Heresy 189

[Black Crow]

1 hour ago, wolfmaid7 said:

I disagree with this to some degree.Mel's shell is human.She has certainly undergone some alteration but outwardly that body no matter how unique is passing as human

That rather depends on how true that picture is. We've long speculated, way before the mummers offered it, that what we see is a glamour, particularly given the references to shimmers both when describing Mel and the equally indestructible Moqorro

[LynnS]

1 hour ago, Black Crow said:

Yes, Redriver proposed something very like that way back in I think the second Heresy thread, proposing that the wall's function was to hold back Winter itself.

Its not an unattractive theory but mindful of a hinge having two leaves I'm still inclined to see it as both Ice and Fire butted up one against the other

Yes, I agree with Redriver but I can't remember if he explained how the Wall held back the cold.  I think the Wall does more than hold back the cold; I think it specifically draws the killing cold to itself and contains it in the ice itself.   The killing cold is the agent that puts out campfires and raises the dead.  It doesn't seem logical to me that it can be defeated with fire magic but only with ice magic itself.  How does the Wall contain an air mass?  Why doesn't it just go around or over?   I'll crib from some of my notes:

The Wall has the characteristics of a man made "fire" break in that the NW keep the trees cut down and provide for it's maintenance. Ostensibly, to keep the wildlings from getting across, which it fails to do, because it wasn't the wall's original purpose.

"Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him. And he looked past the Wall, past endless forests cloaked in snow, past the frozen shore and the great blue-white rivers of ice and the dead plains where nothing grew or lived. North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks." - Bran Got

 

The Wall has all the characteristics of a glacier in it's massive size and it's blue white color. Glaciers are sometimes characterized as having the properties of stone. That Planetos went through some kind of ice age seems evident with the inclusion of such animals as the woolly mammoths and the now defunct unicorns (woolly rhinoceros). Possibly even the giants as a proto-race like the neanderthal. Finding the Horn of Joramun under a receding glacier is contemporary with finding stone age artifacts that we do today. It's also suggestive that the last ice age began receding about 12,000 years ago and that massive flooding events in North America and the Middle East occurred giving us the origin stories for Gilgamesh and Noah and in GRRM's world, the Hammer of the Waters.  The CotF wouldn't have to call down a comet or meteor to do that or call up the waters of the oceans;  they would just have to break the ice holding back massive glacial lakes.    Essentially, the wall is a massive dam.  If absorbs and contains the killing cold; otherwise everything within it's reach, plant and animal would become a dead zone.  So bringing down the Wall or releasing the magic it contains would result in a massive tsunami of death.  Very dangerous indeed.  

I think the Wall is made of the same magic stuff that animates the wights and it feeds on death.   This is why it's evil.  It draws the killing cold to itself and contains it and the more of the stuff it gets; the stronger the wall becomes.  It's using the same ice magic at the Ancient One as a defence for the living. 

The physical wall is not made of 'normal ice' and it's infused with ice magic and warding magic. Just as a glacier locks water up inside it; the wall locks up the killing cold inside it. This may be the reason for it's massive size; why the Night's Watch has to maintain it and continue topping it up.  The killing cold is responsible for the Wall being made of blood as Ygritte tells Jon.

In a sense, the Wall wasn't raised... magic was applied to it; so it would devour the ice sheet behind it and draw the killing cold to itself.  The Night's Watch continued to add to it.   This is how the season's became unbalanced with long summers and winters. The more the Wall grew in size; the more the seasons were unbalanced.   The Wall absorbs too much cold; melting the North when it should remain cool ending in long summers and then drawing down the cold to swing the climate the other way for the long winters.

Physically, it's a remnant of a glacier; the front edge of the ice sheet that remains having been 'fixed' in place with binding and ice magic.  It serves to dam the killing cold, the cold that raises the dead;  drawing, consuming, and containing it.  When it was first raised; it consumed it's own tail until only the fixed portion remained becoming the Wall.  It shrinks and it grows with the seasons.  The NW continuing to add to it's size.  It continues to draw the killing cold to itself and it's so massive it affects the seasons.  It has to come down; but doing so would release all that killing cold collected and contained for thousands of years and wipe out everything in it's way.  All the fires would go out.

The Wall is GRRM's version of the Orobouros; the serpent or dragon that consumes it's own tail.  

