Poisons, potions and their fellow travelers

[Evolett]

1 hour ago, Seams said:

As I read this, I said out loud, "Of course!" I feel as if we are professors working together toward our Nobel prize in the science of ASOIAF Decoding. No one else knows what the hell we are talking about, but they will all be impressed when we pin down the details of why the season in Westeros have been out of whack. Thank you for sharing your "Eureka moment" with me!

Indeed. Thanks for all your insights too. They often support thoughts I have or lead to new connections and down further paths well worth examining .

 

2 hours ago, Seams said:

Ser Barristan then travels to Essos and pledges his service to Dany, displacing Jorah from her inner circle. What does Ser Barristan represent in the fertility cycle? Are there two types of warriors in this fertility pantheon?

Looks like you've discovered two more warrior/hunter types.  Barristan comes from Harvest Hall. Not much is revealed about it, not even its exact location but the name suggests crop growing and harvesting which makes Barristan a floral warrior (like the Knight of Flowers, coming to think of it). Ser Jorah is from Bear Island, a place of forests and bears with no significant link to agricultural crops, though one could hunt bears, making him a "faunal warrior." After Ser Jorah is dismissed in disgrace and Barristan takes over as Dany's chief knight in Meereen, she is preoccupied with the question of feeding her freed men and women and begins planting crops, olives and beans, also digging canals to water the crops. So Barristan the "floral warrior" likely adds to the green cycle of fertility while Jorah who you see as an ingredient in the hatching of eggs is a facilitator of the faunal, meat cycle. 

Writing this highlighted possible wordplay with Barristan and "barrister" as in law. A quick glance in Wikipedia tells me barristers are not usually hired by clients but out of the body of legal workers are chiefly appointed as judges. I have the feeling this is really important in respect of his connection to the harvest. More to think about. 

 

2 hours ago, Seams said:

I suspect the Battle of the Blackwater was a giant symbolic hatching of dragon eggs - the wild fire made by pyromancers was the "pyre romance" element and the ships were the eggs

 Yes, I can see the association. The one thing that stood out to me in the text relating the Battle in Davos' POV was the underlying sexual imagery regarding the ship "Swordfish" that eagerly steers towards the Lannister ship filled with wildfire. The latter bursts like an "overripe fruit" and screams a "shattering wooden scream." The ensuing wildfire resembles a kraken with a dozen hands carrying whips of flaming wildfire. That led me to speculate on a terrible kraken being born of the union between the "Swordfish" and the Lannister ship (have to check for the name of that ship). I had put that thought aside back then but the scene may carry significance especially if seen in the context of some nuggets that have come to light via the released Forsaken chapter.  

I love the py/re - romance wordplay! Freshly married Joffery and Margaery cutting the wedding pie together could be another aspect of that, a pie-romance that hatches birds which might be symbolical dragons. And how would Mance Rayder fit into this? Mance escaped having a ro-mance with a pyre, so it's not a romance but a "mance" as part of the word group. I've always thought of the red silk that patches his cloak as a representation of the addition of fire. Perhaps the red silk fabric represents the "rays" in Rayder. Ray - der / Ray - red = red ray. Red rays. The only relevant information I've found about the word "mance" is its use as a suffix denoting the carrying out of a specified form of divination as in "necromancy, pyromancy" and so on. So perhaps the author uses "Mance" in reference to the glamour that Mance is subjected to. Ahh... check this out - Glamour - amour (French for love) / lol, there we have it, the link to romance! Who said this isn't fun? But amour may also denote armor and the glamour is indeed Mance's "armor" - literally the bones which serve to hold up the disguise. Oh my. 

One last thought on Shagwell, Pyg and Timeon. We can see them in relation to the male trinity of the Seven. What I forgot to add in my last comment is that the Father is of course also the one who "impregnates the goddess." 
Using that template, Shagwell the Fool represents the "Father." He "shags well," - and he threatens to rape Brienne. (Shag as in having sex, for those unfamiliar with the term). Pyg (pig) is the Smith/farmer connection leaving Timeon as the Warrior. I have not thought in depth about this but bear in mind that the King's Landing Small Council spreads the rumour that Patchface the Fool fathered Shireen on Selyse. The pig then as a faunal aspect of the Smith could shed some more light on the boar/pig motif. And another thing I noticed - Shagwell kills Nimble Dick. Nimble Dick? Implying Shagwell kills Nimble Dick because of the latters sexual prowess? A confrontation between two fertility gods?

4 hours ago, Seams said:

I keep meaning to get back to some of your earlier posts to offer some thoughts in reply, but the new revelations keep distacting me. So much good insight here. Thanks for playing! I still hope to get back to the earlier posts one of these days. 

Same here. 

 

 

[Springwatch]

On 6/20/2022 at 9:56 PM, Seams said:

Here are some more examples of orange linked to a foot:

There's another one I came across recently (and I'm sure you know it): Ser Shadrich was a wiry fox-faced man with a sharp nose and a shock of orange hair, mounted on a rangy, chestnut courser. Though he could not have been more than five foot two, he had a cocksure manner.

It's the more convincing to me because there's already evidence of the author playing around with the description. I like to check if a horse's description matches with its rider (they nearly always do) - and it's there of course, the chestnut horse has reddish hair, so does Shadrich. And this time I noticed 'rangy' as well - horrible clumsy choice of word in the literal sense because it means long-limbed, which isn't possible. A man as short as Shadrich does not choose a tall horse, because he cannot get on it without help. So it seems to me that the word 'rangy' was chosen purely to chime with 'orange'. Orange man, orange horse, and the foot is there too. Interesting.

[Evolett]

Arya's poison kisses

Arya returns with a bunch of purple and green flowers for Ned after exploring their surroundings while travelling through the Neck on the way to King's Landing. It turns out the purple flowers cause an itching skin rash and are called "poison kisses." Following Mycah's advice, she rubs her arms with mud to stop the itching. The scene could simply be forshadowing Arya's arc, that's easy enough to see. She will assist and learn how to prepare poisons from the waif and will employ poison on an assignment. I never really paid much attention to the passage but now the mud which acts as an antidote to the poison kisses appears relevent especially since they are traversing the territory of the so called mud men. An antidote may delay, relieve, prevent or counteract the effects of poison. The crannogmen are proficient in the manufacture and use of poison, the Neck itself an unwholesome deadly environment, but that the mud men are linked to a preventive force capable of counteracting or even curing an allegorical poison is a new thought. 

Purple is linked to the "strangler" poison and to Purple Harbour, the location of Arya's first assassination mission where she uses poison to dispatch her victim. Purple is used on various sigils with the Daynes standing out. We know Ned won the duel with Arthur Dayne with Howland Reed's help or intervention. Was Howland the "mud antidote" that prevented Dayne from symbolically poisoning Ned? 

What of Trisifer Mudd, the Hammer of Justice? Was the influx of the Andals a poisoning of Westeros that he tried to prevent? The Neck certainly contributed to keeping the North free of the Andals and their religion. Then of course there is the association between mud and justice. 

Melisandre attributes her resistance to Cressen's strangler-poisoned wine to the power of her god. That she saw what was coming in her flames and prepared for it by ingesting an antidote beforehand is more likely.