Winterfell - the Heart of Summer?

[Clegane'sPup]

21 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

Did you read my post?

I tried a number of times.

22 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

Kings of Winter guarding against summer is the gist.  

The Kings of Winter do not want summer to come?

23 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

If you're going to rebut with simplistic quotes that everyone knows, at least read the post first.

I did not type simplistic quotes that everybody knows.

I made two posts. One was my general overall opine to the topic. The other was me flapping about Mel.

Thank you.

[Clegane'sPup]

On 10/31/2018 at 7:56 AM, Lady Barbrey said:

I have always been curious about a few logical inconsistencies in the tales we have regarding the First Men, particularly one the Maesters seem perplexed by as well: why did the Children swamp the Arm of Dorne when the First Men had already arrived and were well-established? 

Because there was a war. Then there was a pact.     Everybody knows that.  

[Clegane'sPup]

On 10/31/2018 at 7:56 AM, Lady Barbrey said:

Was the Heart of Summer, a source if not the source of fire magic in Westeros, being contained by ice magic in the crypts?

 

On 10/31/2018 at 7:56 AM, Lady Barbrey said:

If there is a Heart of Summer, a source for fire magic, it should be in Asshai or Valyria, right? 

I dunna know. Sort it out.

[hiemal]

19 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

Fish grails?  The Grail is heavily connected to the ichthus, the fish, that's why the myth is called the Fisher King.

On the nose as usual.

19 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

  A wolf with a fish in its mouth sounds like a Stark caught a Tully!  Tell me more.

Quote

"Jon chuckled. "Perhaps you should do the same thing, little sister. Wed Tully to Stark in your arms."

"A wolf with a fish in its mouth?" It made her laugh. "That would look silly."

AGoT

My primary interpretation of this was that it was foreshadowing Arya/Nymeria pulling Cat's body from the Trident but I was thinking aloud about the implications of that image with the Tully maiden/grail idea you brought up earlier. Without a better idea of exactly the wolf image there isn't really a whole to say at this point but I feel like there is something going on and that Arya and Sansa both represent a continuation of that idea? Sansa could end up a winged fish/grail. I'm trying to remember where the image of winged grail is coming from (tarot cards?) but as an image of grace it's hard to beat.

19 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

Love the implication the Starks are paying for something - Faustian?

Faust's bargain with Mephistopheles was for the soul, personal and self-contained. The Stark's bargain is in the blood, undiluted by thousands of years of marriages and even by swearing fealty to the Old Gods and sacrificing to them. The original Ice may have been the physical symbol of that bargain?

[The Mother of The Others]

On 10/31/2018 at 1:14 PM, John Suburbs said:

 Others walk on top of snow like it was granite. So why on earth would anyone think a giant wall of ice would stop them? If the wards keep them at bay then why bother building a wall, or at least so big? If the Wall is a creation of ice magic, and ice magic emits from the LoAW, then doesn't it stand to reason that the wall is their construction and is designed to prevent humans from migrating north?

 I'm gelatinous, but I'd have a tough time climbing a huge jello mold, even though it and I are largely the same substance.  It started less tall, the wall, then the yearly snows added icing height.  the wall keeps their bodies out, the wards keep their magic hindered.  I think the wall has to come down for their heavy invasion, the one backed by ultra winter, but their basic powers would probably still function south of the wall just fine if they got smuggled past it.

Giants sound most likely as builders of the wall.  It's a bigger wall than any on Earth, and giants are also bigger than Earth stuff, so I'd imagine they could build more impressively in a shorter timeframe.  Dragons can fuse stones maybe, but who's setting all those bricks in place for them?   Giant day laborers!  (Dragons don't have true thumbs).   HOLY POOP!  THE "DEMONS" OF ESSOS WOULD THEN BE THE FIRE GIANTS WHO LABORED ON THE EMPIRE'S MAGIC BRICK ROADS OVER THERE?!! (The 'demon road' on the map).

Others building it doesn't feel right to me.  They don't like fences, they like trouble.  And humans can't help but invite trouble.  Which is why the responsible grownups of several species built the wall to halt that cycle of violence so it wouldn't trash the continent totally.  But i don't see Others as part of that work detail. 

So if The Wall is built to fence humans out of the north, weirgate makes sense as a way of only admitting humans north of the wall who've been verified as Tree Lovers like Sam and Jon.

Re: Winterfell Crypts are cold for no reason- - -  One reason that's not popular here: caves ARE really cold.  They just are.   

Bran's tears burn on his cheek because that's how cold it is.  "Freezer burns"

The 1000 frozen greenseers bran sees, i don't know.  A vision of the eon- spanning struggle between weirnet and icy incursion into that network by the malevolent Cold Ones.  Or, yeah, a sneak peak of how the stark kings aren't so dead but in deep slumber awaiting the valhalla horn of winter.

The oath of Reed amounts to him saying, "I swear it with everything I am, with all I've got."  So he mentions some alpha to omega hyperbole to signify that  ("by fire and ice." )   May not be referencing a huge secret of the ancient world, just that he's committed to the cause.

