Heresy 226 of wolves, dragons and other familiars

[alienarea]

Just an observation: the IMHO most interesting characters are men closer to GRRM's age (when he wrote): Tywin, Roose, Mance, ...

Maybe a theme for a future heresy: outside looking in? We need to analyze GRRM to see missing pieces?

[Melifeather]

4 hours ago, alienarea said:

Just an observation: the IMHO most interesting characters are men closer to GRRM's age (when he wrote): Tywin, Roose, Mance, ...

Maybe a theme for a future heresy: outside looking in? We need to analyze GRRM to see missing pieces?

He likes Marvel and comics in general, reading, role playing, chess, fantasy art, parties, and turtles. 

[LynnS]

Another favorite cracked pot of mine is the business of the god of the red lot, R'hllor.  Melisandre insists that 'he' exists and that seems to be confirmed by Jaqen H'gar:

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A Clash of Kings - Arya IX

"Swear it," Arya said. "Swear it by the gods."

"By all the gods of sea and air, and even him of fire, I swear it." He placed a hand in the mouth of the weirwood. "By the seven new gods and the old gods beyond count, I swear it."

I don't think Jaqen's is putting one over on Arya when he takes the oath.  I think this is the same 'god' that Dany sees dancing with the Great Wolf:

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A Game of Thrones - Daenerys VIII

No, Dany wanted to say, no, not that, you mustn't, but when she opened her mouth, a long wail of pain escaped, and the sweat broke over her skin. What was wrong with them, couldn't they see? Inside the tent the shapes were dancing, circling the brazier and the bloody bath, dark against the sandsilk, and some did not look human. She glimpsed the shadow of a great wolf, and another like a man wreathed in flames.

These are the old powers that no living man can look upon:

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A Game of Thrones - Daenerys VIII

"I will stay," Dany said. "The man took me under the stars and gave life to the child inside me. I will not leave him."

"You must. Once I begin to sing, no one must enter this tent. My song will wake powers old and dark. The dead will dance here this night. No living man must look on them."

So this is a ritual only women can invoke or attend.

I've said before that both Dany and Mel can't see past the image of the Great Wolf or the boy with wolf's head to their true identity; that they are blocked from seeing what lies beneath.  But Dany can see the man limned in flame.  So the leap I take is that this is the Great Dragon that Dany wakes.  In other words, him of fire.

This is him of fire, R'hllor, the singing dragon:

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A Game of Thrones - Daenerys III

Day followed day, and night followed night, until Dany knew she could not endure a moment longer. She would kill herself rather than go on, she decided one night …

Yet when she slept that night, she dreamt the dragon dream again. Viserys was not in it this time. There was only her and the dragon. Its scales were black as night, wet and slick with blood. Her blood, Dany sensed. Its eyes were pools of molten magma, and when it opened its mouth, the flame came roaring out in a hot jet. She could hear it singing to her. She opened her arms to the fire, embraced it, let it swallow her whole, let it cleanse her and temper her and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam, and yet there was no pain. She felt strong and new and fierce.

And this is Dany's transformation, her cleansing by spiritual fire and her transformation into the chosen of R'hllor to be the bride of fire and the mother of dragons.  The cup of fire that Dany drinks from is different than the one that transformed Melisandre.

Melisandre literally drinks down the fire:

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A Dance with Dragons - Melisandre I

A face took shape within the hearth. Stannis? she thought, for just a moment … but no, these were not his features. A wooden face, corpse white. Was this the enemy? A thousand red eyes floated in the rising flames. He sees me. Beside him, a boy with a wolf's face threw back his head and howled.

The red priestess shuddered. Blood trickled down her thigh, black and smoking. The fire was inside her, an agony, an ecstasy, filling her, searing her, transforming her. Shimmers of heat traced patterns on her skin, insistent as a lover's hand. Strange voices called to her from days long past. "Melony," she heard a woman cry. A man's voice called, "Lot Seven." She was weeping, and her tears were flame. And still she drank it in.

Melisandre's transformation is much more brutal using magic spells (traced patterns on her skin) and something else. Her blood is black and smokes.  Not unlike Drogon's blood also black and smoking.

