Heresy 192 The Wheel of Time

[LynnS]

16 minutes ago, DutchArya said:

Has anyone tried to really map this out? It would be really cool to see the parallels. 

I think people have been circling around it but perhaps with the wrong frame of reference.  I should also say that I think it's entirely possible that Jon was born on the Quiet Isle admidst  salt (saltpans) and smoke (smoking beehives) and this is where Ned was told he could find her.  I think it's possible to fit the AAR type without having a dragon blood mix.  We can't discount Dany as the firey aspect.  Drink from a cup of ice; drink from a cup of fire.  

I don't have the kind of knowledge that some people have regarding the plethora of characters and where anybody was at any given time.  I'm not sure we've been given all those details. 

[LynnS]

3 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Were you around for the Dark Narnia discussions way back in Heresy?

Where do you think "The Land of Always Winter" came from?

 

Alas, no.  I'm guessing it came from Dark Narnia.  LOL

[Melifeather]

58 minutes ago, GloubieBoulga said:

 

You were faster than me !

This abstract is very interesting because Sansa, when she is in her bedroom after, accomplish unconsciontly a false blood-magic ritual :

 

So, we have false blood, false fire (hearth cold), false smoke (the old ashes), she make herself nake, go to (nuptial ?) bed, and salt with false (=not sincere) tears. 

And she say "I hate her !" Fortunately, all is false. 

But in ACOK, when she has her periods, she act exactly the same way, with real fire (she try also to burn the bed), real tears, real feminine blood, and she think she absolutely don't want marry Joffrey (ACOK, Sansa IV)

But I didn't saw it before, because I don't think I had read this passage in english : is there a possible puns with "cold hearth"/"heart of winter" ? After all, the link between winter/cold and Stark family seems as strong as the link between fire and Targaryen. 

 

 

For the rest, you all, thanks. 

Yes, the heart of my theory is that each character has his proper song, and the totallity make the song of Ice and fire. When I re-read the first time, I was focused on the Azor Ahai and Lightbringer prophecy : so I was looking everywhere Azor Ahai reincarnate, and I found many character who lived a kind of "blood magic ritual". But their stories never told exactly about Azor Ahai or Lightbringer. Reading with a bit more attention, I found all legendary characters, and also gods.  

@Feather Crystal, I think I've found a image who evoques perfectly forme what I have understood about your wheel theory : a clock with pendulum. Needles are rolling all around the clock, and in the same time, pendulum is rocking from a side to another. Tic tac tic tac, winter is coming  

 

 

Wow. I had missed Sansa's "false" blood magic ritual, but I quite agree with your analysis. Very good!

57 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

ETA:  Actually, I see I've made an error.  The way it's written in the text is actually 'kof kof kof,' not 'kuf kuf kuf'...

In Dutch-derived languages, it can still mean the same though!

Oh fock. 

50 minutes ago, LynnS said:

I agree.  The symbolism of the white fawn sigil spattered with blood hanging beside the sleeping lion in Robert's Hall is also suggestive. The sleeping lion or the lion of Judah or the lion of Night (Night's King),  A new born babe in other words.  Roberts sigil is a black stag on a field of gold white the Grandison sigil is a black lion on a field of gold.  Longclaw is starting to make some sense.

I know your feelings regarding Robert's place as your favorite for Jon's father, and I'm leaning that way as well, but I also think Robert is Judas in that he betrayed his friend Ned and he's not the man Ned thought he knew. I think the white fawn sigil spattered with blood suggests he was complicit in the kidnapping plot that IMO was put together by Twyin.

47 minutes ago, Pain killer Jane said:

This is called Songline a concept in Australian Aboriginal culture.

 The Dreamtime we know as the Age of Heroes. 

 

I wish your quotes had copied...the part about the traveler knowing how to navigate by singing the song because it had landmarks, etc in it...it just feels so perfectly suited to the very definition of interpreting the Jabberwocky of the parallel inversions. If we find the parallels and decipher the inversions, we'll know what happened in the past and we'll be able to guess with fair accuracy what will happen in the future...in the books I mean.

[Armstark]

Sansa and blood orange juice running down a face always reminded me of some kind of blood ritual as well, a similar image like Dany eating the stallion heart in Vaes Dothrak. I guess Littlefinger got a hard on seeing her like that.

When someone finally takes the virginity of the Winter Maid and spills her maiden blood it is going to be a truly magical night - just not the kind of magic Sansa always dreamed of.

[Melifeather]

1 hour ago, PrettyPig said:

I agree, not sure if it's possible to identify an event/point in time that broke the wheel and caused everything to go wonky - or a single event, anyway.    My guess is that there's more than one - and it *might* be tied to times when blood magic is used, when powers old and dark are summoned for some purpose, and possibly even the reigns of certain destructive kings (I'll get to that in a sec).

You bring up Summerhall as an origin point, and while I agree that Summerhall changed or triggered *something* in the cycle, I would argue that you can roll it back even further than that.   I'll use the example of the years of Aegon IV's reign leading to the first Blackfyre Rebellion.      Most folks, when trying to find an Aegon the Unworthy counterpart or "echo" in the current story look to Robert Baratheon - legit on the surface, both being corrupt and greedy kings given mostly to their lusts, all the bastards, etc.   However, the true parallel - and in some instances, inverse - is with Aerys II, the Mad King.    These two kings' lives are, on most points, practically identical, albeit in some ways mirrored or inverted.  (I have detailed those individual points HERE if anyone is interested.)     In both instances we have a terrible king whose actions and decisions  - particularly in relation to their children - inadvertently led to two of the greatest wars and some of the greatest tragedies in Westeros' history and legend.  

Now, I have not completed a similar analysis regarding any of the characters involved in the Dance or the Rhoynish conflict, so cannot say if there are more examples further back in history.    However, I do believe that there are enough similarities between Aegon IV and Aerys II to say that these parallel life stories/backgrounds/reigns/consequential events are more than mere coincidence - it's a repeated pattern, a rotation of the wheel that has brought this set of circumstances, this point on the wheel,  to the apex once again.   

We see it with other events, too - Ned Stark's journey to King's Landing to assume the Handship during what we now know as the prelude to the WotFK is a clear mirror to Cregan Stark and the Hour of the Wolf at the end of the Dance.    The inverse parallels between Mirri Maz Duur's ritual in Dany's tent and the snippets of Ned's dream-memory about the tower of joy  - again, when seen in point-by-point comparison - are hard to argue.   As @LynnSnoted above, Arya may be mirroring Lyanna via her journey through the Riverlands, and we just don't have enough detail to realize it.