The weird thing about greywater watch is how it parallels the fisher queens' flotilla home.  It's the weirdest house of anyone's, the most impossible nonsense no earthling lord has ever done on our planet, and yet he's seen as a backwoods bayou idjit by other lords , and yet he's graceful and wise and spiritual compared to them.  And a future king crowner?    Hardcore Oddity.  Reeds are children- ish, yet live in the children's blast zone....

Fire + Ice bloodline was forcibly divorced long ago.    Too much trouble to maintain it.  Volatility.  But someone thinks it's time to try again.  Maybe in short bursts Ice&Fire can do great things.  Finish the world's unfinished business.   The Children as the ones who built little pre- Valyrians with their chemistry set is new to me and feels weird.  Like, not what they'd churn out.  Gotta give me more time to get used to that "early people were highly morphable" deal.   Seems a lite and poofy source for all the superheavy warring elemental creatures & problems that resulted.   So children took human stock and made a bigger fire elf sort of done in the children's image.  Huh.  Like suruman turned small orcs into big uruk hai.

[Lady Barbrey]

1 hour ago, hiemal said:

On the nose as usual.

My primary interpretation of this was that it was foreshadowing Arya/Nymeria pulling Cat's body from the Trident but I was thinking aloud about the implications of that image with the Tully maiden/grail idea you brought up earlier. Without a better idea of exactly the wolf image there isn't really a whole to say at this point but I feel like there is something going on and that Arya and Sansa both represent a continuation of that idea? Sansa could end up a winged fish/grail. I'm trying to remember where the image of winged grail is coming from (tarot cards?) but as an image of grace it's hard to beat.

Faust's bargain with Mephistopheles was for the soul, personal and self-contained. The Stark's bargain is in the blood, undiluted by thousands of years of marriages and even by swearing fealty to the Old Gods and sacrificing to them. The original Ice may have been the physical symbol of that bargain?

I actually really like your primary interpretation.  Fits really well.

I'm pretty sure that in visions of the Grail by Grail knights it was seen floating in the air at least once or twice, so iconography of it with wings would be fitting.  I've seen that image with the wings too, and maybe it was on the tarot, but I suspect It's older.

It's tough sometimes to disentangle the source allegories,  Sansa is also playing a reverse Persephone,  child of the underworld (Winterfell) seduced by solar court, mother desperately wants her back and until she is returned, the world will remain in winter, but if she is restored to Hel (Lady Stoneheart) or Hades(Winterfell) the seasons regain balance.

I haven't given much thought to Sansa beyond that.  Does she ever have any wolf symbolism or is it all birds?

 

[hiemal]

14 hours ago, Lady Barbrey said:

I actually really like your primary interpretation.  Fits really well.

I'm pretty sure that in visions of the Grail by Grail knights it was seen floating in the air at least once or twice, so iconography of it with wings would be fitting.  I've seen that image with the wings too, and maybe it was on the tarot, but I suspect It's older.

It's tough sometimes to disentangle the source allegories,  Sansa is also playing a reverse Persephone,  child of the underworld (Winterfell) seduced by solar court, mother desperately wants her back and until she is returned, the world will remain in winter, but if she is restored to Hel (Lady Stoneheart) or Hades(Winterfell) the seasons regain balance.

I haven't given much thought to Sansa beyond that.  Does she ever have any wolf symbolism or is it all birds?

 

My favorite is:

Quote

I forgot, you've been hiding under a rock. The northern girl. Winterfell's daughter. We heard she killed the king with a spell, and afterward changed into a wolf with big leather wings like a bat, and flew out a tower window. But she left the dwarf behind and Cersei means to have his head."

...ASoS

 

[Seams]

22 hours ago, hiemal said:

I'm trying to remember where the image of winged grail is coming from (tarot cards?) but as an image of grace it's hard to beat.

Ser Arlan of Pennytree bore a winged chalice on his shield.

Eventually, I hope to respond to the challenge to clarify the ideas behind the "smugglers" who seem to be able to bypass magical wards on walls. I think shields represent doors and Ser Arlan's shield is a door to a Celtic-type Otherworld. Because Dunk carries that shield (repainted with his own sigil) he inherits the ability to transcend barriers.

[Lady Barbrey]

5 hours ago, hiemal said:

My favorite is:

 

Lovely!  Brings in the wolf, possible Lothston, and bird all at once.  The winged wolf, the winged grail maiden.  

I suppose we should consider who or what is the Grail, but as with all of George's stories, he's riffing on it with more than one character.  Still, the Tully family with their infertility images are most definitely closest to the wounded Fisher King - dying Hoster, almost-dead Cat, wounded and impotent Bran.  Arya and Sansa are the Grail maidens, in some texts almost interchangeable with the grail, that Lance and Galahad (Jaime and Brienne) (Brienne's trip through the wasteland of the Riverlands, also a Hades equivalent), must find and protect, but ultimately the grail will be, I suspect, Jon.  

Do you want me to continue with this, hiemal, because I go into the Grail as cauldron and Philosopher's stone?  This thread is mostly dead, but it actually does connect to my main OP.  

[hiemal]

1 hour ago, Seams said:

Ser Arlan of Pennytree bore a winged chalice on his shield.

