Seven wanderers

[Luddagain]

In Westeros cosmology there are seven wanderers. There are seven houses and their religion relates around the seven. Since the story is about disruption and renewal, I expect each of the seven houses to be inherited by someone who is in a sense a wanderer and NOT the chosen one by their houses/fathers etc. The Romans also recognised the seven wanderers ie the heavenly bodies  visible in the night sky. I have a gut feel too that each will be descended form the "old andal gods" rather than the new 7, but not clear in all cases. they will each also be connected to the Old gods in someway.

So let us look:

Stormlands is the home of thunder, Storm, with the characteristics of a thunder god, Thor in Norse mythology and Jupiter in Roman mythology.  The link is obviously to Jupiter one of the wandering planets in the night sky. Of the three sons of the house, there is just one legitimate heiress and her chances of reproduction seem limited.  The house will likely fall to one of Robert's male bastards.  Now Gendry is the eldest Bastard and if Stannis is King he will likely be named successor.  Stannis believes very, very strongly in ages precedence. Edrik Storm is the only other viable person.  We know Robert had 10 bastards, of whom we know of Mya, Barra, and Bella in the pub and the dead (possibly) twins. So there are three and possibly 5 other bastards out there.  Gendry is both a bastard and a wanderer. He was never acknowledged in any way by his father who may not even have known of his existence. he is very good with a hammer.   This may be stretching the analysis but if in the old world Robert was the king and linked to the Father in the new world Gendry is linked to the Smith. Old Andal God obviously the Storm god.  Older gods - unclear

 

Westerlands is a warlike house and there are many, many close parallels between the Nordic god Tue (Tyr) and house Lannister. The cosmology is the planet Mars.  Tyrion was rejected by his father - hated even and is obviously a wanderer.  I do not expect Tyrion to inherit, but what of his only possible legitimate son.  He was married to Tysha.  If he conceived a son by Tysha who might that be. There is one obvious answer. Little Podrick Pyne.  Why did Tywin take an interest in the boy and not hang him like the others.  So I predict Westerlands to be inherited by Podrick. He may marry his cousin Lanna who is I suspect the daughter of his uncle Gerion the alternate legitimate heir in the female line. (remember the sailor's wife) -Not counting Tyrek, who may still appear. She would come ahead of the Freys.  The other possible heir might be a child of Tyrion and Sansa.  In the old world obviously house Lannister was associated with the warrior. New world, perhaps the Father, strange though that might seem.  For all his faults, Tyrion was in fact a wise and kindly father figure to every young person with whom he interacts.  To Jon, he is wise and kind, he provides a saddle design for Bran, to Podrick he inspires loyalty to the risk of his life, to Sansa he is kind as does not rape her, to Aegon he gives wise advice and to Penny he protects. He even protects a rather helpless Ser Jorah. 

 

The Moon house is of course Arryn and their line is very very thin. Which wanderer might rightly inherit this house.  My best guess is that it will be Timmett, clearly a wanderer, not even known to his own house but probably the son of the kidnapped Arryn daughter. Alternatively it could be one of the Royces. I suspect they have great significance. Perhaps Timmet married to Miranda Royce might be the outcome.   In the old system the Moon is probably the Maiden, but this constantly changes as the moon is always maiden, mother and crone. Diana/Artemis is associated with the moon. The Royces and the Vale clansmen still worship the Old gods - not even the Andal ones

 

The Sun house is obviously Dorne, but as to which wanderer will inherit, it is less clear. I do not see it being any of the Martells. although possibly a sandsnake. My guess is Ned  Dayne, who I suspect will become Sword of the Morning.   He is clearly a wanderer.  Now I am going to be controversial.  I suspect Ned is the son of Ashara Dayne and Ned Stark.  He is exactly the right age.  We know he was about 12 when we meet him, at a time when Sansa seems to be still 11.  Based on his age we can more or less confidently assume he was conceived, after the Tower of Joy and before Ned returns to Riverrun to collect Catelyn.  This coincides with the time Ned was in Dorne travelling with the Dayne sword. Likely outcome, Ned Dayne married to a sandsnake.  it somehow makes sense - Ice and Fire.  It would make a lovely counterpoint should Jon be the son of Lyanna and Arthur Dayne.  I would doubt that Ned was ever aware of Ned's origin.  I do not believe that Ashara is dead.  I suspect she is one of the Bravos courtesans. If thinking about the religion of the seven, the sun is one of the three women - maiden, mother crone - probably the crone, but it changes anyway.  Apollo and archery are associated with the Sun. This is obvious for Alleras/Sarella. The Daynes are an ancient house and seem top predate the Andals.

