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Astronomy of Ice and Fire


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The Planets and the Stranger

 

I think the gods in Faith of the Seven are the planets like in Greek and Roman mythology, the Greeks treated Venus Morningstar and Venus Evenstar as separate gods, Eosphorus and Hesperus, and I think George adopted that idea
  1. the Warrior is Mercury; ---a Merc  is a warrior for hire,  because it's orbit is fast Mercury is quicksilver in Alchemy, mercurial means "to have a volatile temperament" like a warrior
  2. the Maiden is Venus Morningstar; ---the brightest planet, Aphrodite is a maiden, rises in morning, represents youth and beauty and love, (venus means "beautiful" in Latin) and is a fertility goddess, is Lemon colored, in alchemy its metal is copper and Aphrodite has red hair
  3. the Mother is Venus Eveningstar; ---the Mother is a fertility goddess, and the Mother is the Maiden later in life after she has fulfilled her role as fertility goddess, but still bright and beautiful.
  4. the Smith is Mars; ---in Hindi the word for "Mars, red, blood" is right next to the word for "smith, forge"  lohit, lohar    In alchemy, Mars and its symbol, a stylized shield and sword, were used to represent the element iron.  (Mars is important to Martin because Mars is called Mairt  in Gaelic.)
  5. the Father is Jupiter; ---the word Jupiter  means "sky father" in Latin, its metal is tin is alchemy (stannus means "tin")
  6. the Crone is Saturn; ---Saturn is Cronos in Greek, it is the slowest visible planet, its metal is lead and the Crone's Lantern "leads the way"
  7. the Stranger is a black planet that is wanderer from far places;  (Planet X, Aex  means "goat" in Latin and Greek, so the Planet Aex is Yuggoth) ---The God of Death, is an outcast, unknown and unknowable, without a regular orbit.  The other planets have defined genders, but the Stranger is both male and female because it is the Black Goat Baphomet, which is a hermaphrodite,  and the Stranger is more and less than human and Baphomet is a half-human/half-goat god, and Baphomet in his classic depictions is twice associated with a black planet--he is pointing at a black moon and he is sitting on a black moon (very reminiscent of Satan's infernal council by John Martin, where Satan is sitting on a black orb)  and the Stranger is a black oval with stars for eyes.

 

The Stranger

The word "occult" means "hidden, concealed, secret" and in astronomy it means "one heavenly body (as the moon or a planet) hiding another (as a star, or a satellite) from view, by passing in front of it"   And the Occult is the worship of Baphomet, the Black Goat, and the Black Goat causes eclipses.  I have posted previously that the God they worship at the Church of Starry Wisdom is the Black Goat/the Stranger.  

In the World of Ice and Fire, all the maps of Westeros have these little glyphs on them that depict a partially occulted/eclipsed black sphere, a goat's horn, a depiction of a shadow, all inside a bell.  I think these are drawing our attention to the Shadow planet. 

Yuggoth partially comes from the Welsh word for "shadow" ysgod,   Maester Luwin was an astronomer who made "shadow maps" --that is, star charts that show the track of something occulting the stars.  lliwen  means "goat" in Welsh and luaineach  means "wandering" in Gaelic and luighe  means "cauldron, kettle" and  luan  means "moon"  and  "Judgment Day" and  llewen  means "focus"--Luwin was mapping the movements of the Stranger, the wandering black moon as it occulted known stars on his star chart.  And in The Whisperer in Darkness, part of the plot is that the fungi from Yuggoth will telepathically get Earth's astronomers to discover the Black Goat / the Shadow with their telescopes.

 

In Lovecraft's stories, Nyarlathotep ("the Black Stone") is called the "mad, faceless god" and it is another name for Yuggoth / the Black Goat / Shub Niggurath which means "wandering/mad Black Goat"  so the idea that the black wandering planet is known as a "faceless god" because it has no visible surface--it is hooded, or concealed.

