Garth of the Gallows (Mythical Astronomy of Ice and Fire)

[LmL]

1 minute ago, ravenous reader said:

2 hours ago, Unchained said:

Do you think the blood betrayal could have been a case of sacrificing someone else instead of one's self as should be done?

Yes.  That is the crux of it.

Yes, at least in the sense of 'sacrificing others to gain power is evil,' and on the other hand 'self sacrifice is the only way to truly attain of knowledge.'

[LmL]

2 hours ago, Unchained said:

and the Ash tree nymphs (obviously).

What's all this about now?

[ravenous reader]

1 minute ago, LmL said:

What's all this about now?

Meliai

You are going to like the part of raining down ash from heaven!

[ravenous reader]

8 minutes ago, LmL said:

Truer words were never spoken, lol. 

Cat rakes her own face, and when Varmyr merges with Thistle, they claw out their own eyes and bite out their own tongue. The weirwoods have the same symbolism - bloody eyes and mouth, and their silent scream implies a tongue torn out - and I think they eat their own in some sense. The rat cook story is about weirwoods eating their own too, I think. It could be that because one's ancestors are likely to be in the weirwood tree (if one is a greenseer), when you sacrifice yourself to the tree and let it start eating you (body and mind), that is like the weirwood eating its children. @ravenous reader, does that explanation satisfy you?

It still sounds very cannibalistic rather than self-sacrificing!  

[LmL]

1 minute ago, ravenous reader said:

It still sounds very cannibalistic rather than self-sacrificing!  

The greenseer sacrifices himself to enter the tree. The tree, however, is eating its own. But it's a mutual thing... the greenseer skinchanges the tree, invading it. It's mutual consumption, a merging of two into one. I was just trying to think of what the rat Cook stuff might mean. 

[LmL]

6 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

Meliai

You are going to like the part of raining down ash from heaven!

So the nymphs are not trees, but somehow tied to ash trees through the honey and the spears? That's cool they are borne from the same sky-blood that borne Aphrodite, because I've already introduced / uncovered / highlighted  the Aphrodite correlations, and I've also already said that the meaning of the thunderbolt setting the tree ablaze has something to do with the meteors affecting the weirwoodnet...  so it kind of just works its way into what martin has set up with the ash tree ideas of Yggdrasil. 

Anything I am missing?

[ravenous reader]

11 hours ago, Unchained said:

Do you think the bifurcation you are exploring could in some sense be the sword that was broken?  

 

I have been thinking about fertility and white swords recently.  It started when I realized that Tyrion's escape from King's Landing may be based on the birth of Perseus, making the morning, dawn light slashing through the window of the room Tywin and Shae are laying in akin to Zeus' fertile golden shower.  Tyrion has a green eye, a black eye, and hair that is almost white so when he bursts from the wooden barrel he is all three dragons being born.  

Great catch!  Tyrion is the Trios (note the similarity of the names)-- all three heads in one (the hardcore A+J=Ters will be elated)!  Compare the fate of another dwarf who was hunted down in Tyrion's place:

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Tyrion VIII

"I am sorry about your brother." Tyrion had said the same words to her before, back in Volantis, but she was so far gone in grief back there that he doubted she had heard them.

She heard them now. "Sorry. You are sorry." Her lip was trembling, her cheeks were wet, her eyes were red-rimmed holes. "We left King's Landing that very night. My brother said it was for the best, before someone wondered if we'd had some part in the king's death and decided to torture us to find out. We went to Tyrosh first. My brother thought that would be far enough, but it wasn't. We knew a juggler there. For years and years he would juggle every day by the Fountain of the Drunken God. He was old, so his hands were not as deft as they had been, and sometimes he would drop his balls and chase them across the square, but the Tyroshi would laugh and throw him coins all the same. Then one morning we heard that his body had been found at the Temple of Trios. Trios has three heads, and there's a big statue of him beside the temple doors. The old man had been cut into three parts and pushed inside the threefold mouths of Trios. Only when the parts were sewn back together, his head was gone."

"A gift for my sweet sister. He was another dwarf."

About the golden shower reference, another instance of this occurs in Bran's coma dream, releasing the golden shower of corn kernels (=seed) from his pocket as he's falling -- making Bran another kind of Perseus figure.

