A Burning Brandon (Mythical Astronomy of Ice and Fire)

[Isobel Harper]

1 hour ago, LmL said:

This is a possibility I have always kept in the back of my mind. It's the only possible acceptable justification for breaking the moon. But, I haven't seen the symbolism that would match that, which is why I haven't talked about it much. I can't find a scene where a moon character "jumps in front a moving vehicle" to save an earth symbol, so to speak. Does anything like that come to mind for you?

And if you think about it, a comet hitting the moon during an eclipse looks like the moon jumping in front of the sun to take the impact, and sacrifice itself to save the sun.  

As for instances of symbolism, it would have to be instances where a person died in another person's stead, or attempted to die in their stead. 

During the Small Council in AGoT where it is decided that pregnant Daenerys (who is still the moon to her sun and stars) should be poisoned, Pycelle's reasoning is that by killing her now, thousands of other lives could be prevented.  They want to kill a moon-maiden in order to save thousands of potential lives.  One of their fears/reasons was the possibility that her babe might later "land in Westeros" with an army. 

Aegon was swapped out with another baby.  This baby's head is then smashed against a wall.  Heads (like the Titan of Braavos of House Baelish) commonly represent celestial bodies, especially the moon.  Moon-head baby gets destroyed to save Earth-Aegon.  

Per some theories (which I support), Tyrion was the intended target for Sansa's Strangler poison, not Joffrey (whose death was a happy accident).  According to these theories, the poison was in the pie.  Joffrey literally got in the way of the plot and poisoned himself.

There's potential symbolism in little Jaehaerys' death.  Blood and Cheese force Haelaena to choose which son should die.  She begs them to kill her instead.  I'm not sure who is the solar, lunar, and earth figure in the scene though.  Maybe Jaehaerys is the "earth" figure.  Haelaena names Maelor to be killed, but Blood and Cheese kill Jaehaerys anyway; the point of killing the moon (naming Maelor) was to save the planet (Jaehaerys), but the destruction of the moon caused death and devastation anyway (Jaehaerys died anyway). 

 

[cgrav]

@Isobel Harper

I think the distinction is the willingness of the sacrifice. The moon-archetype characters haven't really shown a willingness to die. Robert B overthrew a prominent sun symbol, and was later murdered. Danaerys has refused to die the many times she could have. Melissandre seems to value her life as if it's all she's got, and convinces other people to do they dying for her. There's plenty of moon death/destruction, but I don't really any of it as self-sacrifice.

[LmL]

1 hour ago, cgrav said:

@Isobel Harper

I think the distinction is the willingness of the sacrifice. The moon-archetype characters haven't really shown a willingness to die. Robert B overthrew a prominent sun symbol, and was later murdered. Danaerys has refused to die the many times she could have. Melissandre seems to value her life as if it's all she's got, and convinces other people to do they dying for her. There's plenty of moon death/destruction, but I don't really any of it as self-sacrifice.

That's a good point, and another point I would make is dead there's always a more physical manifestation of the mechanics of this thing. We should see something in a sword fight or battle or a physical conflict which shows that somebody leaping in front of moving comet symbol to protect an Earth symbol. It may well be out there but I just can't think of it.

[cgrav]

2 minutes ago, LmL said:

That's a good point, and another point I would make is dead there's always a more physical manifestation of the mechanics of this thing. We should see something in a sword fight or battle or a physical conflict which shows that somebody leaping in front of moving comet symbol to protect an Earth symbol. It may well be out there but I just can't think of it.

Earth symbols... do we have many of those? I mean I guess we can vaguely call the whole mess of season-based mythology a sort of pagany, earthy, religiony thing, but I'm not sure we should expect a symbol of the planet itself in a setting that, as far as we know, is pre-Copernican, just like we were back when people wore hauberks and sieged with trebuchets. Entirely possible I've zoned out while listening to the Mythical Astronomy and other podcasts, but I haven't heard of much that would indicate an Earth symbol per se. 

What I'd expect in that place would be symbols of humanity or some aspect of humanity that would be lost as a result of catastrophe. Symbols of nature would make sense, as well, like the CoTF, but like Tolkien's elves, the CoTF appear to have a limited amount of time left on the planet. The Crannogs are earthy, too, but so far haven't figured into the story as an archetype, just as a couple individual characters.

It would make sense that the life/death winter/summer cycle exemplified in the Corn King myth is such an "earth" symbol, but I think part of the story is that such a concept is ironically missing from Planetos because that cycle has been interrupted. 

[LmL]

57 minutes ago, cgrav said:

Earth symbols... do we have many of those? I mean I guess we can vaguely call the whole mess of season-based mythology a sort of pagany, earthy, religiony thing, but I'm not sure we should expect a symbol of the planet itself in a setting that, as far as we know, is pre-Copernican, just like we were back when people wore hauberks and sieged with trebuchets. Entirely possible I've zoned out while listening to the Mythical Astronomy and other podcasts, but I haven't heard of much that would indicate an Earth symbol per se. 

What I'd expect in that place would be symbols of humanity or some aspect of humanity that would be lost as a result of catastrophe. Symbols of nature would make sense, as well, like the CoTF, but like Tolkien's elves, the CoTF appear to have a limited amount of time left on the planet. The Crannogs are earthy, too, but so far haven't figured into the story as an archetype, just as a couple individual characters.

It would make sense that the life/death winter/summer cycle exemplified in the Corn King myth is such an "earth" symbol, but I think part of the story is that such a concept is ironically missing from Planetos because that cycle has been interrupted. 

I have found at least one instance of an earth symbol.  He had a spade shaped beard and some other sort of dirt clue about him. I have also seen characters who play moon meteors like Gregor or Tyrion take the "hammer of the waters injuries," throat and arm, and in that moment, they are sort of playing the role of the earth. 

Honestly I would be interested to look at any scenes where someone jumps in front of a comet symbol to protect someone else, period.

[Isobel Harper]

8 hours ago, LmL said:

I have found at least one instance of an earth symbol.  He had a spade shaped beard and some other sort of dirt clue about him. I have also seen characters who play moon meteors like Gregor or Tyrion take the "hammer of the waters injuries," throat and arm, and in that moment, they are sort of playing the role of the earth. 

Honestly I would be interested to look at any scenes where someone jumps in front of a comet symbol to protect someone else, period.

Catelyn protecting Bran from the assassin?  Lysa Arryn killing Jon Arryn to "protect" Sweetrobin from being warded with Tywin or Stannis?  

[LmL]

2 hours ago, Isobel Harper said:

Catelyn protecting Bran from the assassin?  Lysa Arryn killing Jon Arryn to "protect" Sweetrobin from being warded with Tywin or Stannis?  

The Catelyn scene might qualify, that's more like what you're talking about. I'll have to reread that one. @ravenous reader knows that scene well, as does @Pain killer Jane, what do y'all think? 

[cgrav]

3 hours ago, Isobel Harper said:

Catelyn protecting Bran from the assassin?  Lysa Arryn killing Jon Arryn to "protect" Sweetrobin from being warded with Tywin or Stannis?  

Catelyn's actions make sense in that light, though she survives and the assassin ends up dead. I think the primary purpose of her injuries in that scene is to foreshadow Ned's future as Hand and the Red Wedding. And she was attacked first, so it's hard to say if it's a case of willing self sacrifice. 

