Time and Causality

[Melifeather]

2 hours ago, Tucu said:

I like to see those as a reset of the wheel of time by an impact from the red comet. An impact strong enough to blow up mountains and change the direction of planet rotation.

Facts time! Venus and Uranus are the only two planets that rotate backwards.  For Venus a possible explanation is a mix of an impact and the Sun tidals forces.

For book references that support an impact we have Benerro:

 

I did not know that about Venus and Uranus! Very interesting! I had just read a recent science article about Venus and that fact was never mentioned. The topic was speculation about past life on Venus. The first probe landing on Venus was Russian in origin in 1962 and lasted, if I recall correctly, ten minutes before it burned up. Before it burned it sent back scientific data such as temperature, atmosphere, etc - its also probably how they figured out if was rotating backwards. 

As for Benerro...do you think his gestures at the moon are prophetic or accusatory? I took it that he was pantomiming an historic celestial event and blaming it for the Doom and Darkness.

[LynnS]

1 hour ago, Melifeather said:

If Mirri is a mage and sees images of prophecies, then I think she thought she was telling Daenerys that she would never see Drogo again, that it was as impossible as seas drying up and mountains blowing away,

It certainly seems like she is saying it's impossible and that she will never have anymore children, But at the end of Dance, Dany blees again.  The whole thing sounds like prophecy and I wonder how much MMD knows about the mysteries of the Dosh Khaleen.  After all, she knows how to wake the old gods and she knows what Dany meant to do with the dragon eggs.  She also tells Dany that on some level she knew the price, just as Dany knows how to wake dragons from stone without being told how to do it.

So I wonder what will happen when Dany returns to Vaes Dothrak and passes beneath the shadow of the Mother of Mountains, as Quaithe instructs and into the womb of the world.  The domain of the Dosh Khaleen and their mysteries.  I'm guessing that to touch the light, Dany will be made to have another drug induced vision that will take her into the past.  Possibly as far back as an ice age, where the sees dry up and mammoths roam the world.  Like Bran seeing the weirwood tree shrink over time,  Dany will see the changes to the land, and the sun rising and fall in reverse order, as she goes backwards in time..

Mountains blowing in the wind like leaves is very cryptic.

Quaithe says that before she can move forward, he must go backwards at least to Vaes Dothak, not only to join the Khals together but to touch the light and gain some knowledge she needs including something about Asshai.

If we interpret the sun rising in the west to be Tyrion leaving Pentos through the Sunrise Gate; then it seems Tyrion's fate is tied to Dany.

[LynnS]

Mars HiRise also interesting to see.

Images - NASA Mars

 

[LynnS]

23 minutes ago, Melifeather said:

As for Benerro...do you think his gestures at the moon are prophetic or accusatory? I took it that he was pantomiming an historic celestial event and blaming it for the Doom and Darkness.

Accusatory!  This is also a moon door with the blood eye peering down on Volantis.

[Tucu]

1 hour ago, Melifeather said:

I did not know that about Venus and Uranus! Very interesting! I had just read a recent science article about Venus and that fact was never mentioned. The topic was speculation about past life on Venus. The first probe landing on Venus was Russian in origin in 1962 and lasted, if I recall correctly, ten minutes before it burned up. Before it burned it sent back scientific data such as temperature, atmosphere, etc - its also probably how they figured out if was rotating backwards. 

As for Benerro...do you think his gestures at the moon are prophetic or accusatory? I took it that he was pantomiming an historic celestial event and blaming it for the Doom and Darkness.

I think it was a bit of both as Benerro seems to preach about Azor Ahai reborn. Arya and Gendry call the comet the Red Sword:

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“The Red Sword,” the Bull named it; he claimed it looked like a sword, the blade still red-hot from the forge.

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Above, the Red Sword shared the sky with half a thousand stars

We get this version of the forging of Lightbringer from Salladhor. He calls Lightbringer the Red Sword of Heroes and its forging cracked the moon.

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Do you know the tale of the forging of Lightbringer? I shall tell it to you. It was a time when darkness lay heavy on the world. To oppose it, the hero must have a hero's blade, oh, like none that had ever been. And so for thirty days and thirty nights Azor Ahai labored sleepless in the temple, forging a blade in the sacred fires. Heat and hammer and fold, heat and hammer and fold, oh, yes, until the sword was done. Yet when he plunged it into water to temper the steel it burst asunder.