Anyway, my point is that the wheel of time is...a wheel.   Where is the beginning?  Where is the end?  Can we isolate specific points as the "cause" of its current path or motion?    Also, a wheel rolls forward...but also backward.    Just as on any given day the tires on your car might go back and forth, back and forth multiple times depending on where you're going and what you're doing, the wheel of Westeros may be doing the same thing....so these patterns, these similar events and circumstances, not only roll all the way around but reverse midstream and roll back on top of each other.   Perhaps the trick is not to focus on specific instances, but determine the stops and starts of the wheel.

 

This is really good Pretty Pig, and I am familiar with your Comparison of Kings which is very good. I agree that the parallel inversion are pretty distinct and deliberate. Once you see a few, you recognize many. I particularly liked the visual of the wheel turning in both directions, forward and back.

57 minutes ago, DutchArya said:

Has anyone tried to really map this out? It would be really cool to see the parallels. 

I've worked on it some. You can read my early impressions in my essay on The Queenmaker chapter. A link can be found in my signature. However, some of my thoughts have changed and I haven't updated. I believe Lyanna and Ashara's lives are intertwined and that Arya and Sansa parallel both of these women. They just trade places. For example, Lyanna starts out as Arya and Ashara starts out as Sansa, but somewhere in the Riverlands they trade places and Lyanna becomes Sansa, and Ashara becomes Arya.

We should start another thread just for this topic after this one is done. 

[LynnS]

30 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

Wow. I had missed Sansa's "false" blood magic ritual, but I quite agree with your analysis. Very good!

Oh fock. 

I know your feelings regarding Robert's place as your favorite for Jon's father, and I'm leaning that way as well, but I also think Robert is Judas in that he betrayed his friend Ned and he's not the man Ned thought he knew. I think the white fawn sigil spattered with blood suggests he was complicit in the kidnapping plot that IMO was put together by Twyin.

I wish your quotes had copied...the part about the traveler knowing how to navigate by singing the song because it had landmarks, etc in it...it just feels so perfectly suited to the very definition of interpreting the Jabberwocky of the parallel inversions. If we find the parallels and decipher the inversions, we'll know what happened in the past and we'll be able to guess with fair accuracy what will happen in the future...in the books I mean.

I'm not sure about it.  I think Walys Flowers had something to do with her leaving and that could implicate the Citadel.  I think Robert's death bed scene with Ned is interesting because I think there is a subtext in Ned's POV concerning Jon and Lyanna.  I don't think Robert knew anything about what really took place.  Ned hopes he'll find out the truth on the other side.

[Pain killer Jane]

16 minutes ago, LmL said:

A black sleeping lion on a yellow field, and their words are "Rouse Me Not."  The major Grandison in the story is an old dude nicknamed "Graybeard." As in the Grey King, whose beard was as grey as winter sea? Lion of Night? Grandison was lord defeated by Robert who then became his friend. Robert hung his banner, which was almost torn in half, in his hall. Thoughts?

Well, the situation of Graybeard being defeated by Robert at Summerhall reminds me of Damon Lannister, the Grey Lion yielding to Leo Longthorn Tyrell when a lance took off his helm (read as took off his head) at the tourney of Ashford Meadow. Two lions being defeated by green men at places where it is supposed to evoke fertility, Summer's hall and Meadow but one was burned and is a ruin and the other has Ash (remnants of a burning)- ford (a crossing). And then both reasons for each "battle" was a girl Lord Ashford's daughter, the queen of love and Beauty and Lyanna Stark, Robert's and Rheagar's queen of Love and Beauty. And on a small scale, the trial of seven occurred over a girl as well but had major ramifications for the realm, the death of Prince Baelor which is the ultimate fight of Robert's.

I think Robert hanging his banner alongside Lord Cafferen (Calf) and his double white fawns is paralleled to Dany with her white lion (and some times white is called grey like her silver) pelt. I also think it is a parallel to Aegon VI with his Griffin (half lion) Hand and his white Fawn Septa (Wenda the White Fawn = Septa Lemore theory by Lady Gwen) but it also speaks to the 'blessed'- ness of Aegon VI because Robert had to defeat his own banner man the lion and the white fawn to become king over the black dragon. And this speaks to the biblical allegory of the lion and lamb being one in the same in savior. The Lamb of God and the Lion of Judah.  

And the "Rouse me Not' speaks to going to the den of lions and we have the story of the Corlos son of Caster killing a lion, sparing the cubs and being rewarded by finding a vein of gold. And we have a prophet in the bible, Daniel being thrown into a den of lion and then being sparred by the angels and his visions entailed a struggle between a king of the north and a king of the south. And the other biblical story is Samson wrestling a lion and killing it which his power was in his hair and we have Drogo whose power was symbolically attested to by the length of his hair and Drogo hunted down that white lion and promised Delilah  Dany to make it into an outfit for her and we know that Dany echoes Delilah as she allowed Mirri to heal Drogo. 

And since there is am association between thorns and claws and horns then it is no wonder Longclaw found its way into Jon's hands but as Alliser Thorn is an opponent to Jon and not an ally, all I can say is that it is a familial struggle that started in blood and will end in blood which I think is why the name is Grandison or Grandson/Great Son/Son of a Son is a second son. 

[LmL]

50 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

Wow. I had missed Sansa's "false" blood magic ritual, but I quite agree with your analysis. Very good!

 

39 minutes ago, Armstark said:

 

Sansa and blood orange juice running down a face always reminded me of some kind of blood ritual as well, a similar image like Dany eating the stallion heart in Vaes Dothrak. I guess Littlefinger got a hard on seeing her like that.

When someone finally takes the virginity of the Winter Maid and spills her maiden blood it is going to be a truly magical night - just not the kind of magic Sansa always dreamed of.

 

I commented last page, but I think it was issued - Sansa does a real version of this when she gets her moon blood in this very same room. She balls up her bloody clothes and throws them in the very live fireplace, then her bedding as well. That entire scene is depicting the Azor Ahai / Lightbringer forging sequence, which I talked about in one of my essays / podcasts. I just hadn't caught this earlier foreshadowing of that event with the cold hearth, very cool. 

[Melifeather]

35 minutes ago, LynnS said:

I'm not sure about it.  I think Walys Flowers had something to do with her leaving and that could implicate the Citadel.  I think Robert's death bed scene with Ned is interesting because I think there is a subtext in Ned's POV concerning Jon and Lyanna.  I don't think Robert knew anything about what really took place.  Ned hopes he'll find out the truth on the other side.

