H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (and ASoIaF)

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

Morlocks and Eloi

I solved the mystery of where the words Eloi and Morlock came from:

In Dinneen's Gaelic eolaighe means "educated person, guide, director, learned, skilled, scientific" and the Eloi were the educated upper-class rulers who forgot their responsibilities to society, and thus became Eallaige or eallaidh  “cattle” and the Eloi are called "fatted cattle" by the Time Traveler.

And Meirlach / mearlach / meirleach / mheirleach means “a thief, a looter, a villain, a rebel, a malefactor, treason” and the Morlocks emerge from their caverns on moonless nights and abduct and eat the Eloi.

 

(Edward E. French does a great narration of the story, I have listened to it over 30 times recently, and it has the missing chapter included that was cut out of most editions)

Summary

For those who haven't read the story in a while, in Victorian England the Time Traveler builds his Time Machine and travels 800,000 years into the future and discovers that mankind has split into two subspecies: the Eloi are the beautiful people who live above ground and live in leisure, eating fruit and socializing and playing and they do not work or provide for themselves in any way and they have the mental capacity of children.  Their society has regressed, they have lost all culture and knowledge, they no longer know how to read, and their is no social organization.

The Morlocks live underground in complete darkness, they have a ghastly white appearance with red eyes, and unbeknownst to the Eloi, they provide everything necessary for the Eloi's existence: they cloth them and feed them and provide upkeep on their dwellings, and maybe even see to their breeding, but they are farming the Eloi for their meat, as the Morlocks are carnivorous, and mankind has eliminated every other animal from the planet and the Eloi are the only source of meat.  So on dark, moonless nights the Morlocks come out of their burrows and capture and kill the Eloi.  The Eloi cannot see in the dark so they don't even know who or what is taking them away, nor are they particularly concerned about the matter, as they make no effort at fortifying their dwellings or guarding themselves at night. 

The Eloi and the Morlocks were one race that split into two.  The Eloi are called "children" several times, and they are like the nature-loving Children of the Forests--they are described as being very feminine, and the Morlocks are their "brothers" and the White Walkers are the Brothers of the CotF, --(Craster is the weirwood, his daughters become his wives, his sons become White Walkers) and the Brothers come back to kill them.

 

Time Traveling = Falling

He says several times that time traveling is accompanied by the very strong sensation of falling and there is mist around him.  Bran is the time traveler and he has dreams where he is falling through mist.

 

The White Walkers and Morlocks

As I said the Morlocks live in vast subterranean caverns filled with machinery to provide for the Eloi.  The entrances to their caves look like wells, and the caves have towers that are heat vents.  One of the entrances to the Morlocks' caves is a huge white marble Sphinx with wings outspread, and that is where the Morlocks hide the Time Machine.  So we have a group of beings that are totally white, who are compared to ghosts and spiders, who come out of wells and live inside of a tree-shaped white sphinx, that prey on human beings, who can’t stand the light, who can only come out on dark moonless nights--he uses the phrase Long Night to describe the time when the Morlocks come out.

This parallels the White Walkers, who prey on human beings and who can only come out at night or during an eclipse, and who are ghosts that are being projected by a greenseer in a well under a tree / tower / white sphinx / time travel machine.  The White Sphinx is a trap for the Time Traveler. 

The sphinx are in the Citadel in Old Town are under the Hightower, which a huge red and white metaphor for a weirwood raised by Bran (brandaris is a red and white lighthouse), and the Citadel is a repository of all knowledge like the weirwood network, founded by a cripple.  The Morlocks come out of the Sphinx, and a Time Traveler goes into the Sphinx.  A twisted crystal is used to travel time, and Marwin has a twisted glass candle crystal.

He also uses the phrase "long night" when he loses the Time Machine, and when he is camping in the woods with Weena hiding from the Morlocks.

He uses the phrase "go to the wall" to mean "to die, to fail"

Light is what defeats the Morlocks--matches and forest fire.  In the original House of the Worm, a forest fire / explosion is what defeats the white worm and its ghastly blind worshipers.

 

Time Travel can cause an huge explosion

He mentions that when he is traveling through time he is going between the atoms of whatever is in his way, but when he stops his molecules have to reintigrate with whatever occupies that space at that time.  He brings up the possibility that stopping very suddenly could cause a huge explosion:

"The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some substance in the space which I, or the machine, occupied. So long as I travelled at a high velocity through time, this scarcely mattered: I was, so to speak, attenuated—was slipping like a vapour through the interstices of intervening substances! But to come to a stop involved the jamming of myself, molecule by molecule, into whatever lay in my way; meant bringing my atoms into such intimate contact with those of the obstacle that a profound chemical reaction—possibly a far-reaching explosion—would result, and blow myself and my apparatus out of all possible dimensions—into the Unknown."

And I have been saying for some time the Bran will cause the weirwoods to explode in a Sidhe Gaoithe, fairy blast.  To blow them into the Unknown, back into space.  A huge explosion and a forest fire defeats the White Worm in The House of the Worm. 

 

ETA: he also finds dynamite in the House of Green Porcelain Museum and was going to blow up the White Sphinx with it, destroying the Time Machine in the Process.  So large explosions are twice associated with the Time Machine.

 

 

In the House of the Worm

The Morlocks are compared to white worms, and after the Time Traveler escapes from the trap of the White Sphinx he goes millions of years into the future, he first finds that the Eloi and Morlocks have degraded still further, into grey kangaroos men and predatory centapede man-worms that eat them.  He then goes even further into the future to find that the sun is going out, and it has enlarged to take up much of the sky and that tidal drag has stopped the rotation of the Earth, so the sun just sits in the sky never moving.  The Morlocks have devolved into giant crabs that try to eat the Time Traveler.  An eclipse happens just as he stops, caused by an unknown planet wandering very close to Earth.