 

And in the story that introduced the Church of Starry Wisdom, the shrine to the Black Goat/Nyarlathotep ("the black stone") is seven-sided and everything is in multiples of seven.  And the Stranger is one of the Seven, and is the seventh planet.  Because in Welsh the word for seven is saith /seith, and the word for Satan is sathan.  The Seventh Planet is Satan.  And one of the names of the Black Goat is Yog Sothoth, which is "Yuggoth" with "saith / sath" in the middle.  And in The Dunwich Horror, Yog Sothoth is an invisible moving mountain that tramples everything in its path, and sathr means "to trample" and Baphomet is a satyr.  satyr ~ sath ~ sathr ~ saith    Cthulhu is also a "mountain that walks" and cwth  means "goat"
 

In Arthur Machen's the Great God Pan, there is a hidden world parallel to ours, and to glimpse it is "to see the Great God Pan" and to see it destroys your mind.  hwdwl  means "stark mad" and hwrdd means "goat" and hoedus  means "goat" in Latin, and I think Hodor saw the Black Goat and lost his mind and he has been trying to tell us what he sawhudiwr means "deceiver" in Welsh and hudwy means "phantom, delusive vision" and hudd-- means "shade/shading/covering" and "darkening over" and hwdwg  means "bugbear"/"hobgoblin"/"object of dread"

 

We are told that Planetos used to have two moons, and one cracked during an eclipse and gave birth to dragons.  I think this idea comes from Jack Vance's Dying Earth series, where there is an invisible second moon that dragon-like alien creatures came from.  And from Jack Vance's Dragon Masters, where a planet with a very eccentric orbit comes close enough to Earth that dragons can land on our planet and they terrorize and enslave humans.  Vance was probably inspired by Lovecraft's Yuggoth.

 

 

The Stranger's name

So, I think its clear that George has adopted the mythology of Lovecraft's wandering black planet Yuggoth, and I was just browsing the Welsh dictionary and I think I found the origin for the black planet Yuggoth.

(and sorry in advance, Lovecraft was super racist, and just to be clear I am not endorsing his views, I am just reporting on how he came up with his names)

 

pellenigwr means "stranger"  and pellen  means "a round mass, a ball"  so the implication that "the Stranger" is a "black sphere"  [Pretty much everything related to Yuggoth follows this racist naming scheme: Shub Niggurath (means "wandering Black Goat" in Gaelic), and  Nyarlathotep (neyros  means "black" and lithos means "stone" in Greek)

pellynig  means "far-wandering"  and the word "planet" comes from the Greek which means "wanderer"

pell  means "periphery of a circle" and Yuggoth was at the rim of the solar system in the Whisperer in Darkness and pellddrych means "telescope" and Yuggoth is discovered by telescope

 

So the idea of a wanderer from far places, that is called "the Stranger" that causes the Long Night when it eclipses the sun is all directly taken from Lovecraft.  As in Lovecraft's the Tree on the Hill, the Black Goat Yuggoth caused an Endless Night on Earth during the Year of the Black Goat, when demons will torment mankind in absolute darkness.

[Pelennor Fields from Lord of the Rings comes from this same root, as they are far-extending fields around Minas Tirith, as pellynu / pellynol means "afar off, far-extending"]

 

 

Earth's Shadow

And the name Yuggoth comes from the Welsh:

gwth / ysgwth / yscuth / ysgeth  which means "goat" [as in the Black Goat Baphomet, which is always depicted alongside a black planet] and is associated with the Stranger

ysgod  "shadow"  [is-god, and the Shadow is god]

ysgodogion means "men of the shades, hobgoblins, black devils, Scottish" [and the Starks are Scottish] 

ysgodog means "shadowing, sheltering" 

ygoed means "hollow"  and ysgoeg means "empty"  [Yuggoth is a hollow planet]

ygoth means "to purge" [and Yuggoth will purge the Earth in the year of the Black Goat/Endless Night/Long Night/Judgment Day]

ysgud means "shield, tarian"

 