YES! I quite agree Walys is complicit in carrying out the plot.  I believe the Citadel viewed Tywin as symbolic of their Warrior while Robert was the Smith. We've discussed before the feather Robert places on Lyanna's statue in the mummers version which seems to be a hint, to me at least, that the showrunners know about the Citadel conspiracy. The guinea fowl was used in ancient times to depict a defender of the Faith, and I think Robert was built up to feel like what he was doing was for the Faith and for the realm, and for himself too, because I think he wanted to be king until he realized how much he hated the responsibility of the position.

28 minutes ago, Pain killer Jane said:

Well, the situation of Graybeard being defeated by Robert at Summerhall reminds me of Damon Lannister, the Grey Lion yielding to Leo Longthorn Tyrell when a lance took off his helm (read as took off his head) at the tourney of Ashford Meadow. Two lions being defeated by green men at places where it is supposed to evoke fertility, Summer's hall and Meadow but one was burned and is a ruin and the other has Ash (remnants of a burning)- ford (a crossing). And then both reasons for each "battle" was a girl Lord Ashford's daughter, the queen of love and Beauty and Lyanna Stark, Robert's and Rheagar's queen of Love and Beauty. And on a small scale, the trial of seven occurred over a girl as well but had major ramifications for the realm, the death of Prince Baelor which is the ultimate fight of Robert's.

I think Robert hanging his banner alongside Lord Cafferen (Calf) and his double white fawns is paralleled to Dany with her white lion (and some times white is called grey like her silver) pelt. I also think it is a parallel to Aegon VI with his Griffin (half lion) Hand and his white Fawn Septa (Wenda the White Fawn = Septa Lemore theory by Lady Gwen) but it also speaks to the 'blessed'- ness of Aegon VI because Robert had to defeat his own banner man the lion and the white fawn to become king over the black dragon. And this speaks to the biblical allegory of the lion and lamb being one in the same in savior. The Lamb of God and the Lion of Judah.  

And the "Rouse me Not' speaks to going to the den of lions and we have the story of the Corlos son of Caster killing a lion, sparing the cubs and being rewarded by finding a vein of gold. And we have a prophet in the bible, Daniel being thrown into a den of lion and then being sparred by the angels and his visions entailed a struggle between a king of the north and a king of the south. And the other biblical story is Samson wrestling a lion and killing it which his power was in his hair and we have Drogo whose power was symbolically attested to by the length of his hair and Drogo hunted down that white lion and promised Delilah  Dany to make it into an outfit for her and we know that Dany echoes Delilah as she allowed Mirri to heal Drogo. 

And since there is am association between thorns and claws and horns then it is no wonder Longclaw found its way into Jon's hands but as Alliser Thorn is an opponent to Jon and not an ally, all I can say is that it is a familial struggle that started in blood and will end in blood which I think is why the name is Grandison or Grandson/Great Son/Son of a Son is a second son. 

Do you have a link for the White Fawn - Septa - Lemore thread? 

[Pain killer Jane]

3 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

Do you have a link for the White Fawn - Septa - Lemore thread? 

I don't know if there is a thread. I heard it on Radio Westeros which is co-hosted by Lady Gwen. It is at the end of ep. 26 Aegon and Company- The Only Dragon You Need. 

https://radiowesteros.com/2016/09/01/episode-26-aegon-company-the-only-dragon-you-need/

[Armstark]

24 minutes ago, LmL said:

 

I commented last page, but I think it was issued - Sansa does a real version of this when she gets her moon blood in this very same room. She balls up her bloody clothes and throws them in the very live fireplace, then her bedding as well. That entire scene is depicting the Azor Ahai / Lightbringer forging sequence, which I talked about in one of my essays / podcasts. I just hadn't caught this earlier foreshadowing of that event with the cold hearth, very cool. 

Well, she is a true daughter of Harrenhal and her instincts are magical. Just like Dany instinctively knew what to do to hatch the dragons Sansa knew what to do with her moon blood. With all the fuss about her maidenhead I guess the real magic will come later though, after all nothing magical happened in that scene.

[Black Crow]

Returning for a moment to songs, there's this interesting passage in the first Bran chapter in Clash of Kings:

 

...and he loved to listen to the direwolves sing to the stars.

Of late, he often dreamed of wolves. They are talking to me, brother to brother. he told himself when the direwolves howled. He could almost understand them... not quite, not truly but almost... as if they were singing in a language he had once known and somehow forgotten

[Pain killer Jane]

1 minute ago, Armstark said:

Well, she is a true daughter of Harrenhal and her instincts are magical. Just like Dany instinctively knew what to do to hatch the dragons Sansa knew what to do with her moon blood. With all the fuss about her maidenhead I guess the real magic will come later though, after all nothing magical happened in that scene.

Wasn't her motivation for her burning her bloodstain stuff was that so she wouldn't have to wed Joffrey?! Seems to me that her being set aside for Margary could be viewed as a magical outcome if we view it through this lens. It is a miracle that the Tyrells received so much when they were traitors not a month before. 

[Armstark]

2 minutes ago, Pain killer Jane said:

Wasn't her motivation for her burning her bloodstain stuff was that so she wouldn't have to wed Joffrey?! Seems to me that her being set aside for Margary could be viewed as a magical outcome if we view it through this lens. It is a miracle that the Tyrells received so much when they were traitors not a month before. 

Good point! Maybe it did work after all. 

 

[Pain killer Jane]

29 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Returning for a moment to songs, there's this interesting passage in the first Bran chapter in Clash of Kings:

 

...and he loved to listen to the direwolves sing to the stars.

Of late, he often dreamed of wolves. They are talking to me, brother to brother. he told himself when the direwolves howled. He could almost understand them... not quite, not truly but almost... as if they were singing in a language he had once known and somehow forgotten

"The wolf and the shaman are of one nest." - Inuit proverb

[ravenous reader]

15 hours ago, Cowboy Dan said:

The big thing thing I think holding the theory back is the twisting nature of connective symbolism GRRM uses. The analogy I like best is a giant web, having clusters where different strands meet. Something that may seem like an unrelated concept is actually directly related or serves as a symbolic stand-in for the original.

Illyrio expresses something similar:

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A Dance with Dragons - Tyrion I

"Slaver's Bay is a long way from Pentos." Tyrion speared a goose liver on the point of his knife. No man is as cursed as the kinslayer, he mused, but I could learn to like this hell.

"This is so," Illyrio agreed, "but the world is one great web, and a man dare not touch a single strand lest all the others tremble. More wine?" Illyrio popped a pepper into his mouth. "No, something better." He clapped his hands together.

