Time and Causality 2

[Mourning Star]

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

I don't think there were ever two moons in the sky.  I think there was a red comet and a moon.  A comet that reappears on a long periodic orbit.

This old Qaartheen tale describes a comet rather than a moon.  Something that was so bright early populations mistake it for a second moon.  

A thousand thousand dragons could very well be meteorites, but I doubt they all fell on Planetos or there would be no life left.  So the moon with a crack across it's face sounds like the comet to me.

This is far more reasonable to me than two literal moons.

Although I might add that while most of the meteors can't have hit the planet, as you point out, we see some evidence that perhaps some (two?) of them did:

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"The finest knight I ever saw was Ser Arthur Dayne, who fought with a blade called Dawn, forged from the heart of a fallen star. They called him the Sword of the Morning, and he would have killed me but for Howland Reed." Father had gotten sad then, and he would say no more. Bran wished he had asked him what he meant.

A Clash of Kings - Bran III

The white sword...

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The years pass in their hundreds and their thousands, and what does any man see of life but a few summers, a few winters? We look at mountains and call them eternal, and so they seem . . . but in the course of time, mountains rise and fall, rivers change their courses, stars fall from the sky, and great cities sink beneath the sea. Even gods die, we think. Everything changes.

A Clash of Kings - Bran IV

Mountains blow in the wind like leaves? The River Inn now at a dry crossroads? Valyria, swallowed by the sea?

The death of gods?

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When the daughter of the Opal Emperor succeeded him as the Amethyst Empress, her envious younger brother cast her down and slew her, proclaiming himself the Bloodstone Emperor and beginning a reign of terror. He practiced dark arts, torture, and necromancy, enslaved his people, took a tiger-woman for his bride, feasted on human flesh, and cast down the true gods to worship a black stone that had fallen from the sky. (Many scholars count the Bloodstone Emperor as the first High Priest of the sinister Church of Starry Wisdom, which persists to this day in many port cities throughout the known world).
In the annals of the Further East, it was the Blood Betrayal, as his usurpation is named, that ushered in the age of darkness called the Long Night. Despairing of the evil that had been unleashed on earth, the Maiden-Made-of-Light turned her back upon the world, and the Lion of Night came forth in all his wroth to punish the wickedness of men.

The World of Ice and Fire - The Bones and Beyond: Yi Ti

I would only add that it seems like there are also two kinds of magic trees in the world as well, white weirwoods and the black trees of the Undying.

I would suggest that as we are told Ice, the sword of house Stark, is an imitation of an older sword (Dawn!) that Blackfyre, the sword of House Targaryen, may also have been an imitation of a blade, this one of the night.

Also, for those who like the references to IRL myth, I highly recommend checking out the myth of the son of the morning star!

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcyone_and_Ceyx

(italics are my comments!)

Alcyone and Ceyx married and were very happy together in Trachis. According to Pseudo-Apollodorus's account, they often sacrilegiously called each other "Zeus" and "Hera". (My sun and stars? Moon of my life?) This angered Zeus, so while Ceyx was at sea (going to consult an oracle, according to Ovid), the god threw a thunderbolt at his ship. Soon after, Morpheus, the god of dreams, disguised as Ceyx, appeared to Alcyone as an apparition to tell her of his fate, and she threw herself into the sea in her grief. (like Ashara?) Out of compassion, the gods changed them both into common kingfishers, or "halcyon birds", named after her. (from here I would leap to the fisher kings... but that's a whole other thing!)

Ovid and Hyginus both also make the metamorphosis the origin of the etymology for "halcyon days", the seven days in winter when storms never occur. (Stormborn? or perhaps not stormborn at all...)

The legend of the halcyon’s, or kingfisher’s, nest (which has no foundation in natural history, since the halcyon does not build any kind of nest, but lays eggs in holes by the waterside) can refer only to the birth of the new sacred king at the winter solstice—after the queen who represents his mother, the Moon-goddess, has conveyed the old king’s corpse to a sepulchral island. But because the winter solstice does not always coincide with the same phase of the moon, ‘every year’ must be understood as ‘every Great Year’, of one hundred lunations, in the last of which solar and lunar time were roughly synchronized, and the sacred king’s term ended.