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Bran III

The voice was high and thin. Bran looked around to see where it was coming from. A crow was spiraling down with him, just out of reach, following him as he fell. "Help me," he said.

I'm trying, the crow replied. Say, got any corn?

Bran reached into his pocket as the darkness spun dizzily around him. When he pulled his hand out, golden kernels slid from between his fingers into the air. They fell with him.

 

9 hours ago, LmL said:

So the nymphs are not trees, but somehow tied to ash trees through the honey and the spears? That's cool they are borne from the same sky-blood that borne Aphrodite, because I've already introduced / uncovered / highlighted  the Aphrodite correlations, and I've also already said that the meaning of the thunderbolt setting the tree ablaze has something to do with the meteors affecting the weirwoodnet...  so it kind of just works its way into what martin has set up with the ash tree ideas of Yggdrasil. 

Anything I am missing?

For all intents and purposes the nymphs can be equated with the mountain ash tree, with which they are intimately associated.  I think @Unchained  was making the point that Uranus's castration led to a split into three groups (analogous I suppose to your sword bifurcation/trifurcation) -- namely the Meliai, from which humanity stemmed; the Erinyes (the vengeful Furies...seeking vengeance for Uranus's death -- they might correspond with the Others and the Oathkeeping aspect); and the Giants.  The nymphs sprouted from the drops of Uranus's blood hitting the earth (like your beloved meteors!); and gave rise to both the means of providing nurturance (honey & manna) and weapons (the ash spears) for the progeny of the Meliai -- humans.  So here is a myth about a tree birthing humans!  Note the similarity of 'Meliai'(variations: Meliae or Meliades) to 'Melisandre'.

[LmL]

48 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

Great catch!  Tyrion is the Trios (note the similarity of the names)-- all three heads in one (the hardcore A+J=Ters will be elated)!  Compare the fate of another dwarf who was hunted down in Tyrion's place:

That's pretty good - I wonder if this could be the meaning behind that very weird story. Why is the person who might represent all three (white, green, black) a dwarf?

 

48 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

Note the similarity of 'Meliai'(variations: Meliae or Meliades) to 'Melisandre'.

That I did notice! The list of NN women with connections to ash trees is growing:

• Melisandre vis the Meliai and because she's from ASHai (with its river Ash, ha ha)
• Asha Greyjoy
• Osha
• Rowan Gold Tree (Rowan is just another word for "Mountain Ash")
• Rowan the spearwife with Mance who has red kissed by fire hair and tries to seduce Theon who is like a grey king at that point

 

[Unchained]

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

Great catch!  Tyrion is the Trios (note the similarity of the names)-- all three heads in one (the hardcore A+J=Ters will be elated)!  Compare the fate of another dwarf who was hunted down in Tyrion's place:

About the golden shower reference, another instance of this occurs in Bran's coma dream, releasing the golden shower of corn kernels (=seed) from his pocket as he's falling -- making Bran another kind of Perseus figure.

 

For all intents and purposes the nymphs can be equated with the mountain ash tree, with which they are intimately associated.  I think @Unchained  was making the point that Uranus's castration led to a split into three groups (analogous I suppose to your sword bifurcation/trifurcation) -- namely the Meliai, from which humanity stemmed; the Erinyes (the vengeful Furies...seeking vengeance for Uranus's death -- they might correspond with the Others and the Oathkeeping aspect); and the Giants.  The nymphs sprouted from the drops of Uranus's blood hitting the earth (like your beloved meteors!); and gave rise to both the means of providing nurturance (honey & manna) and weapons (the ash spears) for the progeny of the Meliai -- humans.  So here is a myth about a tree birthing humans!  Note the similarity of 'Meliai'(variations: Meliae or Meliades) to 'Melisandre'.

I was mostly just pointing out that it had been set up to where all the things born from the blood could be connected to green-seeing.  I think the Meliai are like the CotF.  The Meliai raised baby Zeus fight his father and avenge the sky god's castration.  This may be the same thing as the CotF helping the last hero.  The bronze people they birthed and armed with ash spears sounds like the Thenns and early First Men in general.  