[ravenous reader]

On 2/25/2017 at 8:10 PM, LmL said:

That's a pretty good observation, and that does make sense. That kind of matches with Daenerys, who is a pail, silver Rider on a black dragon. The black dragon is the sword, Dany would be the pommel, or perhaps the rudder.  I tend to think John is a sword, not a hilt, mainly because the Nights Watch brothers are themselves swords in the darkness, and Jon armored in black ice makes him literally a black ice sword himself. Jon is also many times like into Dragon glass, which is more of the same idea. @ravenous reader, if Bran wargs into Drogon, that would also be a weirwood hilt for a black dragon sword from a certain perspective. 

Yes, I understand what you and @cgrav are getting at with the weirwood as hilt, but can't quite shake the idea of Bran as symbolically hiltless...If you imagine a personified sword standing upright with the blade pointing up and the hilt to the earth, then the hilt -- the grounding of the sword -- represents the legs, and the blade the head.  Bran having lost his legs is symbolically a hiltless sword -- or maybe it's vice versa?

I see Bran's descent 'under the sea/see' in Bloodraven's cavern, with its inky-black, underground 'sunless sea' with the blind white fish (a metaphor for the greenseers), as a mermaid-type figure, now embracing his quicksilver Tully identity, with his flabby, atrophic, useless legs dragging behind him like the mermaid's tail, which leaves him stranded on land, but ideally suited to the greenseeing arena 'under the sea'!  Like the Wall, which we're told is a serpent to the west and sword to the east, Bran's legs or tail are serpentine, with a bit of imagination, with his head representing the blade (as Tyrion tells Jon, the mind of someone who is crippled/disabled physically can still be sharp as a blade, given the whetstone-treatment of books; and Maester Luwin tells Bran when he's lamenting his brokenness that he can still be a 'knight of the mind' ). 

I also tend to think of someone as hiltless when they behave irresponsibly and Bran is a bit of a livewire, 'naughty greenseer', as we've seen, whereas Jon tends to be the more responsible, grounded member of the Stark family, (e.g. cautioning Arya not to pursue the 'needlework' too avidly all winter long, lest she become frozen and interred in the landscape).  

Jon even fashions a hilt for the dragonglass blade he's given:

Quote

A Clash of Kings - Jon V

Just then one of the dogs had raised his head and growled, and he had to move away quickly, before he was seen. I was not meant to hear that, he thought. He considered taking the tale to Mormont, but he could not bring himself to inform on his brothers, even brothers such as Chett and the Sisterman. It was just empty talk, he told himself. They are cold and afraid; we all are. It was hard waiting here, perched on the stony summit above the forest, wondering what the morrow might bring. The unseen enemy is always the most fearsome.

Jon slid his new dagger from its sheath and studied the flames as they played against the shiny black glass. He had fashioned the wooden hilt himself, and wound hempen twine around it to make a grip. Ugly, but it served. Dolorous Edd opined that glass knives were about as useful as nipples on a knight's breastplate, but Jon was not so certain. The dragonglass blade was sharper than steel, albeit far more brittle.

It must have been buried for a reason.

Although, come to think of it, the fact that the hilt is 'wooden' with 'hempen twine' (the latter plant 'hemp' from which yet another mind-altering drug is derived) might seem to rather corroborate your suggestion of the weirwood as the hilt!

As far as Longclaw is concerned, the hilt of the white direwolf was fashioned specially for Jon after the fire destroyed the original hilt (the fire which Jon started in order to save Mormont's life and kill the wight), linking Jon specifically with the hilt rather than the blade which is more of a Mormont artifact.

On 2/25/2017 at 7:58 PM, LmL said:

2 and 3. That was originally 1 episode that got split in half. And also, huzzah! May you find them pleasing to your eyeballs and your membranes, whichever is appropriate

Interesting idea about one person being a hilt and another a sword... I will ponder that.

You have a knack for making even appropriate statements sound inappropriate...  

40 minutes ago, cgrav said:

it's hard to say if it's a case of willing self sacrifice. 

Could someone please explain why the 'willing self sacrifice' is so important to the analogy?  If we're positing that a greenseer acted with good intentions to protect earth from the comet by using the moon as a shield to absorb the impact, then the greenseer is still the aggressor -- nothing self-sacrificial about the attack on the moon.  Further, by the greenseer's diabolical (from the perspective of the moon and comet) 'moonsinging,' the moon might have been forced into alignment (i.e. the solar eclipse) to shield the sun from impact, if that's your argument -- yet, again, the moon along with the comet (and indeed sun caught in the fallout) play the unwilling not willing victims in all of this.

Brienne strikes me as a candidate for sacrificial moon figure, whether unwilling or willing (she might indeed throw herself in front of Lady Stoneheart for love of Jaime, for example!)  In the following passage, she's associated with a shield -- i.e. she's a moon shield -- serving to trap projectiles (e.g. the thrown axe flying through the air, such as in the 'finger dance,' would be the comet analogy here).  Fittingly, the shield in question potentially describes the drama of which she's symbolically part, namely the black bats of Whent over which the tree with the falling star symbolism was later painted.  Not only is the tree present as a painting on the shield-- hinting at the greenseer influence in events via weirwood and/or triggering weirwood transformation as a consequence of the celestial tampering -- but the fact that the shield itself is made of wood which is effective as a trap -- i.e. 'garth or 'weir' -- also points to the greenseers who themselves are 'trapped' in the tree as well as 'trapping' the comet in the moon in space.

Quote

A Feast for Crows - Brienne II

There were pine and linden shields to be had for pennies, but Brienne rode past them. She meant to keep the heavy oaken shield Jaime had given her, the one he'd borne himself from Harrenhal to King's Landing. A pine shield had its advantages. It was lighter, and therefore easier to bear, and the soft wood was more like to trap a foeman's axe or sword. But oak gave more protection, if you were strong enough to bear its weight.

 

[LmL]

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

Yes, I understand what you and @cgrav are getting at with the weirwood as hilt, but can't quite shake the idea of Bran as symbolically hiltless...If you imagine a personified sword standing upright with the blade pointing up and the hilt to the earth, then the hilt -- the grounding of the sword -- represents the legs, and the blade the head.  Bran having lost his legs is symbolically a hiltless sword -- or maybe it's vice versa?

The pommels usually have heads on them, so perhaps the head is the pommel and the blade is the legs. Bran's legs are broken, he's a broken sword. 

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

I see Bran's descent 'under the sea/see' in Bloodraven's cavern, with its inky-black, underground 'sunless sea' with the blind white fish (a metaphor for the greenseers),

Oh, they sure would be - blind wish denizens of the see. Got it, nice work.  The see / sea metaphor continues to pay dividends and reinforce itself at every turn. 

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

as a mermaid-type figure, now embracing his quicksilver Tully identity, with his flabby, atrophic, useless legs dragging behind him like the mermaid's tail, which leaves him stranded on land, but ideally suited to the greenseeing arena 'under the sea'!  

Yep, very cool, this all makes sense. Heard you talk about it before, but I just wanted to say how much I like it. 