So I'll stretch the boundaries here to suggest that dragon blood itself is used to transform R'hllor's slaves into his priests and priestesses.   This is literally drinking from a cup of blood and fire.

It occurs to me that the real slave here is a dragon in bondage to the Red Lot, the source of their magical power.  Tyrion is actually questioned about dragons as it relates to the making of wildfire:

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A Clash of Kings - Tyrion XI

"Not unless you found one under the Dragonpit. Why?"

"Oh, pardon, I was just remembering something old Wisdom Pollitor told me once, when I was an acolyte. I'd asked him why so many of our spells seemed, well, not as effectual as the scrolls would have us believe, and he said it was because magic had begun to go out of the world the day the last dragon died."

"Sorry to disappoint you, but I've seen no dragons. I have noticed the King's Justice lurking about, however. Should any of these fruits you're selling me turn out to be filled with anything but wildfire, you'll be seeing him as well."

 He tells him previously that their spells have been more potent of late.  So more dragons, more magic.  Which might explain why the Red Lot are so ecstatic about Dany and her three dragons.  Like everyone they want her dragons for their own purposes.  To increase their own power.

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A Dance with Dragons - Tyrion VIII

"Someone told me that the night is dark and full of terrors. What do you see in those flames?"

"Dragons," Moqorro said in the Common Tongue of Westeros. He spoke it very well, with hardly a trace of accent. No doubt that was one reason the high priest Benerro had chosen him to bring the faith of R'hllor to Daenerys Targaryen. "Dragons old and young, true and false, bright and dark. And you. A small man with a big shadow, snarling in the midst of all."

When Moqorro talks about dragons young and old, I think he is literally talking about dragons rather than metaphorical dragons or Targaryens.  Their dragon, the old dragon is fading, becoming dark, it's life force spent and they need to replace their god, their source of power with a younger, brighter version. 

It seems to me that the Great Temple of R'hllor in Volantis makes a great dragon pit.

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A Dance with Dragons - Daenerys V

"Them, and dragons," said Brown Ben Plumm, with a grin.

"In the pit, in chains," wailed Reznak mo Reznak. "What good are dragons that cannot be controlled? Even the Unsullied grow fearful when they must open the doors to feed them."

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A Dance with Dragons - Daenerys X
If she had not been so sick and scared, that might have come as a relief. Instead she began to shiver violently. She rubbed her fingers through the dirt, and grabbed a handful of grass to wipe between her legs. The dragon does not weep. She was bleeding, but it was only woman's blood. The moon is still a crescent, though. How can that be? She tried to remember the last time she had bled. The last full moon? The one before? The one before that? No, it cannot have been so long as that.

"I am the blood of the dragon," she told the grass, aloud.

Once, the grass whispered back, until you chained your dragons in the dark.

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A Dance with Dragons - Tyrion VII

Benerro's high voice carried well. Tall and thin, he had a drawn face and skin white as milk. Flames had been tattooed across his cheeks and chin and shaven head to make a bright red mask that crackled about his eyes and coiled down and around his lipless mouth. "Is that a slave tattoo?" asked Tyrion.

The knight nodded. "The red temple buys them as children and makes them priests or temple prostitutes or warriors. Look there." He pointed at the steps, where a line of men in ornate armor and orange cloaks stood before the temple's doors, clasping spears with points like writhing flames. "The Fiery Hand. The Lord of Light's sacred soldiers, defenders of the temple."

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A Dance with Dragons - Tyrion VII

"One thousand. Never more, and never less. A new flame is kindled for every one that gutters out."

Benerro jabbed a finger at the moon, made a fist, spread his hands wide. When his voice rose in a crescendo, flames leapt from his fingers with a sudden whoosh and made the crowd gasp. The priest could trace fiery letters in the air as well. Valyrian glyphs. Tyrion recognized perhaps two in ten; one was Doom, the other Darkness.

So chaining your dragon in the darkness, a violation against the dragons and dragon bond.  The Fiery Hand are defenders of the temple protecting what exactly?  Benerro can trace fiery letters in the air.  That sounds suspiciulsy like the fiery hand tracing patterns on Melisandre's skin. 