And these descriptions from Bran from aSoS following his encounter with Jon before entering the Night Fort:

The Wall could look like stone, all grey and pitted, but then the clouds would break and the sun would hit it differently, and all at once it would transform, and stand there white and blue and glittering. It was the end of the world, Old Nan always said. On the other side were monsters and giants and ghouls, but they could not pass so long as the Wall stood strong.

He remembered Maester Luwin saying the Nightfort was the only castle where the steps had been cut from the ice of the wall itself. Or maybe it had been Uncle Benjen. The newer castles had wooden steps, or stone ones, or long ramps of earth and gravel. Ice is too treacherous. It was his uncle who'd told him that. He said the outer surface of the Wall wept icy tears sometimes, though the core inside stayed frozen hard as rock. The steps must have melted and refrozen a thousand times since the last black brothers left the castle, and every time they did they shrunk a little and got smoother and rounder and more treacherous.

And smaller. It's almost like the Wall was swallowing them back into itself.

And yes, there is a fire side to the equation.  The Wall is described by Benjen as both a Sword and a Serprent: a hinge of the world with two leaves.  One connecting to Winterfell and the other to the House of the Undying.  I expect that Dany will have to resolve the fire side of the Wall equation with Euron as protagonist.

The first known appearance of the ouroboros motif is in the Enigmatic Book of the Netherworld, an ancient Egyptian funerary text in KV62, the tomb of Tutankhamun, in the 14th century BC. The text concerns the actions of the god Ra and his union with Osiris in the underworld. In an illustration from this text, two serpents, holding their tails in their mouths, coil around the head and feet of an enormous god, who may represent the unified Ra-Osiris. Both serpents are manifestations of the deity Mehen, who in other funerary texts protects Ra in his underworld journey. The whole divine figure represents the beginning and the end of time.[6] Wikipedia

I am the storm, my lord. The first storm, and the last. -Euron Greyjoy
 

The ice side of the equation:

In Norse mythology, the ouroboros appears as the serpent Jörmungandr, one of the three children of Loki and Angrboda, which grew so large that it could encircle the world and grasp its tail in its teeth.


The House of Black and White connection:

In alchemy, the ouroboros is a sigil. Swiss psychologist Carl Jung saw the ouroboros as an archetype and the basic mandala of alchemy. Jung also defined the relationship of the ouroboros to alchemy:[15]

The alchemists, who in their own way knew more about the nature of the individuation process than we moderns do, expressed this paradox through the symbol of the Ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. The Ouroboros has been said to have a meaning of infinity or wholeness. In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself. The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow. This 'feed-back' process is at the same time a symbol of immortality, since it is said of the Ouroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself and gives birth to himself. He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites, and he therefore constitutes the secret of the prima materia which [...] unquestionably stems from man's unconscious. - wikipedia

The Dawn Age:

The ouroboros or oroboros  is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail.

The ouroboros often symbolizes self-reflexivity, introspection, or cyclicality,[3] especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, and other things such as the phoenix which operate in cycles that begin anew as soon as they end. It can also represent the idea of primordial unity related to something existing in or persisting from the beginning with such force or qualities it cannot be extinguished.

The Jungian psychologist Erich Neumann writes of it as a representation of the pre-ego "dawn state", depicting the undifferentiated infancy experience of both mankind and the individual child.[5] 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Armstark]

1 hour ago, Black Crow said:

Yes, Redriver proposed something very like that way back in I think the second Heresy thread, proposing that the wall's function was to hold back Winter itself.

Its not an unattractive theory but mindful of a hinge having two leaves I'm still inclined to see it as both Ice and Fire butted up one against the other

So do you think a dragon could fly over the Wall or does its magic stop it?

[LynnS]

11 minutes ago, Armstark said:

So do you think a dragon could fly over the Wall or does its magic stop it?

There is no dragon Armstark.  The Wall consumes itself; it swallows it's own tail.

[wolfmaid7]

2 hours ago, LynnS said:

The fact that blizzards emanate from Winterfell is curious;  but so far we haven't seen any dead raised on the other side of the Wall.  Why not?  But yes, the killing cold has slammed into the wall timed with Jon's death.  The outcome will answer a lot of questions.

Haven't we though? Othor and Jaffar were Southside no? As to why none father south? I think its because the cold winds aren't rising in the south. seem to recall the same with Beric in that Arya chaper as well but i'll double check..Yet.Once the winds make it pass the Wall game over.Here is where i think your idea and i think it was Redriver that also propsed this comes into play the wall being a kind of wind breaker.However, Armstark has put forth something i'm behind that means there are ways to get pass the Wall.That's basically via the tunnels which who knows may open back again.