In one of my previous rambling meditations in which I mused on the kaleidoscopic iridescences attending GRRM's use of the word 'plucking', I identified a musical motif running through -- it's called 'A Song of ice and fire' after all.  Accordingly, plucking the strands of a spider web is analogous to plucking the strings of a musical instrument such as the harp, therefore an analogy for playing the game of thrones and a profound commentary on the nature of history and 'fate', so that sounding one 'string' or plucking one 'bead'/nexus sets up vibrations in the others.  Much of GRRM's poetic world is concerned with the vibrations, echoes, harmonies and dissonances thus produced over time.  Liberated from the concept of linear time, in addition to events setting up 'vibrations' which are transmitted to the future -- what we refer to as 'foreshadowing' -- vibrations from future events may also mysteriously be transmitted to the past.  We may think of these future-to-past reverberations as foreshadowing in reverse or 'retroshadowing.'  It's like ripples spreading outward from the original event in all directions:

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A Clash of Kings - Bran II

Hodor knew Bran's favorite place, so he took him to the edge of the pool beneath the great spread of the heart tree, where Lord Eddard used to kneel to pray. Ripples were running across the surface of the water when they arrived, making the reflection of the weirwood shimmer and dance. There was no wind, though. For an instant Bran was baffled.

And then Osha exploded up out of the pool with a great splash, so sudden that even Summer leapt back, snarling. Hodor jumped away, wailing "Hodor, Hodor" in dismay until Bran patted his shoulder to soothe his fears. "How can you swim in there?" he asked Osha. "Isn't it cold?"

The river of time in which humanity is trapped is unidirectional.  According to Bloodraven, however, 'tree-time', particularly according to a weirwood, who is usually associated with a feeding pool of black water (a sea/see connection which I'll touch on later), spreads outward in all directions from a central focus.  The patterns formed in the pool radiate in a multidirectional fashion like an ever-elaborated spider web.

(By the way, 'Hodor Hodor Hodor' is another of our heralding triplets).

Since you're interested in Buddhist philosophies and non-western conceptualizations of identity and time, you'll probably be familiar with Indra's Net ( the same expressed more colloquially here).

15 hours ago, Cowboy Dan said:

This makes piecing everything together extremely difficult to anyone not searching for such a pattern. For simplicity ...

That's 'simple'..?!  he he

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...let's say the originator for a specific event is given the letter A but the letter A is also tied to concepts I will give the colors red, green, yellow, and blue. Furthermore each color is given 5 more concepts I will give numbers: red is 1-5, green is 6-10 and so on until ending at 20. When we get to view the original event we will see the numbers 1 through 20 in order as related to their colors but the problem is the world/time broke and all of the symbols got thrown around.

How evocative!  Like one of Picasso's cubist paintings, or even better his pastiches!  Bits of other times and identities become embedded in seemingly 'out-of-way' places.

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So we may see event A but only red is mentioned with the numbers 1 & 5 while another time we may get numbers 4, 5, 7, and 13  sans color description, while in yet another instance we might get green and blue with 2 and 4. The same event is shown but with different symbols that don't seem causally related on the surface. But after looking at the numbers 1, 2, 4, and 5 you begin to realize that far more often than not the concept for red is used with each and eventually you connect 3 to the cluster. Upon finishing the red cluster you notice 3 with the colors green and blue, then begin searching for the related numbers of green and blue. Once you gather all the evidence, you can synthesize it all as the same event and then the symbols that seemed disparate are in fact connected -- albeit in an extremely circuitous fashion. Different roads lead to the same castle, no?

Indeed.  Synthesizing it into a coherent whole is the challenge.

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A great example of this is the coloring of Cersei constantly associated with the deep green of emerald (nearly 2/3 of all mentions of emeralds are related to Cersei or her children wearing an emerald she gave them). Yet when Sansa sees the Blackwater ablaze she connects emeralds and jade to wildfire:

Deep green is also connected to Renly's armor, described as "the green of leaves in a summer wood." Victarion worries about a storm and how it would break up his fleet of ships and they would end up, "Like leaves strewn across the Summer Sea." An apt analogy, as the wood of the ships could be seen as a forest on the sea. 

That's beautiful!  I love that you've identified that.  Are you familiar with my green see/ green sea pun?  The passages you quoted reminded me of this one with Arya:

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A Clash of Kings - Arya IX

Gendry was too stubborn to make one for her, so she had made her own by breaking the bristles off a broom. Her blade was much too light and had no proper grip, but she liked the sharp jagged splintery end. Whenever she had a free hour she stole away to work at the drills Syrio had taught her, moving barefoot over the fallen leaves, slashing at branches and whacking down leaves. Sometimes she even climbed the trees and danced among the upper branches, her toes gripping the limbs as she moved back and forth, teetering a little less every day as her balance returned to her. Night was the best time; no one ever bothered her at night.

Arya climbed. Up in the kingdom of the leaves, she unsheathed and for a time forgot them all, Ser Amory and the Mummers and her father's men alike, losing herself in the feel of rough wood beneath the soles of her feet and the swish of sword through air. A broken branch became Joffrey. She struck at it until it fell away. The queen and Ser Ilyn and Ser Meryn and the Hound were only leaves, but she killed them all as well, slashing them to wet green ribbons. When her arm grew weary, she sat with her legs over a high limb to catch her breath in the cool dark air, listening to the squeak of bats as they hunted. Through the leafy canopy she could see the bone-white branches of the heart tree. It looks just like the one in Winterfell from here. If only it had been . . . then when she climbed down she would have been home again, and maybe find her father sitting under the weirwood where he always sat.

Arya 'loses herself' in a green 'kingdom of leaves,' which is almost like being at sea.  The connection between water and trees is manifested in the fact that Arya is 'water dancing' up in the canopy of green and the leaves dissolve into 'wet green ribbons' when she 'sticks them with the pointy end'!  Therefore, an additional connection is made between the tides of red blood, green leaves, and wild fire.

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A Game of Thrones - Arya II

"—needle," Arya finished for him, fiercely.

"Just so. Now we will begin the dance. Remember, child, this is not the iron dance of Westeros we are learning, the knight's dance, hacking and hammering, no. This is the bravo's dance, the water dance, swift and sudden. All men are made of water, do you know this? When you pierce them, the water leaks out and they die." He took a step backward, raised his own wooden blade. "Now you will try to strike me."

Arya tried to strike him. She tried for four hours, until every muscle in her body was sore and aching, while Syrio Forel clicked his teeth together and told her what to do.

Note, they are practising the water dance with 'wooden blades', wooden branches evoking the trees -- as well as the masts of ships.

Climbing a tree is like ascending to the 'crow's nest' of a ship.  There are many similarities between Arya and her climbing brother (who is currently residing 'under the sea' in Bloodraven's hollow fed by a Coleridgean 'sunless sea').  @DutchArya you might like this one!