 

 

[LynnS]

12 hours ago, Wizz-The-Smith said:

I agree this idea holds a lot of merit, with some really enticing passages of text. I certainly haven't ruled this option out. Thanks for reminding me of some of these quotes. 

I have to admit, I think I'm rather biased having been involved in a lot of the chat prior to & after any of the moon meteor essays being released. I like the many examples of moon faces being slashed or shards of swords/shards of ice etc acting as meteor symbolism. 

I am always open to other ideas though.  

Well my opinion is usually the outlier.  LOL!  I know that LML's theories are very popular.  I followed him for a while when he first started writing Lucifer Means Lightbringer essays and I found him very charming.   I stopped for two reasons.  I wanted to be able to think for myself and I thought he had made some mistakes in his basic premise.  I've recently tried watching some of his youtubes on Euron and they don't resonate with me the way his early essays used to.  I'm also not a patreon member.

Anyway, no matter. The red comet is significant and I don't really know why or how. I suspect it made an appearance during AA's time and this is why Mel says it heralds AA's rebirth.   When was this? Does it mark a time when the Andals first came to Westeros 6,000 years ago?  Their militant faction carves the bleeding star into their flesh.

Irri also places the moon in the category of wanderers when she says it wandered too close to the sun.

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A Clash of Kings - Jon I

And we are going beyond it.

The morning sky was streaked by thin grey clouds, but the pale red line was there behind them. The black brothers had dubbed the wanderer Mormont's Torch, saying (only half in jest) that the gods must have sent it to light the old man's way through the haunted forest.

"The comet's so bright you can see it by day now," Sam said, shading his eyes with a fistful of books. 

 

[LynnS]

15 hours ago, Wizz-The-Smith said:

Having pointed at the moon, Benerro makes a fist, as if that fist is a representation of said moon. The moon (fist) then explodes as he spreads his hand, and that's when we get the flames leaping from fingers representing the meteors. Once the metaphorical moon explodes and flaming metaphorical meteors fall, we get the description of Doom and Darkness to signal the long night. 

This is an interesting interpretation.  I tend to think of the doom and darkness as an inference to the doom of Valyria and Benerro's warning that men are weak compared to the gods.  Delving too deep into those mysteries caused the last doom.  Showing his fist to the moon in defiance and the fiery hand standing on guard against such a recurrance.  Both Benerro and Moqorro know of the threat that Euron poses.  The dark eye has fallen upon Dany.  Moqorro is dispatched to intervene in Euron's plans.

Euron plans to break the world:

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A Dance with Dragons - Tyrion VIII

And perhaps he was not so wrong. Almost a decade had passed since the Laughing Lion headed out from Lannisport, and Gerion had never returned. The men Lord Tywin sent to seek after him had traced his course as far as Volantis, where half his crew had deserted him and he had bought slaves to replace them. No free man would willingly sign aboard a ship whose captain spoke openly of his intent to sail into the Smoking Sea. "So those are fires of the Fourteen Flames we're seeing, reflected on the clouds?"

"Fourteen or fourteen thousand. What man dares count them? It is not wise for mortals to look too deeply at those fires, my friend. Those are the fires of god's own wrath, and no human flame can match them. We are small creatures, men."

"Some smaller than others." Valyria. It was written that on the day of Doom every hill for five hundred miles had split asunder to fill the air with ash and smoke and fire, blazes so hot and hungry that even the dragons in the sky were engulfed and consumed. Great rents had opened in the earth, swallowing palaces, temples, entire towns. Lakes boiled or turned to acid, mountains burst, fiery fountains spewed molten rock a thousand feet into the air, red clouds rained down dragonglass and the black blood of demons, and to the north the ground splintered and collapsed and fell in on itself and an angry sea came rushing in. The proudest city in all the world was gone in an instant, its fabled empire vanished in a day, the Lands of the Long Summer scorched and drowned and blighted.