AIso,if you can go through it,then you can also go under it which is where the underground connecting caves can come in.

[Armstark]

3 minutes ago, LynnS said:

There is no dragon Armstark.  The Wall consumes itself; it swallows it's own tail.

Not sure if serious but I wasn't really asking about your oroboros dragon but more about the Targaryen kind of dragon

 

I liked your write up though and agree with much of it. The 'killing cold' as you call it will not be released though when the Wall falls because it's turned into ice now and is no longer a cold wind. Doesn't really matter anyway though because there will be a fresh icy wind blowing from the North.

[Armstark]

12 minutes ago, wolfmaid7 said:

Haven't we though? Othor and Jaffar were Southside no? As to why none father south? I think its because the cold winds aren't rising in the south...Yet.Once the winds make it pass the Wall game over.Here is where i think your idea and i think it was Redriver that also propsed this comes into play the wall being a kind of wind breaker.However, Armstark has put forth something i'm behind that means there are ways to get pass the Wall.That's basically via the tunnels which who knows may open back again.

AIso,f you can go through it,then you can also go under it which is where the underground connecting caves can come in.

There is only one tunnel through the ice. Glad you liked it though

[LynnS]

14 minutes ago, wolfmaid7 said:

Haven't we though? Othor and Jaffar were Southside no? As to why none father south? I think its because the cold winds aren't rising in the south. seem to recall the same with Beric in that Arya chaper as well but i'll double check..Yet.Once the winds make it pass the Wall game over.Here is where i think your idea and i think it was Redriver that also propsed this comes into play the wall being a kind of wind breaker.However, Armstark has put forth something i'm behind that means there are ways to get pass the Wall.That's basically via the tunnels which who knows may open back again.

AIso,if you can go through it,then you can also go under it which is where the underground connecting caves can come in.

Oh, I see what you mean.  The thing is that Othor and Jaffar were infected on the other side of the wall first.  The only way to destroy that is with fire.  I meant have any fresh wights been raised on the southern side of the Wall?  Sorry, I haven't read Armstark's stuff.

[LynnS]

11 minutes ago, Armstark said:

Not sure if serious but I wasn't really asking about your oroboros dragon but more about the Targaryen kind of dragon

 

I liked your write up though and agree with much of it. The 'killing cold' as you call it will not be released though when the Wall falls because it's turned into ice now and is no longer a cold wind. Doesn't really matter anyway though because there will be a fresh icy wind blowing from the North.

Thank you Armstark.   I don't know about the fire dragons.   I haven't been around for a couple of years so I have a lot of catching up to do.  I'm really just offering an origin story for the wall and something about how I think it works as an ice break or how this is fighting ice with ice or fire with fire for that matter.  I would like to read your thread on how the wall has been breached.

[Armstark]

5 minutes ago, LynnS said:

  I would like to read your thread on how the wall has been breached.

Well, you are already in the right thread  It's on page 7.

[LynnS]

1 minute ago, Armstark said:

Well, you are already in the right thread  It's on page 7.

LOL! Thank you. 

[LynnS]

On 2016-07-23 at 6:47 PM, Armstark said:

I propose a different solution to this question: The Wall does block the magic that is controlling the wights (cold winds) but it has a flaw: the ignorant Night's Watch cut a tunnel into the ice. Not enough for large scale army-controlling but certainly enough for a small operation near the tunnel like with Jafer and Othor. There is a reason the Black Gate is underground.

Exactly!  There is no Gatekeeper. Seems plausible to me.  They can't get past the iron gates; so they go in like a trojan horse.

[LynnS]

3 hours ago, wolfmaid7 said:

However, Armstark has put forth something i'm behind that means there are ways to get pass the Wall.That's basically via the tunnels which who knows may open back again.

AIso,if you can go through it,then you can also go under it which is where the underground connecting caves can come in.

Yes, it's possible unless those entrances have been warded by the CotF like the entrance to Bloodraven's cave.  They've been in the caves for a long time.  I'm inclined to think that the gate at Castle Black is the breach; the crack in the wall that Dany sees in her vision; the blue flower growing from it and Ned's dream of a storm of rose petals, blue as the eyes of death foreshadowing the wars to come.  Unless Bran or Sam can seal the breach; the wights can get through.