Eventually, I hope to respond to the challenge to clarify the ideas behind the "smugglers" who seem to be able to bypass magical wards on walls. I think shields represent doors and Ser Arlan's shield is a door to a Celtic-type Otherworld. Because Dunk carries that shield (repainted with his own sigil) he inherits the ability to transcend barriers.

I look forward to it. That's an interesting idea.

Do Raiders count?

[hiemal]

1 hour ago, Lady Barbrey said:

Lovely!  Brings in the wolf, possible Lothston, and bird all at once.  The winged wolf, the winged grail maiden. 

The Lothston-esque element could portend a rise to actual power, I think? Rumors of sorcery seem to dog a lot of women who openly wield power for their own ends.

1 hour ago, Lady Barbrey said:

I suppose we should consider who or what is the Grail, but as with all of George's stories, he's riffing on it with more than one character.  Still, the Tully family with their infertility images are most definitely closest to the wounded Fisher King - dying Hoster, almost-dead Cat, wounded and impotent Bran.  Arya and Sansa are the Grail maidens, in some texts almost interchangeable with the grail, that Lance and Galahad (Jaime and Brienne) (Brienne's trip through the wasteland of the Riverlands, also a Hades equivalent), must find and protect, but ultimately the grail will be, I suspect, Jon. 

I can dig it.

1 hour ago, Lady Barbrey said:

Do you want me to continue with this, hiemal, because I go into the Grail as cauldron and Philosopher's stone?  This thread is mostly dead, but it actually does connect to my main OP.  

I absolutely want you to.

Lapis Exillis, the Dagda's Caludron- let's see where this leads us!

[hiemal]

I'll get this started shall I?

Dawn. Dawn is the philosopher's stone, and the sword from that stone. To bring it back it back to Winterfell, I think that some point Dawn went North and was lost to the Others or their allies and it became Ice.

After the Battle for the Dawn, Ice was reclaimed and renamed and returned to Dorne. Now that seasons are turning and a Darkstar is rising I wonder how much longer Dawn will hang over a mantle in Starfall?

 

Night's Queen is the Cauldron, the womb of undeath.

[Lady Barbrey]

23 hours ago, hiemal said:

I'll get this started shall I?

Dawn. Dawn is the philosopher's stone, and the sword from that stone. To bring it back it back to Winterfell, I think that some point Dawn went North and was lost to the Others or their allies and it became Ice.

After the Battle for the Dawn, Ice was reclaimed and renamed and returned to Dorne. Now that seasons are turning and a Darkstar is rising I wonder how much longer Dawn will hang over a mantle in Starfall?

 

Night's Queen is the Cauldron, the womb of undeath.

Actually not Dawn imo, Jon is the Philosopher's Stone, product of the alchemical wedding.  What is the Philosopher's Stone?  Lots of things are associated with it and the Grail, but mainly - transformation of one substance to another, and resurrection to life equivalent to resurrection of spring. He's both.

The Grail is associated with Christ, but according to many its antecedents are pagan, the Fisher King symbolism and fish in general as a symbol of the sacred can't be traced in Christianity, and Christianity itself has no Fisher King legends, these came from pagan ritual, appropriated as a "secret sign" in Christianity as the ichthus, and writers picked up from it from there.  So its history is muddied, but in literature since early 20th century it became much more heavily connected with the "wasteland" motif because of TS Eliot's poem The Wasteland, and his voluminous notes extracted from a little publication called From Ritual to Romance by Jessie Weston (you can find it on Project Gutenberg since it was published in 1920).

Weston's book got a lot of bad press because she took Fraser's idea of a corn king or vegetation deity being sacrificed and reborn in connection to the seasons and restoring the land and made a case this was the original Grail story.  But whatever her merits as a scholar or soundness of her theory, writers since Eliot found the idea of the wasteland compelling and it has become a huge part of literary tradition since - think Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now as just one example.  Recently, we got the Holy Blood, Holy Grail book and The DaVinci Code, but these ideas have been around for a lot longer.  The idea that the Holy Grail is connected in some way to 'kingsblood',  for instance, is older than the premise of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, that it is connected to a bloodline from Jesus.  It is connected rather to a bloodline from a semi-divine "corn king" through sacrifice to ensure the seasons are regulated - that the spring will come again after winter.

Jon is literally called a "corn. king." by the ravens so I think we can conclude a few things from this:

1) He is of some original 'kingsblood' ancestry that can restore the seasons through sacrificial death and resurrection.

2) His birth signals a hope that the land, the wasteland of the Riverlands now that was so evident in FFC, and bad things to come for the rest of Westeros, can be healed, as can the Fisher King line of Tully's, ultimately Bran, because they're connected.  