 

 

[LynnS]

12 hours ago, Mourning Star said:

Mountains blow in the wind like leaves?

This is a tough one.  Mountains blowing in the wind:

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A Dance with Dragons - Tyrion IX

In the end, they did not drown … though there were times when the prospect of a nice, peaceful drowning had a certain appeal. The storm raged for the rest of that day and well into the night. Wet winds howled around them and waves rose like the fists of drowned giants to smash down on their decks. Above, they learned later, a mate and two sailors were swept overboard, the ship's cook was blinded when a kettle of hot grease flew up into his face, and the captain was thrown from the sterncastle to the main deck so violently he broke both legs. Below, Crunch howled and barked and snapped at Penny, and Pretty Pig began to shit again, turning the cramped, damp cabin into a sty. Tyrion managed to avoid retching his way through all of this, chiefly thanks to the lack of wine. Penny was not so fortunate, but he held her anyway as the ship's hull creaked and groaned alarmingly around them, like a cask about to burst.

Nearby midnight the winds finally died away, and the sea grew calm enough for Tyrion to make his way back up onto deck. What he saw there did not reassure him. The cog was drifting on a sea of dragonglass beneath a bowl of stars, but all around the storm raged on. East, west, north, south, everywhere he looked, the clouds rose up like black mountains, their tumbled slopes and collossal cliffs alive with blue and purple lightning. No rain was falling, but the decks were slick and wet underfoot.

Tyrion could hear someone screaming from below, a thin, high voice hysterical with fear. He could hear Moqorro too. The red priest stood on the forecastle facing the storm, his staff raised above his head as he boomed a prayer. Amidships, a dozen sailors and two of the fiery fingers were struggling with tangled lines and sodden canvas, but whether they were trying to raise the sail again or pull it down he never knew. Whatever they were doing, it seemed to him a very bad idea. And so it was.

 

 

[LynnS]

13 hours ago, Mourning Star said:

Although I might add that while most of the meteors can't have hit the planet, as you point out, we see some evidence that perhaps some (two?) of them did:

Yes the Dawn Sword made from the heart of a fallen star certainly.  I think this is more akin to damascus steel which is closer to white.  The valyrian steel swords may also be forged from the metal contained in the heart of a meteorite but their color is changed to dark and smokey through sorcery and dragonfire.  I don't think they are made from oily black stone.  This sounds more like volcanic rock to me.  Some volcanic stone can absorb oil.   It may be that the black roads in Essos are made of this stuff.

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The World of Ice and Fire - The Iron Islands

Even among the ironborn there are some who doubt this and acknowledge the more widely accepted view of an ancient descent from the First Men—even though the First Men, unlike the later Andals, were never a seafaring people. Certainly, we cannot seriously accept the assertions of the ironborn priests, who would have us believe that the ironmen are closer kin to fish and merlings than the other races of mankind.

Archmaester Haereg once advanced the interesting notion that the ancestors of the ironborn came from some unknown land west of the Sunset Sea, citing the legend of the Seastone Chair. The throne of the Greyjoys, carved into the shape of a kraken from an oily black stone, was said to have been found by the First Men when they first came to Old Wyk. Haereg argued that the chair was a product of the first inhabitants of the islands, and only the later histories of maesters and septons alike began to claim that they were in fact descended of the First Men. But this is the purest speculation and, in the end, Haereg himself dismissed the idea, and so must we.

Yet however the ironborn arose, it cannot be denied that they stand apart, with customs, beliefs, and ways of governance quite unlike those common elsewhere in the Seven Kingdoms.

The World of Ice and Fire - Beyond the Free Cities: Sothoryos

Some say that there were other races here once—forgotten peoples destroyed, devoured, or driven out by the Brindled Men. Tales of lizard men, lost cities, and eyeless cave-dwellers are commonplace. No proof exists for any of these.