<...>

"A hundred days and a hundred nights he labored on the third blade, and as it glowed white-hot in the sacred fires, he summoned his wife. 'Nissa Nissa,' he said to her, for that was her name, 'bare your breast, and know that I love you best of all that is in this world.' She did this thing, why I cannot say, and Azor Ahai thrust the smoking sword through her living heart. It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon, but her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel. Such is the tale of the forging of Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes.

then Haldon adds the piece of Azor Ahai making the world anew

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Haldon nodded. "Benerro has sent forth the word from Volantis. Her coming is the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy. From smoke and salt was she born to make the world anew. She is Azor Ahai returned … and her triumph over darkness will bring a summer that will never end … death itself will bend its knee, and all those who die fighting in her cause shall be reborn …"

And we can throw in this bit from Euron and I repeat one from Benerro:

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“The bleeding star bespoke the end,” he said to Aeron. “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade

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Benerro shriek of bleeding stars and a sword of fire that will cleanse the world.

 

[Melifeather]

2 hours ago, LynnS said:

It certainly seems like she is saying it's impossible and that she will never have anymore children, But at the end of Dance, Dany blees again.  The whole thing sounds like prophecy and I wonder how much MMD knows about the mysteries of the Dosh Khaleen.  After all, she knows how to wake the old gods and she knows what Dany meant to do with the dragon eggs.  She also tells Dany that on some level she knew the price, just as Dany knows how to wake dragons from stone without being told how to do it.

So I wonder what will happen when Dany returns to Vaes Dothrak and passes beneath the shadow of the Mother of Mountains, as Quaithe instructs and into the womb of the world.  The domain of the Dosh Khaleen and their mysteries.  I'm guessing that to touch the light, Dany will be made to have another drug induced vision that will take her into the past.  Possibly as far back as an ice age, where the sees dry up and mammoths roam the world.  Like Bran seeing the weirwood tree shrink over time,  Dany will see the changes to the land, and the sun rising and fall in reverse order, as she goes backwards in time..

Mountains blowing in the wind like leaves is very cryptic.

Quaithe says that before she can move forward, he must go backwards at least to Vaes Dothak, not only to join the Khals together but to touch the light and gain some knowledge she needs including something about Asshai.

If we interpret the sun rising in the west to be Tyrion leaving Pentos through the Sunrise Gate; then it seems Tyrion's fate is tied to Dany.

Or a combination of you and Tuccu. Daenerys, as the mother and origin of dragons, is being encouraged to go (back/a return) to the womb. For what? As if dragons were never born? Maybe the wheel WILL reset and she’ll revert back to her childhood, and her last scene in the book has her running towards the house with the red door. If she’s allowed to grow up without the Targaryen-dragon-baggage, she could have a new destiny where she reconnects with Drogo and gives birth to a living Rhaego.

[LongRider]

"A light had gone out somewhere."

7 hours ago, Wizz-The-Smith said:

I'll have to check out some of the other scenes where characters inhabit a Hhill/cave/the subterranean and see if there are any similar transformative moments. 

Do these spaces in dreams count?  There are three dreams that some fans think are connected; Theon's dream in the feast hall of Winterfell, Jon's dream in the crypts and Jamie's dream beneath Casterly Rock.   The noise of the feast is heard in Jon's dream, and when the fire on Jamie's sword goes out Jon notes "a light has gone out somewhere'.  Here is a link to an old post from TZE about these dreams, although I'm sure there are many others.  

Theon's dream is in chapter 56 of Clash, Jon's dream is in ?  Jamie's dream is chapter 44 of Storm.  I can't find the chapter Jon's dream is in, is some knows please post.  Anyway, thought I might mention dreamscapes as possible subterranean places.

[MissM]

Speaking of High Heart, the significance of those 31 weirwood stumps and Arya circling them once with Gendry and then again with Ned.  

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The next day they rode to a place called High Heart, a hill so lofty that from atop it Arya felt as though she could see half the world. Around its brow stood a ring of huge pale stumps, all that remained of a circle of once-mighty weirwoods. Arya and Gendry walked around the hill to count them. There were thirty-one, some so wide that she could have used them for a bed.

High Heart had been sacred to the children of the forest, Tom Sevenstrings told her, and some of their magic lingered here still. "No harm can ever come to those as sleep here," the singer said. Arya thought that must be true; the hill was so high and the surrounding lands so flat that no enemy could approach unseen. - ASOS, Arya 

 

 

They circled back to High Heart here:

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When Arya saw the shape of a great hill looming in the distance, golden in the afternoon sun, she knew it at once. They had come all the way back to High Heart.