The book starts with the maiming of Bran.  This signals the wasteland motif beginning.  Catelyn, as part of the Fisher King family, rejects Jon - this too is her symbolic rejection of the Grail.  She fails to ask what is his nature - the Grail question - because she is blinded by grief and prejudice.  But her "it should have been you" is in a sense correct, because Jon as corn king is the one that should die and be resurrected, but that gets displaced to Bran as Fisher King.  We've therefore got the two myths of Corn King and Fisher King intersecting and displacing, and that is actually historically true of the Fisher King myth according to Weston.  It is a version of the Corn King myth that displaces it with a maiming instead of death and resurrection.  And this is associated with the land as well.  As long as Bran is maimed, the land will die, unless and until Jon dies and is resurrected - as the Corn King.  Jon might go through a few deaths and resurrections till the right one happens, for all I know, but as the Grail he holds out hope for Bran and Westeros of healing.

The Grail and Philosopher's Stone are often conflated in literature - the search for the unobtainable, the emphasis of converting lead to gold is that of converting winter to spring, the idea of life everlasting, in the Grail story a spiritual transformation cycle tied to the land, in the Philosopher's Stone, a physical transformation tied to the body and to elements.

But it is a stone (and in some stories, so is the Grail).  That's why all the references to oily black stone, stones falling, stones being worshipped, meteorites and transformation.  Its primary purpose is to take base elements, like lead or mortal humans, and transform them into something wonderful, like gold or immortal semi-divine humans.

The philosophers, or alchemists, wanted this transformation, but their alchemy was focused on creating the stone itself, that would be able to do these things.  So they experimented, and couched their experiments in coded language.  What would create the stone was a marriage of opposites, this was the "alchemical wedding".

The marriage of the red king to the white queen.  This produces the stone.

The marriage of fire, Rhaegar,  and ice, Lyanna, produces the stone. Jon is the stone.

The stone is capable of transforming base elements into gold, or transformation, period, of some thing or things into something else.

So that's why we get this ongoing metaphor in the books of a sword in the, or of the, stone, or a stone itself that served some special transformative purpose.

But if we think of Jon as both the Grail and the Stone, which are conflated in literature anyway as often the same thing, what you get is a human being capable of saving the world, restoring the seasons, healing his brother and the land, through a transformation of elements like fire and ice, the Valyrians and the Others, into something more incredible, or I would argue, back to something human.  One human bloodline - the Corn King or kingsblood bloodline - already transformed into the semi-divine of Valyrians and Others and in doing so they maimed the bloodline, maimed the seasons.  Jon's sacrifice will be to transform them back.

I don't know if I expressed this well, hiemal, I've got too much background stuff on this in my head, and I'd have to sit down and do a proper essay to do these ideas justice - and that's just simply too much work! I'll let those working on a master's do it, I already have mine in lit, and don't relish writing more long essays.

As for the cauldron, it too is often conflated with the grail but it's from a different tradition entirely.  George might play with it a bit but it doesn't have the same kinds of connotations as the Grail and Philosopher's Stone, which he is using heavily.

Regarding Dawn, I see it as "made of the same stuff" in a way to the human "stone", the Last Hero, and it might provide a funnel or catalyst of sorts in the same way Jon's blood might. Dawn is interchangeable with the Sword of the Morning; it is a Sword of the Morning.  But what does that mean?  To me, it was made of something rare, then forged into a weapon that brought the dawn.  That's the Last Hero being forged.  That's Jon being forged.  But while the Last Hero was forged of fire to bring back the day, Jon is forged of ice and fire to bring back the proper seasons.

I therefore think if there is a Sword symbolic of balancing the seasons, and Jon himself, it needs to be a song of ice and fire just like he is.

Is that Dawn?  Very possibly, if it pre-dates the original sundering of one greenseeing bloodline into Others and Valyrians. And that's possible, because It's held by the Daynes, the ones never changed into dragon riders as far as we know.

But if Dawn was the Sword of the Last Hero, if Dawn is Lightbringer and so was the Last Hero, then it and he brought the Morning but didn't balance the seasons.

And if that's the case, we symbolically need a new sword forged from Night and Day, Ice and Fire.

So Dawn is either: 

1) Lightbringer, symbolic of the Last Hero, who ends the Long Night, but does not fix the seasons; or

2) Dawn as representative of the Dawn age, a bloodline pre-ancestral to Others and Valyrians, symbolic of when seasons were normal and bloodlines not split

If Dawn is #1, it's symbolic of Dany and Lightbringer,  not Jon.  In which case we need another Sword forged from Fire and Ice for Jon.

If Dawn is #2, then it will possibly be the Sword Jon wields, but there is another contender:

People believe I think that we must have original Ice not a Valyrian sword to play a role or be symbolic of Jon, but I think Ice, Ned's sword, is a good stand-in because It's made with fire but it has been quenched in the blood of northerners and tempered in that black icy pool, representative of ice magic, for generations.  Oathkeeper and Widow's Wail assume a new importance if you think of it like that.

Assuming the last to be true, what does it mean that they are twinned? (Does Jon have a secret twin? Or just representative of dual-sided nature?) Will they need to be reforged as one, or will one be okay?

You can see why people get so obsessed on the Sword threads.

 

 

 

[AlaskanSandman]

Where do you see Storm's End in all of this?

Being that Bran as a boy helped with one and its bound in magic, then went North and built the Wall bound in magic and Winterfell above a hotspring. Almost like a Valyrian making his home above a base of power as they did at Dragonstone. 