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A Feast for Crows - Arya I

Ashore. Arya bit her lip. She had crossed the narrow sea to get here, but if the captain had asked she would have told him she wanted to stay aboard the Titan's Daughter. Salty was too small to man an oar, she knew that now, but she could learn to splice ropes and reef the sails and steer a course across the great salt seas. Denyo had taken her up to the crow's nest once, and she hadn't been afraid at all, though the deck had seemed a tiny thing below her. I can do sums too, and keep a cabin neat.

But the galleas had no need of a second boy. Besides, she had only to look at the captain's face to know how anxious he was to be rid of her. So Arya only nodded. "Ashore," she said, though ashore meant only strangers.

I believe there is a parallel being made between the seamen and the 'see-men', namely the greenseers.  Fittingly, we have examples of how men at sea turn green, evoking the 'green men'!

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A Clash of Kings - Theon I

The captain's face was as green as the sea when he came bowing up to Theon and asked, "May we make for port now, milord?"

"You may," Theon said, a faint smile playing about his lips. The promise of gold had turned the Oldtowner into a shameless lickspittle. It would have been a much different voyage if a longship from the islands had been waiting at Seagard as he'd hoped. Ironborn captains were proud and willful, and did not go in awe of a man's blood. The islands were too small for awe, and a longship smaller still. If every captain was a king aboard his own ship, as was often said, it was small wonder they named the islands the land of ten thousand kings. And when you have seen your kings shit over the rail and turn green in a storm, it was hard to bend the knee and pretend they were gods. "The Drowned God makes men," old King Urron Redhand had once said, thousands of years ago, "but it's men who make crowns."

My 'bottom-line' interpretation for this sea-see overlapping is that 'green magic' is 'ice magic' is 'water magic' (ice is water).  'Fire magic' is interwoven with all of them -- in fact, I suspect it's the animating factor, the spark that sets the 'green' in motion akin to the spread of wildfire -- although I haven't yet worked out exactly how fire relates to the rest.

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The next contender is Dunk receiving his infamous shield:

Here he connects the summer leaves to shields and then shields to death by neck injury (hanging/decapitation as the skulls are severed from the body) but also wolves and ravens, magical implements of Bloodraven and the Children. If we go back to Sansa's vision, she sees red and yellow as opposite to jade and emerald. Red and yellow are both used as descriptors of gold quite often, as both red-gold and yellow gold.

That's just lovely!  Likewise, the weirwood trees act as a protective shield or regulatory valve akin to the Wall ('weir' is a dam or fish trap) on the side of the 'old gods'.  Your mention of 'decapitation/hanging' is reminiscent of the greenseers' paradoxical plight being pinioned by the selfsame weirwood enabling their grounded flight; sapped of life by the same tree that nurtures them and grants them a measure of immortality. Additionally, again connecting the sea with the trees there's a literal and figurative echo in the disembodied whispering heads at the Whispers/Crackclaw, which similarly evoke the greenseers (in the courtyard there where Brienne fights the trio, there's a weirwood sapling to mark the site as a greenseer venue despite its coastal location, which would at first seem to place it far away from greenseers and forests -- the 'cave' there is an additional clue of its magical status as @Wizz-The-Smith has noted). It's also a reiteration of the myth of Odin hanging himself on the Yggdrasil tree in order to obtain enlightenment.  The singers subsumed in the trees -- who 'go into the trees' drinking from the 'green fountain' -- can also be thought of as disembodied heads or shadows of their former selves communing in the sea of the universal consciousness.  Reciprocally, the way this power is sustained is by human sacrifice, traditionally slitting someone's throat with a bronze sickle-- which is a kind of decapitation releasing the red tide feeding the green one.  Are you following?  I can clarify further, if you'd like.  I know I sometimes get carried away caught up in Indra's net and unable to see the forest for the trees!

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I'm going to stop here because I'm not trying to decipher every hidden meaning, just show how you can start with one concept and by following the associations spiral out quickly into an endless search, like some fractal whose pattern can be puzzled out at all levels so long as you have the right meanings/context with which to view it.

So true. 

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Now to look at something you've already mentioned and try to take it a step further using your inversion theory.

Garin lead a quarter million of his followers to their deaths in attempting to stop a war with the dragonlords and after failing drowns his enemies in water. Jaime, upon learning Aerys wanted to drown his enemies in flame, attempts to stop a war with dragonlords and succeeds, saving half a million lives. From the wiki: "some say Garin's curse brought the Doom of Valyria." In ACOK around the time of the bread riots (I can't seem to find the quote but I distinctly remember it) Myrcella or Tommen tells Cersei that the smallfolk say Jaime killing Aerys cursed them. The fact that the number saved is doubled seems to imply Garin may have been once allied to or part of the dragonlords' ranks similar to how Jaime was Aerys' sworn sword.

Can you explain what you mean by 'the number doubled' implying Jaime's and Garin's connection to the Targaryens?  

This example is intriguing.  So there's a reiteration of the green flood of water and fire respectively.  Instead of interpreting the inversion to signify Garin's alliance with the dragonlords, one might interpret the success of Jaime's intervention relative to Garin's failure in light of Jaime possibly being a 'secret Targ' vs. Garin who wasn't; therefore, the conclusion that only fire not water can put out fire.  Only the sun/son (or other descendants) of the destructive villain can put things to rights.  By turning Oedipal style on his father Aerys, Jaime's fire combats Aerys' fire in a mini 'Dance of the Dragons' at a micro-level!  Perhaps that's why this time the 'golden cage' is successful, since it harbors a dragon -- Jaime -- the golden armor can be thought of as a golden dragon's scales (alternatively, perhaps he really is a bona fide caged lion in the Lannister menagerie...we can take our pick, for now).  The caged dragon thus turns upon the one who caged him.  Dragons do not do well in captivity and none less so than Jaime who can be deadly in his attempts to extricate himself from the prisons others such as Aerys, Tywin and Cersei have created for him.  Should Jaime turn out to be Aerys's son, Aerys likely impregnated his mother Joanna in order to spite Tywin, leaving a shadow on the family which was ironically projected onto Tyrion, who became the unwitting scapegoat of the family, though in reality the only true Lannister heir. 

Analogously to the idea of fire-duelling-fire, @LynnS has suggested that only ice can fight ice (the Wall as weir holding back the others and containing the 'killing cold'; in other words, the extinguishing cold extinguishes its own extinguishing!)

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A Game of Thrones - Eddard IX

"How many?"

