Waves of Night and Moon Blood: Mythical Astronomy of Ice and Fire podcast, episode 3

[Evolett]

4 hours ago, Ser Knute said:

think you're likely right, there's a bit of Yin and Yang going on here; two opposites of the same whole.  I'd thought about this before when you first started presenting your essays; that the White and Black meteorites were separate.  First I thought the blacks came from part of the comet itself, but now I wonder... perhaps the impact point and that 'half' of the moon was charred from the impact and elemental structure of the comet and that perhaps the back-half of the moon that faced away from the impact point stayed 'pristine'.  This allows both types to fall, but we've seen very little of the pristine portions, at least that I've been able to gather.  If Dawn was fashioned out of the pristine chunks, that makes sense, but then one must ask, are there more pieces somewhere?  Of course it could also be that the comet charred more than half of the moon-rock and the small tiny piece that Dawn was forged from was/is the only piece in the story.  That leads me to think of the Heart of a Fallen Star.  If Dawn represents the heart of the destroyed moon, it literally would be the heart of a fallen star.

This dark and bright side of the moon are represented together a few times: by the doors of the House of Black and White, one side carved of weirwood with an ebony moon, the other carved of ebony with a white weirwood moon. Mel conveys the same imagery during her conversation  with Davos in the caves beneath Storm's End:

Quote

I would say my parts are mixed m’lady. Good and bad.”...
“If half of an onion is black with rot, it is a rotten onion."

 

The onion, especially Davos' onion against a black field, is very much a moon in the night sky. 

The problem is, while both 'pristine' and 'black' portions may have fallen during the actual breaking of the moon, it doesn't explain the origin of the first-god emperor's carved pearl palanquin, which is definitely related to the bright side of the moon. He sat on this 'pearl' thousands of years before the breaking. We would have to assume that some pieces of the bright side somehow fell to earth during the Dawn Age itself. The first Dayne who followed a fallen star is said to have arrived 10,000 years ago, before the breaking. Of course, time lines are fuzzy, the first Dayne could have arrived around the time of the breaking and forged Dawn in one of the rare pristine pieces. This still leaves us with the first god-emperor's pearl. But I think there may be an alternate explanation for the 'pearl' relating to the role of the Silver Sea and the Fisher Queens as described in my latest essay. Consider this:

The Silver Sea must have been one great parabolic mirror. In fact - there are two hints at this: Dany looks into a silvered mirror and we have the bright reflection of the moon in the Womb of the World. Okay, so what's special about parabolic mirrors? In a nutshell, they reflect the light onto a single focal point, creating a great concentrated bundle of energy, which we can theoretically visualize as a luminous pearl. This video explains the mechanics of this:

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics/geometric-optics/mirrors-and-lenses/v/parabolic-mirrors-and-real-images

So perhaps the 'pearl' wasn't a physical medium, but rather a bundle of concentrated moonlight, harnessed by his one hundred wives. Forging in this concentrated energy may have produced the pale swords of fire Dany sees in her waking the dragon dream. It may be significant that they aren't explicitly described as 'milkglass' in the dream, perhaps implying that some other material was used. There's plenty to choose from here, from platinum (also mentioned in the dream) and associated minerals such as irridium to the feldspar types used in the manufacture of ceramic knives. 

 

The dark side of the moon and oily black stone:

@LmL I'm not sure if you mention this in your essays, but there are hints at a link between toads, things falling from above and dragons in the text. We know of course of the giant toad statue of malignant aspect, carved of oily black stone. 

In this context, Arya hears rumors of "a rain of toads". That in itself is a portent of doom and one of the plagues sent by god through his servant Aaron (thinking Damphair here) in the biblical account of the Isralites release from slavery in Egypt. 

Then there's Janos Slint, a frog-faced man with golden scales sewn onto his doublet:

Quote

Sansa glimpsed motion from the corner of her eye as Janos Slynt made his entrance. This time the muttering was louder and angrier. Proud lords whose houses went back thousands of years made way reluctantly for the balding, frog-faced commoner as he marched past. Golden scales had been sewn onto the black velvet of his doublet and rang together softly with each step. His cloak was checked black-and-gold satin. Two ugly boys who must have been his sons went before him, struggling with the weight of a heavy metal shield as tall as they were. For his sigil he had taken a bloody spear, gold on a night-black field.

Not forgetting Quentin Martell, otherwise known as Frog, who tries to steal one of Dany's dragons. 

I've only just started looking into this - perhaps there is more. 

 

ETA - compare the role of  parabolic mirrors in concentrating light with the God's Eye and its great weirwood groove. I've shown that weirwoods absorb light - a groove of them function according to the same principle as the parabolic mirror - one giant lens and light collector.  @hiemal and I have been speculating on this here. 

[Ser Knute]

2 hours ago, Evolett said:

This dark and bright side of the moon are represented together a few times: by the doors of the House of Black and White, one side carved of weirwood with an ebony moon, the other carved of ebony with a white weirwood moon. Mel conveys the same imagery during her conversation  with Davos in the caves beneath Storm's End:

 

The onion, especially Davos' onion against a black field, is very much a moon in the night sky. 

The problem is, while both 'pristine' and 'black' portions may have fallen during the actual breaking of the moon, it doesn't explain the origin of the first-god emperor's carved pearl palanquin, which is definitely related to the bright side of the moon. He sat on this 'pearl' thousands of years before the breaking. We would have to assume that some pieces of the bright side somehow fell to earth during the Dawn Age itself. The first Dayne who followed a fallen star is said to have arrived 10,000 years ago, before the breaking. Of course, time lines are fuzzy, the first Dayne could have arrived around the time of the breaking and forged Dawn in one of the rare pristine pieces. This still leaves us with the first god-emperor's pearl. But I think there may be an alternate explanation for the 'pearl' relating to the role of the Silver Sea and the Fisher Queens as described in my latest essay. Consider this:

The Silver Sea must have been one great parabolic mirror. In fact - there are two hints at this: Dany looks into a silvered mirror and we have the bright reflection of the moon in the Womb of the World. Okay, so what's special about parabolic mirrors? In a nutshell, they reflect the light onto a single focal point, creating a great concentrated bundle of energy, which we can theoretically visualize as a luminous pearl. This video explains the mechanics of this:

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics/geometric-optics/mirrors-and-lenses/v/parabolic-mirrors-and-real-images

So perhaps the 'pearl' wasn't a physical medium, but rather a bundle of concentrated moonlight, harnessed by his one hundred wives. Forging in this concentrated energy may have produced the pale swords of fire Dany sees in her waking the dragon dream. It may be significant that they aren't explicitly described as 'milkglass' in the dream, perhaps implying that some other material was used. There's plenty to choose from here, from platinum (also mentioned in the dream) and associated minerals such as irridium to the feldspar types used in the manufacture of ceramic knives. 

