itself, as I was saying. And isn't space the mother of all suns and stars? (Same thing, I realize, yes) The mother of all comets too. The sun's mother is a witch queen - the mother of the Others???? Can it be? (paging TMOTO) The comet comes from deep space - this is the part of the Lightbringer story where darkness was heavy on the world. The comet is in the Oort Cloud. Then a water forging - entering the atmosphere, it begins to break up and forges a blue and white / grey tail. After it passes perihelion, it becomes the sun's sword / comet / penis, wielded against his moon wife. Not sure if it turns red after the sun splits it or after the explosion - probably the latter - but the point is, it turns red with blood. And then returns to space. The LH taking the dragon steel into the frozen lands??

[Lord_Pepsi_Cupps]

Drogo is heavily associated with the Sun, and the Dothraki in general are on the "fire" side of the spectrum. Their conquering ways, literally burning up all around Central Essos (contemporaneously with a drying of the area that leaves actual deserts where the Dothraki turned cities to dust), and their general culture, all thematically sound very fire/desire.

And they're literal wanderers, being nomadic.

If you look at their actions since the Doom, it looks like they've burnt a circle of destruction around the Dothraki Sea, where they've burnt things they came into contact with. Almost like a sun of destruction radiating outwards from the Dothraki Sea (and the khalasars wander across it, like stars across the firmament). In the same area that enduring drying and desertification as the place heated up.

It's all symbolically very firey, but are the Dothraki then taking the role of both the sun warrior and the sword itself?

If the khalasars are pieces of the original great khalasar, wouldn't the entire Dothraki endeavour (including the destruction of Sarnor) more properly just represent the sword/comet, rather than the sun as well?

Dosh means council in Dothraki, and given Doshi's name (and the possibility her role either created the Dosh Khaleen or reinforced their influence) the clear hint of her being the counsellor, the instigator of the unification. Astronomically, she would the personification of the forces that move heavenly bodies - which I guess in one particular religious tradition means she's the embodiment of space itself. Or the void. The kind of cold associated with the Others.

The same force that brings the day and night and the change of seasons also brought the comet that destroyed the second moon - it's a neutral force then, but the "instigator" role given to Doshi suggests at least one myth where this personification of "space" has an agenda.

Doshi as the instigator of Sarnor's destruction (the space as the "mother" of the comet), and the Dothraki as the engine of destruction (the comet).