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

Like the Wall, which we're told is a serpent to the west and sword to the east, Bran's legs or tail are serpentine, with a bit of imagination, with his head representing the blade (as Tyrion tells Jon, the mind of someone who is crippled/disabled physically can still be sharp as a blade, given the whetstone-treatment of books; and Maester Luwin tells Bran when he's lamenting his brokenness that he can still be a 'knight of the mind' ). 

I also tend to think of someone as hiltless when they behave irresponsibly and Bran is a bit of a livewire, 'naughty greenseer', as we've seen, whereas Jon tends to be the more responsible, grounded member of the Stark family, (e.g. cautioning Arya not to pursue the 'needlework' too avidly all winter long, lest she become frozen and interred in the landscape).  

Makes sense.

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

Jon even fashions a hilt for the dragonglass blade he's given:

Although, come to think of it, the fact that the hilt is 'wooden' with 'hempen twine' (the latter plant 'hemp' from which yet another mind-altering drug is derived) might seem to rather corroborate your suggestion of the weirwood as the hilt!

Indeed. This idea comes first from Jon's sword, and the pommel is pale stone (like petrified weir) and looks like Ghost, who symbolizes a weirwood. That makes it seem clear the weirwood is the hilt, and and Jon making wooden hilts with hemp line sup with this also. Ghost will be a kind of hilt for reborn Jon, a controlling factor that harnesses his power.

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

As far as Longclaw is concerned, the hilt of the white direwolf was fashioned specially for Jon after the fire destroyed the original hilt (the fire which Jon started in order to save Mormont's life and kill the wight), linking Jon specifically with the hilt rather than the blade which is more of a Mormont artifact.

No, I think it links Ghost with the hilt. Jon was given the sword, and Jon is a sword. 

Here's where I think the confusion lies - Bran and Jon are probably not supposed to be considered part of the same sword.  They are both swords in need of hilts. The weirwood cage acts as a hilt for Bran, just like Lonclaw's pommel implies a weirwood hilt for a black sword. Bran is undoubtedly a broken sword, and I would agree with your hiltless sword analysis. But Jon is also undeniably a sword, and Stannis likens him to his dragonglass weapons, saying he has found Jon as Jon found the dragonglass, and that he will make use of Jon. The logical answer is that they simply parallel each other in this, they are not a sword - hilt pair. Or it could be that the are both swords than need hilts, but then will later combine to make a larger pairing of the same nature. But there isn't clear evidence for that, not like there is for both being swords than need hilts. 

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

You have a knack for making even appropriate statements sound inappropriate...  

Indeed! Just call me Randy.

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

Could someone please explain why the 'willing self sacrifice' is so important to the analogy?  If we're positing that a greenseer acted with good intentions to protect earth from the comet by using the moon as a shield to absorb the impact, then the greenseer is still the aggressor -- nothing self-sacrificial about the attack on the moon.  

Agree fully, was going to point that out. Someone could be pushed into the line of fire, that works better actually. 

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

Further, by the greenseer's diabolical (from the perspective of the moon and comet) 'moonsinging,' the moon might have been forced into alignment (i.e. the solar eclipse) to shield the sun from impact, if that's your argument -- yet, again, the moon along with the comet (and indeed sun caught in the fallout) play the unwilling not willing victims in all of this.

Yep, and that's a pretty desperate gamble. Still an interesting notion however. 

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

Brienne strikes me as a candidate for sacrificial moon figure, whether unwilling or willing (she might indeed throw herself in front of Lady Stoneheart for love of Jaime, for example!)  In the following passage, she's associated with a shield -- i.e. she's a moon shield -- serving to trap projectiles (e.g. the thrown axe flying through the air, such as in the 'finger dance,' would be the comet analogy here).  Fittingly, the shield in question potentially describes the drama of which she's symbolically part, namely the black bats of Whent over which the tree with the falling star symbolism was later painted.  Not only is the tree present as a painting on the shield-- hinting at the greenseer influence in events via weirwood and/or triggering weirwood transformation as a consequence of the celestial tampering -- but the fact that the shield itself is made of wood which is effective as a trap -- i.e. 'garth or 'weir' -- also points to the greenseers who themselves are 'trapped' in the tree as well as 'trapping' the comet in the moon in space.

 

Yes, I'd agree with most of that. I will just add that in my mind, Brienne represents the ice moon which has been impregnated with a black fire moon meteor, represented by her carrying around Oathkeeper, a black sword given to her by the sun.  Oathkeeper, as one half of Ned's split sword, also represents the half of the comet which has returned to the story, and will keep it's oath by hitting the ice moon. According to this line of thinking, the ice moon has a black dragon trapped inside, and when the comet returns, that dragon will be let out. "One day the Other moon will kiss the sun too, and the dragons will return. "

[cgrav]

@ravenous reader the "willing sacrifice" thing is only important to the idea of the moon putting itself in the way intentionally, which I don't think is the case, based on the symbolic scenes featuring moon figures. I agree that the moon was murdered, whether it was used as a shield or meant to be destroyed (I lean towards the latter).

[Isobel Harper]

6 hours ago, LmL said:

 

Yes, I'd agree with most of that. I will just add that in my mind, Brienne represents the ice moon which has been impregnated with a black fire moon meteor, represented by her carrying around Oathkeeper, a black sword given to her by the sun.  Oathkeeper, as one half of Ned's split sword, also represents the half of the comet which has returned to the story, and will keep it's oath by hitting the ice moon. According to this line of thinking, the ice moon has a black dragon trapped inside, and when the comet returns, that dragon will be let out. "One day the Other moon will kiss the sun too, and the dragons will return. "

Question.  Why is the fire moon red and black?   I thought black meteors were only those that fell to the planet.  And wouldn't the meteor (represented by Oathkeeper) be red anyway since Oathkeeper has been dyed red? 

Interesting that Brienne is the inverse of Sansa.  Brienne is an ice moon with a fire moon meteor inside and Sansa is a fire moon meteor inside an ice moon. 

Remind me again that Arya represents.  A black moon meteor, right?  But one that has fallen to earth?  

[Pain killer Jane]

On 2/27/2017 at 8:20 AM, LmL said:

The Catelyn scene might qualify, that's more like what you're talking about. I'll have to reread that one. @ravenous reader knows that scene well, as does @Pain killer Jane, what do y'all think? 

Hey sorry, class all day. @sweetsunray is also another person very familiar with this scene as well. Anyway, I had time to look over this and I agree that Catelyn is the best because of this sentence right here;

Quote

 Bran looked so pale. She wondered whether they might move his bed under the window, so he could get the morning sun.

 

And then Robb remarking that the dogs barking even when the wolves were howling as odd is interesting if we consider that animals know that natural disasters will occur before we do. 

 

On 2/27/2017 at 9:29 AM, cgrav said:

Catelyn's actions make sense in that light, though she survives and the assassin ends up dead. I think the primary purpose of her injuries in that scene is to foreshadow Ned's future as Hand and the Red Wedding. And she was attacked first, so it's hard to say if it's a case of willing self sacrifice. 

While I see the foreshadowing for the Red Wedding, in terms of a foreshadowed Hand of a King, I see Davos because of her hand injuries.

Quote

The cuts in her fingers went deep, almost to the bone.......

We know that Davos' fingers were cut at the last joint but we don't know exactly where Catelyn's injuries on her fingers are located. The catspaw in order to slice Cat's throat would have placed the blade side to it. Cat gripped the dagger and tried to pull it away from her throat so she would have curled her fingers around the blade and therefore injuring her in the same area as Davos's shortened hand. 