George's short story In the House of the Worm was based largely on the events of the Time Machine and House of the Worm.  The sun has gone out, and the planet has stop turning, so the sun just sits in the sky.  Mankind has gone underground and split into two groups, the Eloi-like yaga-la-hai and the Morlock-like grouns, who are white and ghastly and can see in the dark.  Both groups catch and eat each other.  The yaga-la-hai worship the White Worm of Death, and their religious leader is the manworm, a faceless man, who is becoming one with the White Worm.  The Time Traveler goes to a museum and finds a mace to use as a weapon and he can see in the dark with matches, Annelin goes to a musuem and finds a mace to use as a weapon and he finds a nightvision helmet so he can see in the dark, and he repels grouns with matches.  The Morlocks' wells are ventilation towers, and Annelin travels through ventilation ducts to kill the Meatbringer, and the Meatbringer discovered the Changemaster's Hall with an HVAC repair schematic.

 

Lovecraft, crabs, and eclipses

Lovecraft borrowed a lot from The Time Machine as well, the plot of the Whisperer in Darkness is that humanoid crabs from the black planet Yuggoth have come to Earth.  Yuggoth is a black planet that causes eclipses on Earth, and caused an endless night on Earth.  This is based on the scene where the Time Traveler goes to the far future to encounter the giant crabs during an eclipse caused by an unknown planet wandering close to Earth.  The Morlocks are called Nemesis, and Nemesis is one of Lovecraft's names for the black planet.  The crabs cannot come out in light.

 

 

Weena

The Time Traveler has a brief romance with a child-sized woman of the future named Weena.  He hints that her name has special meaning when he introduces her by saying "I found that her name was Weena, which though I don't know what it meant, somehow seemed appropriate enough."  "She was exactly like a child."

In gaelic uaine sounds like "weena"

uan / uain / uainean means “little lamb, darling”  "my bright lamb"

uaine means “time, leisure, vacation, borrow”

uaineadoir means "a watch, timepiece"

uanach means “a three year old heifer” and Weena is one of the Eloi that are human cattle.

ween means "beautiful" in Old Norse

wena means "hope, expectation, fancy, look for" in Anglo-Saxon

He says that Weena gives him hope for the future of mankind.

 

The Time Traveler is very concerned about the Morlocks stealing Weena and eating her.  (weem means "cave")  Towards the end of the story the Time Traveler and Weena find themselves outside at night and are passing through a forest and he starts a brush fire to keep the Morlocks away.  But it ends up starting the whole forest on fire that kills a bunch of Morlocks and he gets separated from Weena and that is the last we see of her.

Throughout the story he mentions that he wants to bring Weena back with him in the Time Machine, and that he loves her.

At the end of the story the Time Traveler goes into time again and we never hear from him again.  I actually think he went back to that night with forest fire and saved her from the Morlocks and the fire and that was why Weena just disappeared without a trace that night. 

 

In ASoIaF, Bran is the Time Traveler and Meera is Weena.  He falls in love with a child-sized woman.  There is more than a little foreshadowing of her being eaten.  She mysteriously disappears at the end of Dance. 

 

More Morlocks and Eloi meanings

marlach means "a boy under twelve years old"

marlaigh means "the children, the young folk"

mor-laoch means "hero, champion"

mor-luach means "great value, great price" (directly above mormanta "wormwood" and mor-mhaor "high steward" "lord-mayor")

murlach means "the bird Kingfisher" (coirneach iaschare means "crow, kingfisher") Bran is the Fisher King, and Jon is the Kingfisher

murlach / morlach means "mud"

muirleach means "marsh" and "a variety of long marine grass . . . used in rope-making" and it is on the same page as muire and muir-bran ("sea crow") and muirgean "meer + jon" (family)

muirleog / murlog  means a "basket used by fishers to catch fish"  (like a Weir)

 

So Morlock is synonymous with mud, reeds, marsh, and it is associated with fish traps and ropes.  So there some suggestion that Meera is being used to trap Bran in the cave. 

Recall that meirlach means "thief" and Jon is associated with the Thief, and murlach means "kingfisher, crow" and Jon is the kingfisher, crow.  Morlocks are white ghosts, and Jon Snow's spirit animal is a white ghost.  Morlocks are called human spiders, and Jon dreams about human spiders scuttling up the Wall.

 

And eallaid means “music, merriment” and several words beginning with ealladh mean “learned, skill, science, art” and the Eloi used to be the ruling class of aristocrats, but became wholly absorbed in hedonism and forgot their obligation to actually rule society. 

In Dwelly’s, several words around eallaige describe the Morlocks, eallaidhe means “white” and ealaidh means “creep, crawl, skulk, steal away, creeping stealthily, sneaking, jealous, deserting”

And in Dinneen ealodh means “going off stealthily, absconding, eloping, a fugitive” and ealuighim means “make off with, escape, steal away”

(And I think that the Time Traveler eloped with Weena at the end.)

 

And several words that sound like Morlock describe them, morlanachd means “labor performed by a tenant for their landlord, duty”

The Morlocks are compared to ants, and moirb means "ant" in Gaelic.

 

Reigniting the sun

The Time Traveler says that a planet falling back into the sun can reignite it, and postulates that that is why the Earth was warmer when he was with the Eloi, and when he travels millions of years into the future he witnesses the sun occasionally getting much brighter--presumably as the inner planets fall back into the sun.  In Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun, the sun is going out and the main character reignities it by launching something into it--in his case a "White Fountain" to kill the worm at the sun's core (i.e., a black hole)

And in ASoIaF, the sun with be reignited with the Red Comet / Dawn Star that knocks the Stranger / Lion of Night / Yuggoth / Nemesis / black moon out of eclipse.