 

The dark side of the moon and oily black stone:

@LmL I'm not sure if you mention this in your essays, but there are hints at a link between toads, things falling from above and dragons in the text. We know of course of the giant toad statue of malignant aspect, carved of oily black stone. 

In this context, Arya hears rumors of "a rain of toads". That in itself is a portent of doom and one of the plagues sent by god through his servant Aaron (thinking Damphair here) in the biblical account of the Isralites release from slavery in Egypt. 

Then there's Janos Slint, a frog-faced man with golden scales sewn onto his doublet:

Not forgetting Quentin Martell, otherwise known as Frog, who tries to steal one of Dany's dragons. 

I've only just started looking into this - perhaps there is more. 

 

ETA - compare the role of  parabolic mirrors in concentrating light with the God's Eye and its great weirwood groove. I've shown that weirwoods absorb light - a groove of them function according to the same principle as the parabolic mirror - one giant lens and light collector.  @hiemal and I have been speculating on this here. 

Great food for thought Evolett!  Must pontificate...

[Bluetiger]

Well I admit that with so much depth going on it's hard to be sure, there's so many layers as you've pointed out many times.  I know that Aziz likes to stay grounded for the most part and have no problem with it; I was actually really pleased that he and you got together for at least the one episode because while I think HoW does a fantastic job of explaining what is mostly canon, you do the same type of job in exploring what's behind the text; the meanings the double entendres, the parallels, the foreshadowing, etc.

It's sometimes a bit hard to keep it all straight but I think I'm getting there.  I like that there's that basis in our real world but then amped up with magic to push it into a fantasy genre but not completely fantastic, like how you see all the unknown troops die in LOTR but hardly any main characters are killed off, well except for Boromir, poor Sean Bean.  

Anyway, I know there's no textual evidence to support that theorum, as we don't know when a guy like Vorian Dayne was born (month and day), we might get the year at best, but I was thinking about that after the podcast and thought about the starcharts and such.  I know the answer could be as simple as: no this guy just turned out evil/bad, or this guy (Arthur) turned out good, but I have a sneaking suspicion that George has considered these things, no one is just good/evil, events and circumstances and choices play a major part.

I think you're likely right, there's a bit of Yin and Yang going on here; two opposites of the same whole.  I'd thought about this before when you first started presenting your essays; that the White and Black meteorites were separate.  First I thought the blacks came from part of the comet itself, but now I wonder... perhaps the impact point and that 'half' of the moon was charred from the impact and elemental structure of the comet and that perhaps the back-half of the moon that faced away from the impact point stayed 'pristine'.  This allows both types to fall, but we've seen very little of the pristine portions, at least that I've been able to gather.  If Dawn was fashioned out of the pristine chunks, that makes sense, but then one must ask, are there more pieces somewhere?  Of course it could also be that the comet charred more than half of the moon-rock and the small tiny piece that Dawn was forged from was/is the only piece in the story.  That leads me to think of the Heart of a Fallen Star.  If Dawn represents the heart of the destroyed moon, it literally would be the heart of a fallen star.

I'll have to watch your podcasts but this line of thinking leads me back to a discussion we had awhile back where I postulated that in the World Book there was a reference in the section that was Yi Ti I believe when discussing the fall of the Empire of the Dawn after the BSE usurped the AE; that they'd sought a person with the same knightly qualities that is espoused in the Faith of the Seven.  My sister has my world book at the moment so I can't pull the exact quote but I remember seeing that and thinking "that sounds a lot like what the knights of the seven are supposed to be like".

Your thought that AA brought the LN but his son ended it would follow an old saying about how the sons inherit the sins of the father, something like that, I forget the exact quote but you see that theme used a lot, weren't Aragorn's ancestors of the Dunedain responsible for the One-Ring not being destroyed the first time they had it at Mount Doom?  Something like that... I can see that here for sure, at least in some respects.  You see it in Star Wars too with Anakin and Luke, only in this story we're talking about millenia rather than decades.  

Fantastic work again, you guys give me so much pleasure in your enthusiasm for the story, it's so much fun to push play on those podcasts and just let it all sink in (again and again).

 

You're right. Aragorn's claim to the throne of Gondor directly comes from his ancestor Isildur, who rejected Elrond and Cirdan's council to destroy the ring.

[Bluetiger]

In Chinese culture, the tiger is the king of the beasts and has been presented with a 王 on his forehead for centuries. According to legend, the tiger's tail would turn white when it reached the age of 500 years. In this way, the white tiger became a kind of mythological creature. It was said that the white tiger would only appear when the emperorruled with absolute virtue, or if there was peace throughout the world. Because the color white of the Wu Xingtheory also represents the west, the white tiger became a mythological guardian of the west

In ancient chineese astronomy tigers symbolise West while dragons are symbol of East. In folk lore and legends tigers are biggest enemy of dragons...

Maybe taking tiger-woman as wife means that Bloodstone Emperor left GEoTD and went to the WESTeros?

[Blind Beth the Cat Lady]

38 minutes ago, Blue Tiger said:

 

In ancient chineese astronomy tigers symbolise West while dragons are symbol of East. In folk lore and legends tigers are biggest enemy of dragons...

Maybe taking tiger-woman as wife means that Bloodstone Emperor left GEoTD and went to the WESTeros?

Could be. Smart idea, actually.

But FWIW, the two animals noted as being present and abundant on "the great and holy Isle of Leng" are tigers and monkeys. And in eastern Long Night stories we have a story of a tiger-woman and a woman with a monkey's tail. Add the Lengii resemblance to CotF as well as their matriarchal rulership and it seems we're being nudged in the direction of two prominent Lengii skinchanger women. IMO.