The moment she gripped that dagger and held on, she stood firmly in between the assassin and her son in the hope that someone would save her son, not save her. If Nissa Nissa did commit self-sacrifice than she would have done like Cat and gripped that dagger and plunged it into her own heart. 

This scene is very reminiscent of Cersei and Ser Ilyn Payne (who is the King's Justice and the catspaw was the Prince's Gift of Mercy) during the Battle of the Blackwater. And if you notice Stannis's cutting of only Davos' fingers was justice and mercy because the cutting of a head was the customary punishment for smuggling.  

[LmL]

40 minutes ago, Cowboy Dan said:

NIN is a great listen but I prefer not to get that depressed these days  Also the Metallica reference I had mistaken for a Dio nod at first.. I should be ashamed to call myself a metalhead. Luckily I don't care much for labels, so my shame will pass.

Ha ha, always great to hear from you Cowboy! I'm sorry I've shot down your ideas to some extent in the past - I don't recall which those were, who knows, I may have come around on them by now. That happens you know. My foggy memory thinks of you as someone who always has interesting things to say, for what it's worth. You have great insights here though!

40 minutes ago, Cowboy Dan said:

And of course as everyone's already said: excellent essay! I always enjoy hearing your stuff even if I don't totally follow all the time but this one was really straight forward and had some fun symbolic analysis going down. But alas as always it's just too much symbolism for my mind to keep track of when looking for candidates.

Just pause the podcast and listen section at a time. It's a lot to take in - I have to go over the material many times to sort it out, so I think you kind of have to listen to these podcasts as couple of times to get everything. It's not me, it's the nature of George's symbolic fractal funhouse.

40 minutes ago, Cowboy Dan said:

Even the conversation here makes me feel out of my depth. That said, I think y'all are missing a really obvious connection if the discussion is regarding a possible self-sacrifice that appears like an unwanted betrayal. Because we've already seen that happen once and it was to protect against the Long Night (albeit indirectly).

It's the murder of Qhorin Halfhand! 

Oh yeah, for sure! Nice one!

40 minutes ago, Cowboy Dan said:

I mean, hell, it's got the telltale arm/neck wounds and everything! There's the pre-existing hand maiming followed by having his throat cut by a VS sword, black with a bloody tip. 

He even sprayed the blood from his maimed hand in the enemy's face, w very good "fiery hand of R'hllor" --> "waves of blood and night" sequence. After Qhorin is slain, he is burned on a pyre. If you recall the very end of Weirwood Compendium One, I showed all those scenes where fiery dancers and fiery sorcerers emerge from burning wood when Lightbringer was forged. One of the best ones was when Jon and Qhorin made a fire right before this encounter. The wood had been dead a long time, but seemed to live again in the flames, if you remember. That was the beginning of this chapter, and it ends with Qhorin being burned, so I think its fair to draw the connection between the undead fire sorcerer emerging from the tree and Qhorin. 

40 minutes ago, Cowboy Dan said:

To everyone but Jon the kill is a betrayal of a sworn brother (you could say it's a blood betrayal) but for them it is a noble act intended to save the kingdom. I can't say much on the symbolism front as it relates to your essays since the few times I felt like I had a good example you seem to tell me I have something wrong . So I'll leave you to say whether it's a good candidate or not.

There's definitely something going on here! What we need to figure is what part of the celestial arrangement this is. There is more than one sacrificial victim, so it's not a dead ringer that Qhorin is the fire moon. The Azor Ahai reborn meteors, offspring of sun and moon, kill their sun father, for example. This is like when Tyrion kills Tywin - Tyrion is the moon meteor, Lightbringer, AA reborn, and when the meteors land, they blot out the sun - that's akin to killing their father. Since Qhorin is like a father figure to Jon, this might be what is happening. 

But, it could be that Jon is player a solar role (it would be a dark solar king role) and Quorin the fire moon. The idea that Jon is saving the kingdom by doing the foul deed could definitely fit with the idea putting the moon in the way to save the earth. That's a very good observation. Ygritte is an easy fire moon symbol, and Jon has "forge Lightbringers in the dark" with her to save the realm as well. What's funny is that he keeps a weirwood (ghost) in between them to prevent her from forging with him... then when Ghost is gone, and when they go to the underworld cavern (and under the sunless see to boot) they finally forge a Lightbringer together. That seems like AA the greenseer bringing down the moon from an underground lair, right? He's literally in the sunless see when he does this. That's awesome! I just figured that out, and it's all thanks to you Cowboy Dan.  Your observations here combined with @ravenous reader's continually potent see / sea pun have given us another great clue about greenseers bringing down the moon. 

 

RR, PKJ, et al, why is it that Ghost, acting like a weirwood sword in between them and preserving the moon's chastity, has to go away before they can do the deed? What does that mean?

40 minutes ago, Cowboy Dan said:

After re-reading the chapter a couple things stuck out at me though. First is that they repeat their vows together, "Their voices blended as one beneath the rising moon, while Ghost listened and the mountains themselves bore witness," which made me think of two swords acting as one.

Sure, there's a strong link between song and word to swords and weapons. Specifically, the sound which broke the moon, NN's cry of anguish and ecstasy, which is echoed in Euron's dragonbinder horn, which split the air like a swordthrust and sounded like a shivering hot scream. Think about the greenseers who brought the moon down - or perhaps their assistants as @Unchained suggests, the dancers and singers, perhaps children of the forest helping the naughty greenseers... these could also be the dwarves we see in these visions - think of the dwarves that helped Bloodraven steal the egg from Butterwell's solar. So the NW brothers making their voices merge as one can definitely be compared to a sword forging.  Sam is a sea dragon sword, and Jon is a black ice sword... they seem like the same material. It's so hard to say because the sea dragon can be a black meteor or white petrified weirwood stone. If we could find a way to identify Sam as a white meteor or a weirwood stone, we might have evidence of forging a sword with black and white material mixed together - something I am on the lookout for, as I think it is one possibility. Longclaw gives the model - pale stone pommel, with Ghost symbolizing a weirwood, and the black steel of the blade.  Can we make Sam a weirwood stone? Anyone?

 

1 hour ago, Cowboy Dan said:

Quote

"Shagga, what moon is this?"

Shagga's frown was a fierce thing. "Black, I think."

"In the west, they call that a traitor's moon. Try not to get too drunk tonight, and see that your axe is sharp."

"A Stone Crow's axe is always sharp, and Shagga's axes are sharpest of all. Once I cut off a man's head, but he did not know it until he tried to brush his hair. Then it fell off." -Tyrion VI, ACOK

Jon is naturally called a traitor's bastard after he returns to Castle Black and gets accused of being a traitor himself for the murder of Qhorin. So it seems a straightforward connection but and this is where it gets fun, it gets reinforced by Shagga's follow-up remark. Recall that Qhorin consistently asks Jon if his blade is sharp, he responds that it's VS (which is always sharp) and when he is killed it is so sharp it almost seems as if Jon missed his mark.