 

I think these four houses have fairly obvious association with both Norse and Graeco- Roman religion but the associations become more complex after this.

 

For the final fertility deity (frey/a in Norse and Venus) - the mother there are two candidates - the Reach and  the Riverlands. The Riverlands is of course technically not a kingdom, however the presence of the highly fertile Freys sort of suggests the Riverlands. However I am opting for the Reach. The successor will be none other than Sam Tarly. Sam is in fact the next but one heir to the Florents, a descendent of Garth Greenhand. You could not find a boy more rejected by his father than Sam.  Even Tywin gave more love and protection to Tyrion, than poor Sam ever received.  In many, many ways Sam resembles Garth Greenhand and also other former reach dwellers the oversized Manderleys. Sam is most definitely a wanderer. Perhaps Sam will marry Gilly - a girl from the North. Once again Sam's growing skill with archery may prove important.

 

In Roman times Mercury/Hermes was one of their celestial deities. They tried to equate Hermes with the strange Norse god Odin/Woden. It was not a particularly successful match (in my opinion) but there are some shared characteristics - travel to the underworld especially. However Odin is the one eyed tree dweller, strongly associated with the raven and with magic and with shamanism and with wisdom.  AND with WOLVES Think a dark Merlin or Dumbledore.  Two realms stand out as connected to Odin - the Starks of the North with Bran and his Greenseer capacities and obviously Bloodraven who is almost a replica of Odin.  This picture used to be confusing, with Bloodraven being so obviously from the Riverlands. However following the world book we now see that the Blackwoods were exiles from the North, probably carrying the shapeshifting capacities. We know they stayed true to the old Northern gods. Either John Snow the bastard or Bran the cripple could be contenders for the head of the North. Both are wanderers and both are not part of the standard inheritance system. The obvious connection with the 7 is to the Stranger.  Arya and Bran seem to be aspects of the Stranger - life and death.

 

So this just leaves one kingdom and one celestial being to consider. This is Saturn. Much afeared in ancient times, Saturn is often associates with evil and danger and death and the underworld also sometimes.  The closest Nordic deity seems to be Loki the trickster. Two candidates spring to mind for Loki - Theon and Littlefinger. One from the iron Islands and one from the Riverlands.  Harrenhall seems evil. So too does Euron.  Theon is a wanderer and despised by his father for being too much of a greenlander.  He will probably inherit the iron Islands and maybe harrenhall.

 

 

 

[John Suburbs]

Nice wrap-up, but my understanding is that the seven wanderers in Westeros are seven wandering stars, not including the sun and the moon.

This would be different from our own pre-modern world, which only had five wanderers.

[Lost Melnibonean]

Quote

Ghost was gone when the wildlings led their horses from the cave. Did he understand about Castle Black? Jon took a breath of the crisp morning air and allowed himself to hope. The eastern sky was pink near the horizon and pale grey higher up. The Sword of the Morning still hung in the south, the bright white star in its hilt blazing like a diamond in the dawn, but the blacks and greys of the darkling forest were turning once again to greens and golds, reds and russets. And above the soldier pines and oaks and ash and sentinels stood the Wall, the ice pale and glimmering beneath the dust and dirt that pocked its surface.