 

Between this and Evolett's analysis I'm thinking that Dawnian emperors were drawn to both Lengii noblewomen and Fisher Queens as brides. Which makes sense in terms of rank/politics and geographically.

 

ETA: I think this still fits with the idea of yin and yang, as one is supposed to be masculine and one feminine. So Fisher Queens and Lengii empresses both represent matriarchal societies with strong Yin energy, while Dawnia (until AE) was ruled by men and represents Yang energy.

[Evolett]

4 minutes ago, Blind Beth the Cat Lady said:

Between this and Evolett's analysis I'm thinking that Dawnian emperors were drawn to both Lengii noblewomen and Fisher Queens as brides. Which makes sense in terms of rank/politics and geographically.

Exactly. The FQs are only half of the story. Relating this to the 'Womb of the World' and the 'Mother of Mountains' - the FQ = the WoW, while the Lengi/Tiger/Lion women stem from the 'Mother of Mountains'. Cersei is one good hint here: by giving Qyburn the go-ahead to 'remodel' Gregor Clegane, she's identifiable as one of these 'Mother of Mountains'. And I would say Nissa Nissa carried the inheritance of both within her.

[LmL]

6 hours ago, Evolett said:

This dark and bright side of the moon are represented together a few times: by the doors of the House of Black and White, one side carved of weirwood with an ebony moon, the other carved of ebony with a white weirwood moon. Mel conveys the same imagery during her conversation  with Davos in the caves beneath Storm's End:

 

The onion, especially Davos' onion against a black field, is very much a moon in the night sky. 

The problem is, while both 'pristine' and 'black' portions may have fallen during the actual breaking of the moon, it doesn't explain the origin of the first-god emperor's carved pearl palanquin, which is definitely related to the bright side of the moon. He sat on this 'pearl' thousands of years before the breaking. We would have to assume that some pieces of the bright side somehow fell to earth during the Dawn Age itself. The first Dayne who followed a fallen star is said to have arrived 10,000 years ago, before the breaking. Of course, time lines are fuzzy, the first Dayne could have arrived around the time of the breaking and forged Dawn in one of the rare pristine pieces. This still leaves us with the first god-emperor's pearl. But I think there may be an alternate explanation for the 'pearl' relating to the role of the Silver Sea and the Fisher Queens as described in my latest essay. Consider this:

The Silver Sea must have been one great parabolic mirror. In fact - there are two hints at this: Dany looks into a silvered mirror and we have the bright reflection of the moon in the Womb of the World. Okay, so what's special about parabolic mirrors? In a nutshell, they reflect the light onto a single focal point, creating a great concentrated bundle of energy, which we can theoretically visualize as a luminous pearl. This video explains the mechanics of this:

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics/geometric-optics/mirrors-and-lenses/v/parabolic-mirrors-and-real-images

So perhaps the 'pearl' wasn't a physical medium, but rather a bundle of concentrated moonlight, harnessed by his one hundred wives. Forging in this concentrated energy may have produced the pale swords of fire Dany sees in her waking the dragon dream. It may be significant that they aren't explicitly described as 'milkglass' in the dream, perhaps implying that some other material was used. There's plenty to choose from here, from platinum (also mentioned in the dream) and associated minerals such as irridium to the feldspar types used in the manufacture of ceramic knives. 

 

The dark side of the moon and oily black stone:

@LmL I'm not sure if you mention this in your essays, but there are hints at a link between toads, things falling from above and dragons in the text. We know of course of the giant toad statue of malignant aspect, carved of oily black stone. 

In this context, Arya hears rumors of "a rain of toads". That in itself is a portent of doom and one of the plagues sent by god through his servant Aaron (thinking Damphair here) in the biblical account of the Isralites release from slavery in Egypt. 

Then there's Janos Slint, a frog-faced man with golden scales sewn onto his doublet:

Not forgetting Quentin Martell, otherwise known as Frog, who tries to steal one of Dany's dragons. 

I've only just started looking into this - perhaps there is more. 

 

ETA - compare the role of  parabolic mirrors in concentrating light with the God's Eye and its great weirwood groove. I've shown that weirwoods absorb light - a groove of them function according to the same principle as the parabolic mirror - one giant lens and light collector.  @hiemal and I have been speculating on this here. 

The half rotten onion may well be a clue. It is, as you say, an obvious moon symbol. And of course Sam happily cuts away half of a rotten onion later in the story and eats the good half. There are a few heads that get split in half at key moments also; this seems a good candidate for the subject of such metaphors. I'll have to chew on this one a bit and see if I have missed any clues about that. 

As for toads, there are traditionally symbols of the underworld; or more specifically, the entrance to the underworld. Frogs and toads make a good psychopomp, a go-between between the realms of life and death, because they are amphibious. Mesoamerican myth made good use of frog statues to denote the entrance to the underworld (which features prominently in their mythology). Thus the Isle of Toads statue implies a descent to the underworld. 

When Quentyn gets eaten by the dragon, he "turns into frog again," his voice becoming a croak. He's about to become food and enter the underworld. I think it's a bit of a frog-eater / frog food joke (think of Jojen paste). And isn't it the green dragon that burns him? 

Notice the underworld imagery of the pit under the pyramid where the dragons are. It's the heft of darkness one time, stinks of brimstone and sulphur, the burned bricks drink the light. It's pretty thick. 

Ill have to look up the rain of frogs scene, what book is that in? 

As for the God Emperor's pearl, which sure seems like a meteor, perhaps that's what it is. It's just an older meteorite which the GEotD used for magic and flaming swords. That's maybe where the BSE got the idea of bringing down his own meteor and making a more terrible sword. The God Emperor pearl meteorite could have fallen anytime, thousands of years in the past. It does happen, it doesn't always take a moon disaster to get a meteor of course. 

[LmL]

59 minutes ago, Evolett said:

Exactly. The FQs are only half of the story. Relating this to the 'Womb of the World' and the 'Mother of Mountains' - the FQ = the WoW, while the Lengi/Tiger/Lion women stem from the 'Mother of Mountains'. Cersei is one good hint here: by giving Qyburn the go-ahead to 'remodel' Gregor Clegane, she's identifiable as one of these 'Mother of Mountains'. And I would say Nissa Nissa carried the inheritance of both within her.