[ravenous reader]

13 minutes ago, Unchained said:

I was mostly just pointing out that it had been set up to where all the things born from the blood could be connected to green-seeing.  I think the Meliai are like the CotF.  The Meliai raised baby Zeus fight his father and avenge the sky god's castration.  This may be the same thing as the CotF helping the last hero.  The bronze people they birthed and armed with ash spears sounds like the Thenns and early First Men in general.  

I agree.  The 'Meliai' are the equivalent of the 'merwives wearing nennymoans' in the Patchface riddle.  They're mostly benevolent to humans, but they're also sirens who lure men into the trees in order to trap them there for their own benefit.

All things born of the blood are connected to the greenseeing godhead.  The split arises with the transgressive act of kinslaying.  The original sin -- eating of the tree of knowledge -- confers insight into the difference between good and evil and sets up the divorce of man from God, or in psychoanalytic terms the self from the shadow self.  You saw my parsing of the Prologue?  That's like Will up the tree who conjures the 'Id' (the 'Other' representing his own murderous shadow self) at the moment he expresses his hidden urge to slay his own 'brother', although he knows this is wrong and he is being disloyal.

[Jon Ice-Eyes]

Those tree-nymphs have another possible connection as sea-nymphs. Which is an interesting parallel to the less-known theogony, of which we get some hints in Homer and a couple other fragments, where the gods were born from the ocean and nereids. I've read that this may actually be an older theogony myth. 

Not trying to intrude too much with reality here, just spitballing.  COTF as merlings? Or even the storm-god as one of the Dawnish? I haven't considered it enough to know if it's crazy. 

[Durran Durrandon]

9 hours ago, Jon Ice-Eyes said:

Those tree-nymphs have another possible connection as sea-nymphs. Which is an interesting parallel to the less-known theogony, of which we get some hints in Homer and a couple other fragments, where the gods were born from the ocean and nereids. I've read that this may actually be an older theogony myth. 

Not trying to intrude too much with reality here, just spitballing.  COTF as merlings? Or even the storm-god as one of the Dawnish? I haven't considered it enough to know if it's crazy. 

I've had this niggling notion of merlings as COTF for a while, sort of a notion of deep flooded underground caverns with aquatic COTF connecting Leng, Essos, and Westeros and popping up in places like the Womb of the World where the lake supposedly has no bottom. I can't back that up of course.

[Pain killer Jane]

21 hours ago, Jon Ice-Eyes said:

Those tree-nymphs have another possible connection as sea-nymphs. Which is an interesting parallel to the less-known theogony, of which we get some hints in Homer and a couple other fragments, where the gods were born from the ocean and nereids. I've read that this may actually be an older theogony myth. 

Not trying to intrude too much with reality here, just spitballing.  COTF as merlings? Or even the storm-god as one of the Dawnish? I haven't considered it enough to know if it's crazy. 

It would give context for the Fisher Queens of the Silver Sea and their AA-esque son Huzhor Amai and his Hairy Man Cloak (aka a flag pointing at skingchanging). 

@LmL

cannibalism and ashes raining sounds like I am missing a lot of good stuff here. 

Eta: 

And since we were talking about cannibalism up thread something I wanted to point out in terms of the Donner etymology you ran through. 

The Donner-Reed party and their journey west to California. 

 

[LmL]

HEY YOU GUYS.... so I just found this really old post on reddit... with a very interesting idea about the moon. It comes in the comments of the thread, not in the thread itself. The thread proper is about how GRRM doesn't understand how the moon works. George's moon always rises at sunset, and the phases of the moon do not appear how and when they should. Only the full moon rises at sunset, for example, and there is actually no such thing as a black moon / black of the moon. Martin uses this phrase to signify a new moon - in Arya's chapter, she goes to the HOBAW for three days every month (which is 30 days) and calls it "the black of the moon." It happens elsewhere too - but this is not possible. A new moon occurs when the moon is close to the sun. 

So either George does not know how the moon works - like at all - or he's simply using it poetically, to suit the needed symbolism in each scene (he is undoubtedly doing this to some extent), or....

[–]Kandiru 77 points 2 years ago* 

Theory: The moon is half-highly reflective rock, and half black rock. It is not rotationally tidally-locked to westeros, and so rotates at a certain speed. It is, however, at a legrangian point (L2), behind westeros, and so does not orbit westeros, resulting in it always rising a set time after sunset.