By sunset they were at the top, making camp where no harm could come to them. Arya walked around the circle of weirwood stumps with Lord Beric's squire Ned, and they stood on top of one watching the last light fade in the west. From up here she could see a storm raging to the north, but High Heart stood above the rain. It wasn't above the wind, though; the gusts were blowing so strongly that it felt like someone was behind her, yanking on her cloak. Only when she turned, no one was there.

Ghosts, she remembered. High Heart is haunted. - ASOS, Arya 

 

 

 

[Melifeather]

14 hours ago, LongRider said:

"A light had gone out somewhere."

Do these spaces in dreams count?  There are three dreams that some fans think are connected; Theon's dream in the feast hall of Winterfell, Jon's dream in the crypts and Jamie's dream beneath Casterly Rock.   The noise of the feast is heard in Jon's dream, and when the fire on Jamie's sword goes out Jon notes "a light has gone out somewhere'.  Here is a link to an old post from TZE about these dreams, although I'm sure there are many others.  

Theon's dream is in chapter 56 of Clash, Jon's dream is in ?  Jamie's dream is chapter 44 of Storm.  I can't find the chapter Jon's dream is in, is some knows please post.  Anyway, thought I might mention dreamscapes as possible subterranean places.

I'd like to reread all three dreams again. GRRM often does groups of threes intentionally to reveal something. The order in the books matter too. The vaguest one will come first, then a little more clearer on the second, and then the last will have the most information and whatever it is that he wants made plain will then be easiest to determine. I'll do a little digging and see if I can come up with anything to add.

[LongRider]

2 hours ago, Melifeather said:

'd like to reread all three dreams again. GRRM often does groups of threes intentionally to reveal something

Looking at the TZE link I posted, I just noticed that Jon heard the feast that Theon is at, and perceives Jamie’s light from his sword flame going out, but the other dreamers don’t have any sense of other dreams, only their own. Now I really want to know Jon’s chapter. Will have to check my books tonight. 

[Tucu]

1 hour ago, LongRider said:

Looking at the TZE link I posted, I just noticed that Jon heard the feast that Theon is at, and perceives Jamie’s light from his sword flame going out, but the other dreamers don’t have any sense of other dreams, only their own. Now I really want to know Jon’s chapter. Will have to check my books tonight. 

It is Jon VIII in ASOS. After the Thenn's attack and before Mance attacks.

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He dreamed he was back in Winterfell, limping past the stone kings on their thrones. Their grey granite eyes turned to follow him as he passed, and their grey granite fingers tightened on the hilts of the rusted swords upon their laps. You are no Stark, he could hear them mutter, in heavy granite voices. There is no place for you here. Go away. He walked deeper into the darkness. “Father?” he called. “Bran? Rickon?” No one answered. A chill wind was blowing on his neck. “Uncle?” he called. “Uncle Benjen? Father? Please, Father, help me.” Up above he heard drums. They are feasting in the Great Hall, but I am not welcome there. I am no Stark, and this is not my place. His crutch slipped and he fell to his knees. The crypts were growing darker. A light has gone out somewhere. “Ygritte?” he whispered. “Forgive me. Please.” But it was only a direwolf, grey and ghastly, spotted with blood, his golden eyes shining sadly through the dark…

 

It is a modified/extended version of Jon's crypt dreams.

 

[Melifeather]

1 hour ago, LongRider said:

Looking at the TZE link I posted, I just noticed that Jon heard the feast that Theon is at, and perceives Jamie’s light from his sword flame going out, but the other dreamers don’t have any sense of other dreams, only their own. Now I really want to know Jon’s chapter. Will have to check my books tonight. 

The conversation between Jaime and his ghosts...I got the impression that it was the old gods or a greenseer scolding him rather that the ghosts of all those people. They say greenseers can come to people in their dreams. Maybe they can also look like anybody they want to? I think that idea is supported by Jon's dream having elements of Jaime's and Theon's in it. The dreams all seem like subliminal messages from Bran or Bloodraven.

[LongRider]

8 hours ago, Tucu said:

It is Jon VIII in ASOS. After the Thenn's attack and before Mance attacks.

Oh thank you so much! I think i'll read the 3 chapters tonight.  