I have been on board the "God Emeperors marry Lengi God-Empresses" train for a long time. Your Fisher Queen ideas are under consideration, but I am not sold. I follow all of your symbolic analysis, but the question is "does the symbolism of the Fisher Queens refer to something else or to itself?" We find Sandor playing the role of AA reborn for example in the Sansa moon blood scene, but nobody things he is actual Azor Ahai reborn - he's just echoing a pattern, or you could say George is hiding the metaphor in lots of places just to show us the pattern. Point being, does the Fisher Queen stuff matter in and of itself? The Jogos Nhai / Xia Xorseface story echoes the LH, but the LH is not a Jogos Nhai... you see what I am saying. There are reasons to think the Fisher Queens hem selves were important, but I am not sure about it. Like many of your more specific and speculative ideas, I don't really judge them true or false but rather I keep them in mind as a possibility so that if I find evidence in support, I can contribute. Dany is showing a lot of Fisher Queen symbolism, which I think works in your favor. In any case, I am pretty confident Lengi Empresses married GEotD emperors, and tiger woman is almost certainly a reference to this. You know I also think the "Old Ones" beneath Leng are super important, the horned gods or "green men" to be more specific. Like tall relatives of the cotf, I believe the Old Ones have the golden eyes and brown skin of the cotf, but clearly they are tall motherfuckers. I think all this crap about the horned lord and antler wearing giants, Garth the Green and Durran Godsgrief, are talking about the greenseers who were not cotf, the ones who dropped the Hammer of the Waters. Azor Ahai would have been one of these, at least in part, and I think the Others and the Blood of the Dragon both trace back to the Old One greenseers. I am curious if marrying a tiger woman was really an act of rebellion or a tradition - was this the first Lengi tiger woman to wed a GEotD emperor? If so, we can deduce the BSE married her for her magic to some extent, right? 

Monkey's Tail woman might be tiger woman, honestly. I think it was Lady Barbrey who did a great write up of Monkey's Tail woman. I don't think the folks in the east have their heroes and villains straight, of course, since they remember AA as a hero, so in my mind we have to flexible in assigning the various roles. Nissa Nissa could be Tiger Woman and Monley's tail woman. It's really hard to say, which is why I didn't usually try to get that specific. I'd rather say there was interbreeding with the GEotD and these Old Ones, or perhaps the Fisher Queens as you say. Which one? How many children? Who knows. We can follow modern echoes and reverse apply them to the past, but this is sketchy and highly subjective work. I think at a certain point we have to speak of possibilities and generalities: "something like this or that seems to have happened," etc. 

[Evolett]

6 minutes ago, LmL said:

Ill have to look up the rain of frogs scene, what book is that in? 

 

Sometimes she brought back sailor’s tales, of strange and wondrous happenings from the wide wet world beyond the isles of Braavos, wars and rains of toads and dragons hatching. AFFC, Cat of the Canals - Brilliant quote actually.

Seeing as you're well-versed in toad lore, I'll give you my take on the significance of the toad: in a nutshell, the toad is an ancient representative of the drowned god. As an amphibian at home both on land and in water, it's the perfect creature to mediate between the 'drowned god and man. 

Regarding the emperor's pearl - I always assumed it might have been a meteor that just happened to land on earth. The other possibility is much more intriquing however - a ball of energy - the stuff that might have powered that floating palace around the shores of the Silver Sea . And the notion does find similar expression in the weirwoods on the Isle of Faces.

[LmL]

31 minutes ago, Evolett said:

 

Sometimes she brought back sailor’s tales, of strange and wondrous happenings from the wide wet world beyond the isles of Braavos, wars and rains of toads and dragons hatching. AFFC, Cat of the Canals - Brilliant quote actually.

Seeing as you're well-versed in toad lore, I'll give you my take on the significance of the toad: in a nutshell, the toad is an ancient representative of the drowned god. As an amphibian at home both on land and in water, it's the perfect creature to mediate between the 'drowned god and man. 

Regarding the emperor's pearl - I always assumed it might have been a meteor that just happened to land on earth. The other possibility is much more intriquing however - a ball of energy - the stuff that might have powered that floating palace around the shores of the Silver Sea . And the notion does find similar expression in the weirwoods on the Isle of Faces.

That leads perfectly into something I was about to bring up, so let me bounce this off you. The sea and the sky are interchangeable, whether we speak of a sea of stars or the cosmic ocean. When you're in a calm sea at night, the similarity is readily apparent. Martin's specifically noted it several times. So consider the symbolism of the pearl palanquin held by a hundred queens in which a star king rides, and compare it to the floating palace of the great and wise Fisher Queen. It's pretty similar, isn't it? 

Now you're also correct that the Isle of Faces parallels the floating palace. In my God's Eye celestial symbol, the Isle of Faces parallels the moon, and the lake is the sun. The Silver Sea - is it the moon itself, or the entire sky? If the S Sea is the sky, then the place is the moon, and if that's the case, it's a perfect match to the Isle of Faces (which is the moon) and the Pearl Palanquin (pearl can = moon). So whether it's perceived as a king or queen, the monarch rides around in or on the moon. 

Right?

Now the Gods Eye isn't just the sun or moon, but the combination of the two. That's when the sun and moon can have sex and make Lightbringer babies. Does the God Emperor, as the son of the sun, represent the solar aspect to the pearls lunar aspect? Or are we right to see the God Emperor and the pearl as two parts of a whole which represent the Morningstar (which is a comet in ASOIAF) as we discussed yesterday? 

