Shadow Maps

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

So we know Maester Luwin was a specialist in astronomy, he taught Jon a lot about astronomy and he told Bran he could teach him to navigate by the stars and measure the seasons with astrological observations.  He had a telescope and star charts, and he had his mysterious shadow maps.

But check this out, in Irish "luain" or "luan" or "luinn" means "moon" and "movement" and "powerful/sword" and "la luain" means "Doomsday/Judgement Day" One old book says "luan" is a contraction of "luath-an" which means "swift planet"

Luwin was tracking the Doomsday "Moon" and that is what makes him frown in Bran's coma dream.

luan can also mean "dog/hound" and I have argued that Sandor Clegane is a metaphor for one of the two black planets. 

The Hound is an ash colored huge man that emerges from the shadows and blots out the sun (he is a grey hound, and luan can mean greyhound), in Chinese myth eclipses are caused by a black dog, the Clegane sigii is three black dogs on yellow, causing an eclipse. Claigeann means "skull" in Irish. Which is a symbol of death, and in Hindu myth, Rahu a floating skull, causes the eclipse when he swallows the sun.

Why did Maester Aemon have a telescope?  And is the Shadow Tower an observatory to keep track of the Shadow?

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

While on the subject of eclipses, in Irish sgail means "shadow" or "eclipse" and Saagael is one of the gods worshiped in Lys, and children are sacrificed to it, and in George's Only Kids are Afraid of the Dark, Saagael is the Prince of Darkness that wants to create a Long Night that never ends. 

Spoiler

The Lord of Darkness gestured expansively, and all light in the temple vanished.  A thick darkness prevailed everywhere, and a vision slowly too shape before the awestruck eyes of Doctor Weird.

He saw men turn against other men in anger and hatred.  He witnessed wars and holocaust and blood.  Death, grinning and horrible, was everywhere.  The world was bathed in chaos and destruction.  And then, in the aftermath, he beheld flood and fire and plague, and famine upon the land.  Fear and superstition reached new heights.  There was a vision of churches being torn down, and of crosses burning against the night sky.  Awesome statues were raised in their stead, bearing the hideous likeness of the Demon Prince.  Everywhere men bowed before hte great dark altars, and gave their daughters to the priests of Saagael.  And, lo, the creatures of the night burst forth again in new strength, walking the earth and lusting for blood.  Locked doors were no protection.  The servants of Saagael ruled supreme on the earth, and their dark lord hunted for men's souls.  The gates of Corlos were opened, and a great shadow descended over the land.  Not in a thousand generations would it be lifted.

And Saagael is one of the Seven cosmic deities in the Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr, that feeds on souls.

Spoiler

The sky was very dark, but she could see clearly, for against the darkness a shape was moving. Light poured from it, and the dirt in the courtyard and the stones of the battlements and the gray pennants were all bright beneath its glow. Puzzling, Sharra looked up.

Something looked back. It was taller than the mountains and it filled up half the sky, and though it gave off light enough to see the castle by, Sharra knew that it was dark beyond darkness. It had a man-shape, roughly, and it wore a long cape and a cowl, and below that was blackness even fouler than the rest. The only sounds were Laren’s soft breathing and the beating of her heart and the distant weeping of a mourning-bird, but in her head Sharra could hear demonic laughter.

The shape in the sky looked down at her, in her, and she felt the cold dark in her soul. Frozen, she could not move her eyes. But the shape did move. It turned and raised a hand, and then there was something else up there with it, a tiny man-shape with eyes of fire that writhed and screamed and called to her.

 

And uraigh/uraithe means eclipse in Irish, I subscribe to the theory that Euron is Urrathon Night-Walker, (urragon means hurricane).  Euron will cause the eclipse.

[Aebram]

I think Ser Leftwich has the right of it:

It could be marking angles of shadows to do calculations about seasons/weather and/or time of year. Which are all a little wonky on Planetos. (Think a shadow stick.)

We know that the seasons in Westeros are irregular and very long. So it's vitally important for them to be able to predict, or at least recognize, the changes.  This must be an important job for all the maesters, something that they might work on every day, keep detailed records, and send reports to each other or to the Citadel.

The sun's movements appear different when viewed from different latitudes and longitudes. So it might be helpful to draw a simple map of the country, and annotate it with information about the behavior of shadows in different locations.  And since there's limited space on a map, I can easily imagine maesters creating a separate map for each year. Then, by comparing this year's map to previous years, they can get a sense what the future will bring. That explains why a maester would have several of them lying around.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

11 hours ago, Aebram said:

The sun's movements appear different when viewed from different latitudes and longitudes. So it might be helpful to draw a simple map of the country, and annotate it with information about the behavior of shadows in different locations.  And since there's limited space on a map, I can easily imagine maesters creating a separate map for each year. Then, by comparing this year's map to previous years, they can get a sense what the future will bring. That explains why a maester would have several of them lying around.

The way to measure how high the sun gets in the sky would be with an astronomical sextant and/or an analemmatic sundial, neither of which would produce a shadow map--just a small table with the sun's angle, or an analemma.  (and longitude would not change your observations, only latitude).  And if the sun stayed at the same angle for almost a decade, it would not look like much.

Also, recall that there used to be a second moon that was believed to be destroyed, that something is messing up the seasons by effecting the tilt of the Earth, that there was once a generation long eclipse that is about to happen again, and that Luwin's name means "moon" and "Doomsday," and in Bran's dream his astronomical observations made him frown as he took notes, that there is a Shadow over Asshai, and that the gods in the Faith of the Seven are planets and one of them is a totally black wanderer from far places without a regular orbit.  

[Aebram]

It's true that latitude is more important than longitude when analyzing the behavior of the Sun. We don't have a detailed description of the Shadow Maps, so it's possible that they are some sort of table or chart, rather than a literal map. But there might be reasons why the maesters would prefer to use an actual map. For example, if you need to explain your findings to some lord who isn't good with math, a map might work better than a page covered with numbers..

Those other points about planets and gods are, I think, conjecture rather than established facts (but I'm somewhat new here, so excuse me if I'm wrong about that).  And given the maesters' general anti-magic attitude, it seems unlikely that Luwin would have several maps of Asshai lying around in plain sight.