 

7 hours ago, Melifeather said:

The conversation between Jaime and his ghosts...I got the impression that it was the old gods or a greenseer 

Really, falling asleep on a ww stump on High Hill is just asking them to be mainlined right into his dreams!

edt: Jamie was sleeping on ww stump but not at High Hill, he was traveling from Harrenhal to be returned to Casterly Rock.  The day after the dream he returned to Harrenhal to rescue Brienne.  

edt #2: factoid; Theon's dream about one page long,  Jamie's about four pages long, Jon's dream one long paragraph.  

[Tucu]

Now that @LongRider mentioned how long Jamie's dream sequence was  I remembered the last Brienne chapter in AFFC. The whole chapter is a dreamy, ghostly and timeless descent into the Underworld to meet Lady Stoneheart. It is worth doing a re-read focusing on the underworld theme. Some good bits:

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This is an evil dream, she thought. But if she were dreaming, why did it hurt so much?

<...>

She did not understand who had bound her, or why. She tried to ask the shadows, but they did not answer. Perhaps they did not hear her. Perhaps they were not real.

<...>

“Oathkeeper. Please.” The watchers did not answer. Renly was there, with Nimble Dick and Catelyn Stark. Shagwell, Pyg, and Timeon had come, and the corpses from the trees with their sunken cheeks, swollen tongues, and empty eye sockets.

<...>

Then she was back at the Whispers, standing amongst the ruins and facing Clarence Crabb. He was huge and fierce, mounted on an aurochs shaggier than he was. The beast pawed the ground in fury, tearing deep furrows in the earth. Crabb’s teeth had been filed into points. When Brienne went to draw her sword, she found her scabbard empty. “No,” she cried, as Ser Clarence charged. It wasn’t fair. She could not fight without her magic sword.

<...>

She dreamed that she was lying in a boat, her head pillowed on someone’s lap. There were shadows all around them, hooded men in mail and leather, paddling them across a foggy river with muffled oars. She was drenched in sweat, burning, yet somehow shivering too. The fog was full of faces.

<...>

She did not know where she was. The air was cold and heavy, and smelled of earth and worms and mold. She was lying on a pallet beneath a mound of sheepskins, with rock above her head and roots poking through the walls.

<...>

The stew was cold and greasy, the bread hard, the cheese harder. Brienne had never eaten anything half so good.

<...>

“I do not doubt that kindness and mercy and forgiveness can still be found somewhere in these Seven Kingdoms, but do not look for them here. This is a cave, not a temple. When men must live like rats in the dark beneath the earth, they soon run out of pity, as they do of milk and honey.”

<...>

A trestle table had been set up across the cave, in a cleft in the rock. Behind it sat a woman all in grey, cloaked and hooded. In her hands was a crown, a bronze circlet ringed by iron swords. She was studying it, her fingers stroking the blades as if to test their sharpness.

<...>

Her voice was halting, broken, tortured. The sound seemed to come from her throat, part croak, part wheeze, part death rattle. The language of the damned,

<...>

Her hair was dry and brittle, white as bone. Her brow was mottled green and grey, spotted with the brown blooms of decay. The flesh of her face clung in ragged strips from her eyes down to her jaw. Some of the rips were crusted with dried blood, but others gaped open to reveal the skull beneath.

<...>

Am I dreaming still? Brienne wondered. Is this another nightmare born from Biter’s teeth?

<...>

If this is another dream, it is time for me to awaken. If this is real, it is time for me to die. All she could see was Podrick, the noose around his thin neck, his legs twitching. Her mouth opened. Pod was kicking, choking, dying. Brienne sucked the air in desperately, even as the rope was strangling her. Nothing had ever hurt so much.

 

[LynnS]

On 12/4/2020 at 9:42 AM, MissM said:

Speaking of High Heart, the significance of those 31 weirwood stumps and Arya circling them once with Gendry and then again with Ned.  

Thanks for posting these descriptions of High Heart.  It's really quite stunning to imagine the enormity of it.  A hill so high you can see it from half a days journey with a plateau that was once rimmed with enormous weirwoods; with surrounding flatland.  There doesn't seem to be any climbing involved so you would be walking up a sloped hill which makes the enormity of it far bigger than just the top. Most of it is underground, one of the hidden cities of the COTF and a holy place which once had 31 greenseers overlooking the land in all directions.  There must have been quite a battle there at one time for all the trees to be cut down.  It might have been the high holy place of the COTF before the Pact.  

I wonder if the Isle of Faces is similar to High Heart in it;s features but surrounded with a 'moat'. 