Maesters and other scholars alike have puzzled over the greatest of the engimas of Sothoryos, the ancient city of Yeen. A ruin older than time, built of oily black stone, in massive blocks so heavy that it would require a dozen elephants to move them, Yeen has remained a desolation for many thousands of years, yet the jungle that surrounds it on every side has scarce touched it. ("A city so evil that even the jungle will not enter," Nymeria is supposed to have said when she laid eyes on it, if the tales are true). Every attempt to rebuild or resettle Yeen has ended in horror.

 

 These are the only references I can find.   

The oily black stone might also be natural asphalt or hardened bitumen:

 

 

[LynnS]

13 hours ago, Mourning Star said:

When the daughter of the Opal Emperor succeeded him as the Amethyst Empress, her envious younger brother cast her down and slew her, proclaiming himself the Bloodstone Emperor and beginning a reign of terror. He practiced dark arts, torture, and necromancy, enslaved his people, took a tiger-woman for his bride, feasted on human flesh, and cast down the true gods to worship a black stone that had fallen from the sky. (Many scholars count the Bloodstone Emperor as the first High Priest of the sinister Church of Starry Wisdom, which persists to this day in many port cities throughout the known world).
In the annals of the Further East, it was the Blood Betrayal, as his usurpation is named, that ushered in the age of darkness called the Long Night. Despairing of the evil that had been unleashed on earth, the Maiden-Made-of-Light turned her back upon the world, and the Lion of Night came forth in all his wroth to punish the wickedness of men.

This sounds a lot like where Euron is heading with his black and bloody crow's eye..

[Tucu]

5 hours ago, LynnS said:

This sounds a lot like where Euron is heading with his black and bloody crow's eye..

Hmm, many of the accussations against the bloodstone emperor seem to apply to the BR+Bran team too.

BR was Hand of the King and spymaster; he was known for using dark arts and torture comes naturally with a being spymaster.

BR cave is surrounded by wights and the cave is full of human bones, so necromancy and feasting on human flesh is probable. Bran skinchanching Hodor can be compared to slavery. Can the CoTF be an equivalent to the tiger people with their cat eyes and sharp claws?

 

[LynnS]

21 minutes ago, Tucu said:

Hmm, many of the accussations against the bloodstone emperor seem to apply to the BR+Bran team too.

BR was Hand of the King and spymaster; he was known for using dark arts and torture comes naturally with a being spymaster.

BR cave is surrounded by wights and the cave is full of human bones, so necromancy and feasting on human flesh is probable. Bran skinchanching Hodor can be compared to slavery. Can the CoTF be an equivalent to the tiger people with their cat eyes and sharp claws?

I'm not sure that BR and Bran are a team. Although the cave of skulls is a charnel pit and a graveyard:

Spoiler

“The bleeding star bespoke the end,” he said to Aeron. “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.” Then Euron lifted a great horn to his lips and blew, and dragons and krakens and sphinxes came at his command and bowed before him. “Kneel, brother,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king, I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest.” - TWOW Foresaken

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A Dance with Dragons - Bran II

The light dwindled again. Small as she was, the child-who-was-not-a-child moved quickly when she wanted. As Hodor thumped after her, something crunched beneath his feet. His halt was so sudden that Meera and Jojen almost slammed into his back.

"Bones," said Bran. "It's bones." The floor of the passage was littered with the bones of birds and beasts. But there were other bones as well, big ones that must have come from giants and small ones that could have been from children. On either side of them, in niches carved from the stone, skulls looked down on them. Bran saw a bear skull and a wolf skull, half a dozen human skulls and near as many giants. All the rest were small, queerly formed. Children of the forest. The roots had grown in and around and through them, every one. A few had ravens perched atop them, watching them pass with bright black eyes.

The last part of their dark journey was the steepest. Hodor made the final descent on his arse, bumping and sliding downward in a clatter of broken bones, loose dirt, and pebbles. The girl child was waiting for them, standing on one end of a natural bridge above a yawning chasm. Down below in the darkness, Bran heard the sound of rushing water. An underground river.

Unless BR intends to be born a god within Euron's body;  Bran will become the newborn god.

The cotf as tiger people?  Maybe. 