[Quoth the raven,]

It may appear that way to those without the knowledge of astronomy but the Red Comet is the sign of what is to come.  Climate shift.  I do not necessarily expect cause and effect.  Mere coincidence that their arrival at the planet is near enough to the same time. 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

In the last chapter of The Time Machine before he goes on the final journey, he tells the narrator:

“I only want half an hour,” he said. “I know why you came, and it’s awfully good of you. There’s some magazines here. If you’ll stop to lunch I’ll prove you this time travelling up to the hilt, specimens and all. If you’ll forgive my leaving you now?”

He was going to bring "specimens" back and it would only take half an hour.  The specimen was Weena, he was going back to the future to save her and the Time Machine is destroyed in the process, so he cannot return.

 

I think Asimov thought that The Time Traveler went back to save Weena also, because in his novel The End of Eternity, which is a take on The Time Machine plot, the Time Traveler goes back to save the girl and the Time Machine is destroyed in the process, just like in the original.

The End of Eternity is about a young man (Harlan) who is recruited into the time-travelers' guild, called Eternity, that controls human civilization for its own ends--they think they are keeping humans safe, but they are really just keeping them stagnant--civilization is prevented from advancing because they don't want to allow space travel, the protagonist uses the time-travel device (kettle) to go into the past and prevent it from being invented, thus erasing the guild and freeing humans from their meddling oversight. 

I think that is essentially Bran's arc.  He is recruited into the time-travelers' guild to be a greenseer.  They control human civilization for their own ends.  They have kept civilization at a medieval level for thousands of years.  Bran will free humans from their meddling oversight by destroying the weirwood network.

 

In The End of Eternity what prompts Harlan to destroy the time-travel guild is that he falls in love with a woman Noys, and he would have to kill her to preserve Eternity, but he opts to go into the past with her and prevent time-travel from being invented, and it ends with him and her in a cave in the past--and they have erased their own timeline and set humanity free. 

Bran falls in love with Meera in a cave, and her death will spur him to destroy the weirwood network.

 

In Gaelic nois means "excellent, noble" and nos means "white, pure"

I just realized that Weena means "beautiful" and Meera (Mira) means "wonderful, marvelous, extraordinary"

So Weena, Meera, and Noys all mean the same thing.

 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

Conspicuously, the Time Traveler is never named in the story, but I think I have figured it out--his name was Bran. 

The entire story parallels the Celtic myth of the Voyage of Bran.  In The Time Machine when he first demonstrates the machine he says it went on a "voyage" and in the Voyage of Bran, Bran travels through time. 

The exact line is: "So that it was the Psychologist himself who sent forth the model Time Machine on its interminable voyage. We all saw the lever turn." 

The words "voyage" and "lever" are used right next to each other.  And the Time Machine is activated by white levers, and he breaks a lever off of a machine in the House of Green Porcelain to use as a weapon against the Morlocks, and he calls the lever an "iron crowbar" and "bar of iron".  So the Time Traveler is highly associated with levers.

In Dinneen's Gaelic, Bran means "crow" and cro means "an iron bar, crowbar" and "lever" is given as a synonym of "crowbar" (and cro means "cattle" and the Eloi are cattle)

The Time Machine is activated by Bran, the crow.

He also uses the words "travel" and "journey" to describe going into the future, and both are synonyms of "voyage".

 

 

In the Voyage of Bran, he is given a magical summons to visit the Otherworld.  The magical summons is a White Branch. 

In the Time Machine, he has an urge to visit the future, the Time Machine is activated by a White Lever.

 

In the Voyage of Bran, he takes his ship out, first he encounters the Isle of Joy, where the inhabitants cannot communicate with him, they only laugh and point at him.

In the Time Machine, he takes the Time Machine into the future and the Eloi cannot communicate with him, they only laugh and point at him.

 

In the Voyage of Bran, he then goes to the Isle of Women, a paradise populated only by young females--everyone is young and healthy, and no-one gets sick or old, food is provided, and no one has to work.  He has sex with the women there. 

In the Time Machine, he takes up residence with the Eloi--who are described as being very feminine-- he lives in their garden of Eden where everyone is young and healthy, and no-one gets sick or old, food is provided, and no one has to work.   He has a romance with Weena there and probably has sex with her. 

 

In the Voyage of Bran, he stays at the Isle of Women for a while, some of his crew get homesick and so they try to return home.

In the Time Machine, after the order with the Morlocks and the Crabs, he gets homesick and tries to return home.

 

In the Voyage of Bran, when they get back to the coast of Ireland one of Bran's crew disembarks and when he lands on shore instantly turns to a pile of dust.  Those on shore tell Bran that hundreds of years have passed while they were in the Otherworld, and the Bran is only a figure in their ancient myths.  Bran writes an account of his adventure on tablets and passes them to those on shore.  Bran then sails back to the Otherworld.

In the Time Machine, he returns home, gives an account of his adventure, then returns to the future, never to be seen again.

 
 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

In Gaelic Imraim Brain means "the Voyage of Bran." So Bran = Brain. 

Lovecraft must have made the connection between the Time Machine and the Voyage of Bran, because in The Whisperer in Darkness, it is explained that the time-travelling crabs/ fungi from Yuggoth are the true basis for widespread myths about Sidhe faeries who live in hollow hills. 

And as I said above, the crabs from Yuggoth are based on the Further Vision chapter from The Time Machine where humans have devolved into crabs and the sun is eclipsed by a wandering planet.

 

The Celtic Otherworld is sometimes said to be an island, or under-the-sea, or inside a hollow hill.  (George combined all three into a weirwood hill in the God's Eye).  The cave of the crabs is the Otherworld.  (and craob means "tree")

And they steal brains and put them in jars.  The disembodied brains can then travel backward and forward in time, and to other planets and dark stars.  And the brains have fantastic dreams.  The Brains go on Voyages--the Voyage of Brain.

 

The main character is lured to a lonely, solitary location, and asked to enter the Otherworld by the crab/faeires so they can steal his brain. 