I've been following more strictly AGOT/ACOK/ASOS and there are many things i find interesting. Like Matin mentioning AE usage in 1999 when ACOK came out, which mentions Bael. AGOT mentions Daeryssa, Maege and Maesters. 

So i get the picture of Valyrians in Westeros back then, or preValyrians. Though some other points stand out as odd to me.

Namely that in some scenario's that seem like mirrors to the myths or legend. We have Rhaegar in Black and Red Rubies giving a blue rose to a Stark. Which at first seems, what ever. Then there is Loras though, in silver and Blue sapphires giving a red rose to a Stark. So we apparently have Ice and Fire trying to court a Stark. Now, it is hinted in AGOT that Loras (Ser Daisy per Walder) and Renly (Buys more clothes than a woman per Baelish) are gay and likely not interested in Sansa but still for the sake of the Tourney and what was "Seen", this is what happened. What stands out as odd to me is that Loras is representing Ice in his Silver and Blue Sapphires.

This odd association continues. In AGOT it's also mentioned that Alyssa Arryn's statue is of White Marbled veined in blue. This again gives the Others association to houses in the South. (Alyssa's tale i think may be important and also does mirror Cat's journey).

This association continues on though into ACOK where we are given Stannis and Renly meeting up. Stannis in black and accompanied by Melisandre in her reds (Black and red like Rhaegar and from Dragonstone), where as Renly shows up in Green Armor with Antlers accompanied by Brienne in Silver blue armor with a rainbow cloak. Again, Houses of the South are representing Ice. What's more, Renly is from Storm's End. 

I can't help but seeing a yin and yang thing going on. With North being mostly Ice, but having a dab of Fire. The South which should be Fire, has dabs of Ice.  Perhaps Harrenhal upset this balance? Im still trying to work it all out and understand it all but i find it interesting based off some of what you've brought up here.

[hiemal]

On 11/6/2018 at 7:47 PM, Lady Barbrey said:

Actually not Dawn imo, Jon is the Philosopher's Stone, product of the alchemical wedding.  What is the Philosopher's Stone?  Lots of things are associated with it and the Grail, but mainly - transformation of one substance to another, and resurrection to life equivalent to resurrection of spring. He's both.

I already like where you're going with this...

On 11/6/2018 at 7:47 PM, Lady Barbrey said:

The Grail is associated with Christ, but according to many its antecedents are pagan, the Fisher King symbolism and fish in general as a symbol of the sacred can't be traced in Christianity, and Christianity itself has no Fisher King legends, these came from pagan ritual, appropriated as a "secret sign" in Christianity as the ichthus, and writers picked up from it from there.  So its history is muddied, but in literature since early 20th century it became much more heavily connected with the "wasteland" motif because of TS Eliot's poem The Wasteland, and his voluminous notes extracted from a little publication called From Ritual to Romance by Jessie Weston (you can find it on Project Gutenberg since it was published in 1920).

Grails and Christ:

I can't believe I forgot House Stokeworth; a lamb holding a chalice.

Bam!?

I think we can also put Mithraism and the other Mysteries into this mix. GRRM also basically included a taurumbolis (sp?) ritual of mithras/rite of Cybele with Samwell's bull ritual.

 

On 11/6/2018 at 7:47 PM, Lady Barbrey said:

Weston's book got a lot of bad press because she took Fraser's idea of a corn king or vegetation deity being sacrificed and reborn in connection to the seasons and restoring the land and made a case this was the original Grail story.  But whatever her merits as a scholar or soundness of her theory, writers since Eliot found the idea of the wasteland compelling and it has become a huge part of literary tradition since - think Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now as just one example.  Recently, we got the Holy Blood, Holy Grail book and The DaVinci Code, but these ideas have been around for a lot longer.  The idea that the Holy Grail is connected in some way to 'kingsblood',  for instance, is older than the premise of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, that it is connected to a bloodline from Jesus.  It is connected rather to a bloodline from a semi-divine "corn king" through sacrifice to ensure the seasons are regulated - that the spring will come again after winter.

Jon is literally called a "corn. king." by the ravens so I think we can conclude a few things from this:

Is the corn king in the blood or is it selected by lot? I'm with you 100%, as you mention:

Quote

"Corn," the bird said, and, "King," and, "Snow, Jon Snow, Jon Snow." That was queer. The bird had never said his full name before, as best Jon could recall. "

...ADwD

I think our primary difference may lie in distinctions between the the different symbols and the consolidation thereof?

I suspect that there are either distinct grails, philosopher's stones, and cauldrons for example, or that there are multiple instances each of different origin but identical thematic substance. If that makes sense...

So for philosopher's stones (lapis exillis), I have Lightbringer as the stone in exile and Dawn as the stone from without but tbh I haven't pursued the Corn King/grail angle so I'm certainly not disagreeing with you,

On 11/6/2018 at 7:47 PM, Lady Barbrey said:

1) He is of some original 'kingsblood' ancestry that can restore the seasons through sacrificial death and resurrection.

2) His birth signals a hope that the land, the wasteland of the Riverlands now that was so evident in FFC, and bad things to come for the rest of Westeros, can be healed, as can the Fisher King line of Tully's, ultimately Bran, because they're connected. 