The weirwoods, with their branches reaching to the heavens and their resemblance to Yggdrasil and other world trees, represent the celestial axis. That means the branches of the tree are the celestial realm, blah blah blah I already said that. Ok. The point is, the idea of greenseers or Azor Ahai or both as I suspect reaching into the heavens and doing any kind of comet-steering is perfectly symbolized by the weirwood. Their leaves are bits of flame or bloody hands, symbolize the blood and fire in the sky which came with the forging of Lightbringer and the second moon destruction. We've seen that greenseers have incredible powers of astral projection, and we've seen the weirwoods be described as reaching to pull down the moon, scratch at the face of the moon, etc. You were talking about the Silver Sea or Isle of Faces being a place to focus power like a lense and send it up the the heavens - we are talking about the same thing, I'm sure you realize. However I think the key is sound, as you yourself suggested to me several months ago, as opposed to light. There is a line in the battle of he Blackwater about the light of a green fire shooting up at the heavens or something, I'm on mobile and can't quote it but it bears looking at. I think all the green fire and green dragon stuff refers to greenseers and fire magic interacting. 

[Evolett]

10 minutes ago, LmL said:

You were talking about the Silver Sea or Isle of Faces being a place to focus power like a lense and send it up the the heavens - we are talking about the same thing, I'm sure you realize. However I think the key is sound, as you yourself suggested to me several months ago, as opposed to light. There is a line in the battle of he Blackwater about the light of a green fire shooting up at the heavens or something, I'm on mobile and can't quote it but it bears looking at. I think all the green fire and green dragon stuff refers to greenseers and fire magic interacting. 

No, it's the other way round. Power (light) isn't focused to be sent to the heavens, light power, both sunlight and moonlight (or some specific portion of the light spectrum) comes from the heavens. It's gathered from the heavens by the trees for a purpose on earth. That's the principle of a horoscopical gem. Sending soundwaves into the heavens is another matter and I'm not certain weirwoods are involved in transmitting sound, in fact I don't think so. Human singing and instruments are more likely here as suggested by the Church of Starry Wisdom which recalls a choir of voices singing, sending out sound waves into the heavens. 

As the son of two suns, the first god-emperor should be a sun himself. He sits on a pearl carried by wives - he's married to the moon. Moon is wife of sun - it is known. Is he also morning star? Perhaps his descending to earth and returning to the heavens makes him one.

 

On the tiger-woman and the Lengi: the legend speaks of the tiger-woman in the same breath as dark sorcery, necromancy etc, giving us the impression that marrying a tiger-woman was not the done thing at the time and perhaps on a par with the rest of the BSE's evil deeds. Tales of the Lengi putting strangers to death may also go back a long way, perhaps this was an ancient tradition. If this is so, it's no surprise that wedding a 'tiger-woman' caused alarm. Looking at it from that angle suggests he may indeed have been the first to wed a woman from that island. We don't have much to go on but I think next to their height, the main feature of interest are their eyes. They do not have to be related to the CotF or the Naathi for that matter. Eye-colour links these different people/races and imo the eyes are the key to whatever magical ability these folk share. The native tall Lengi stand out because of their height. Both men and women are very tall. They are giants among humans, some reaching 8 feet, as tall as Gregor Clegane. The island is home to great apes, as large as giants and some as clever as man. That's a lot of giants and outsized men. If the BSE married one of these people, then she is a likely candidate for the 'Mother of Giants', or as the Dothraki put it 'the Mother of Mountains'. Same thing. We can't be sure, but despite the scanty information, we can narrow it down. The CotF are similarly associated with giants - their brothers and their bane. And so are the Naathi with their jolly laughing giant God of Harmony. What we can pin down for sure is a connection between giants and golden-eyed folk.    

@hiemal's thoughts on the forging of LB have merit and are very relevant in this regard. So far all eyes have been on the forging in NN, but what about the other two? Are they just decoration? The Dothraki have two different mothers - note mothers, no forefathers are mentioned. Seems significant to me. The FQs and the Lengi tiger-woman could represent these mothers respectively, more likely than not. If we assume the two races have different intrinsic magical ability, it possible that both were subject to sacrifice in the quest for magic swords. Nissa Nissa as a descendant of both races then combines both types of magic to create the ultimate sword.  We can even spin this further by taking 'salt and 'smoke' into consideration. Salt, destilled from the Silver Sea, a FQ inheritance, and Smoke, the stuff that rises from Valyrian volcanos - from the heritage of the Mother of Mountains. Salt and Smoke is all about heritage, it makes sense for it to be meant that way. 

I must look for Lady Barbrey's work on the woman with the monkey's tail. I haven't read that yet. Spontaneous thoughts would be the Lemur, also called Little Valyrian because of it's silver hair and purple eyes which people rub for luck. Tyrion, the monkey-demon, also rubbed for luck. Tyrion on his way to Dany - tailing her.. Lemur means ghost or spirit.  So, the woman with the monkey's tail could have been the Amethyst Princess (reborn, as the spirit or ghost might indicate). 

 

 

[Blind Beth the Cat Lady]

2 hours ago, LmL said:

I have been on board the "God Emeperors marry Lengi God-Empresses" train for a long time. Your Fisher Queen ideas are under consideration, but I am not sold. I follow all of your symbolic analysis, but the question is "does the symbolism of the Fisher Queens refer to something else or to itself?" We find Sandor playing the role of AA reborn for example in the Sansa moon blood scene, but nobody things he is actual Azor Ahai reborn - he's just echoing a pattern, or you could say George is hiding the metaphor in lots of places just to show us the pattern. Point being, does the Fisher Queen stuff matter in and of itself? The Jogos Nhai / Xia Xorseface story echoes the LH, but the LH is not a Jogos Nhai... you see what I am saying. There are reasons to think the Fisher Queens hem selves were important, but I am not sure about it. Like many of your more specific and speculative ideas, I don't really judge them true or false but rather I keep them in mind as a possibility so that if I find evidence in support, I can contribute. Dany is showing a lot of Fisher Queen symbolism, which I think works in your favor.

I'm surprised to realize you're so ambivalent about the Fisher Queen/Silver Sea stuff. Seems like it's crawling with moon symbolism.

FWIW, when I was listening to your bit about the myth of Clytie, I thought that it sounded like a spot-on allegory for the AE's mom. (Evolett completely sold me on AE as having Dawnian and and Silver Sea parentage--which also works perfectly with my interpretation of Dany's fever dream. I'll have to post that in full sometime.)

