Pole Positions: Cataclysm, Staggered Polar Shift, and the Seasons

[hiemal]

I've made a few stabs before at diagnosing what I call the Malady of the Seasons and I wanted to set out what I think is the best and shiniest piece of tinfoil on the topic in its own space for examination, critique, and ridicule (after all, this is pretty deep in the weeds here and tinfoil helmets are recommended field gear) without distraction.

In short, I think that the magnetic north pole has been replaced by not one but two competing poles that are the focus of magical instead of magnetic energies- call them the Winter Pole and the Summer Pole. The Summer Pole is not opposite the Winter Pole on the globe, but lies on an imaginary line on the surface of the world roughly halfway to where such a pole would lie (if it exists in any meaningful way). The poles act as focal points for the energies of the nature; fire (the world's tectonic forces redirected and perverted by magic, if I am correct) for Summer and ice (the world's cycle of glaciation and ice ages redirected and perverted by magic) for winter.

The Poles represent competing forces that exist in a rough sort of balance as energies gather and are distributed in a way that mirrors the soul activity of the weirwoods network of incoming and outgoing souls that Bran glimpses in his visions but are even less natural and more prone to disaster. Several times in the past there have been cataclysms caused by one of the Poles gathering too much power, creating too great an imbalance, and then things fall apart as the center cannot hold. I believe we see evidence for this in places like K'Dath (the first Land of Always Winter, I believe, and origin of the nefarious and undoubtedly Lovecraftian Deep Ones), Yeen (primal Land of Always Summer and home to the snake/lizard people), Stygai/Asshai, and Valyria.

When these cataclysms take place, the magical forces are thrown out of balance and eventually the dominant force achieves the crest of its power (a Long Night or an Eternal Summer) before something acts to bring things back towards balance and a new Pole is created further to the West. This means that the imaginary line between Winter (North/South) and Summer (East/West) moves and the cardinal directions are redefined. I believe this is one of the reasons that there are no magnetic compasses in ASoIaF and characters must resort of a Pole Star for their reckoning:

Quote

Osha," Bran asked as they crossed the yard. "Do you know the way north? To the Wall and . . . and even past?"

"The way's easy. Look for the Ice Dragon, and chase the blue star in the rider's eye."

ACoK

Ominous, right?

Now that the Summer Pole has disappeared in the fiery Doom, Winter is on the rise and a new Pole must be established. Personally, I believe it will on the Isle of Faces in God's Eye and that the new Pole Star will be:

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The Sword of the Morning still hung in the south, the bright white star in its hilt blazing like a diamond in the dawn...

ASoS

This would make the North into the South, I reckon, which has probably already happened at least once. It is said that the North is the oldest of the Seven Kingdoms, which makes zero sense if folks actually came across the Arm of Dorne and hauled ass from one of the least hospitable kingdoms to settle in the other. Either the climate was different or they didn't actually cross there (or, as I believe, both- but that's another thread). This could, after establishing a new Pole also go a ways towards satisfying Mirri Maz Duur's maddening prophecy (or acid taunt):

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"When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east," said Mirri Maz Duur. "When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before."

AGoT

On the other hand, perhaps it would be enough to simply destroy the Winter Pole and nature would reassert itself?

A few thoughts of the history of Cataclysms and the races involved:

I feel that the Deep Ones are one of the prime suspects for agents of infection (magic). They seem to associated with the mutation and perversion of existing lifeforms and K'Dath is described thusly:

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K'dath in the Grey Waste, a city said to be older than time, where unspeakable rites are performed to slake the hunger of mad gods.

TWoIaF

This fits exactly with Lovecraft's K'Dath, which exists outside of time. Since cyclical time and prophecy are issues at play here I am looking in this direction. Perhaps the Deep Ones (not yet Deep, obviously) created the serpent people as slaves who then rebelled and precipitated the crisis, leaving behind a population to become shrykes. Regardless, I think this is where the Others originally come from, as well- assuming they are not simply a form of alien life with liquid oxygen for blood.

Not a lot is known about Yeen, but as I've said I think it was the capital city of the Serpent People, who I believe originally tamed wyverns and firewyrms as instruments of war. I think they were the original "Greenhands" and their cataclysm was an explosion of cancerous fecundity, probably infused with the unwholesome energies of the Deep One's Oily Black Stone that have popped up again and again.

I think the Mazemakers were the ancestral form of the Children of the Forest, the Giants, the Lengii, and the Merlings. I think they were wiped out by forced evolution by a combination of the powers of Yeen and the Deep Ones, who essentially split the race into diverse forms, one of which formed a pact with the weirwoods of Westeros and used that power to resist Deep One incursions by sinking parts of their own continent and forcing the Deep Ones into the Deep. Those CotF that were drowned became merlings and their associated weirwoods, underwater but still living, were poisoned by the Deep Ones to become the Drowned God (Oily-Black Stone infused weirwood or Shade of the Evening). The weirwoods seem to have subverted parts of the natural cycle involving souls, life and death, and somehow, the ability to drown continents. Plate tectonics- stolen. No random earthquakes, until the cataclysm anyways.The Horn of Joramun and the Hammer of Waters are of the Children and it may have been them who infused wyverns with the Fires of the Earth and created dragons.

Or not- it may have been the Dawnites. It seems certain that they created Dragonriders during the Lightbringer Incident at Stygai that brought about the Long Night but the origins of dragons are less clear. Regardless that cataclysm is the best documented and I think it also created R'hlorr, when the Bloodstone Emperor "downloaded" his mind into the planet's molten mantle and became the "god of flame and shadow", and Night's Queen when the Amethyst Empress died birthing Azor Ahai and came back as something Other. The LB incident probably involved a combination of Dawnite, Deep One, Yeenite, and CotF power. I think Summerhall is a reflection of this.

I'm tapped for now. Back when I think of more.