The Prince That Was Promised. I think we are by and large getting to the same places...

The healing of the Tully line- elaborate?

On 11/6/2018 at 7:47 PM, Lady Barbrey said:

The book starts with the maiming of Bran.  This signals the wasteland motif beginning.  Catelyn, as part of the Fisher King family, rejects Jon - this too is her symbolic rejection of the Grail.  She fails to ask what is his nature - the Grail question - because she is blinded by grief and prejudice.  But her "it should have been you" is in a sense correct, because Jon as corn king is the one that should die and be resurrected, but that gets displaced to Bran as Fisher King.  We've therefore got the two myths of Corn King and Fisher King intersecting and displacing, and that is actually historically true of the Fisher King myth according to Weston.  It is a version of the Corn King myth that displaces it with a maiming instead of death and resurrection.  And this is associated with the land as well.  As long as Bran is maimed, the land will die, unless and until Jon dies and is resurrected - as the Corn King.  Jon might go through a few deaths and resurrections till the right one happens, for all I know, but as the Grail he holds out hope for Bran and Westeros of healing.

Jon=Corn King Dany=Tiamat?

On 11/6/2018 at 7:47 PM, Lady Barbrey said:

 

The Grail and Philosopher's Stone are often conflated in literature - the search for the unobtainable, the emphasis of converting lead to gold is that of converting winter to spring, the idea of life everlasting, in the Grail story a spiritual transformation cycle tied to the land, in the Philosopher's Stone, a physical transformation tied to the body and to elements.

The difference between those ideas seems to one of those "zeitgeits shifts" that happen in history and although I haven't thought too much about it in these terms in particular I think it may be associated with the shift between the cyclical, circular "time" system of the Old Gods (the life/death cycle of the weirwoods) and the eternal, linear time system of the Seven (eternal heavens and hells) and that the tension between these may be part of what is wrong with the world. This is my Mystery vs. Monomyth theory; in a sense, a grail and a philosopher's stone might be antagonistic elements?

Not trying to distract too much, I do so love getting mythic...

On 11/6/2018 at 7:47 PM, Lady Barbrey said:

But it is a stone (and in some stories, so is the Grail).  That's why all the references to oily black stone, stones falling, stones being worshipped, meteorites and transformation.  Its primary purpose is to take base elements, like lead or mortal humans, and transform them into something wonderful, like gold or immortal semi-divine humans.

I think you can probably guess my thoughts on the oily black stone so I won't bore you with them beyond agreeing vehemently with stones being worshipped/shades of the Magna Mater Cybele.

On 11/6/2018 at 7:47 PM, Lady Barbrey said:

The philosophers, or alchemists, wanted this transformation, but their alchemy was focused on creating the stone itself, that would be able to do these things.  So they experimented, and couched their experiments in coded language.  What would create the stone was a marriage of opposites, this was the "alchemical wedding".

The marriage of the red king to the white queen.  This produces the stone.

The marriage of fire, Rhaegar,  and ice, Lyanna, produces the stone. Jon is the stone.

You know, I had actually forgotten the alchemical wedding? Thank you for reminding me- did you ever read Eco's Foucault's Pendulum? It has an... interesting depiction of the wedding played out by homunculii...

Anyways- that's awesome!

On 11/6/2018 at 7:47 PM, Lady Barbrey said:

 

The stone is capable of transforming base elements into gold, or transformation, period, of some thing or things into something else.

So that's why we get this ongoing metaphor in the books of a sword in the, or of the, stone, or a stone itself that served some special transformative purpose.

But if we think of Jon as both the Grail and the Stone, which are conflated in literature anyway as often the same thing, what you get is a human being capable of saving the world, restoring the seasons, healing his brother and the land, through a transformation of elements like fire and ice, the Valyrians and the Others, into something more incredible, or I would argue, back to something human.  One human bloodline - the Corn King or kingsblood bloodline - already transformed into the semi-divine of Valyrians and Others and in doing so they maimed the bloodline, maimed the seasons.  Jon's sacrifice will be to transform them back.

I don't know if I expressed this well, hiemal, I've got too much background stuff on this in my head, and I'd have to sit down and do a proper essay to do these ideas justice - and that's just simply too much work! I'll let those working on a master's do it, I already have mine in lit, and don't relish writing more long essays.

 

It's marvelous, although a lot to digest in one meal, so a few notes aside I'll let this settle for a while.

On 11/6/2018 at 7:47 PM, Lady Barbrey said:

As for the cauldron, it too is often conflated with the grail but it's from a different tradition entirely.  George might play with it a bit but it doesn't have the same kinds of connotations as the Grail and Philosopher's Stone, which he is using heavily.

 

Possibly, but I've already mentioned my mania with the Tuatha de Dannon and the other Irish Invaders. Never accuse GRRM of keeping things simple?