As per Evolett, the purple and silver aspects of Dany seem to be FQ while the gold aspect is Dawnian. Especially if we consider that the gold-ish hair seems consistent through the lineage of gemstone emperors (paternal line) while the eye color changes (which may imply that eye colors were brought in by the mothers of various lineages--this seems especially likely as the first gemstone emperor is a "blank slate" of eye color--pearl, which is white (sorry Evolett, I hope that doesn't confuse your pearl imagery)). Perhaps the mother of the topaz emperor was also Lengii, giving him golden eyes. But that's not important at the moment.

Point being...

- Clytie was a water nymph (Fisher Queen?)

- Beloved of Helios (sunny deity--Dawnian Emperor?--a solar king figure in your parlance)

- Abandoned by Helios (different mothers between AE and BSE could explain radically different color schemes and terrible relationship; also gives us quite a close echo between Blood Betrayal and the inheritance struggle at the heart of The Princess and the Queen)

- Clytie is transformed in to a turnsole/heliotrope/valyrian/violet figure. (Although I think this part is more figurative; AE's mom would need to already have violet eyes to pass them on to her daughter.)

2 hours ago, LmL said:

In any case, I am pretty confident Lengi Empresses married GEotD emperors, and tiger woman is almost certainly a reference to this. You know I also think the "Old Ones" beneath Leng are super important, the horned gods or "green men" to be more specific. Like tall relatives of the cotf, I believe the Old Ones have the golden eyes and brown skin of the cotf, but clearly they are tall motherfuckers. I think all this crap about the horned lord and antler wearing giants, Garth the Green and Durran Godsgrief, are talking about the greenseers who were not cotf, the ones who dropped the Hammer of the Waters. Azor Ahai would have been one of these, at least in part, and I think the Others and the Blood of the Dragon both trace back to the Old One greenseers. I am curious if marrying a tiger woman was really an act of rebellion or a tradition - was this the first Lengi tiger woman to wed a GEotD emperor? If so, we can deduce the BSE married her for her magic to some extent, right? 

Specifically my thought is that the Green Men are CotF/Dawnian hybrids--combining the nature magic of the CotF with green magic from the Dawnian color magic spectrum. If Dawnians intermarried with Lengii as well, it makes sense for Leng to have such hybrids as well.

I too am curious if the "tiger woman" bride was a deviation or actually something normal that was painted as deviant in hindsight. And I think it's 99% likely BSE married her primarily for her magic.

2 hours ago, LmL said:

Monkey's Tail woman might be tiger woman, honestly. I think it was Lady Barbrey who did a great write up of Monkey's Tail woman. I don't think the folks in the east have their heroes and villains straight, of course, since they remember AA as a hero, so in my mind we have to flexible in assigning the various roles. Nissa Nissa could be Tiger Woman and Monley's tail woman. It's really hard to say, which is why I didn't usually try to get that specific. I'd rather say there was interbreeding with the GEotD and these Old Ones, or perhaps the Fisher Queens as you say. Which one? How many children? Who knows. We can follow modern echoes and reverse apply them to the past, but this is sketchy and highly subjective work. I think at a certain point we have to speak of possibilities and generalities: "something like this or that seems to have happened," etc. 

I'm still shipping tiger woman and monkey tail as different. Mainly because Leng is noted to have both tigers and monkeys. And that's all the fauna we hear about. So to me it makes sense that those are the two most dominant types of skinchangers and that we have an historic notable of each type.

Though I did toy with the idea of them being the same, making (in my version) NN also the woman with the monkey tail. Her "heroic" action to end the long night being her sacrifice of her soul to make Lightbringer. (Heroic to her fans anyway, as AA is heroic to his questionable fan base.)

But...eh.

(I need to go back and read Lady Barbrey's work, I recall looking at it but no details.)

[Evolett]

19 minutes ago, Blind Beth the Cat Lady said:

As per Evolett, the purple and silver aspects of Dany seem to be FQ while the gold aspect is Dawnian. Especially if we consider that the gold-ish hair seems consistent through the lineage of gemstone emperors (paternal line) while the eye color changes (which may imply that eye colors were brought in by the mothers of various lineages--this seems especially likely as the first gemstone emperor is a "blank slate" of eye color--pearl, which is white (sorry Evolett, I hope that doesn't confuse your pearl imagery)). Perhaps the mother of the topaz emperor was also Lengii, giving him golden eyes. But that's not important at the moment.

It doesn't confuse the pearl imagery at all. So far I've concentrated on the women - still working on the male pearls, most of whom are concentrated in Slaver's Bay. The concentration seems to be on hair rather than eye-colour there. But the first god-emperor is the odd one out in terms of gems - reminds me of the Bolton's eyes, though I'd be hard-pressed to make a connection at the moment. His son is the Pearl emperor though - like you say, if gems = eye-colour, he could have inherited from his pearl mothers. Then again, the genetics of eye-colour is a complicated affair; mixing tones doesn't necessarily result in colours we would expect and there's always the issue of dominance versus recessive genes. Tricky business.

 

 

[LmL]

1 hour ago, Blind Beth the Cat Lady said:

I'm surprised to realize you're so ambivalent about the Fisher Queen/Silver Sea stuff. Seems like it's crawling with moon symbolism.

Oh it surely is, it's just sometimes heard to say if the symbolism is in reference to something else or not. Like I said, George gave us a Last Hero mini drama with Lo Bu and the Jogos Nhai, but I think that's merely a parallel which contains clues about the Last Hero, not that the Last Hero is a Johos Nhai or YiTish emperor. Perhaps the last of the GEotD emperors, who could be remembered as the last of the Fisher Queens.

@Evolett, I'm repsonding to your comments too here. So, let's talk about Huzhor Amai, the amazing, who founded Sarnor and supposedly ties the Sarnori (who have been around since shortly after the LN, fighting in the Ghiscari wars which were 5,000 years ago) to the Fisher Queens. It is my opinion that the destruction of the Fisher Queens kingdom happened during the Long Night. It's the most logical, being a cultural bottleneck where famine and death and anarchy would topple all institutions and organized states.  It's likely the case of all the drying out we see in the east, from the Red Waste to the Great Sand Sea to the Shrinking Sea to the disappearance of the Silver Sea itself. The Silver Sea turning into three smaller lakes, the only one of which we see is black, is a direct parallel to the moon being burned black and three dragon meteors landing on earth (with one of them breaking up in the atmosphere to make the meteor shower). One big silver thing turning into three black things, that's the song.