This way, when the shiny-side is facing Westeros, it is a full moon and when the dull side is facing Westeros, it is a Black moon.

It makes perfect sense!!!!

(I think this is consistent with how the moon is described in Westeros?)

[LmL]

@hiemal @Maester of Valyria @Durran Godsgrief

[Durran Durrandon]

So, who put the moon in a La Grange point and made it half reflective and half matte? It is at once a simple an elegant explanation and so outlandish that it requires a god or aliens to be responsible for it.

The moon problem was brought up to me in an post I made about the Eye of the Dragon being the pole star. The planet clearly has a wobble causing the seasonal fluctuation, so it shouldn't have a consistent pole star. There is also a chapter where Sam and Gilly are trying to flee south to get away from the Others in which Sam tries to follow the Tail of the Ice Dragon to go south, which clearly wouldn't work, but Sam gets lost. So is George a crap astronomer or a clever astronomer who is writing a character that is a crap astronomer? I think that question can kind of expand to the rest of this. Is George ignorant of how moon phases work? (I was until about a year ago.) Or is George really clever and messing with us?

[LmL]

25 minutes ago, Durran Durrandon said:

So, who put the moon in a La Grange point and made it half reflective and half matte? It is at once a simple an elegant explanation and so outlandish that it requires a god or aliens to be responsible for it.

The moon problem was brought up to me in an post I made about the Eye of the Dragon being the pole star. The planet clearly has a wobble causing the seasonal fluctuation, so it shouldn't have a consistent pole star. There is also a chapter where Sam and Gilly are trying to flee south to get away from the Others in which Sam tries to follow the Tail of the Ice Dragon to go south, which clearly wouldn't work, but Sam gets lost. So is George a crap astronomer or a clever astronomer who is writing a character that is a crap astronomer? I think that question can kind of expand to the rest of this. Is George ignorant of how moon phases work? (I was until about a year ago.) Or is George really clever and messing with us?

So here's the thing - I've realized the moon was wrong for a while now - in particular someone brought up the fact that it always rises after sunset, seemingly. Do you remember when we were looking for examples of a day moon and could not find one? In a way, you could infer that because the moon is breaking the rules, that he is in fact choosing the appearance of the moon purely based on symbolism. It shows he isn't just making moons to fit different parts of the month, diff parts of the globe, diff seasons. This reinforces my general line of interpretation - the moon's descriptions should be interpreted symbolically. However, it's obviously more satisfying to have things make a bit of sense. And one line of symbolism that I have been unable to really get a firm grip on is the half moon symbol. Think of the doors of the HOBAW - they are showing us a yin yang moon. The chairs do not - they have black chairs with white moon faces and white chairs w black faces. 

My theory actually has a good way to incorporate this idea, potentially, because I have been talking for a while now about some part of the fire moon, a fire moon meteor, being lodged in the ice moon. It's not much different that the idea of two moons merging. 

One thing is that this scenario precludes an eclipse, at least for the moon we have left. Perhaps the first moon was in the opposite lagrange position, between us and the sun at all times. In fact, the corpse of that moon could still be floating in between us and the sun and we would never see it unless it moved exactly into eclipse position. 

 

[LmL]

As to how it got there... obviously magic, but it would have to be a result of the LN disaster, right? Unless we just started with two moons in two lagrange points and that's just how it is. I mean, real moons do get in those positions - how do they get there?/ I do not know, but some moons do just that. 

[Durran Durrandon]

What planet has a moon at a La Grange point?

[LmL]

36 minutes ago, Durran Durrandon said:

What planet has a moon at a La Grange point?

• The Saturnian moon Tethys has two smaller moons in its L₄ and L₅ points, Telesto and Calypso. The Saturnian moon Dione also has two Lagrangian co-orbitals, Helene at its L₄ point and Polydeuces at L₅. The moons wander azimuthally about the Lagrangian points, with Polydeuces describing the largest deviations, moving up to 32° away from the Saturn–Dione L₅ point. Tethys and Dione are hundreds of times more massive than their "escorts" (see the moons' articles for exact diameter figures; masses are not known in several cases), and Saturn is far more massive still, which makes the overall system stable.

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