Quote

"The ranger was leaning away, and for an instant it seemed that Jon's slash had not touched him. Then a string of red tears appeared across the big man's throat, bright as a ruby necklace, and the blood gushed out of him, and Qhorin Halfhand fell." -Jon VIII, ACOK

 

Right on, I am liking all your ideas today. We were JUST talking about the fact that a blue moon - the occasional extra 13th full moon that we get every once in a while is also called a traitor's moon. But here George has made the new moon the traitor's moon. That's quite interesting. @Blue Tiger, @ravenous reader, thoughts on this? Uncanny timing on Cowboy Dan's part, aye? 

High five @Cowboy Dan.  You done good my man. 

 

 

40 minutes ago, Cowboy Dan said:

 

[LmL]

5 hours ago, Isobel Harper said:

Question.  Why is the fire moon red and black?   I thought black meteors were only those that fell to the planet.  And wouldn't the meteor (represented by Oathkeeper) be red anyway since Oathkeeper has been dyed red? 

The fire moon itself, before it's death, seems to be associated with silver, as moons tend to be, or white and red, as we see with Ygritte and Melisandre and Dany standing in a pyre. The black and red mostly applied to the meteors, but the meteors are also the transformed moon. They are all that's left of the moon. When we see moons drown, that's the moon meteor, a piece of the moon, landing in the ocean. So the moon doesn't turn black until it's blown to bits. That's why we have those clues about the moon turning into a black hole in the sky when it is the new moon phase - a black hole drinks in light, and that's exactly what the lightbringer meteors did. That's what all that drinking the light stuff was about, which we saw applied to Oathkeeper and WW, the greasy stone, etc. 

As for the black and red, it seems we had black meteors - think of the black stone and the Bloodstone Emperor's black meteor - which would have burned red as they fell through the atmosphere.  This is also the composition of the red comet - the cores of comets maybe dirty ice and rock, but they are coated in a layer of ultra-dark black tar that scientists call "space gunk"; it's akin to the char on your barbecue but much harder. In other words, the red comet is a greasy black ice stone burning red. Based on all the research that indicates AA made his Lightbringer sword from a black moon meteor, and because it was remembered as burning red, I tend to imagine Lightbringer just as Jon sees Longclaw in his dream - a black steel blade burning red. Very like the Blackfyre sigil, a black dragon surrounded by red. And of course "Blackfyre" is an ideal Lightbringer symbol according to me, because I actually think Lightbringer's fire might have matched Drogon's black fire, which is "black fire shot through with red." Since the dragonfire matches the color of the dragons, it's fair to conclude that Aegon the Conqueror named his sword Blackfyre after the color of Balerion's fire. In the dark, black fire shot through with red would look mostly red, and would still be bright, just as Drogon's black fire still lights up the room in the House of the Undying. 

Oathkeeper is terrific. It's blade is a dark blood red and night black - like "waves of night and blood on some steely shore." It's crossguard "flames gold," giving us the implication of fire, and of course Balerion and Drogon's black fire is shot through not only with red, but also gold, so black, red, and gold are the primary colors of the burning meteors. You could also think of the gold as signifying it's partial solar heritage. The lion's head has two ruby eyes like red stars - that's the solar face that split the comet in two, along side the two red stars which represent the two comet halves. That's also what WW and OK represent, two halves of a split comet (Ned's Ice, which is compared to the red comet). Widow's Wail is the comet to hit the fire moon, hence the name correlating to Nissa Nissa's cry and hence it being given to Joffrey the sun king on the day he dies and his face turns dark.  Oathkeeper is in the hands of an icy moon maiden, Brienne the Blue, and that symbolized the comet returning to hit the ice moon (in theory of course).

So, with OK and WW, it's all right there. The comet splitting, the sun, the black and red meteors which were Lightbringer. A red sword of blood and fire and darkness. 

Some of my favorite clues about Lightbringer being a sword of darkness or a black sword are the allusions to it as a shadowsword. When the shadowbaby version of Stannis (a great Azor Ahai reborn the black meteor symbol) kills Renly, he's wielding a "shadowsword" the phrase is used twice. The GOHH laters sees this as a shadow with a burning heart, btw, so the fire idea is till there, despite the darkness, and that's Lightbringer in a nutshell. Elsewhere, Theon thinks that "the shadow of his (Ned's) greatsword always lay between them." Mel says "Ice, I see, and daggers in the dark." That's a description of Ned's "Black Ice," a dagger in the dark. Then she says "blood frozen red and hard," again giving us the idea of bloody Ice (Ned's sword). As you can see, the colors are red and black, and the idea is black ice, frozen fire.  The dagger sin the dark is a great match for the black teeth of the dragons, which Arya describes as a "dagger made of darkness," very similar to Mel's daggers in the dark. In that same Arya scene, one of the dragon skulls (balerion's) has teeth as tall as swords. So, black dragon teeth are like swords and daggers made of darkness, and that's how I see Lightbringer. 

On the opposite end, we have Dawn, the sword of the Morning (Lightbringer being a kind of "Sword of the Evening," the sword that set the sun, etc. It's a white sword, associated with morning, and my favorite line about dawn the sunrise is "Dawn came cruel, a dagger of light." It's the opposite of a dagger of darkness. Burning white ice vs. burning black ice, I think. For all I know both will burn red and the sword fight will be very confusing to watch, like hockey was before hi-def TV.  Or perhaps Dawn will burn pink, as @ravenous reader is beginning to think?

5 hours ago, Isobel Harper said:

Interesting that Brienne is the inverse of Sansa.  Brienne is an ice moon with a fire moon meteor inside and Sansa is a fire moon meteor inside an ice moon. 

They are both expressing the same thing in different ways is how I would say it, but yes, you've got it. Sansa is more analogous to Oathkeeper in Brienne's hands. Sansa is a fire moon maiden, when she flies from KL, she's now a moon meteor (Alayne Stone) who gets buried in the ice moon (the Eyrie). The Giant's Lance, a mountain of dark stone covered in ice, is parallel to Sansa, if you can believe that. That's why the Mountain puts his giant's lance in the blue armored Ser Hugh of the Vale, turning his crescent moons red, one by one. The giant's lance destroyed the fire moon and transformed the ice moon (this is what gave it its cold fire, symbolized by the Others burning blue star eyes, imo). Giant's lance mountain buried in snow of the Vale, Giant's Lance lance buried in Ser Hugh of the Vale. 

Brienne is analogous to the Eyrie, the recipient of the fire moon meteor than came from the sun (Tywin and Jaime giving her Oathkeeper). It's interesting where Oathkeeper came from too - it was inside the white sword tower, the home of the KG-like Others. That's yet another depiction of the black sword meteor stuck in the ice moon. 

5 hours ago, Isobel Harper said:

Remind me again that Arya represents.  A black moon meteor, right?  But one that has fallen to earth?  

Yes, she sees to be part death goddess, which would be the Nissa Nissa reborn version of the moon meteor, like her mother Stoneheart. She's also part cotf, a skinny squirrel and a girl dressed like an oak tree who visits the kingdom of the leaves. The cotf reminds Bran of Arya - it's noted repeatedly. This is one of the good pieces of evidence for Nissa Nissa as an elf woman, as the Scandinavian translation of Nissa as "helpful / mischievous elf suggests.  Of course, this could also be referring to a weirwood woman, as we have picked up on this crossover between fire moon maidens and weirwoods. 