Littlefinger shrugged. Rivulets of moisture twisted down the back of his cloak. "Does it matter? If you bed enough women, some will give you presents, and His Grace has never been shy on that count. I know he's acknowledged that boy at Storm's End, the one he fathered the night Lord Stannis wed. He could hardly do otherwise. The mother was a Florent, niece to the Lady Selyse, one of her bedmaids. Renly says that Robert carried the girl upstairs during the feast, and broke in the wedding bed while Stannis and his bride were still dancing. Lord Stannis seemed to think that was a blot on the honor of his wife's House, so when the boy was born, he shipped him off to Renly." He gave Ned a sideways glance. "I've also heard whispers that Robert got a pair of twins on a serving wench at Casterly Rock, three years ago when he went west for Lord Tywin's tourney. Cersei had the babes killed, and sold the mother to a passing slaver. Too much an affront to Lannister pride, that close to home."

Ned Stark grimaced. Ugly tales like that were told of every great lord in the realm. He could believe it of Cersei Lannister readily enough … but would the king stand by and let it happen? The Robert he had known would not have, but the Robert he had known had never been so practiced at shutting his eyes to things he did not wish to see. "Why would Jon Arryn take a sudden interest in the king's baseborn children?"

 

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ASOS-Tyrion XII

When he heard noises through the thick wooden door of his cell, Tyrion Lannister prepared to die.

Past time, he thought. Come on, come on, make an end to it. He pushed himself to his feet. His legs were asleep from being folded under him. He bent down and rubbed the knives from them. I will not go stumbling and waddling to the headsman's block.

He wondered whether they would kill him down here in the dark or drag him through the city so Ser Ilyn Payne could lop his head off. After his mummer's farce of a trial, his sweet sister and loving father might prefer to dispose of him quietly, rather than risk a public execution. I could tell the mob a few choice things, if they let me speak. But would they be that foolish?

As the keys rattled and the door to his cell pushed inward, creaking, Tyrion pressed back against the dampness of the wall, wishing for a weapon. I can still bite and kick. I'll die with the taste of blood in my mouth, that's something. He wished he'd been able to think of some rousing last words. "Bugger you all" was not like to earn him much of a place in the histories.

Torchlight fell across his face. He shielded his eyes with a hand. "Come on, are you frightened of a dwarf? Do it, you son of a poxy whore." His voice had grown hoarse from disuse.

'Is that any way to speak about our lady mother?" The man moved forward, a torch in his left hand. "This is even more ghastly than my cell at Riverrun, though not quite so dank."

For a moment Tyrion could not breathe. "You?"

"Well, most of me." Jaime was gaunt, his hair hacked short. "I left a hand at Harrenhal. Bringing the Brave Companions across the narrow sea was not one of Father's better notions." He lifted his arm, and Tyrion saw the stump.

A bark of hysterical laughter burst from his lips. "Oh, gods," he said. "Jaime, I am so sorry, but . . . gods be good, look at the two of us. Handless and Noseless, the Lannister boys."

I think the Casterly 'serving wench' and 'poxy whore' is a reference to one and the same person -- namely Joanna.  The king who fathered twins on her is Aerys, not Robert.  It's difficult for me attempting to separate inversions from ironies.  The way a rumor spreads is a bit like that fractal pattern you were referencing whereby the message gets 'broken up' as it's passed along ( like DNA mutation creating variation), resulting in shifts from the original message, which seem closer to 'ironies' than inversions per se to me.  

Here there's a historical recapitulation, although I wouldn't quite call it an 'inversion' as such.  Jaime the shadowy figure of the Red Keep (he even calls himself a shadow or ghost of his 'true' self, although I don't think he knows who that truly is... I think he's a dragon who doesn't know he's a dragon) on the sly taking matters into his hands comes to kill one of his relatives -- from Tyrion's perspective -- except the 'inversion' manifests as Jaime saving Tyrion, which has the ironic consequence of in turn condemning Tywin to death.  The jig is up -- the dance has come full-circle.  In effect, Jaime does the opposite relative to his kin(g)slaying of Aerys.  Whereas then he killed Aerys (who I believe is his father by 'nature'), in order to spare his father by 'nurture'; in contrast now, by sparing his brother, Jaime unleashes a figurative flood of wildfire (with which Tyrion is associated), meaning Tywin has finally run out of time and places to hide.  Since Tywin essentially orchestrated the death of his natural father with the sack of King's Landing, in addition to the slaughter of several other relatives he was sworn to protect, including most notably the children the future of House Targaryen, by sparing Tyrion he ultimately avenges his 'true' family.  Although Jaime doesn't act on a 'conscious intention,' perhaps there's an 'unconscious intention' at work?

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A Storm of Swords - Tyrion X

"It was. Even you can see that, surely?"

"Oh, surely." It all goes back and back, Tyrion thought, to our mothers and fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance on in our steads. "Well, Prince Rhaegar married Elia of Dorne, not Cersei Lannister of Casterly Rock. So it would seem your mother won that tilt."

Sometimes, the puppet takes up the strings from the puppet-master and seizing them turns them on the master reflexively instead of passing the baton in a linear relay-type model.  Thus, son turns vs. father,  the former puppet becomes the master, the hunter the hunted, in a primal Oedipal battle where 'good' intentions unfortunately facilitate 'evil' side-effects, and reciprocally 'evil ' intentions in a surprising twist bring the 'good' to fruition.  Whichever way you choose to analyse it, Jaime is responsible for one kinslaying/ kingslaying or another; that doesn't mean, however, that he cannot work any good in this world.

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I'm going to do something I promised myself I wouldn't and use one of the pieces of evidence I've been holding onto for my big A+J=J+C post.

Can't wait!

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The reason for this is I think ignoring their dragon blood here would be like trying to decipher the Ironborn inversion chapters/characters without keeping in mind their Ironborn lineage and how they relate/reciprocate Blackfyre tendencies as you've shown.

The blood bay, despite invoking the red of blood, is more of a brownish red, the brown of dirt/mud being very important for these scenes.

So if inversion holds true then Jaime is in the place of a Targaryen usurper by killing Aerys and taking the throne. Despite succeeding where Garin and Daemon failed, Jaime abdicates almost immediately. Perhaps Garin wasn't wanting to take the throne, only stop the war? But that would be a parallel and not an inversion, for me this is the real difficulty in trying to suss all this out. Also, after being defeated in a battle at the Trident (Whitewalls was on the Trident until after being torn down), Jaime, ever the golden knight, is clasped in fetters and brought to the Tully seat of power as a ward against the crown in their rebellion. Similarly Daemon II, is clapped in golden fetters and brought to King's Landing to serve as a ward to protect against the Blackfyre rebellion across the Narrow Sea. Once Catelyn releases him with Brienne, Jaime is put in chains around hands and feet, just like Daemon's fetters, and is pretty constantly covered in mud and shit, a brown dragon just as Daemon was. There the similarities end for now, as Daemon stayed in KL and died a few years later. Possibly he was tortured and succumbed? Jaime did want to die until Brienne kicked some sense into him. Whoever the parallel is for Jaime from then on I can't say but the possibility seems likely, as you could say he is reborn after losing his sword hand.