Anyway, about Huzhor, he would be the person who organized some kind of social order in the wake of the Long Night - every people or nation has this character. Bran the builder, Durran Godsgrief, the Grey King, Hugor Hill - these folks had many children and founded nations. This would all have taken place after the cultural reset that was the LN. So Huzhor Amai, with his name so similar to Azor Ahai? My guess is that some survivors of the GEotD went over the Bones Mountains (we are specifically shown evidence of east west migration over the Bones in TWOIAF) and carried the name with them - Azor Ahai could be a title for all we know. Thus the ancient legend of the Long Night character Azor Ahai became merged, over time, with their more local founding hero, and the name changed to Huzhor Amai... something like that. So what I have always been seeing is a connection between the Sarnori and the GEotD. There are a lot of things in the Sarnori section that seem a shoutout to the GEotD. So it's not like I'm against the idea of an actual pre-LN contact between the Fisher Queens and the GEotD. It does make a certain amount of sense. The Sarnori also were said to sail as far as Asshai to trade - why is that? That's a long way around, through the Narrow Sea and all the way east. Perhaps they had a bit of knowledge about ancient Asshai that motivates them to go there. 

A variation on this Huzor stuff is that it's simply a common language, brought over the Bones by the GEotD fugitives that interbred with people on the plains (Fisher Queen descendants) to create the Sarnori. Huzhor married 3 women of different tribes to unite the nation, but it does not say where he himself is from. It's easy to imagine him as a powerful sorcerer or warrior from the GEotD who escaped and was viewed as god like by the peoples he met. If he was wise and powerful, he would be able to unite everyone as he was said to have. If the GEotD already had Fisher Queen heritage as you suggest, it explains why a GEotD fugitive like Huzhor Amai (hypothesis) could claim to be the last son of the Fisher Queens. 

Interesting ideas, for sure... The thing is that it's so far from the main plot, which is already something people complain about with my stuff sometimes. I'm always trying to work on the stuff that is the most relevant tot he plot... and so as much as I love all the Sarnor Fisher Queens stuff - I wrote about here in Fingerprints of the Dawn Part 2 - I haven't gone back to it because I'm trying to work my way to all the horned lord greenseer stuff I was just talking about. 

I'm glad it's being brought up here and I very much enjoyed reading the pearl essays @Evolett. I'm glad you're crawling around with a magnifying glass (myrish lens?) and looking at all this stuff. 

1 hour ago, Blind Beth the Cat Lady said:

FWIW, when I was listening to your bit about the myth of Clytie, I thought that it sounded like a spot-on allegory for the AE's mom. (Evolett completely sold me on AE as having Dawnian and and Silver Sea parentage--which also works perfectly with my interpretation of Dany's fever dream. I'll have to post that in full sometime.)

As per Evolett, the purple and silver aspects of Dany seem to be FQ while the gold aspect is Dawnian. Especially if we consider that the gold-ish hair seems consistent through the lineage of gemstone emperors (paternal line) while the eye color changes (which may imply that eye colors were brought in by the mothers of various lineages--this seems especially likely as the first gemstone emperor is a "blank slate" of eye color--pearl, which is white (sorry Evolett, I hope that doesn't confuse your pearl imagery)). Perhaps the mother of the topaz emperor was also Lengii, giving him golden eyes. But that's not important at the moment.

Point being...

- Clytie was a water nymph (Fisher Queen?)

- Beloved of Helios (sunny deity--Dawnian Emperor?--a solar king figure in your parlance)

- Abandoned by Helios (different mothers between AE and BSE could explain radically different color schemes and terrible relationship; also gives us quite a close echo between Blood Betrayal and the inheritance struggle at the heart of The Princess and the Queen)

- Clytie is transformed in to a turnsole/heliotrope/valyrian/violet figure. (Although I think this part is more figurative; AE's mom would need to already have violet eyes to pass them on to her daughter.)

Right on, yep I follow you here. The moon maiden is frequently a water nymph or mermaid, I believe this is primarily because of the idea of the moon drowning (which I believe refers to moon meteors drowning of course). It allows George to make good use of all the terrific water-goddesses associated with the moon in world mythology, which he has certainly done. Clytie is but one of many. Of course the moon and the tides are directly related, and the night sky is a type of sea, as I mentioned above. It makes all the pearl symbolism @Evolett is exploring work so well. I need to do my own essay on drowning moon goddesses, but I'll surely be referencing Evolett's stuff as it works so well with my ideas. 

All of the courtesans have moon maiden names - moon shadow and black pearl are great ones. Veiled lady, another moon name. Oh and Evolett - starlight and sea-foam is a direct reference to Aphrodite, the "foam born." Zeus's gentials were hacked off, and fell into the sea. Aphrodite rose from the sea foam, and her name means foam-born because of this. So starlight and sea foam and a bared breast - you see what is going on here. She is a moon goddess, which is the Nissa Nissa archetype - she bears her breast and dresses in starlight (moon goddess in the sky) and sea foam (moon goddess born in the sea). I was surpassed you didn't mention Aphrodite in your essay.

The fact that Azor Ahai is a hero "reborn in the sea" refers to the fact that AA reborn is also NN reborn, because the moon meteors are pieces of moon, fertilized / burnt by solar fire, children of the sun and the moon... as I have said many times. Azor Ahai is reborn in the sea, but that's also the rebirth of the moon, just as Dany immerses herself in the WOTW while the moon shatters and reforms. 

1 hour ago, Blind Beth the Cat Lady said:

Specifically my thought is that the Green Men are CotF/Dawnian hybrids--combining the nature magic of the CotF with green magic from the Dawnian color magic spectrum. If Dawnians intermarried with Lengii as well, it makes sense for Leng to have such hybrids as well.

Yep, something along those lines. I don't know how the breeding flow chart works, if the "Old Ones" came before humans (seems likely) or if they are transformed humans, or what. But some mix of these ideas went down, it seems like we agree. I'm glad we agree! That's nice, just to mix things up.