When she plays the ghost in Harrenhall, that implies her as a fiery spirit. The ghosts which are said to roam harrenhall are said to be the burnt ghosts of those who died there. So if she's a ghost in Harrenhall, she's a fiery one, which of course makes sense. The scene where she escapes the burning barn inside the holdfast by crawling through the tunnel is a great scene - it's here essentially being reborn in fire. The tunnel is like a birthing canal, and there is ample fire moon explosion symbolism going on. That is also the scene where she sees the burning tree in robes of living fire which I made such a big deal of. 

[Bluetiger]

6 hours ago, LmL said:

Ha ha, always great to hear from you Cowboy! I'm sorry I've shot down your ideas to some extent in the past - I don't recall which those were, who knows, I may have come around on them by now. That happens you know. My foggy memory thinks of you as someone who always has interesting things to say, for what it's worth. You have great insights here though!

Just pause the podcast and listen section at a time. It's a lot to take in - I have to go over the material many times to sort it out, so I think you kind of have to listen to these podcasts as couple of times to get everything. It's not me, it's the nature of George's symbolic fractal funhouse.

Oh yeah, for sure! Nice one!

He even sprayed the blood from his maimed hand in the enemy's face, w very good "fiery hand of R'hllor" --> "waves of blood and night" sequence. After Qhorin is slain, he is burned on a pyre. If you recall the very end of Weirwood Compendium One, I showed all those scenes where fiery dancers and fiery sorcerers emerge from burning wood when Lightbringer was forged. One of the best ones was when Jon and Qhorin made a fire right before this encounter. The wood had been dead a long time, but seemed to live again in the flames, if you remember. That was the beginning of this chapter, and it ends with Qhorin being burned, so I think its fair to draw the connection between the undead fire sorcerer emerging from the tree and Qhorin. 

There's definitely something going on here! What we need to figure is what part of the celestial arrangement this is. There is more than one sacrificial victim, so it's not a dead ringer that Qhorin is the fire moon. The Azor Ahai reborn meteors, offspring of sun and moon, kill their sun father, for example. This is like when Tyrion kills Tywin - Tyrion is the moon meteor, Lightbringer, AA reborn, and when the meteors land, they blot out the sun - that's akin to killing their father. Since Qhorin is like a father figure to Jon, this might be what is happening. 

But, it could be that Jon is player a solar role (it would be a dark solar king role) and Quorin the fire moon. The idea that Jon is saving the kingdom by doing the foul deed could definitely fit with the idea putting the moon in the way to save the earth. That's a very good observation. Ygritte is an easy fire moon symbol, and Jon has "forge Lightbringers in the dark" with her to save the realm as well. What's funny is that he keeps a weirwood (ghost) in between them to prevent her from forging with him... then when Ghost is gone, and when they go to the underworld cavern (and under the sunless see to boot) they finally forge a Lightbringer together. That seems like AA the greenseer bringing down the moon from an underground lair, right? He's literally in the sunless see when he does this. That's awesome! I just figured that out, and it's all thanks to you Cowboy Dan.  Your observations here combined with @ravenous reader's continually potent see / sea pun have given us another great clue about greenseers bringing down the moon. 

 

RR, PKJ, et al, why is it that Ghost, acting like a weirwood sword in between them and preserving the moon's chastity, has to go away before they can do the deed? What does that mean?

Sure, there's a strong link between song and word to swords and weapons. Specifically, the sound which broke the moon, NN's cry of anguish and ecstasy, which is echoed in Euron's dragonbinder horn, which split the air like a swordthrust and sounded like a shivering hot scream. Think about the greenseers who brought the moon down - or perhaps their assistants as @Unchained suggests, the dancers and singers, perhaps children of the forest helping the naughty greenseers... these could also be the dwarves we see in these visions - think of the dwarves that helped Bloodraven steal the egg from Butterwell's solar. So the NW brothers making their voices merge as one can definitely be compared to a sword forging.  Sam is a sea dragon sword, and Jon is a black ice sword... they seem like the same material. It's so hard to say because the sea dragon can be a black meteor or white petrified weirwood stone. If we could find a way to identify Sam as a white meteor or a weirwood stone, we might have evidence of forging a sword with black and white material mixed together - something I am on the lookout for, as I think it is one possibility. Longclaw gives the model - pale stone pommel, with Ghost symbolizing a weirwood, and the black steel of the blade.  Can we make Sam a weirwood stone? Anyone?

 

Right on, I am liking all your ideas today. We were JUST talking about the fact that a blue moon - the occasional extra 13th full moon that we get every once in a while is also called a traitor's moon. But here George has made the new moon the traitor's moon. That's quite interesting. @Blue Tiger, @ravenous reader, thoughts on this? Uncanny timing on Cowboy Dan's part, aye? 

High five @Cowboy Dan.  You done good my man. 

 

 

 

From Wikipedia:

• In calculating the dates for Lent and Easter, Catholic clergy identified a Lenten moon. Historically, when the moons arrived too early, they called the early moon a "betrayer" (belewe) moon, so the Lenten moon came at its expected time.

• The suggestion has been made that the term "blue moon" for "intercalary month" arose byfolk etymology, the "blue" replacing the no-longer-understood belewe, 'to betray'. The original meaning would then have been "betrayer moon", referring to a full moon that would "normally" (in years without an intercalary month) be the full moon of spring, while in an intercalary year, it was "traitorous" in the sense that people would have had to continue fasting for another month in accordance with the season of Lent.

  The earliest recorded English usage of the term blue moon is found in an anti-clerical pamphlet (attacking the Roman clergy, and cardinal Thomas Wolsey in particular) by twoconverted Greenwich friars, William Roy and Jerome Barlow, published in 1528 under the title Rede me and be nott wrothe, for I say no thynge but trothe. The relevant passage reads:

  O churche men are wyly foxes [...] Yf they say the mone is blewe / We must beleve that it is true / Admittynge their interpretacion.(ed. Arber 1871 p. 114)

  It is not clear from the context that this refers to intercalation; the context of the passage is a dialogue between two priest's servants, spoken by the character "Jeffrey" (a brefe dialoge betwene two preste's servauntis, named Watkyn and Ieffraye). The intention may simply be that Jeffrey makes an absurd statement, "the moon is blue", to make the point that priests require laymen to believe in statements even if they are patently false. But in the above interpretation of "betrayer moon", Jeffrey may also be saying that it is up to the priests to say when Lent will be delayed, by announcing "blue moons" which laymen have no means to verify.

•  

Maybe I'll write more about this topic in TAC episode about Easter...

 

[Isobel Harper]

6 hours ago, LmL said:

The fire moon itself, before it's death, seems to be associated with silver, as moons tend to be, or white and red, as we see with Ygritte and Melisandre and Dany standing in a pyre. The black and red mostly applied to the meteors, but the meteors are also the transformed moon. They are all that's left of the moon. When we see moons drown, that's the moon meteor, a piece of the moon, landing in the ocean. So the moon doesn't turn black until it's blown to bits. That's why we have those clues about the moon turning into a black hole in the sky when it is the new moon phase - a black hole drinks in light, and that's exactly what the lightbringer meteors did. That's what all that drinking the light stuff was about, which we saw applied to Oathkeeper and WW, the greasy stone, etc. 