The main character is Wilmarth, and besides being very close to the word "Weena", uamh means "cave" and uamhas means "monster" and "horror" and "deed done in a cave" and uamalt means "lonely, solitary" and uile-mhath means "all-good"

Wilmarth is lured to a cave by a monster in the isolated woods.

And he has correspondence with Akeley.  acalla means "conversation" in Gaelic.  The Sidhe were believed to replace humans with changelings, called faerie corpses, and Akeley is replaced by a changeling/ crab/tree that is actually wearing his skin like a suit to lure Wilmarth into a trap.

Yuggoth =  uig means "rock" and uaigh means "cave, grave, den" and uigean means "fugitive, lonely wanderer" and uigheach means "traveller"

 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

I was doing some thinking about the Celtic Otherworld, and realized it is the Land of Always Summer, and one of its names is Tir Tairngire  "the Land of Promise" and Tír fo Thuinn "Land under the Waves"

The name Targaryen comes from tairngire "promise, prophecy" and tairngeartach "the Prophesied One, the Messiah" and from Argyria which is silver poisoning that turns your eyes purple.

Valyria was the Land of the Targaryens, and Valyria is the Lands of Long Summer, and Valyria is now the Land under the Waves, so Valyria was the Otherworld, or at least a large part of it, and that is why magic diminished when it erupted.

In Celtic myth the Tuatha Dé Danann were the Sidhe faeries and Danu was their mother goddess.  Danu from Tir Tairngire ~ Daenarys Targaryen.

 

 

In Lord of the Rings, the Otherworld is Valinor, and the Isle of Avallone has the White Tower of Tirion, which houses an all-seeing palantir.  The humans of Numenor, under the influence of Sauron, tried to invade Valinor--to invade the Otherworld, and so god separated Valinor and Avallone from the planet and sent them into space.  At the same time Numenor sunk under the waves.

And if Valyria is Valinor is the Otherworld--Valyria got shot into space.  Separating the Otherworld from the planet.

 

In Old Norse vollr means "field" and another name of the Celtic Otherworld is Magh Meall  which is translated as "the Sweet Plain" but magh meall can also mean "big hill" and Valyria had many hills (weirwood hills with extensive tunnels underneath) that all erupted at the same time.

In Old Norse valr = avalr ~ Avalon.  and valr = "the slain" and valr = hawk and vallari means "pilgrim, traveller"
In Hindi vali means "lord, master" and vala means "high, lofty" 

 

The Otherworld is also called Tír na nÓg ("Land of the Young") or Tír na hÓige ("Land of Youth") which sound like "Tyrion".  And Tir Tairngire also sounds like Tyrion Targaryen

In LoTR, the Tower of Tirion is on Avallone in the Otherworld, Avallone is the Floating Island that drifted around the ocean, and in Hindi tirana means "to float, to cross over water, to rescue, to save"--and eventually it floats right off into space.

And tirohit means "concealed, vanished" and tirobhav means "disappearance of things and properties by divine power" and the Tower of Tirion disappears when god shoots it into space.

(And in Westeros the Isle of Faces is a floating island that cannot be found, and will follow after Valyria.)

In Welsh tirion means "a source of continuance, a familiar spot" and "lovely, pleasant, kind" and Lle tirion means "a pleasant place" and in Hindi tiraya means "woman"--so very much like the Otherworld Isle of Joy and the Isle of Women.

 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

So Uran/Vran is an alternate spelling of Bran, and Bran is the Crow and Euron is the Crow's Eye.  In Gaelic braine means "prow, ship, and captain" and bran means "crow" and "black" and uran means "flight" in Hindi--and both had flying dreams where they were visited by the 3 Eyed Crow.  And in Gaelic urran means "strife, contention" and "point, spear" and urranta means "bold, dauntless"

Euron is a ship captain and he the only person bold and dauntless enough to visit Valyria and return--that is, voyages to the Otherworld and returns.  Bran voyages to the Otherworld and returns.  Euron returns from the Otherworld insane. 

 

(brannam means "chessboard" and Patchface's face is chequey/chessboard and he returns from the Otherworld under-the-sea insane also)

 

The Motte/Mote/Mot in God's Eye

motte means "a grove of trees" and motte means "hill" and Mot is the god of death and mot means "moot, assembly" and the Isle of Faces is surrounded by a moat.  There a moat around the motte at God's Eye, where Mot lives, where the moot happens.

Euron winning the Kingsmoot and the Driftwood Crown at the Weirwood circle of Nagga's Ribs, and sitting the Kraken/Seastone Chair is all a metaphor for Bran becoming the new greenseer.  (in LoTR, the entmoot is a circle of trees deciding what to do)

A moot takes place at the motte (the God's Eye), and a new greenseer gets named Mot (the god of death).  Euron wants to become the god of death and Euron gets named Mot, and vran/uran means "crow" and he is the Crow's Eye.  Oh, and in gaelic cro#1 cro#2 means "eye", "gore, blood, death" and "hovel, prison"

 

Odin's eye is the sun, and at Ragnarok Fenrir, the winged wolf, breaks his chains and swallows the sun. 

Euron's hidden eye is black, shining with malice, which is revealed during the Long Night.

Recall that braine means "prow, ship, and captain" and "black" and uran means "flight" in Hindi and abraon means "cauldron" and Bran had a magic cauldron that brought the dead back to life.  A flying black ship that eclipses the sun and allows the Others to invade. 

In gaelic, othar means "cripple" and the Others are being controlled by Bran.

The Valyrian suit of armor and the Dragonbinder horn that Euron got from Valyria are both metaphors for the Black Dragon / Black Planet / Bran's Cauldron, and the Dragonbinder is how you control it.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

12 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

and another name of the Celtic Otherworld is Magh Meall  which is translated as "the Sweet Plain" but magh meall can also mean "big hill" and Valyria had many hills (weirwood hills with extensive tunnels underneath) that all erupted at the same time.