There is a spot where Bran refers to tales of evil giants who live in a castle - I think those are the Old Ones. Westerosi giants don't live in or build castles. So what's that story about? We are told Durran Godsgrief - the antler headed man who defied the gods and married an aquatic goddess - built Storm's End, which is set with spells and whose origin is lost in the remote past. That's pretty much giving it away, right there - the horned lords built the ancient structures of Westeros. The language used to describe the spells set into the walls of Storm's End and the Wall are identical - they are even called "old ones" in the Nightfort chapter, as in "there are spells set into these walls, old ones and strong," something like that. Anyway, I think the horned lords / Old Ones built SE, and interestingly, one rumor about SE is that cotf helped Durran build it by turning stone to liquid, which sounds oddly Valyrian and not t all in keeping with cotf. Basically, any time we hear about cotf doing things which do not fit them - like calling down the Hammer - I believe the real culprit is the horned lords, who were also greenseers. 

The idea of them still existing on the Isle of Faces is... just... really exciting. Anyway, the horned lords built SE, and they built the Wall I think (thus we see the tale of giants and cotf building the Wall is garbled truth - it was very tall horned lords / green men who were giants and greenseers). They probably built the fused stone at Battle Isle - although that could be a different faction - and the First Keep, and Pyke, and Moat Cailin. Some or all of those, I suspect. 

1 hour ago, Blind Beth the Cat Lady said:

I too am curious if the "tiger woman" bride was a deviation or actually something normal that was painted as deviant in hindsight. And I think it's 99% likely BSE married her primarily for her magic.

I'm still shipping tiger woman and monkey tail as different. Mainly because Leng is noted to have both tigers and monkeys. And that's all the fauna we hear about. So to me it makes sense that those are the two most dominant types of skinchangers and that we have an historic notable of each type.

Though I did toy with the idea of them being the same, making (in my version) NN also the woman with the monkey tail. Her "heroic" action to end the long night being her sacrifice of her soul to make Lightbringer. (Heroic to her fans anyway, as AA is heroic to his questionable fan base.)

But...eh.

(I need to go back and read Lady Barbrey's work, I recall looking at it but no details.)

I'm keeping an open mind. Some details may have been switched around... it's historical telephone, so we always have to stay flexible. The "three heads has the dragon" and the three horned Baratheon bros make me wonder if there are three "children of AA" by either or both of his wives, however that works. Maybe monkey's tail woman is the daughter of AA, the LH of the east, while Eldric Shadowchaser / Dayne / Stark / ? was the LH of Westeros. 

[OIL, BLOOD, Water]

Just learned that Myrcella/Rosamund's actress in the show is named "Nell Tiger Free."

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

Coincidence? I think not! *puts on tinfoil crown*

But it's interesting that the actress who has to play a Lannister-Lioness is really only a cat of a different coat. 

 

Quote

 

And who are you, the proud lord said,
that I must bow so low?
Only a cat of a different coat,
that's all the truth I know.

In a coat of gold or a coat of red,
a lion still has claws,
And mine are long and sharp, my lord,
as long and sharp as yours.

 

[Evolett]

7 minutes ago, OIL, BLOOD, Water said:

Just learned that Myrcella/Rosamund's actress in the show is named "Nell Tiger Free."

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

Coincidence? I think not! *puts on tinfoil crown*

But it's interesting that the actress who has to play a Lannister-Lioness is really only a cat of a different coat. 

 

Well, Nell Tiger Free's name is probably totally irrelevant to the story itself. 
 

The line "only a cat of a different coat" is not however. As I stated above, we have three different cat-eyed races - the CotF, the Naathi and the Lengii. The line in the song relates to that, if anything, imo. 

[Evolett]

42 minutes ago, LmL said:

All of the courtesans have moon maiden names - moon shadow and black pearl are great ones. Veiled lady, another moon name. Oh and Evolett - starlight and sea-foam is a direct reference to Aphrodite, the "foam born." Zeus's gentials were hacked off, and fell into the sea. Aphrodite rose from the sea foam, and her name means foam-born because of this. So starlight and sea foam and a bared breast - you see what is going on here. She is a moon goddess, which is the Nissa Nissa archetype - she bears her breast and dresses in starlight (moon goddess in the sky) and sea foam (moon goddess born in the sea). I was surpassed you didn't mention Aphrodite in your essay.

Believe it or not, I have a whole page dedicated to all the gods, Zeus' castration, Aphrodite etc etc. I threw it out. The write up was getting far too long and to be honest, I much prefer investigating and writing about science-related themes when I discover them. But maybe I'll add two lines on Aphrodite, can't hurt 

[LmL]

7 minutes ago, Evolett said:

Believe it or not, I have a whole page dedicated to all the gods, Zeus' castration, Aphrodite etc etc. I threw it out. The write up was getting far too long and to be honest, I much prefer investigating and writing about science-related themes when I discover them. But maybe I'll add two lines on Aphrodite, can't hurt 

Right on, because I was quite certain you must be aware of it. I sympathize with the conundrum though - I always have to choose whether to say "the weirwood tree is largely based on Yggdrasil, which is a kind of world tree whose branches represent the heavens" or write a 10,000 word essay on the correlations and what they mean with full text quotes to support. It's always a bear to decide.

You should probably just release the Greek God study as a companion piece or something. You can link to it in the main essay and say "for those who are interested, there's a lot more to this over here..."

[Bluetiger]

I'm listening to 'House Dayne, part 2' now, about 30 minutes left, so I if I find time this afternoon or evening I'll listen to your new podcast.

 

[LmL]

@Blue Tiger, awesome and let me what you think of either one. 

Something occurred to me re: Leng. It's very similar to the Isle of Faces in some ways. The idea of the Lengi being hostile to foreigners and not letting people land on their island parallels the idea that the currents in the God's Eye don't let people easily reach the Isle. The four mass slaughters of "all the foreigners" on Leng by the Lengi remind us of the stories of mass human sacrifice in the Gods Eye to either drop the hammer or give all the trees faces to witness the pact (this latter story has some problems, but whatever). All the skinchanging ideas on Leng of course fit with the idea of greenseers or skinchangers on the Isle of Faces.

The Old Ones live on Leng... and I suspect the Green Men are Old Ones.