As for the black and red, it seems we had black meteors - think of the black stone and the Bloodstone Emperor's black meteor - which would have burned red as they fell through the atmosphere.  This is also the composition of the red comet - the cores of comets maybe dirty ice and rock, but they are coated in a layer of ultra-dark black tar that scientists call "space gunk"; it's akin to the char on your barbecue but much harder. In other words, the red comet is a greasy black ice stone burning red. Based on all the research that indicates AA made his Lightbringer sword from a black moon meteor, and because it was remembered as burning red, I tend to imagine Lightbringer just as Jon sees Longclaw in his dream - a black steel blade burning red. Very like the Blackfyre sigil, a black dragon surrounded by red. And of course "Blackfyre" is an ideal Lightbringer symbol according to me, because I actually think Lightbringer's fire might have matched Drogon's black fire, which is "black fire shot through with red." Since the dragonfire matches the color of the dragons, it's fair to conclude that Aegon the Conqueror named his sword Blackfyre after the color of Balerion's fire. In the dark, black fire shot through with red would look mostly red, and would still be bright, just as Drogon's black fire still lights up the room in the House of the Undying. 

Oathkeeper is terrific. It's blade is a dark blood red and night black - like "waves of night and blood on some steely shore." It's crossguard "flames gold," giving us the implication of fire, and of course Balerion and Drogon's black fire is shot through not only with red, but also gold, so black, red, and gold are the primary colors of the burning meteors. You could also think of the gold as signifying it's partial solar heritage. The lion's head has two ruby eyes like red stars - that's the solar face that split the comet in two, along side the two red stars which represent the two comet halves. That's also what WW and OK represent, two halves of a split comet (Ned's Ice, which is compared to the red comet). Widow's Wail is the comet to hit the fire moon, hence the name correlating to Nissa Nissa's cry and hence it being given to Joffrey the sun king on the day he dies and his face turns dark.  Oathkeeper is in the hands of an icy moon maiden, Brienne the Blue, and that symbolized the comet returning to hit the ice moon (in theory of course).

So, with OK and WW, it's all right there. The comet splitting, the sun, the black and red meteors which were Lightbringer. A red sword of blood and fire and darkness. 

Some of my favorite clues about Lightbringer being a sword of darkness or a black sword are the allusions to it as a shadowsword. When the shadowbaby version of Stannis (a great Azor Ahai reborn the black meteor symbol) kills Renly, he's wielding a "shadowsword" the phrase is used twice. The GOHH laters sees this as a shadow with a burning heart, btw, so the fire idea is till there, despite the darkness, and that's Lightbringer in a nutshell. Elsewhere, Theon thinks that "the shadow of his (Ned's) greatsword always lay between them." Mel says "Ice, I see, and daggers in the dark." That's a description of Ned's "Black Ice," a dagger in the dark. Then she says "blood frozen red and hard," again giving us the idea of bloody Ice (Ned's sword). As you can see, the colors are red and black, and the idea is black ice, frozen fire.  The dagger sin the dark is a great match for the black teeth of the dragons, which Arya describes as a "dagger made of darkness," very similar to Mel's daggers in the dark. In that same Arya scene, one of the dragon skulls (balerion's) has teeth as tall as swords. So, black dragon teeth are like swords and daggers made of darkness, and that's how I see Lightbringer. 

On the opposite end, we have Dawn, the sword of the Morning (Lightbringer being a kind of "Sword of the Evening," the sword that set the sun, etc. It's a white sword, associated with morning, and my favorite line about dawn the sunrise is "Dawn came cruel, a dagger of light." It's the opposite of a dagger of darkness. Burning white ice vs. burning black ice, I think. For all I know both will burn red and the sword fight will be very confusing to watch, like hockey was before hi-def TV.  Or perhaps Dawn will burn pink, as @ravenous reader is beginning to think?

They are both expressing the same thing in different ways is how I would say it, but yes, you've got it. Sansa is more analogous to Oathkeeper in Brienne's hands. Sansa is a fire moon maiden, when she flies from KL, she's now a moon meteor (Alayne Stone) who gets buried in the ice moon (the Eyrie). The Giant's Lance, a mountain of dark stone covered in ice, is parallel to Sansa, if you can believe that. That's why the Mountain puts his giant's lance in the blue armored Ser Hugh of the Vale, turning his crescent moons red, one by one. The giant's lance destroyed the fire moon and transformed the ice moon (this is what gave it its cold fire, symbolized by the Others burning blue star eyes, imo). Giant's lance mountain buried in snow of the Vale, Giant's Lance lance buried in Ser Hugh of the Vale. 

Brienne is analogous to the Eyrie, the recipient of the fire moon meteor than came from the sun (Tywin and Jaime giving her Oathkeeper). It's interesting where Oathkeeper came from too - it was inside the white sword tower, the home of the KG-like Others. That's yet another depiction of the black sword meteor stuck in the ice moon. 

Yes, she sees to be part death goddess, which would be the Nissa Nissa reborn version of the moon meteor, like her mother Stoneheart. She's also part cotf, a skinny squirrel and a girl dressed like an oak tree who visits the kingdom of the leaves. The cotf reminds Bran of Arya - it's noted repeatedly. This is one of the good pieces of evidence for Nissa Nissa as an elf woman, as the Scandinavian translation of Nissa as "helpful / mischievous elf suggests.  Of course, this could also be referring to a weirwood woman, as we have picked up on this crossover between fire moon maidens and weirwoods. 

When she plays the ghost in Harrenhall, that implies her as a fiery spirit. The ghosts which are said to roam harrenhall are said to be the burnt ghosts of those who died there. So if she's a ghost in Harrenhall, she's a fiery one, which of course makes sense. The scene where she escapes the burning barn inside the holdfast by crawling through the tunnel is a great scene - it's here essentially being reborn in fire. The tunnel is like a birthing canal, and there is ample fire moon explosion symbolism going on. That is also the scene where she sees the burning tree in robes of living fire which I made such a big deal of. 

Re: moon color.  Oh ok.  So fire or ice, a moon is silver.  I was thinking the fire moon was red, and it turned black with its death.  OK and WW then would be part death (Ned's death) and life (his two daughters).  And the Lannisters/sun symbols split them in up, both the swords and the daughters.

Re: Brienne's sword and shield.  Brienne is wielding Ice in a new form and a Lothston shield in a new form - the Stark kids' paternal and matrilineal heritage in a new form.  Alayne Stone is Sansa in a new form.  If Oathkeeper represents the fire moon in an ice moon, as does "Alayne Stone" in the Vale, then all the symbolism comes full circle! 

[Pain killer Jane]

2 hours ago, Blue Tiger said:

From Wikipedia:

• In calculating the dates for Lent and Easter, Catholic clergy identified a Lenten moon. Historically, when the moons arrived too early, they called the early moon a "betrayer" (belewe) moon, so the Lenten moon came at its expected time.

• The suggestion has been made that the term "blue moon" for "intercalary month" arose byfolk etymology, the "blue" replacing the no-longer-understood belewe, 'to betray'. The original meaning would then have been "betrayer moon", referring to a full moon that would "normally" (in years without an intercalary month) be the full moon of spring, while in an intercalary year, it was "traitorous" in the sense that people would have had to continue fasting for another month in accordance with the season of Lent.