Just learned that in Gaelic meall  means "eye-ball" or "orb" so the Otherworld Magh Meall  is "the Great Eye."  So the God's Eye is the Otherworld. 

And in the Wheel of Time the Eye of the World is Tar Valon (Avalon), the eye-shaped island, where the all-female Aes Sedai live.

And in the Lord of the Rings, if Mordor is a dark version of the Otherworld, and Sam and Frodo go to the Great Eye and destroy the Ring.  It is a inversion of the Voyage of Bran.  (The Tale of Earendil was a true telling of The Voyage of Bran.)

 

And maghmeall sounds like "magma" and Sauron the Underworld Smith forged the Ring in a volcano, and he was destroyed in a volcano and his dark Otherworld sinks into magma.

The Valyrian Otherworld Magh Meall was also destroyed in a volcanic explosion,--Magh Meall is destroyed by magma.

 

------

In Latin the phrase "Otherworld" is alium orbis meaning "another orb" and alium sounds like "alien" and in the Witcher series, the Otherworld was literally an alien orb, and during the Conjunction of Spheres a planet gets so close to Earth that inhabitants can move from one planet to another.  And it is hinted that Ciri can move the planet.

And in ASoIaF, the Long Night is caused by an alien orb getting very close to Earth and eclipsing the sun for the entire Earth.  In the LoTR, the Great Eye could spread darkness over the whole world.
 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

I was reading up about the Riddle of the Sphinx, and in the myth of Oedipus, the Sphinx had the body of a winged lion and the torso and head of a woman and it devoured all the humans who could not answer its riddle. 

I think H.G. Wells thought the reader would be familiar with that story, so that the fact that the Sphinx is the first thing the Time Traveller encounters in the future was supposed to make the reader think of humans being eaten by the Sphinx.

Oedipus means "swollen foot" and The Time Traveller mentions several times that his foot is injured and that he is lame.

Oedipus kills his own father, and Time Time Traveller talks about killing his own descendants.

The Mandrill Baboon is called Mandrill Sphinx and the Time Traveller calls the Morlocks apes and lemurs, and the ape-like Sphinx baboons come out of the Sphinx.

 

Also the Time Traveller calls the Morlocks the "Nemesis" of the Eloi, and Nemesis was the god of just distribution, or retributive justice, and she persecuted the excessively rich or proud.  She had wings, and was associated with the wheel of fortune, and rode a chariot pulled by griffons.

So the Sphinx was Nemesis.  The Eloi became excessively rich and proud off of the work of the Morlocks, who they forced to be their servitors underground.  Until their servitors turned on them.

 

"The Nemesis of the delicate ones was creeping on apace. Ages ago, thousands of generations ago, man had thrust his brother man out of the ease and the sunshine. And now that brother was coming back—changed! Already the Eloi had begun to learn one old lesson anew. They were becoming reacquainted with Fear."

The Brothers of the Night's Watch were forced out of society, and I think they will come back to society, but changed into Morlocks --into Others and Wights.  Fear is for the Long Night, after all.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

Thinking about the Otherworld some more.  The Celtic Otherworld was called Mag Meall which means the "Sweet Plain" but in Gaelic meall means "sweet" and "hill" and "orb/eye/ball" but it also means "deceit, error, mistake" and meallaire means "deceiver"

And I think that is where Tolkien got the idea of Sauron being the great deceiver who is represented as a Great Eye whose realm is an Inverse Otherworld--they are different interpretations of the phrase Mag Meall. 

(unrelated but nasg means "ring" and "chained" and I just learned that giulan means "bearing" so the nasg-giul are ring-bearers and guil means "wail, lament")

 

But I just realized that George also wrote a story about an Otherworld that was a deception and a trap.  In Bitterblooms, on a post-apocalyptic planet with winters that last for years, there is a derelict space ship called Morgan Le Fay  from Avalon, and it was a magical building that provided endless food and entertainment, but it was all false and was a trap laid by a crazy woman to keep Shawn there forever.  (also, Avalon is a space ship like in Tolkien)

The Otherworld was the space ship from Avalon, it was populated by a single woman, and Shawn was enticed in by flowers, and being there extended your life, so that when you go back home all of your relatives are dead--you essentially time travel while in the ship. 

In the Voyage of Bran, Bran was enticed in by flowers (the White Flowers on the White Branch) and he goes to Avalon/the Isle of Woman.  But it is all deception, and his men long to return home to find that they have time traveled, and everyone they knew back home is dead. 

If it was truly Elysium why would the men want to return home?  I think the idea of deceit was built into the idea of the Otherworld all along.  It was always a trap.

Bran got lured into a trap.

 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

I forgot to say that in Bitterblooms, the Otherworld / Avalonian space ship is on three legs, and in the Voyage of Bran the Isle of Women is described as an island having silver feet.  (And the God's Eye is an island that has white roots under it, forming its feet)

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I listened to The Shadow Over Innsmouth again today and realized it is a take on the Voyage of Bran also.  It is about a black reef called Devil's Reef that is described as "hardly an island" that is a gateway to a magic Otherworld under-the-sea, but the underworld is populated by nightmarish fish people that want human sacrifice and to breed with humans.  The fish-people live forever under-the-sea, and they serve Cthulhu, and one day they will rise to destroy humans.

In Dinneen's Gaelic Dictionary, brannda means "a reef of rocks under sea surface partly or sometimes visible"  and

brannra means "a reef of rocks partly underwater"

So its another nightmare-Otherworld scenario involving Bran.  In ASoIaF, the God's Eye is a nightmare Otherworld where humans are drained of their life force by the weirwood.  Cthulhu is the Kraken, and Weirwoods are the Kraken, and Cthulhu is the Weirwood.  Cthulhu is an island that can move about.