Additionally, Jaime's original assignment to Aerys's kingsguard was to serve as surety for Aerys against Tywin's machinations.  Jaime even refers to himself as a ward or hostage.  Being knighted and/or assigned to the kingsguard for the wrong reasons is certainly like being placed in a gilded cage.  Ironically, keeping a caged beast by his side backfired on Aerys.  I think the parallel of Daemon vs. Bloodraven might be pointing to the upcoming duel between Jaime vs. Tyrion as his half-brother.  Tyrion does have that 'two-headed' dream of himself fighting a war against himself with Jaime as his other head.  

Come to think of it, Tyrion may be the dragon, or maybe they're both dragons; although I find the tragic irony of the twins as Targs vs. Tyrion as the true Lannister onto which the shadow of the original transgression (Aerys's rape of Joanna) is projected, far more appealing.  

Tyrion is turned into a gargoyle with 'Targ' traits inappropriately projected onto him (the tail, the hermaphroditism, etc.) and unfairly scapegoated. In this respect, the twins as a cloven entity (in more ways than one) can be viewed as a two-headed hermaphroditic dragon, with both male and female parts on one body, so self-sufficient that they can self-fertilize, as it were.

Should Tyrion ultimately take charge of Casterly Rock the way Lann the Clever 'winkled' his way into the fortress in the first place, the irony would be that the disinherited, rejected, trueborn prodigal son comes home to 'steal' his own legacy, thus taking his rightful place in contrast to the original thief who had no authentic claim!

I see 'inversions' as the 'chickens coming home to roost' -- an expression of poetic justice or karma.

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A Game of Thrones - Tyrion I

Tyrion turned back to his siblings. Twins, male and female. They looked very much the part this morning. Both had chosen a deep green that matched their eyes. Their blond curls were all a fashionable tumble, and gold ornaments shone at wrists and fingers and throats.

With their deep green eyes, do they together constitute a two-headed 'sea dragon'?

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A Feast for Crows - Samwell IV

What fools we were, who thought ourselves so wise! The error crept in from the translation. Dragons are neither male nor female, Barth saw the truth of that, but now one and now the other, as changeable as flame. The language misled us all for a thousand years. 

Neither male nor female, i.e. two-for-the-price-of-one, like twins.

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A Storm of Swords - Tyrion VIII

Then the heralds summoned another singer; Collio Quaynis of Tyrosh, who had a vermilion beard and an accent as ludicrous as Symon had promised. Collio began with his version of "The Dance of the Dragons," which was more properly a song for two singers, male and female. 

Dragons are fond of their incestuous, duelling duets.

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A Dance with Dragons - The Windblown

But he was said to be the richest man in Yunkai, and he had a passion for grotesques; his slaves included a boy with the legs and hooves of a goat, a bearded woman, a two-headed monster from Mantarys, and a hermaphrodite who warmed his bed at night. "Cock and cunny both," Dick Straw told them. "The Whale used to own a giant too, liked to watch him fuck his slave girls. Then he died. I hear the Whale'd give a sack o' gold for a new one."

 

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"And well you might, since you were said to have one, a stiff curly tail like a swine's. Your head was monstrous huge, we heard, half again the size of your body, and you had been born with thick black hair and a beard besides, an evil eye, and lion's claws. Your teeth were so long you could not close your mouth, and between your legs were a girl's privates as well as a boy's."

"Life would be much simpler if men could fuck themselves,

Isn't this what Jaime is doing by having sex with Cersei?  She's his twin, and though not technically identical (fraternal twins of different sexes can never be identical genetically), a point is made by many parties about how difficult it is to distinguish the two.  Moreover, Cersei is a particularly abrasive person of martial inclinations and overweening ambition, who has rejected her own femininity and desires to become a man -- in fact, she fervently envies and therefore desires to become Jaime.  She frequently emasculates him emotionally, symbolically castrating him and claiming that penis as her own appendage, much as she claims his sword hand as her own.  For example, here, where he refuses to do her bidding (her wish that he kill Tyrion) as her assassin-for-hire (thereby having symbolically reclaimed his sword hand...he's left-handed now like Arthur Dayne), she ruthlessly rips into his masculinity and in the process reveals her core motivating principle -- her penis envy:

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A Storm of Swords - Jaime IX

"You had best go, Cersei. You're making me angry."

"Oh, an angry cripple. How terrifying." She laughed. "A pity Lord Tywin Lannister never had a son. I could have been the heir he wanted, but I lacked the cock. And speaking of such, best tuck yours away, brother. It looks rather sad and small, hanging from your breeches like that."

When she was gone Jaime took her advice, fumbling one-handed at his laces. He felt a bone-deep ache in his phantom fingers. I've lost a hand, a father, a son, a sister, and a lover, and soon enough I will lose a brother. And yet they keep telling me House Lannister won this war.

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A Feast for Crows - Jaime II

"Your sister knows my terms. They have not changed. Tell her that, the next time you are in her bedchamber." Ser Kevan put his heels into his courser and galloped ahead, putting an abrupt end to their conversation.

Jaime let him go, his missing sword hand twitching. He had hoped against hope that Cersei had somehow misunderstood, but plainly that was wrong. He knows about the two of us. About Tommen and Myrcella. And Cersei knows he knows. Ser Kevan was a Lannister of Casterly Rock. He could not believe that she would ever do him harm, but . . . I was wrong about Tyrion, why not about Cersei? When sons were killing fathers, what was there to stop a niece from ordering an uncle slain? An inconvenient uncle, who knows too much. Though perhaps Cersei was hoping that the Hound might do her work for her. If Sandor Clegane cut down Ser Kevan, she would not need to bloody her own hands. And he will, if they should meet. Kevan Lannister had once been a stout man with a sword, but he was no longer young, and the Hound . . .

Interesting avenues here for' inversions'; however, I don't know enough to interpret it.  Anyone care to assist?

From Cersei's perspective, by fucking her brother she's fucking herself -- because in the final analysis she's incapable of relating on an intimate level to anyone else besides herself, as selfish and devoid of empathy as she is.