Or this:

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A Dance with Dragons - Tyrion VII

Tyrion twisted around for a look, hoping against hope that it was Duck and Haldon he was hearing. Instead he saw two strangers … and the dwarf, who was standing a few feet away staring at him intently. He seemed somehow familiar.

The widow sipped daintily at her wine. "Some of the first elephants were women," she said, "the ones who brought the tigers down and ended the old wars. Trianna was returned four times. That was three hundred years ago, alas. Volantis has had no female triarch since, though some women have the vote. Women of good birth who dwell in ancient palaces behind the Black Walls, not creatures such as me. The Old Blood will have their dogs and children voting before any freedman. No, it will be Belicho, or perhaps Alios, but either way it will be war. Or so they think."

 

Early cultures, elephants and tigers.  

[Seams]

8 hours ago, LynnS said:

The morning sky was streaked by thin grey clouds, but the pale red line was there behind them. The black brothers had dubbed the wanderer Mormont's Torch, saying (only half in jest) that the gods must have sent it to light the old man's way through the haunted forest.

 

7 hours ago, LynnS said:

Having pointed at the moon, Benerro makes a fist, as if that fist is a representation of said moon. The moon (fist) then explodes as he spreads his hand, and that's when we get the flames leaping from fingers representing the meteors.

These help to shed some light on Jon Snow's retrieval of the obsidian cache. The moon is a fist that "explodes" by opening its fingers and Mormont has led the Great Ranging to the Fist to make camp on the night of a full moon. (Recall, also, that Jon Snow often works the fingers of his hand as he recovers from the burn he suffered when fighting the wight in Mormont's chamber.)

Jon Snow pretends to be fetching a pail of water when he leaves the circle of stones around the encampment. His path (following the direwolf Ghost) could be like an orbit around the galaxy. He carries a torch with him, and he jabs the handle of the torch into the sand when he begins to dig. So Jon Snow could personify the dragons that came from the moon (the Fist), the comet (the torch) and the finder of the heart of the star after it has fallen to earth - he is Arthur Dayne and the obsidian dagger he keeps (the one with orange light on its edge) is the new Lightbringer.

This interpretation could also help to explain the hidden layers of meaning in the story of Ned bringing Dayne's sword to Starfall and the rumors about Jon being the son of Ned and Ashara.

The dragon glass that tumbles out of the bundle could be like the dragons of the old legend, pouring out of the cracked moon. When Jon Snow gives the dragon glass blades to his friends and allies, is he making them dragon riders?

The word "bundle" is used to describe dried grasses that Dany puts on Drogo's funeral pyre. We don't see the word used too often, but it is used to describe the wrapped obsidian cache Jon uncovers. I think we can put Jon's unearthing of the obsidian bundle in the category of a symbolic dragon hatching.

[Tucu]

33 minutes ago, LynnS said:

I'm not sure that BR and Bran are a team. Although the cave of skulls is a charnel pit and a graveyard:

  Reveal hidden contents

“The bleeding star bespoke the end,” he said to Aeron. “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.” Then Euron lifted a great horn to his lips and blew, and dragons and krakens and sphinxes came at his command and bowed before him. “Kneel, brother,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king, I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest.” - TWOW Foresaken

Unless BR intends to be born a god within Euron's body;  Bran will become the newborn god.

Poor Euron trusting visions and prophecies :-)

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"Prophecy is like a half-trained mule," he complained to Jorah Mormont. "It looks as though it might be useful, but the moment you trust in it, it kicks you in the head"

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Marwyn turned his head and spat a gob of red phlegm onto the floor. "Not that I would trust it. Gorghan of Old Ghis once wrote that a prophecy is like a treacherous woman. She takes your member in her mouth, and you moan with the pleasure of it and think, how sweet, how fine, how good this is . . . and then her teeth snap shut and your moans turn to screams. That is the nature of prophecy, said Gorghan. Prophecy will bite your prick off every time."

 

[LynnS]

2 minutes ago, Seams said:

I think we can put Jon's unearthing of the obsidian bundle in the category of a symbolic dragon hatching.