Yuggoth is the Shadow, Earth's Shadow, and the Others are the "men of the shadow" who are sheltering under its shadow in permanent darkness.  Ghost Grass lives under the Shadow, and is it a metaphor for the White Walkers; Ghost = Shade/Shadow, Grass = Sward/Blades, Ghost Grass = Shadow Swords.  gwellt  [ghoul] means "grass" in Welsh

 

 

The Wanderer (from far places)

One of Lovecraft's disciples was Fritz Leiber, and he expanded the idea of Yuggoth coming to Earth and wrote a book called the Wanderer  where the premise is that a planet-sized spaceship has visited Earth many times in the past, and it has a changing design on its face so as it rotates it looks different, and thus its appearance was incorporated in human mythology variously as Fenrir the wolf the moon-swallower, a Cthulhu-like octopus, a Tyrannosaurus Rex/dragon, a Hooded Man, a Yin-Yang symbol, a Cross or Planet X, a Shield, etc.  

On this visit it accidentally cracks the moon in half like an egg and causes massive destruction on Earth, and the moon fragments fall to Earth as meteors.  And at the end of the story another even bigger planet-sized spaceship shows up in pursuit of the Wanderer, and its hull is polished gunmetal grey armor, and is compared to a mirror, and it is called the Stranger.  

The Stranger has come to punish the Wanderer for disturbing our planet and destroying our moon, and they have an epic laser battle, then they both leave.

 

In Bran's coma dream he sees a man with hounds head armor (the Wanderer) and a giant hollow stone giant (the Stranger) eclipse the sun.

And the myth of Serwyn of the Mirror Shield, cerwyn means "vat, tub"--a hollow metallic vessel, ysgud  means "shield", and the Stranger has a mirrored hull, and in Gaelic, sgath / sgail  means "mirror" and "eclipse"

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The Stars and Constellations

This has a lot of pictures so I made a pdf to make it easier to read. 

 

“I follow tourneys from afar as faithfully as the maesters follow stars.”

 

 

“Maester Luwin had taught him his stars as a boy in Winterfell; he had learned the names of the twelve houses of heaven and the rulers of each; he could find the seven wanderers sacred to the Faith; he was old friends with the Ice Dragon, the Shadowcat, the Moonmaid, and the Sword of the Morning. All those he shared with Ygritte, but not some of the others. We look up at the same stars, and see such different things. The King's Crown was the Cradle, to hear her tell it; the Stallion was the Horned Lord; the red wanderer that septons preached was sacred to their Smith up here was called the Thief. And when the Thief was in the Moonmaid, that was a propitious time for a man to steal a woman, Ygritte insisted. "Like the night you stole me. The Thief was bright that night."

 

I happened to pick up a copy of the Audubon Field Guide to the Night Sky, and I am pretty sure that George used this guide to write the astronomy sections.  (And the sky charts are made by a guy with the last name Tirion.)  Everyone should own a copy of this book, and I used the free astronomy program Stellarium.

 

 

The Ice Dragon and his rider are Draco and Lyra (A Harp made out of a tortoise shell, and the turtle in Arabic astronomy), the blue star that points north is Vega. 

 

Due to the Earth’s axial precession, the location of the North Star changes over time, with a 26,000 year cycle--14000 years ago the polestar was Vega, and in 12,000 years it will be Vega again.  In Middle East and Indian astronomy Lyra was a vulture, and Vega was the Vulture Star, “vega” can mean “eagle” or “vulture”  (valeria means “eagle” in Latin)

[The Vulture King, the Winged Knight, and dragon riders all the same thing?]

 

“But there were clouds to the north, and the blue eye of the Ice Dragon was lost to him, the blue eye that pointed north.”

In Wales, Lyra is known as King Arthur's Harp (Talyn Arthur), and King David's harp.

 

 

The Sow is Ursa Major, in Greek myth this constellation is a mother bear (a sow), and her cub is Ursa Minor.  Sometimes called the Plough, which has association with the word “sow”—as in to sow seed.