Jon IV, Storm 30

The colors are just a description of the sunrise and a reminder that we are in autumn. The more interesting thing here is the Sword of the Morning constellation on the southern horizon, as seen north of the Wall. Forget for the moment that a 700-foot wall of ice should have blotted out the southern horizon from the view of a man (even if he is the special snowflake) standing on the ground just north of the Wall. Rather, concentrate on the shape of the constellation and the bright white star in its hilt blazing like a diamond in the dawn. It should be a cross with a very bright star at one end. Well, that is Crux, also known as the Southern Cross. The Southern Cross, of course, is a small, cross-shaped constellation, with a first-magnitude star (the brightest stars in the night sky), at its bottom end, called Alpha Crucis, also known as Acrux. The analogy is not perfect though. Acrux is at the end that would be the point of the sword, and in any event, it is a blue star. Gamma Crucis, also known as Gacrux is the star that would be the sword’s hilt, and Gacrux is red. The other problem is that the Southern Cross is not observable from north of the 26th parallel (South Florida).

That an ASOIAF constellation resembles one of our own should not be surprising since several celestial bodies described in ASOIAF mirror our own. The George had just given us a little more astronomy in Jon’s preceding chapter in Storm. . .

Quote

So many stars, he thought as he trudged up the slope through pines and firs and ash. Maester Luwin had taught him his stars as a boy in Winterfell; he had learned the names of the twelve houses of heaven and the rulers of each; he could find the seven wanderers sacred to the Faith; he was old friends with the Ice Dragon, the Shadowcat, the Moonmaid, and the Sword of the Morning. All those he shared with Ygritte, but not some of the others. We look up at the same stars, and see such different things. The King's Crown was the Cradle, to hear her tell it; the Stallion was the Horned Lord; the red wanderer that septons preached was sacred to their Smith up here was called the Thief. And when the Thief was in the Moonmaid, that was a propitious time for a man to steal a woman, Ygritte insisted. "Like the night you stole me. The Thief was bright that night."

Jon III, Storm 26

The twelve houses of heaven correspond to the zodiac; the seven wanders correspond to the classical planets of antiquity (i.e., the Sun and Moon and the five planets visible to the naked eye, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), and the red wanderer corresponds to Mars. The Moonmaid most likely corresponds to Virgo since there is a whole bunch of astrology mumbo jumbo about when Mars is in Virgo.

The first mention of an “ice dragon” follows Bran’s realization that the old powers are real. He then asks Osha how to go north, and what he might find. Osha tells him to look for the Ice Dragon, and to chase the blue star in the rider's eye. (It should be noted that after this mention as the blue star in the rider’s eye, it is afterward referred to as the blue star in the dragon’s eye. Since Jon tells us later that the Wildings’s nomenclature for celestial bodies is slightly different than the nomenclature used south of the Wall, this is not necessarily an inconsistency.)

Thus, we learn that the Ice Dragon is a constellation, and that the blue star in the dragon’s eye is a pole star. Currently (more on that in a moment), the north pole star in our sky is Polaris in the constellation Ursa Minor, also known as the Little Dipper. Thus, it appears that the star in the dragon’s eye that points north corresponds to Polaris. But there are differences here too. Polaris is more white than blue, and Ursa Minor is a little bear, not a dragon. However, Ursa Minor is bordered by Draco, which is a dragon, in the north sky, and one of the stars in Draco is Thuban, which is more blue than white.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting: The Southern Cross was visible from the British Isles, Canada, Alaska, and Russia 10,000 years ago, and it will be visible from those regions again after another 15,000 years. This is due to the motion of the Earth called axial precession. This is the motion you see in a wobbling top as it starts to slow. The Earth’s axial precession takes about 26,000 years to complete.

Due to this axial precession, the north star 6,000 years ago was Thuban, a blue star in Draco! And while you might not have been able to see Acrux from Scotland 6,000 years ago, you would have been able to see it from England.

[Luddagain]

Lost

 

Good stuff!!!!!!!

I have considered the constellations and whether they in some way relate to known characters. Obviously sword of the morning is a person probably Ned Dayne, the Moon maid makes me think of Sansa, Shadow Cat Arya (or Catelyn) and the ice Dragon, Jon.