On 11/6/2018 at 7:47 PM, Lady Barbrey said:

Regarding Dawn, I see it as "made of the same stuff" in a way to the human "stone", the Last Hero, and it might provide a funnel or catalyst of sorts in the same way Jon's blood might. Dawn is interchangeable with the Sword of the Morning; it is a Sword of the Morning.  But what does that mean?  To me, it was made of something rare, then forged into a weapon that brought the dawn.  That's the Last Hero being forged.  That's Jon being forged.  But while the Last Hero was forged of fire to bring back the day, Jon is forged of ice and fire to bring back the proper seasons.

I therefore think if there is a Sword symbolic of balancing the seasons, and Jon himself, it needs to be a song of ice and fire just like he is.

Is that Dawn?  Very possibly, if it pre-dates the original sundering of one greenseeing bloodline into Others and Valyrians. And that's possible, because It's held by the Daynes, the ones never changed into dragon riders as far as we know.

But if Dawn was the Sword of the Last Hero, if Dawn is Lightbringer and so was the Last Hero, then it and he brought the Morning but didn't balance the seasons.

And if that's the case, we symbolically need a new sword forged from Night and Day, Ice and Fire.

So Dawn is either: 

1) Lightbringer, symbolic of the Last Hero, who ends the Long Night, but does not fix the seasons; or

 

There's too much made of morning and evening stars for there not to be something here.

Quote

"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

But are they the same, purified or corrupted versions of each other, or distinct entities?

On 11/6/2018 at 7:47 PM, Lady Barbrey said:

2) Dawn as representative of the Dawn age, a bloodline pre-ancestral to Others and Valyrians, symbolic of when seasons were normal and bloodlines not split

If Dawn is #1, it's symbolic of Dany and Lightbringer,  not Jon.  In which case we need another Sword forged from Fire and Ice for Jon.

If Dawn is #2, then it will possibly be the Sword Jon wields, but there is another contender:

People believe I think that we must have original Ice not a Valyrian sword to play a role or be symbolic of Jon, but I think Ice, Ned's sword, is a good stand-in because It's made with fire but it has been quenched in the blood of northerners and tempered in that black icy pool, representative of ice magic, for generations.  Oathkeeper and Widow's Wail assume a new importance if you think of it like that.

Assuming the last to be true, what does it mean that they are twinned? (Does Jon have a secret twin? Or just representative of dual-sided nature?) Will they need to be reforged as one, or will one be okay?

You can see why people get so obsessed on the Sword threads.

 

Indeed.

[Lady Barbrey]

4 hours ago, AlaskanSandman said:

Where do you see Storm's End in all of this?

Being that Bran as a boy helped with one and its bound in magic, then went North and built the Wall bound in magic and Winterfell above a hotspring. Almost like a Valyrian making his home above a base of power as they did at Dragonstone. 

I've been following more strictly AGOT/ACOK/ASOS and there are many things i find interesting. Like Matin mentioning AE usage in 1999 when ACOK came out, which mentions Bael. AGOT mentions Daeryssa, Maege and Maesters. 

So i get the picture of Valyrians in Westeros back then, or preValyrians. Though some other points stand out as odd to me.

Namely that in some scenario's that seem like mirrors to the myths or legend. We have Rhaegar in Black and Red Rubies giving a blue rose to a Stark. Which at first seems, what ever. Then there is Loras though, in silver and Blue sapphires giving a red rose to a Stark. So we apparently have Ice and Fire trying to court a Stark. Now, it is hinted in AGOT that Loras (Ser Daisy per Walder) and Renly (Buys more clothes than a woman per Baelish) are gay and likely not interested in Sansa but still for the sake of the Tourney and what was "Seen", this is what happened. What stands out as odd to me is that Loras is representing Ice in his Silver and Blue Sapphires.

This odd association continues. In AGOT it's also mentioned that Alyssa Arryn's statue is of White Marbled veined in blue. This again gives the Others association to houses in the South. (Alyssa's tale i think may be important and also does mirror Cat's journey).

This association continues on though into ACOK where we are given Stannis and Renly meeting up. Stannis in black and accompanied by Melisandre in her reds (Black and red like Rhaegar and from Dragonstone), where as Renly shows up in Green Armor with Antlers accompanied by Brienne in Silver blue armor with a rainbow cloak. Again, Houses of the South are representing Ice. What's more, Renly is from Storm's End. 

I can't help but seeing a yin and yang thing going on. With North being mostly Ice, but having a dab of Fire. The South which should be Fire, has dabs of Ice.  Perhaps Harrenhal upset this balance? Im still trying to work it all out and understand it all but i find it interesting based off some of what you've brought up here.

I'm not sure there was a Bran the Builder, but there were people with powerful magic building defenses for different purposes, and likely at different times.

Why were the Others made in the first place? To fight humans or fire humans?

Why were the dragon riders made? To fight humans or ice humans?

Which came first - I don't know - but you can definitely see this arbitrary cycle in the seasons.

The Wall was made by fire people, with the help of Children, humans, and giants, to protect the realm from the Others - to contain ice magic to the North of it.

The Winterfell crypts were made by ice people, with the help of Children, humans and maybe giants to protect the realm from fire people - to contain the hot springs, fire magic  and, I suspect dragons.