And the horn, a symbolic dragon binding horn?

I can't help thinking there is a symmetry and duality to most things ice and fire:

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A Clash of Kings - Daenerys IV

"I have come for the gift of truth," Dany said. "In the long hall, the things I saw . . . were they true visions, or lies? Past things, or things to come? What did they mean?"

. . . the shape of shadows . . . morrows not yet made . . . drink from the cup of ice . . . drink from the cup of fire . . ..

 

Dany drank from the cup of fire.  So who will drink from the cup of ice if it isn't Jon Snow?  

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A Clash of Kings - Daenerys IV

"Will you make a song for him?" the woman asked.

"He has a song," the man replied. "He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire." He looked up when he said it and his eyes met Dany's, and it seemed as if he saw her standing there beyond the door. "There must be one more," he said, though whether he was speaking to her or the woman in the bed she could not say. "The dragon has three heads." He went to the window seat, picked up a harp, and ran his fingers lightly over its silvery strings. Sweet sadness filled the room as man and wife and babe faded like the morning mist, only the music lingering behind to speed her on her way.

A Clash of Kings - Daenerys IV

"Three?" She did not understand.

. . . three heads has the dragon . . . the ghost chorus yammered inside her skull with never a lip moving, never a breath stirring the still blue air. . . . mother of dragons . . . child of storm . . . The whispers became a swirling song. . . . three fires must you light . . . one for life and one for death and one to love . . . Her own heart was beating in unison to the one that floated before her, blue and corrupt . . . three mounts must you ride . . . one to bed and one to dread and one to love . . . The voices were growing louder, she realized, and it seemed her heart was slowing, and even her breath. . . . three treasons will you know . . . once for blood and once for gold and once for love . . .

 

I think the three headed dragon not only applies to fire but ice as well.  I don't think we'll see an ice dragon per se; but a dragon personified by the Wall, by the heart of winter and Winterfell, the Crypts and the kings of winter.

The three dragon heads seem to be the three' prentice boys: Bran, Jon and Arya.  Potentially Bran is the ice dragon and his three heads become Jon, Arya and Rickon (now that he is back in play).

The broken horn my also be symbolic of Ghost without a voice and I suspect the cache was left by Coldhands..

[LynnS]

2 minutes ago, Tucu said:

Poor Euron trusting visions and prophecies :-)

A demon in human skin.  He will enslave dragons, manticores and sphynx but his sorcery is likely to wake the kraken.

Spoiler

 

He mocks me and he mocks the god. Kinslayer. Blasphemer. Demon in human skin.

The dreams were even worse the second time. He saw the longships of the Ironborn adrift and burning on a boiling blood-red sea. He saw his brother on the Iron Throne again, but Euron was no longer human. He seemed more squid than man, a monster fathered by a kraken of the deep, his face a mass of writhing tentacles. Beside him stood a shadow in woman’s form, long and tall and terrible, her hands alive with pale white fire. Dwarves capered for their amusement, male and female, naked and misshapen, locked in carnal embrace, biting and tearing at each other as Euron and his mate laughed and laughed and laughed …

 

 

[Tucu]

26 minutes ago, LynnS said:

A demon in human skin.  He will enslave dragons, manticores and sphynx but his sorcery is likely to wake the kraken.

  Hide contents

 

He mocks me and he mocks the god. Kinslayer. Blasphemer. Demon in human skin.

The dreams were even worse the second time. He saw the longships of the Ironborn adrift and burning on a boiling blood-red sea. He saw his brother on the Iron Throne again, but Euron was no longer human. He seemed more squid than man, a monster fathered by a kraken of the deep, his face a mass of writhing tentacles. Beside him stood a shadow in woman’s form, long and tall and terrible, her hands alive with pale white fire. Dwarves capered for their amusement, male and female, naked and misshapen, locked in carnal embrace, biting and tearing at each other as Euron and his mate laughed and laughed and laughed …

 

 

Can't remember if this was mentioned already in these threads, but in one of Arya's chapter tree roots are compared to the arms of krakens:

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But a sudden shout snapped her head about before she could leap. The ferrymen were rushing forward, poles in hand. For a moment she did not understand what was happening. Then she saw it: an uprooted tree, huge and dark, coming straight at them. A tangle of roots and limbs poked up out of the water as it came, like the reaching arms of a great kraken. 