 

 

The Sword of the Morning is Grus, the Crane (Krahen/krāen means “crow” and crann means “tree” in Gaelic) Grues are man-eating predators from Vance’s Dying Earth series, and they are human/bat hybrids that live in the dark, like George’s dactyloids.  George mentions Grues 8 times in the story A Night at the Tarn House so George really likes Grues.  In Old English “grue” means to shiver with fear, to be frightened. 

 

“Jon took a breath of the crisp morning air and allowed himself to hope. The eastern sky was pink near the horizon and pale grey higher up. The Sword of the Morning still hung in the south, the bright white star in its hilt blazing like a diamond in the dawn,”

The Sword of the Morning in the south

Grus is directly south.  Others have suggests that the Sword of the Morning is Cygnus, but Cygnus is never in the south.

 

The brightest star in Grus is Alnair, “the shining one” is a white star, and if the constellation is viewed as a sword, Alnair would be a shining star in the hilt.

 

The Audubon manual states that Grus can only be viewed at latitude 40 and south, so Jon must be south of the 40th parallel.  And it is only visible at sunrise in summer months.

 

It is also worth noting that the Sword of the Morning/The Sword Dawn is a celestial sword, which supports the theory that Lightbringer is a comet that ends the Long Night.

 

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The Moonmaid is Virgo, Virgo is one of the 12 zodiac constellations, so the moon and planets pass through her.

“Jon glimpsed the red wanderer above, watching them through the leafless branches of great trees as they made their way beneath. The Thief, the free folk called it. The best time to steal a woman was when the Thief was in the Moonmaid, Ygritte had always claimed.”

I think I figured out why the Wildlings call Mars the Thief—it has to do with Mars’ retrograde orbit, being further out from the sun and with a slower orbit than Earth as we approach Mars and pass by it, it does something odd, viewed over successive nights in the sky it appears to be going one direction, then halts, and reverses direction.  (What the astronomers used to describe as epicycles).  When this happens every 15 years or so with the constellation Virgo, Mars approaches her from the west, changes direction in her constellation and they move off together.  Mars “steals” her.  With the other constellations he looks like a pickpocket, who sneaks up and takes something and then runs away.

And when the Thief was in the Moonmaid, that was a propitious time for a man to steal a woman, Ygritte insisted. "Like the night you stole me. The Thief was bright that night."

And being on the ecliptic, the moon also passes through Virgo:

The moon had crowned the Moonmaid as they set out from the dust-dry ruins of Shandystone,”

“Virgo is the only female figure among the constellations of the zodiac.  It is also one of the oldest constellations and has assumed the identity of just about every important female deity since history was recorded.”

Just Maid, in some ancient astronomy, Virgo was seen as holding the Scales of Libra.  So the Just Maid could be a reference to the Moonmaid holding the Scales of Justice.

And in Gaelic, the name for Virgo is maighdean, and the word for Libra is meidhe,  and maighdean also means “beheading instrument” so the idea of the Just Maid being a sword might come from that, and it is another celestial sword reference.

 

 

The Crone’s Lantern is the constellation Corvus

NGC 4361 is a large planetary nebula located in the centre of the constellation. Its shape is similar to that of a dim elliptical galaxy. I think this is the “Golden Haze” of the Crone’s Lantern.

 

“Davos could see familiar stars. . .  there the Crone's Lantern, four bright stars that enclosed a golden haze.

 

“the Crone, who had let the first raven into the world when she peered through the door of death”

 

In Celtic astronomy the constellation corvus is Bran/the crow, or the soul of Bran.

I think this is a play on words between “crone” and “corone”.  The carrion crow is Corvus corone

 

“The Crone is very wise and old,
and sees our fates as they unfold.
She lifts her lamp of shining gold,
to lead the little children.”

 

“Lastly she turned to the Crone, whose statues often showed her with a lamp in one hand. "Guide me, wise lady," she prayed. "Show me the path I must walk, and do not let me stumble in the dark places that lie ahead."

 

“the Crone, whose golden lamp showed men the way through life.”