[LynnS]

The connection between Jon's dream, Theon's dream and Jaimie's dream is stunning.  I need to think about it a bit more.  This might also connect with Quaithe's instruction for Dany to pass beneath the shadow and touch the light.

Bit I have a tangent in my head having to do with Dany and the Undying that I would put under the banner of |"the things we do for love".  She is told that she will ride three mounts and know three betrayals (to love, to love and for love).  I don't think these are betrayals committed on her but by her.  

The first mount she rides is Siver and she loses her fear.  The first betrayal is to Viserys her brother and king when she doesn't intervene to stop Drogo from killing her brother.  A betrayal of her blood to love Drogo without divided loyalties.

The second mount she rides is Drogo to produce a child, to be a mother.  She betrays both father and son when she compels MMD to perform the ritual of waking the old powers with her dragon eggs in the tent.  Mirri says Dany knew the blood price but insisted anyway.  Dany says she didn't know the price would be so high.  She paid the price to love her dragons.

The last mount is Drogon and the betrayal will be to at least one dragon.  Something she will do for the love of the dragon(s).

[Pontius Pilate]

On 11/7/2020 at 9:38 AM, LynnS said:

I think we've had a pretty big reveal, in an interview with George Martin, in a newly published book Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon", by James Hibberd.  I guess it's more or less in the public domain at this point.

This is especially interesting to me because I've been banging on about the events at the Skirling Pass for a while; as an example of Martin manipulating time.  I don't call it time travel.  Martin's explanation that events in the future an affect the past, seems better to me.  I would never have guessed that Hodor was connected to Bran through the dimension of time and was changed by events in the future.  When Martin says that the hold the door incident was more akin to hold the pass and that Bran went into Hodor's mind;  I think he was referring to the events at the door to Bloodraven's cave.

I think this is the event where Bran went into Hodor's mind so powerfully, it broke Hodor's mind in the past.   

Besides Hodor and the Skirling Pass, I think there is another incident of time manipulation that we could define as deja vu.  

To be continued...

 

Entering the mind of another without their consent is unethical.  One might say evil.  I can understand why people would not be eager to give their consent.   I don't think GRRM will ever explain the nature of time.  We do know that it is possible to look forward and backward.  It happened in the chapter of The House of the Undying.  It isn't important if the Undying made it possible or something within Daenerys herself which made it possible to look in both directions.  Only that it can be done.  The drink opened the mind's eye and made it so that it is no longer bound by chronological order.  

Perhaps the author experimented with drugs during his youth. 

[LynnS]

14 minutes ago, Pontius Pilate said:

Entering the mind of another without their consent is unethical.  One might say evil.  I can understand why people would not be eager to give their consent.   I don't think GRRM will ever explain the nature of time.  We do know that it is possible to look forward and backward.  It happened in the chapter of The House of the Undying.  It isn't important if the Undying made it possible or something within Daenerys herself which made it possible to look in both directions.  Only that it can be done.  The drink opened the mind's eye and made it so that it is no longer bound by chronological order.  

Perhaps the author experimented with drugs during his youth. 

LOL! Well he does include a reference to the poem "Kublai Khan" by Samuel Taylor Colderige.

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A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

The caves were timeless, vast, silent. They were home to more than three score living singers and the bones of thousands dead, and extended far below the hollow hill. "Men should not go wandering in this place," Leaf warned them. "The river you hear is swift and black, and flows down and down to a sunless sea. And there are passages that go even deeper, bottomless pits and sudden shafts, forgotten ways that lead to the very center of the earth. Even my people have not explored them all, and we have lived here for a thousand thousand of your man-years."

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Kublai Khan

(Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.)

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

   Down to a sunless sea.

Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge | Poetry Foundation

The poem was written while using a narcotic substance.  The poem itself is about using the imagination and reaching different levels or stages of imagination. 

[Pontius Pilate]

Just now, LynnS said:

LOL! Well he does include a reference to the poem "Kublai Khan" by Samuel Taylor Colderige.

Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge | Poetry Foundation

The poem was written while using a narcotic substance.  The poem itself is about using the imagination and reaching different levels or stages of imagination. 

Might we see something in the story inspired by Rhyme?  The killing of an innocent and harmless creature brought about great suffering to the guilty and his mates. 

[LynnS]

6 minutes ago, Pontius Pilate said:

Might we see something in the story inspired by Rhyme?  The killing of an innocent and harmless creature brought about great suffering to the guilty and his mates. 

I'd have to call on an expert to answer that question.  @ravenous reader