 

Now that I am thinking about it, A Song For Lya fits this nightmare-Otherworld pattern also.  The Grieshka ("malice" in Old Norse) is a carnivorous red fungus in a cave, and joining the Grieshka is supposed to be a blissful Otherworld, but it really just eats you, and the promise of the Otherworld was a trick to lure you in. 

 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

I listened to In the House of the Worm again and had a major revelation about Yagalla. 
So in Lovecraft, Yuggoth is a black planet/space ship made of oily black stone, and it is full of tunnels and black Cyclopean ruins, and it has wandered into our solar system bringing with it nightmare-Sidhe faeries (who are really fungoid-crabs) who have flown to Earth to mine caves for precious metals.  And I had noticed previously that Yagalla and Yuggoth both come from the same Gaelic words.* uagh / uighe means "grave, cave" and uigean means "fugitive, lonely wanderer"

In the House of the Worm opens with a Masquerade inside a chamber that is made entirely of fused obsidian/oily black stone, and it occurred to me that the story actually takes place on Yuggoth.  And that their entire planet is a black stone space ship, and Yagalla is Yuggoth.

The Changemasters were genetic engineers of the Ecological Engineering Corps, and Theta was their sigil.  On Yagalla there are Chambers of the Changemasters where they engaged in genetic engineering--they made huge white eater worms, and various kinds of fungus for food and light, and the Grouns engineered themselves to see in the dark and to have 6 limbs.  And in Tuf Voyaging, the Ark was a huge black space ship of the Ecological Engineering Corps, and the ship had vast facilities for genetic engineering.  Yagalla is just a bigger, rounder version of the Ark. 

In Tuf, House of the Worm, and Lovecraft, the Black Planet is a huge black derelict spaceship that monsters come from.  In ASoIaF, dragons came from the second moon, as did the God-on-Earth.  The God-on-Earth was a version of Haviland Tuf that came to Earth and set up a colony.

 

Fungus and mushrooms are a huge part of the plot of In the House of the Worm, and the crabs from Yuggoth are actually a kind of fungi.  (and in Plague Star, the black ship Ark is filled with fungi that kills Mushroom the cat)

So Yagalla is full of fungus, and Yuggoth is full of fungus.  Yagalla has lots of "fused obsidian", and Yuggoth is made out of oily black stone.  Yagalla is a god of death, Yuggoth is the Black Goat/Baphomet/"uaigh+goat", the god of death.  In Yagalla the Yaga-la-hai worship a dying sun, and Yuggoth eclipses the sun to create an endless night in the Year of the Black Goat.

 

As Annelyn goes deeper into the planet he finds the Grouns tending huge machines--I think they are fusion reactors, and the ship is still operable.  If Annelyn could find the right rooms and books he be able to learn how to move the ship again, like Tuf did.

 

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*Yagalla = uaigh "grave" + uaille "heaped up" = "heaped up grave" (The shrine to the White Worm is a "heaped up grave")

Yuggoth = uigean  "fugitive, lonely wanderer" and "terror" and "grave" and yog means "conjunction, union" in Hindi

----

 

In the Time Machine the Morlocks were compared to spiders, and that's why the Grouns are 6-limbed and their arms are weirdly long, they are like spiders.  So the White Walkers are the Ice Spiders, they don't ride them. 

 

The Time Traveller hurts his ankle, and Annelyn hurts his ankle.  And in Dinneen's Gaelic Dictionary between two words that mean "ankle" is the word mugharlog, or murlog ("Morlock") meaning "a low-sized burly person" and the Meatbringer is a low-sized burly person, (who is also described like a pig.)  And the crabs from The Whisperer in Darkness are 5 feet tall and barrel-chested--so low-sized burly crabs.  And Akeley has to have "his ankles bandaged like a gouty beef-eater"

Also, I think I figured out why Wells had Morlocks devolve in crabs.  In Gaelic fochla means "common people" and the Morlocks were the working class, fochladh means "den" and fochd means "crab hole".  And cruban means "crouching, creeping" and "crooked creature" and "crab"

[Bowen Marsh]

I would compare the Morlocks to the future survivors in Westeros.  Underground is the only possible refuge for those who choose to stay.  Bran will the the prince of darkness who will rule over the pale survivors in the north. 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

I was researching the significance of the Theta sigil that is used by the Yaga-la-hai, the Grouns, and the Ecological Engineering Corp, and learned that the Black Theta (theta nigrum) or theta infelix ("unlucky theta") is the symbol representing death, as it was an abbreviation of Thanatos, the god of death. 

The Theta was used next to someone's name to indicate that they had died.  ꝋ crossed horizontally,  – obiit

But the Yaga-la-hai worship death, so instead of the Theta being black, it is gold, because they love death.

But more importantly the Theta looks exactly like a goat's eye!  Θ 

So the Black Theta is the Black Goat, and the planet Yagalla really is Yuggoth, the Black Goat, death star. 

 

And that puts a whole new spin on Tuf Voyaging, so I reread Plague Star, and a few things jumped out to me.  The Ark was in the solar system of Hro Brana--which I think is a reference to Bran's Cauldron.   In Anglo-Saxon hraew means "corpse, carrion" and hroc means "rook, crow, raven" and Bran's Cauldron brought the dead back to life, and that is what the Ark does.  Hrun means "ruin, collapse" and "giant" in Old Norse. 

ETA: bran is the outer hull of a seed, and the Ark is Seedship with a hull, in Anglo-Saxon brun means "having a metallic luster, shining" and bryne /brand means "burning, flame" and the opening passage mentions the Plague Star burning the planet clean, and in Gaelic brain means "ship" and bran means "pot, kettle"

 

Kaj Nevis in the armored space suit is a giant crab, and the Ark is filled with fungus and mushrooms, and it is a huge black space ship--it is itself another version of Yuggoth, the Black Goat, and its sigil is the Theta / goat's eye of death, because the EEC's mission was to wipe out civilizations.