Storm's End, I don't know.  But fire people did not make it with dragonfire or Mel would have felt her magic increase there. OTOH, dragons land there comfortably. It might protect against all spells.  We don't have enough data.

The Hightower base, however, because it is made of fused black stone, might be found to protect against Others. We will see.  I think Euron is being directed by an Other greenseer or ice seer.  Euron and his warlocks might meet an unforeseen obstacle if they aim at the Hightower.

A big question I have is how do the Undying fit here.  It's almost like they are worshipping a corrupted Heart of Winter, and maybe with the destruction of their ice caps, that's all they've got left.

I don't want to go too far into your symbolism, except to point out you need to look at each symbol's context.  Sansa is being indoctrinated - winter child seduced by solar court and the big red rose of romance.  Reverse Persephone.  That rose is her pomegranate seed.

But I do agree absolutely about a little fire in a lot of ice, or a little ice in a lot of fire.  The Others are incapable of animation without life force of fire, maybe found in human blood, and the Valyrians without a little ice in the bloodline, like Aerys, or Aerion Brightflame, consume themselves with fire and madness.

[AlaskanSandman]

44 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

I don't want to go too far into your symbolism, except to point out you need to look at each symbol's context.  Sansa is being indoctrinated - winter child seduced by solar court and the big red rose of romance.  Reverse Persephone.  That rose is her pomegranate seed.

Fer sure, but yea i actually try not to think about his symbols in comparison to our own mythologies. There are far too many he is drawing up to pin point any imo. There's elements of so many that i think they are just flavoring, while GRRM is creating his own mythology. So i look for comparisons in the book between characters he's created to myths he created. Those kinds of symbolism seems more reliable to me though still prone to interpretation. 
Like some one mentioned in here once about Lyanna maybe being taken near where Tyrion was or such, mirroring each other in a way. 

[Lady Barbrey]

18 hours ago, AlaskanSandman said:

Fer sure, but yea i actually try not to think about his symbols in comparison to our own mythologies. There are far too many he is drawing up to pin point any imo. There's elements of so many that i think they are just flavoring, while GRRM is creating his own mythology. So i look for comparisons in the book between characters he's created to myths he created. Those kinds of symbolism seems more reliable to me though still prone to interpretation. 
Like some one mentioned in here once about Lyanna maybe being taken near where Tyrion was or such, mirroring each other in a way. 

The red rose has universal symbolic meaning, though, so when the symbol is being used you have to look at it in terms of that meaning too.  If it were a blue rose, then use George's meaning, but you can't do that with everything.  

George does use some colour symbolism in patterns of his own making but I have yet to see someone come up with any consistent structure.  Brienne's blue eyes don't make her an Other.  You have to look at context.

 

[AlaskanSandman]

6 minutes ago, Lady Barbrey said:

The red rose has universal symbolic meaning, though, so when the symbol is being used you have to look at it in terms of that meaning too.  If it were a blue rose, then use George's meaning, but you can't do that with everything.  

George does use some colour symbolism in patterns of his own making but I have yet to see someone come up with any consistent structure.  Brienne's blue eyes don't make her an Other.  You have to look at context.

 

Yea but red roses have enough symbolism on their own with out having to become a "Pomegranite" now too. This is my point. Why is it not the apple of discord instead? Or why is not in the context of Romeo and Juliet and we're all just making to big a deal of the rose? Since the rose isn't representing "Love" like a red rose normally would in it's simplest symbolic form. I know Sansa really wanted it to be love, but Loras isn't for females.

Or i can just follow GRRM, where Roses represent the Reach, and Blue roses represents something rare, inbred, and a symbol of the North.

Also i never brought up Briennes eyes. I brought up the armor she was wearing in accordance to Renly vs Stannis and Mel in Black and Red. A lil more on the nose than people's eye colors. Also has to do with the eternal consistency of the Novel. I dont think GRRM is requiring any one to study Zoroastrians just to understand his books. Which Asoiaf strike me as resembling Norse mythology more than greek mythology. 

[Alexis-something-Rose]

On 11/1/2018 at 8:29 PM, Lady Barbrey said:

@Alexis-something-Rose might have been right, it's the metals not the weapons, the forging not the finished product, that is implied by that middle line.

Actually, something occurred to me that I forgot to post about, that the oath of fealty from House Reed may have to do with the magic of the crannogs and elements of their magic as opposed to something that's super complicated.

"Once there was a curious lad who lived in the Neck. He was small like all crannogmen, but brave and smart and strong as well. He grew up hunting and fishing and, climbing trees, and learned all the magics of my people."
Bran was almost certain he never heard this story. "Did he have green dreams like Jojen?"
"No," said Meera, "but he could breathe mud and run on leaves, and change earth to water and water to earth with no more than a whispered word. He could talk to trees and weave words and make castles appear and disappear." (Bran II, ASOS 24)

The oath begins with swearing by "earth and water," and Meera alleges that Howland who learned the magics of her people could change earth to water and water to earth and she continues about other things her father is presumably able to do. 

Maybe that's what the children of the forest did with the Arm of Dorne and in the Neck, tried to turn earth to water as opposed to trying to create some cataclysm to break the land apart.