Armstark's comment that once the cold wind is trapped in the wall; it's becomes inert also makes sense.  Unless the magic that traps the cold wind is still active.  And I question that now; since Dany burned down the House of the Undying and the beating blue heart within it.  She may have destroyed that magic or that part of the hinge.   Yes, I think all hell is about to break loose.

Added:  The more I think about, the more convinced I become that Dany did destroy the Great Lore that raised the Wall.  The Black Gate still works tied to weirwood magic and perhaps a gate at Winterfell of the same type.  But it's redundant at the Wall and the gate at Castle Black is irrelevant.  There's nothing to stop the wights from swarming over the Wall just as Jon sees them in his beserker dream.

      

[wolfmaid7]

5 hours ago, Black Crow said:

That rather depends on how true that picture is. We've long speculated, way before the mummers offered it, that what we see is a glamour, particularly given the references to shimmers both when describing Mel and the equally indestructible Moqorro

That's why i said though altered and given over to the flames ,they were still humans.

3 hours ago, Armstark said:

There is only one tunnel through the ice. Glad you liked it though

Oops typo.Yeah that way through was a sweet bit of thinking there.

 

3 hours ago, LynnS said:

Oh, I see what you mean.  The thing is that Othor and Jaffar were infected on the other side of the wall first.  The only way to destroy that is with fire.  I meant have any fresh wights been raised on the southern side of the Wall?  Sorry, I haven't read Armstark's stuff.

Ahhh ok i see what your asking.Yeah i don't think the cold winds have made it that far and i think its the Wall.If that one obstacle is dealt with then game on.

 

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

Yes, it's possible unless those entrances have been warded by the CotF like the entrance to Bloodraven's cave.  They've been in the caves for a long time.  I'm inclined to think that the gate at Castle Black is the breach; the crack in the wall that Dany sees in her vision; the blue flower growing from it and Ned's dream of a storm of rose petals, blue as the eyes of death foreshadowing the wars to come.  Unless Bran or Sam can seal the breach; the wights can get through.

I'm not sure but i think that tunnel was an added addition by the Watch.The idea of the blue flower being the Black Gate is a new and intriguing one.I'm not sure about it but i would like to hear more about it..

2 hours ago, LynnS said:

Armstark's comment that once the cold wind is trapped in the wall; it's becomes inert also makes sense.  Unless the magic that traps the cold wind is still active.  And I question that now; since Dany burned down the House of the Undying and the beating blue heart within it.  She may have destroyed that magic or that part of the hinge.   Yes, I think all hell is about to break loose.

I don't think the wind itself is magical,its only a vehicle of travel for greenseers,i never thought about what that would be like when a greenseer slips skin and tries to go through.Maybe they bump off or maybe they are drawn in and trapped This raises a questions.The Wall was supposedly built after the Longnight who tested out the theory about what can and cannot pass?

 

2 hours ago, LynnS said:

And I question that now; since Dany burned down the House of the Undying and the beating blue heart within it.  She may have destroyed that magic or that part of the hinge.   Yes, I think all hell is about to break loose.

I got lost here,how is Dany burning down THOTU going going to affect that magic? 

[LynnS]

7 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Its not an unattractive theory but mindful of a hinge having two leaves I'm still inclined to see it as both Ice and Fire butted up one against the other

I'm not sure about ice and fire butting up against each other and I don't think the Wall contains fire magic; but I do think conditions have been reset to to the events of the first long night.  Something that Melisandre is clearly afraid of and seems to know more about than we have been told so far.  I think there was an alliance between fire and ice to defeat the Ancient Enemy the first time.  Mel keeps searching for the face of the Great Other, the one who's name cannot be spoken and instead sees R'hllor's agents on the ice side of the equation: Bloodraven, Bran and Jon.  It's Moqorro who sees the face of the Ancient Enemy.  Euron who is intent on on destroying everthying including the God's Eye and he's after dragons.  That would make him the enemy of the Cotf and the Greenseers.  His sigil containing the red eye doesn't represent Bloodraven, but Euron since he will be called Bloodeye, revealed  in Aeron WoW chapter, I think.  The crows carrying the iron crow would suggest the Cotf but I suspect a schism of some kind.  That Mel refers to the enemy as the Great Other is also suggestive.  A name that can't be spoken, an ancient language.  

So it seems the Enemy is opening a front on both the fire side and the ice side.