The Plague Star is a Death Star, and Tuf is a large, bald, very pale man, who takes control of a Death Star, he looks just like Darth Vader when his faceplate was removed.

 

The plot of Plague Star is about who is fit to assume the god powers of the Ark / Yuggoth, --and the conclusion was that anyone who wanted the power was unfit for it. 

In ASoIaF the Second Moon is the God of Death because it is what caused the first Long Night, and it has been mythologized as the Stranger, the Lion of Night, the Hooded Man, Saagael, the Great Stone Face, etc.

And I have been arguing that, in ASoIaF, the characters who get descriptions that match eclipses or coronas or shadow crowns are potential Night King characters, and like in Plague Star they are getting ruled-out one by one as unfit to control the Lion of Night/Second Moon/EEC Seedship.  Viserys caused a metaphorical eclipse and got the shadow crown and died, Joffrey got poisoned by the Strangler/Stranger and he got the eclipse corona (black face, yellow crown) and died, Stannis is described as having a shadow crown, crown of flames, and he fathered shadow swords, and he will soon die.  Jon has been linked with a celestial crown, the King's Crown, and it is called Bran's Cauldron.  So I think Jon and Bran (through Euron) will cause the Long Night.  And the twist is that it is being used to cause the Long Night for the good of mankind.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

More In the House of the Worm stuff

So all the names in the story are related to worms, death, and graves.  Yagalla means "heaped up grave" and Annelyn means "worm" and Groff means "grave" and Vermyllar means "worm" but the names Caralee and Riess have been a mystery to me, but I think I finally figured it out.

 

Caralee

Annelyn is playing the role of the Time Traveller, and Caralee is his love interested playing the part of Weena

In Gaelic cara means "beloved one" and caora means "sheep, ewe" (and Weena means "little lamb" and "little darling") and corr means "worm"

carra / carraig means "a large stone" and lia / liag means "large stone. tombstone" and caor means "globe," And the Yagalla planet itself was a gigantic black rock that is a tombstone.

leagadh means "to reap, to fall, to bring down, wasting away" and lige means "grave, tomb, monument, and to lay down"

So Cara-lee could mean "beloved grave" or "planet grave" and more, sheep are closely related to goats, so it could be a  Black Goat reference: caora = "sheep" and leagadh = "reaper" and lia / lige = "large stone, tombstone, grave"

 

Riess

In Anglo-Saxon rysel means "lard, fat" and Riess is a fat lard.

In Latin reses means "motionless" (i.e., dead) and risus means "laughter" and Riess always laughs when Annelyn laughs.

In Anglo-Saxon hreosan means "to go to ruin, to sink down, to fall" and hruse means "ground, earth, soil"

 

In Swedish rysa means "to shudder, to shiver" and ryss means "charcoal"

And Annelyn finds Riess dead and hung on a meathook in a Groun refrigerated meat-locker, and through Annelyn's infrared goggles Riess looks like an "obscene carving of obsidian"

 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

I just had a breakthrough, the Time Traveler finds matches and a lump of camphor in the Palace of Green Porcelain museum, and later uses the camphor as a torch to repel the Morlocks, and also uses a campfire to repel the Morlocks .  campfire ~ camphor 

There are obvious references to Prometheus bringing flame to mankind, but I knew that there had to be something significant about camphor, but I could not figure it out.  This morning I remembered that camh-fhair  means "dawn, daybreak" in Gaelic (and camaoir means "dawn")

camh-fhair = camphor = campfire

The Time Traveler is the Promethian Lightbringer.  Dawn is what repels the Morlocks and ends the Long Night.  The Time Traveler wields Dawn as a weapon. 

I think the Time Traveler's name is Bran, and he wields a flaming brand/dawn.

 

Also, caimfear means "champion"

comh-fhuir means "staying with or together, waiting together, waiting for one who is coming on behind"

camphire / campar means "anger, grief, sorrow"

He loses Weena after using the camphor.

 

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Weena / uaine means "little lamb" in Gaelic, and at the beginning of the story when the Time Traveler returns he is ravenous for meat and says "save me some of that mutton" and then he goes upstairs and gets cleaned up and comes back to eat the mutton.  Mutton is sheep, lambs are sheep, Weena = lamb.  He mentions "saving the mutton" then disappears and then comes back.  Which I think supports the idea that he was going back to the future to save Weena at the end of the story.

Mutton is sheep, lambs are sheep, the Eloi are cattle.  The Time Traveler was very concerned about Weena being eaten by the Morlocks, but then he is the one that metaphorically eats Weena.  Which parallels Bran, the Time Traveler, eating Meera.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

I just realized that in the prologue of A Game of Thrones, Waymar gets attacked by Morlocks in the Haunted Forest and he is defeated because he does not have Dawn /camh-fhair/camphor.

And I just learned that two words beginning with uinne mean "dawn"  and there might be some connection with her being a sacrificial lamb--as her name means "lamb" and she is sacrificed in the forest when he ignites Dawn.

 

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I figured out why humans devolved into crabs in the far future.  Wells mentions humans spreading out and branching into separate subspecies, first into the Morlocks and Eloi, then further branching into kangaroos and centipedes, then further into crabs and white butterflies. 

 

craobh means "to spread out, to branch" and "tree" in Gaelic, and the red crabs were another branch in the human family tree.  And craobh-sgaoil  means "to spread, branch, ramify" and sgaoil means "shadow, eclipse" so that is where Wells got the idea of an eclipse happening after he encounters the crabs.

(chevre means "goat" and "crab" in French and that is where Lovecraft got the idea that the crabs were the Black Goat, and they came from a Black Planet that causes a very long eclipse on Earth during the Year of the Black Goat)

 

 

I just found that oidhche-mheirleach  (morlock) means "night thief" in Gaelic

 

So after the trap of the White Sphinx, when the Time Traveler goes into the far future and finds that the humans have devolved into kangaroos, and they are being preyed upon by giant centipede worms with metallic teeth.