The twin reflections almost seem to merge and become one beast with two heads here, from Bran's unclouded perspective:

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A Game of Thrones - Bran II

There were soft, wet sounds. Bran realized they were kissing. He watched, wide-eyed and frightened, his breath tight in his throat. The man had a hand down between her legs, and he must have been hurting her there, because the woman started to moan, low in her throat. "Stop it," she said, "stop it, stop it. Oh, please …" But her voice was low and weak, and she did not push him away. Her hands buried themselves in his hair, his tangled golden hair, and pulled his face down to her breast.

Bran saw her face. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open, moaning. Her golden hair swung from side to side as her head moved back and forth, but still he recognized the queen.

He must have made a noise. Suddenly her eyes opened, and she was staring right at him. She screamed.

Everything happened at once then. The woman pushed the man away wildly, shouting and pointing. Bran tried to pull himself up, bending double as he reached for the gargoyle. He was in too much of a hurry. His hand scraped uselessly across smooth stone, and in his panic his legs slipped, and suddenly he was falling. There was an instant of vertigo, a sickening lurch as the window flashed past. He shot out a hand, grabbed for the ledge, lost it, caught it again with his other hand. He swung against the building, hard. The impact took the breath out of him. Bran dangled, one-handed, panting.

Faces appeared in the window above him.

The queen. And now Bran recognized the man beside her. They looked as much alike as reflections in a mirror.

P.S. @Cowboy Dan: you might find this thread useful for your essay.  One of my earliest posts in which I explore Jaime and Cersei as Targs, in terms of double-headed dragons or two-sided coins -- which interestingly can also be dragons!

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A Clash of Kings - Tyrion IV

If ever truly a man had armored himself in gold, it was Petyr Baelish, not Jaime Lannister. Jaime's famous armor was but gilded steel, but Littlefinger, ah . . . Tyrion had learned a few things about sweet Petyr, to his growing disquiet.

Interesting how both Jaime and Littlefinger are painted as the gilded man in this passage, so perhaps we can infer something more about Jaime to follow:

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Ten years ago, Jon Arryn had given him a minor sinecure in customs, where Lord Petyr had soon distinguished himself by bringing in three times as much as any of the king's other collectors. King Robert had been a prodigious spender. A man like Petyr Baelish, who had a gift for rubbing two golden dragons together to breed a third, was invaluable to his Hand. Littlefinger's rise had been arrow-swift. Within three years of his coming to court, he was master of coin and a member of the small council, and today the crown's revenues were ten times what they had been under his beleaguered predecessor . . . though the crown's debts had grown vast as well. A master juggler was Petyr Baelish.

Likewise, Jaime and Cersei have a gift for 'rubbing two golden dragons together to breed a third'; a sexual metaphor about keeping those dragons in the family!

[Pain killer Jane]

5 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

Accordingly, plucking the strands of a spider web is analogous to plucking the strings of a musical instrument such as the harp, therefore an analogy for playing the game of thrones and a profound commentary on the nature of history and 'fate', so that sounding one 'string' or plucking one 'bead'/nexus sets up vibrations in the others.

Which is why we have those knights running around with harps or more accurately they are angels both in their herald of god, warrior of god signing the praises of god.

And don't forget Indra's web. 

10 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

 Much of GRRM's poetic world is concerned with the vibrations, echoes, harmonies and dissonances thus produced over time.  Liberated from the concept of linear time, in addition to events setting up 'vibrations' which are transmitted to the future -- what we refer to as 'foreshadowing' -vibrations from future events may also mysteriously to be transmitted to the past.

and we know that the form these vibrations take are waves. 

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 The two colors lapped over one another without ever touching, each ripple distinct, like waves of night and blood upon some steely shore.

And the Song of Ice and Fire always reminds me of this;

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Well I heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do ya?
Well it goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah

 

[Pain killer Jane]

33 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

Since you're interested in Buddhist philosophies and non-western conceptualizations of identity and time, you'll probably be familiar with Indra's Net ( the same expressed more colloquially here).

totally missed this the first time. So much for my attention to detail. 

[ravenous reader]

2 minutes ago, Pain killer Jane said:

totally missed this the first time. So much for my attention to detail. 

Thanks to you for introducing me to the concept!  For some reason, unfortunately I couldn't get the wikipedia webpage for 'Indra's Net' to link properly.

Love the Leonard Cohen and the 'waves of night and blood'.  There are also these waves:

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A Storm of Swords - Bran II

"Because they're different," he insisted. "Like night and day, or ice and fire."

"If ice can burn," said Jojen in his solemn voice, "then love and hate can mate. Mountain or marsh, it makes no matter. The land is one."

"One," his sister agreed, "but over wrinkled."

The intersection of waveforms as mating, forging, making music -- resolving the moronic oxymoron -- GRRM's central message:

ONE-BUT-OVERWRINKLED

[ravenous reader]

3 hours ago, Cowboy Dan said:

Also of note is she is struck in the forehead between the eyes, where the third eye located.

That's a good catch.  It's similar to this incident here with the cat:

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A Game of Thrones - Arya III

Now at last she had him. High walls pressed close on either side, and ahead was a blank windowless mass of stone. Quiet as a shadow, she repeated, sliding forward, light as a feather.

When she was three steps away from him, the tomcat bolted. Left, then right, he went; and right, then left, went Arya, cutting off his escape. He hissed again and tried to dart between her legs. Quick as a snake, she thought. Her hands closed around him. She hugged him to her chest, whirling and laughing aloud as his claws raked at the front of her leather jerkin. Ever so fast, she kissed him right between the eyes, and jerked her head back an instant before his claws would have found her face. The tomcat yowled and spit.

"What's he doing to that cat?"

Since this foreshadows Arya's role as a faceless man assassin, 'catching cats' symbolises catching Lannisters (Arya's a cat of a different coat, but her claws are as sharp as theirs...in particular, her 'Needle') as well as dealing death more generally.  Opening ones third eye is always accompanied by a real or symbolic death/loss of sorts.

Jaime's 'third eye' capacity is similar awakened during his weirwood stump dream in which the stump on which he's been resting his head (aha!) 'pounds' the message into his brain like a hammer, reminiscent of the crow's beak pecking at Bran's head during his 'coma dream':

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A Storm of Swords - Jaime VI

Steelshanks Walton stood above them, tall and dour. "What is it? Why did you scream?"

"A dream . . . only a dream." Jaime stared at the camp around him, lost for a moment. "I was in the dark, but I had my hand back." He looked at the stump and felt sick all over again. There's no place like that beneath the Rock, he thought. His stomach was sour and empty, and his head was pounding where he'd pillowed it against the stump.

Qyburn felt his brow. "You still have a touch of fever."

I guess Jaime requires more than a light touch to 'knock some sense' into him..!