The House of Black and White is suggestive of that original alliance with it's deference to in particular R'hllor and the God of Many Faces.  They seem to tie things together with Arya's crooked stitching and needle motif.  Something that shows up at the Wall with the switchback stairs, like a lightning bolt connecting the Sword and the Serpent hinges of the Wall.  And also at the House of Black and White; with the ensorceled black and white doors  Dany passes through before meeting a splendor of wizards.  I have no idea how that part will play out with Arya.

So just broad strokes.   

[LynnS]

3 minutes ago, wolfmaid7 said:

I'm not sure but i think that tunnel was an added addition by the Watch.The idea of the blue flower being the Black Gate is a new and intriguing one.I'm not sure about it but i would like to hear more about it..

This is one of the visions that Dany sees in the House of the Undying way back Clash of Kings where she meet Pyat Pree.

A blue flower growing from a chink in a wall of ice, filling the air with sweetness.  

Most people think this refers to Jon Snow but given that the Wall has been breached at Castle Black as Armstark points out,  I think the chink in the Wall is the gate at Castle Black considering the size of the Wall. Also  Ned has a fever dream where he sees a storm of rose petals; blue as the eyes of death.  To me this represents the coming storm of ice wights and ties in with the blue flower.  So far the chink is only a chink in the wall.  But as Dany progresses through the HoU; she eventually ends up in the room with the beating blue heart.  She almost succumbs to the undying until Drogon burns the heart and she makes her escape.

I've always wondered what the heart represented but I think it is the magic at the Wall, that Mel calls the Great Lore.  Not the Black Gate that came later but the lore, as I speculate that absorbs and contains the killing cold.  The wall removes the stuff that animates the wights and it's reason they can't simply climb the Wall. That is until the NW drilled at hole in the Wall.  But if the beating blue heart is destroyed and it represents the heart of the Wall, there is no containment any longer.  So it's a bit ironic; that the gate at Castle Black is more or less irrelevant.  That Wall fell when Drogon burned the Blue Heart and the HoU went down in flames.       

[LynnS]

52 minutes ago, wolfmaid7 said:

The Wall was supposedly built after the Longnight who tested out the theory about what can and cannot pass?

I think the wall was the advance edge of a glacier made of the killing cold and the magic that raises wights contained in the cold.  The results of the night that lasted a generation when snow fell hundreds of feet high according to old Nan.  How do you stop such a thing.  You have to use it's own magic against it.  Fighting ice with ice.  It has to consume it's own tail; all the ice behind it.  It becomes a Dam. You take away the weapon of mass destruction and force a retreat.  Ice preserves the body but it consumes life.  Death feeds off the life force; plant and animal.

So the wall wasn't actually raised in a physical sense.  The Cotf; greenseers, Bran the Builder; whoever is responsible for the magic it contains used the Glacier as it existed to create the Wall as we know it.  They had to apply the Great Lore to the entire leading edge.  So it probably was a lot smaller than 800 feet initially.  When the Ice Dam was created that was the end of the Long Night until now. At some point the Wildlings started burning their dead instead of burying with iron.  They know about the killing cold and that the dead can be raised and they are not providing the materials.

It's been 200 years since the Wall has been breached at Castle Black and nothing.  Until Dany and Jon came along, not to mention Bran who's been expected for 200 years according to Leaf.

To paraphrase Euron: the long night was the first storm and now Planetos is faced with the last storm.  Winner take all.

 

[Lady Dyanna]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there also a gate at Eastwatch? I thought that was why the giants and mammoths got sent there, because the gate was larger? I'm pretty sure that at one time all of the castles had gates carved through or under the wall. They just filled them in as each castle was abandoned. 

I do really like the idea that the wall was put up to absorb things, BTW. 

[Dornish Neck Tie]

Hmmm

What if the Wall is a literal fire extinguisher? Fires approaching from the south trigger the meltdown and drown the flames before they can reach the CotF's last major leafy refuge in the Haunted Forest.

Lol...

[LynnS]

1 hour ago, Lady Dyanna said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there also a gate at Eastwatch? I thought that was why the giants and mammoths got sent there, because the gate was larger? I'm pretty sure that at one time all of the castles had gates carved through or under the wall. They just filled them in as each castle was abandoned. 

I do really like the idea that the wall was put up to absorb things, BTW. 

I don't recall specifically, but that sounds plausible to me.  Could it be that they used iron gates? Is that also an effective ward of a sort.  I think the first men put iron into the graves to keep the dead from rising and the Watch was much more diligent in clearing back the trees back in the day.  Three horn blasts for the Others must have meant something at one time..