 

[LynnS]

49 minutes ago, Tucu said:

Can't remember if this was mentioned already in these threads, but in one of Arya's chapter tree roots are compared to the arms of krakens:

And this:

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A Dance with Dragons - Bran II

The child went in front with the torch in hand, her cloak of leaves whispering behind her, but the passage turned so much that Bran soon lost sight of her. Then the only light was what was reflected off the passage walls. After they had gone down a little, the cave divided, but the left branch was dark as pitch, so even Hodor knew to follow the moving torch to the right.

The way the shadows shifted made it seem as if the walls were moving too. Bran saw great white snakes slithering in and out of the earth around him, and his heart thumped in fear. He wondered if they had blundered into a nest of milk snakes or giant grave worms, soft and pale and squishy. Grave worms have teeth.

Hodor saw them too. "Hodor," he whimpered, reluctant to go on. But when the girl child stopped to let them catch her, the torchlight steadied, and Bran realized that the snakes were only white roots like the one he'd hit his head on. "It's weirwood roots," he said. "Remember the heart tree in the godswood, Hodor? The white tree with the red leaves? A tree can't hurt you."

 

 

[Tucu]

51 minutes ago, LynnS said:

And this:

 

Just before that quote we get the image of a white root with tendrils and fingers:

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Loose dirt crumbled at each touch and dribbled down into his eyes and hair, and once he smacked his brow on a thick white root growing from the tunnel wall, with tendrils hanging from it and spiderwebs between its fingers.

 

[LynnS]

Princes who are Promised.  There seems to be more than one.  I was just listening to LML's the |Prince is Promised to the Others and of course I like the idea of symmetry.

The Prince That Was Promised to the Others - YouTube

I'm not sure that Jon was promised to the Others.  Although It does seem to me that he is heading in that direction specifically in the role of King of Winter.

It seems to me that Bran is the Prince who is promised. The reincarnation of previous Brans. The COTF have been waiting for him for 200 years.  He is the Prince of Winterfell and he calls himself the wolf prince of the wood.

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A Storm of Swords - Bran I

"You always forget."

It was true. He meant to do the things that Jojen asked, but once he was a wolf they never seemed important. There were always things to see and things to smell, a whole green world to hunt. And he could run! There was nothing better than running, unless it was running after prey. "I was a prince, Jojen," he told the older boy. "I was the prince of the woods."

"You are a prince," Jojen reminded him softly. "You remember, don't you? Tell me who you are."

How were the ancestors of the Starks bound by the Pact?  Was it to provide greenseers and protection?

[Melifeather]

Happy holidays everyone!

[TheLastWolf]

7 hours ago, Melifeather said:

Happy holidays everyone!

To all the dear haters out there! 

 

[LynnS]

Merry Christmas!

Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Christmas Canon (Official Music Video) - YouTube

[Melifeather]

On 12/10/2020 at 3:46 PM, Wizz-The-Smith said:

Having released ADWD, I think we can say with confidence that George wanted us to revisit this chapter. (the connections also helped me with my hollow hills essay. But that can't be the reason Grrm wrote this parallel  ).

I think there's an underlying symbolic message for us to decipher in this scene, one that hints towards the ancient histories of Westeros and the Long Night. Although I don't claim to have the answers, my rough guess is it's trying to tell us there was a fight between two characters that occurred in the weirnet in the time of the first Long Night. As George likes to write cyclical histories, this may also point towards what needs to happen this time around in order to defeat a second long night. 