  The earliest recorded English usage of the term blue moon is found in an anti-clerical pamphlet (attacking the Roman clergy, and cardinal Thomas Wolsey in particular) by twoconverted Greenwich friars, William Roy and Jerome Barlow, published in 1528 under the title Rede me and be nott wrothe, for I say no thynge but trothe. The relevant passage reads:

  O churche men are wyly foxes [...] Yf they say the mone is blewe / We must beleve that it is true / Admittynge their interpretacion.(ed. Arber 1871 p. 114)

  It is not clear from the context that this refers to intercalation; the context of the passage is a dialogue between two priest's servants, spoken by the character "Jeffrey" (a brefe dialoge betwene two preste's servauntis, named Watkyn and Ieffraye). The intention may simply be that Jeffrey makes an absurd statement, "the moon is blue", to make the point that priests require laymen to believe in statements even if they are patently false. But in the above interpretation of "betrayer moon", Jeffrey may also be saying that it is up to the priests to say when Lent will be delayed, by announcing "blue moons" which laymen have no means to verify.

•  

Maybe I'll write more about this topic in TAC episode about Easter...

 

@LmL this is what we needed in terms of the Blue Falcon. The first instance of the blue moon  and Blue Falcon is in blue wax on Lysa's letter which is a double betrayal as it speaks of treachery and itself is treachery.   

The key to understanding why GRRM made the new moon the West's traitor moon is the idiom "Once In A Blue Moon" which means once in a while. Tywin regularly imploys treachery but punishes it harshly. This may imply that treachery is a Once in a while type of thing but the traitor's Moon of the West is the new moon. Tywin's treatment of disloyalty and treachery should be viewed as him trying to stamp out the regular phase of treachery among his Bannermen. That is why the new moon is the traitor's moon in the West and not as such for the Moutain Clans. It's a very subtle way at poking at the stereotype of a bastard being more capable of treachery than other men.

 

[Unchained]

23 minutes ago, Cowboy Dan said:

Haha no worries, I'd rather deal with folks that question what I say than those that accept (or deny) it all without a second thought. And it's not like you shot down my ideas, I just get foggy on the details so you corrected me in how things pertain to your mythical astronomy symbolism. For example: here I just kind of intuited that this scene had a bunch going on but the specifics like Qhorin using his bloody hand as waves of night and blood to kill his enemy were lost on me. And yes, I certainly say interesting things, that's the tactful way of putting it  

Also I found it really relevant that they went through the "heart of the mountain," since as I've mentioned before I think all living hearts serve as godheads (the Warlocks' fiery heart/greenseers and heart trees) or at least as analogues. So like you said they go underground but literally into a stone housing for a godhead (metaphorically of course) and emerge at dawn, at the lip of a cave (implying a mouth, perhaps like one of those heart trees hungrily waiting for sacrifices) where the betrayal occurs.

Yeah huh, I always wondered what the import of the dwarves was. It didn't seem like a throw away but they're revealed as important so late in the story it's hard to find a deeper connection. Do you think they might serve as stand-ins for the Children?

Also I actually thought of @Unchained's thread when reading that particular bit on the fire they make because it uses the precise language he quoted in his thread!

Since I love me some color symbolism: just as green, blue, and grey are colors of the Drowned God and his watery priests, red, yellow, and orange are consistent with R'hllor's fiery priests (as I'm sure you well know) so this was kind of screaming out at me to be noticed. Sadly no weddings or kings in this scene (unless you want to take it as a forgone conclusion that Jon will be king) although the fiery dancers of red, yellow, and orange are present.

Also of note is that Qhorin sits with his back to the wall and stares into the fire, which reminds me of Beric in the cave before he challenges Sandor. I'm yet to reach that chapter in my Arya re-read so my own memory's still fuzzy, not sure how relevant that may or may not be.

Note that Qhorin is the third sacrifice, which matches LB forging. Whereas the first fought back and the second ran to deliver the message, Qhorin willingly gave himself up for the realm. Like how NN willing gave her soul up while the water and lion were forced to participate in the forging. There's definitely stuff missing and is why I didn't want to try and point out who is serving what role because I'd most certainly muck something up.

ETA: The first two sacrifices are Ebben (which translates from German to: ebb, flow back, recede and in Dutch means ebb but also translates to ebony) and the other is Stonesnake (which is pretty straight forward).

I had a feeling I'd spark a connection or two, glad to be of service!

I saw the scene you are talking about, but haven't gotten into it deep yet.  The only thing I have to add right now would be to notice how the sticks are broken in two before being burned making this officially the 1,000,000th reference to Bran the broken wooden tree person being set on fire. The dancers connect it to Lightbringer.  

[Isobel Harper]

1 hour ago, Cowboy Dan said:

Haha no worries, I'd rather deal with folks that question what I say than those that accept (or deny) it all without a second thought. And it's not like you shot down my ideas, I just get foggy on the details so you corrected me in how things pertain to your mythical astronomy symbolism. For example: here I just kind of intuited that this scene had a bunch going on but the specifics like Qhorin using his bloody hand as waves of night and blood to kill his enemy were lost on me. And yes, I certainly say interesting things, that's the tactful way of putting it  

Also I found it really relevant that they went through the "heart of the mountain," since as I've mentioned before I think all living hearts serve as godheads (the Warlocks' fiery heart/greenseers and heart trees) or at least as analogues. So like you said they go underground but literally into a stone housing for a godhead (metaphorically of course) and emerge at dawn, at the lip of a cave (implying a mouth, perhaps like one of those heart trees hungrily waiting for sacrifices) where the betrayal occurs.

Yeah huh, I always wondered what the import of the dwarves was. It didn't seem like a throw away but they're revealed as important so late in the story it's hard to find a deeper connection. Do you think they might serve as stand-ins for the Children?

Also I actually thought of @Unchained's thread when reading that particular bit on the fire they make because it uses the precise language he quoted in his thread!

Since I love me some color symbolism: just as green, blue, and grey are colors of the Drowned God and his watery priests, red, yellow, and orange are consistent with R'hllor's fiery priests (as I'm sure you well know) so this was kind of screaming out at me to be noticed. Sadly no weddings or kings in this scene (unless you want to take it as a forgone conclusion that Jon will be king) although the fiery dancers of red, yellow, and orange are present.

Also of note is that Qhorin sits with his back to the wall and stares into the fire, which reminds me of Beric in the cave before he challenges Sandor. I'm yet to reach that chapter in my Arya re-read so my own memory's still fuzzy, not sure how relevant that may or may not be.

Note that Qhorin is the third sacrifice, which matches LB forging. Whereas the first fought back and the second ran to deliver the message, Qhorin willingly gave himself up for the realm. Like how NN willing gave her soul up while the water and lion were forced to participate in the forging. There's definitely stuff missing and is why I didn't want to try and point out who is serving what role because I'd most certainly muck something up.

ETA: The first two sacrifices are Ebben (which translates from German to: ebb, flow back, recede and in Dutch means ebb but also translates to ebony) and the other is Stonesnake (which is pretty straight forward).

I had a feeling I'd spark a connection or two, glad to be of service!

Re: Ebben 

Die Ebbe is also specifically the low tide.  Ebben is the plural form.  (Flut or Hochwasser is the high tide.)  More or less the same thing. 

Die Welle is wave...  I'm sure there's a wave (Welle) and wave wordplay somewhere.  I'll have to look into that in the future.