George obviously thought the kangaroos/"grey men" were descendants of the Morlocks, as they have the same feet and hair that the Morlocks had, and I think George had the idea that the giant centipede worms were created by the Eloi to hunt the Morlocks and eat them, because in George's story In the House of the Worm,  the Yagalahai (Eloi) created the White Worms with metallic teeth to hunt and eat the Grouns (Morlocks).  It is even suggested that the leader of the Yagalahai turned himself into the White Worm to kill the Grouns.

So George thought that the tables had turned and that the Eloi had become the predators.

But I think the kangaroos were the descendants of the Eloi, and the giant centipede were the descendants of the Morlocks, so it was just a continuation of the dynamic of prey and predator that he had seen between the Morlocks and Eloi. 

The kangaroo/grey men were herbivores, and the Eloi were vegetarian.  Whereas the Morlocks were carnivorous.   And the Morlocks were described as being like white worms, sea anemones, and ants.  The Morlocks turned from ants, to centipedes, to crabs.

 

And then in the further vision, the Morlock centipede monsters have further devolved into giant crabs.  And the Eloi devolve into white butterflies that the crabs catch and eat.  The Morlocks tried to eat him, the centipede tried to eat him, and the crabs tried to eat him. 

 

 

Dark, Dark were the Tunnels, is a retelling of the Time Machine from the perspective of a Morlock, and some upper-world people bringing fire to their caves.  Greel is essentially a Morlock (greel  means "pig" in greek) and he and the upper-world people have a misunderstanding and they kill his pet rat and then they kill Greel, and say that he was subhuman.  The worm-things hunt and eat Greel's people. 

The Meatbringer from In the House of the Worm is also described as being a pig, he has an enormous flat nose, and mottled pink/brown skin.

 

[Moiraine Sedai]

The cave dwellers, greenseers, feed on humans but indirectly. The Weirwoods are the conduits like a feeding tube.  

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

2 hours ago, Moiraine Sedai said:

The cave dwellers, greenseers, feed on humans but indirectly. The Weirwoods are the conduits like a feeding tube.  

The weirwoods themselves feed on human blood, it is their primary food source and they are eating the greenseers and CoTF. 

The weirwood is the White Worm and in Clark Ashton Smith's The Coming of the White Worm, the White Worm is the god of death, and its only food source is wizards.  The weirwood is a white worm that eats wizards, and it eats its own children.

 

I just read H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds for the first time recently, and the Martians build a giant cannon and launch themselves towards Earth.  The Martians are described as squid-like, or kraken-like, with a central head and branching tentacles, and they came to Earth to feed on human blood.  In the story Mars is red because it is covered in creeping plants that have red foliage.  

Before I read that story I had argued here previously that Mars is red because it is covered in weirwoods with their red foliage, and that they launched themselves to Earth to colonize Earth, and drink our blood.

 

And in Clark Ashton Smith's the Seedling of Mars, the surface of Mars is covered by a single gigantic immortal, cosmic, omniscient tree whose flesh-colored roots and vines wrap all the way around the globe (the "canals" of Mars are vines/creepers, and the "seas" are foliage).  It is also described as kraken-shaped, with the tree roots being tentacles.  It described as being a god, that has a huge hill for a head--which I am guessing is Olympus Mons--that is described like a giant brain, and it has lakes for eyes. 

The Mars creature populates other worlds by shooting mile-long seeds into space, and at the end of the story one of these falls to earth as a Red Comet, and immediately begins growing and wipes out the population of Earth. 

 

In Norse, Mars is called the Bloody Star, and the Red Comets are the Bleeding Star, and I think the Red Comets are weirwoods that got launched from the Mars.

[Moiraine Sedai]

On 7/13/2022 at 2:58 PM, By Odin's Beard said:

The weirwoods themselves feed on human blood, it is their primary food source and they are eating the greenseers and CoTF. 

The weirwood is the White Worm and in Clark Ashton Smith's The Coming of the White Worm, the White Worm is the god of death, and its only food source is wizards.  The weirwood is a white worm that eats wizards, and it eats its own children.

 

I just read H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds for the first time recently, and the Martians build a giant cannon and launch themselves towards Earth.  The Martians are described as squid-like, or kraken-like, with a central head and branching tentacles, and they came to Earth to feed on human blood.  In the story Mars is red because it is covered in creeping plants that have red foliage.  

Before I read that story I had argued here previously that Mars is red because it is covered in weirwoods with their red foliage, and that they launched themselves to Earth to colonize Earth, and drink our blood.

 

And in Clark Ashton Smith's the Seedling of Mars, the surface of Mars is covered by a single gigantic immortal, cosmic, omniscient tree whose flesh-colored roots and vines wrap all the way around the globe (the "canals" of Mars are vines/creepers, and the "seas" are foliage).  It is also described as kraken-shaped, with the tree roots being tentacles.  It described as being a god, that has a huge hill for a head--which I am guessing is Olympus Mons--that is described like a giant brain, and it has lakes for eyes. 

The Mars creature populates other worlds by shooting mile-long seeds into space, and at the end of the story one of these falls to earth as a Red Comet, and immediately begins growing and wipes out the population of Earth. 

 

In Norse, Mars is called the Bloody Star, and the Red Comets are the Bleeding Star, and I think the Red Comets are weirwoods that got launched from the Mars.

What a fascinating stories you have read. This one included.  Don’t you think the weirwood and greenseer become one? The tree feeds the human who is now becoming a part but it also absorbs the memories of the man. Absorb enough memories, carve a face, and the weirwood becomes sentient. If the memories absorbed are those of the First Men, the tree would become prejudiced against the Andals and the Valyrians.