In conclusion, I find it really interesting that in the same chapter we are informed of greenseers travelling backwards and forwards in time, we the readers are encouraged to do the same. Meta. We can look back in search of new greenseer based clues, while also gaining greater clarity on goings on after reread. Plus, we can perhaps peer into the future and seek Bran's presence using the descriptions of the moon sequences identified by Cantuse. As for the present, I hope we can all continue with the fun, and of course the quality analysis in the second version of 'Time and Causality'! 

I have been mostly absent from this thread due to working two jobs during the holidays, but now that Christmas is upon us I should have more time to catch up. I've just now read your OP and I promise that I will also read the supplemental OPs linked and the five pages of comments, but first I am compelled to share my first thoughts while they are foremost in my mind. My hope is that this branch doesn't deviate too far from the main tree of discussion.

You point out, and I quite agree, that GRRM is telling us to "start back", but its more expansive than rereading a specific chapter. These are directions that need to be applied to subsequent chapters as well as future chapters yet unreleased. I'm specifically referring to the titled chapters which begin with the very first chapter of AFFC, The Prophet. A careful reread reveals multiple parallels. On the surface its about Aeron Greyjoy otherwise known as Damphair, but there are both older and newer parallels that involve Maester Aemon. More importantly I believe there are future parallels that we can only guess at. This is what I enjoy doing the most and is actually the reason why my avatar is Melisandre. I study the titled chapters like she stares into the flames, and I post my predictions on HoBaW explaining where I think GRRM is going with his story. 

Getting back to my first intention of posting my early thoughts regarding your OP... Damphair and Maester Aemon have much in common. The descriptions in The Prophet of living next to the sea can equally describe what it must have been like for Aemon to live next to the Wall. In the previous Time and Causality thread you brought up Seams well-known sea/see analysis, but I too recognized the parallels between the North and that of a great northern sea going way back to when I first began my attempts to decipher the titled chapters. My breakthrough came when I finally realized that the Iron Islands were a parallel to the Iron Throne while studying The Iron Captain. After that realization I returned to The Prophet and read with new eyes. The parallels to Damphair purposely drowning his followers only to resuscitate them struck me as a direct parallel to the men of the Watch dying beyond the Wall and rising as wights. Here are a few more striking parallels that I had noticed while studying The Prophet:

1) Damphair reflects that the Storm God killed his brother and king, Balon. This mirrors the older parallel of Aegon V's death at Summerhal when many of Aemon's family members perished in an element that is the opposite of water, which is of course fire. And the newer parallel of the Storm King, Robert Baratheon who rose in a rebellion that lead to King Aerys death.

2) Victarion had a falling out with Euron over the death of is first wife. The older parallel is the famous falling out between Bloodraven and Bittersteal over Shiera Seastar. The newer parallel was between Aerys and Bloodraven, but it involved an agreed upon death of a woman who shares many parallels to Shiera Seastar as well as to Victarion's Dusky Woman. I'm talking about Lady Serala of Myr who was married to Lord Denys Darklyn of Duskendale. The Dusky Woman's missing tongue is a direct parallel to Lady Serala who had her tongue cut out due to her "poisonous words" as well as her female parts ripped out, which where blamed for "enslaving" her husband, before she was burned to death after the Defiance of Duskendale was put down.

3) Aeron and Aemon (older than their kingly brothers) are both "drowned prophets" or at least obsessed with prophecies. Storms End is a newer location parallel to the Iron Islands and the Iron Throne by being the birth place of another "drowned" prophet: Patchface.

4) Victarion is younger than Euron, but he's Aeron Damphair's choice for king, because Euron is "ungodly". Maester Aemon refused the throne paving the way for his younger brother Egg - or Aegon the Unlikely to take the throne. King Aerys II was also a younger son, because elder brother Duncan perished in the flames of Summerhal.

5) Aegon V's first act as King was to arrest Bloodraven for the murder of Aenys Blackfyre which is similar to Aeron's desire to get rid of Euron for the murder of Balon. Maester Aemon volunteered to go to the Wall with Bloodraven so as to diminish any ideas of replacing Aegon V on the throne. His actions also appear to be an act of solidarity with Bloodraven which is a stark contrast to Damphair's rejection and fear of Euron.