I'm also guessing that the red slaves can burn out or are consumed since the Fiery Hands are also replaced when one light goes out.  That suggests that Melisandre needs to top up her own life force now and then.  Perhaps her sacrifices to R'hllor serve that purpose and the ruby at her throat channels that fire into her.

[alienarea]

R'hllor might simply be a version of ruler? The one true god whose name shall not be spoken - a burning bush?

[Melifeather]

Magic or dragons - which came first is like the proverbial chicken or the egg. The pyromancers think the dragons provided the magic, but in my opinion the dragons cannot exist without magic. Their decline and death was due to a decline in magic.

[Brad Stark]

3 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

Magic or dragons - which came first is like the proverbial chicken or the egg. The pyromancers think the dragons provided the magic, but in my opinion the dragons cannot exist without magic. Their decline and death was due to a decline in magic.

This is an interesting idea.  What if the maesters got rid of the dragons by getting rid of magic itself?  They certainly don't like magic, and if this was possible, they could know how.  Whatever they did was only temporary and it wore off. 

[LynnS]

9 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

Magic or dragons - which came first is like the proverbial chicken or the egg. The pyromancers think the dragons provided the magic, but in my opinion the dragons cannot exist without magic. Their decline and death was due to a decline in magic.

Or dragons amplify fire magic.  The bigger the population, the stronger the magic users become.
 

Quote

A Clash of Kings - Daenerys III

"I want to see."

"Then you must." The Dothraki offered a hand down. When she took it, he pulled her up onto his horse and sat her in front of him, where she could see over the heads of the crowd. The firemage had conjured a ladder in the air, a crackling orange ladder of swirling flame that rose unsupported from the floor of the bazaar, reaching toward the high latticed roof.

The mage was gesturing, urging the flames higher and higher with broad sweeps of his arms. As the watchers craned their necks upward, the cutpurses squirmed through the press, small blades hidden in their palms. They relieved the prosperous of their coin with one hand while pointing upward with the other.

When the fiery ladder stood forty feet high, the mage leapt forward and began to climb it, scrambling up hand over hand as quick as a monkey. Each rung he touched dissolved behind him, leaving no more than a wisp of silver smoke. When he reached the top, the ladder was gone and so was he.

"A fine trick," announced Jhogo with admiration.

"No trick," a woman said in the Common Tongue.

Dany had not noticed Quaithe in the crowd, yet there she stood, eyes wet and shiny behind the implacable red lacquer mask. "What mean you, my lady?"

"Half a year gone, that man could scarcely wake fire from dragonglass. He had some small skill with powders and wildfire, sufficient to entrance a crowd while his cutpurses did their work. He could walk across hot coals and make burning roses bloom in the air, but he could no more aspire to climb the fiery ladder than a common fisherman could hope to catch a kraken in his nets."

Dany looked uneasily at where the ladder had stood. Even the smoke was gone now, and the crowd was breaking up, each man going about his business. In a moment more than a few would find their purses flat and empty. "And now?"

"And now his powers grow, Khaleesi. And you are the cause of it."

"Me?" She laughed. "How could that be?"

The woman stepped closer and lay two fingers on Dany's wrist. "You are the Mother of Dragons, are you not?"

 

It does sound plausible that the Citadel has been involved in killing dragons.  It sounds like pyromancer is just another term for firemage.

[LynnS]

11 hours ago, alienarea said:

R'hllor might simply be a version of ruler? The one true god whose name shall not be spoken - a burning bush?

LOL!  Or something more.  R'hllor, R'haegar, R'haella, R'haenys... etc.  Is there a difference between a Great Dragon and a run of the mill dragon? Davos talks about Melisandre wanting to wake the Great Dragon and Dany dreams of waking the dragon.  This is different from hatching dragons from stone, it would seem, since Mel doesn't have any dragon eggs.  The mad king and several other Targs dream of transforming into a dragon as well.  The Targs venerate dragon gods or did at one point.  How does one become a god?  The man limned in flame knows or is himself a great dragon.  So metaphorically, a burning bush is apt.