 

“the ancient crone closed her single eye, the better to peer into the future” “Even the mightiest of khals bowed to the wisdom and authority of the dosh khaleen.”

 

other crones include the Ghost of High Heart, Old Nan, Maggy the Frog who see the future

 

“Identified with the crow (genus corvus) and with a raven, a bird sacred to Apollo.”

 

“John H. Rogers observed that Hydra signified Ningishzida, the god of the underworld in the Babylonian compendium MUL.APIN. He proposed that Corvus and Crater (along with Hydra) were death symbols and marked the gate to the underworld.”

“Corvus and Crater also featured in the iconography of Mithraism, which is thought to have been of middle-eastern origin before spreading into Ancient Greece and Rome.”

“Corvus is associated with the myth of Apollo and his lover Coronis (“crow” in Greek) the Lapith. Coronis had been unfaithful to Apollo; when he learned this information from a pure white crow, he turned its feathers black in a fit of rage. Another legend associated with Corvus is that a crow stopped on his way to fetch water for Apollo, to eat figs. Instead of telling the truth to Apollo, he lied and said that a snake, Hydra, kept him from the water, while holding a snake in his talons as proof. Apollo, realizing this was a lie, flung the crow (Corvus), cup (Crater), and snake (Hydra) into the sky. He further punished the wayward bird by ensuring it would forever be thirsty, both in real life and in the heavens, where the Cup is just out of reach.”

 

Bloodraven is a manifestation of the Crone.  The Crone peered through the door of death and let the first Raven through.  The word corone sounds like crone.  Saturn is called Cronus, and its element in alchemy is lead,--and her light leads the way.  plumb means “lead” in Latin, and one of Bloodraven’s alter egos is Maynard Plumm.

 

Coronis was one of the seven maidens to be sacrificed to the Minotaur.

Also known by the asterism the Sail.

 

 

The King’s Crown/Cradle is Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown

 

“Corona Borealis is among the smaller constellations, yet it is renowned for it beautiful shape, which actually resembles a crown.  This circlet—not quite complete—of 3rd and 4th magnitude stars has been recognized by many different civilizations worldwide, with several delightful legends to explain it. 

Classically this is the crown of Ariadne.  Ariadne was the daughter of Minos, king of Crete.  Every year Minos levied a tribute on Athens, requiring the athe city-state send him seven each of its most beautiful maidens and youths to sacrifice to the Minotaur, the monster—half man—half bull—that lived beneath the palace of Knossos in the infamous labyrinth, a maze from which no one could escape.  One year Theseus, so of the king of Athens, was among the youths.  When Ariaden saw him she fell in love and secretly gave him a sword and a ball of string.  Theseus unwound the string as he went in the Labyrinth, slew the Minotaur with the sword, and found his way out by following the string again. 

Theseus fled Crete with Ariadne, and on their way to Athens the couple stopped at the island of Naxos.  For some reason—the poets differ on this point—Theseus there abandoned Ariadne, who wept for her lost love.  The god Dionysus in human form but wearing a crown, found her and he, too, fell in love.  She refused to marry him, saying she was fed up with mortal men.  Dionysus told her he was a god, but she did not believe him, whereupon he took of his crown and flung it into the sky.  There it jewels began to sparkle as stars, forming Corona Borealis, a tribute to Ariadne. 

To one Native American tribe, the Shawnee, Corona Borealis was a circle of star maidens dancing in the sky.

To the Arabs, these stars formed a cracked bowl or platter.—coronis can refer to “a vessel with raised ends, like a crescent”

 

There are seven stars in Corona Borealis, and recall that “coronis” means “crow”—King Crow should wear the King’s Crown.

 

“The Faith taught that the Seven themselves had once walked the hills of Andalos in human form. ‘The Father reached his hand into the heavens and pulled down seven stars,’ Tyrion recited from memory, ‘and one by one he set them on the brow of Hugor of the Hill to make a glowing crown.’ ”

 

Corona Borealis has seven stars that are a glowing crown.

 

“There to the west, a sign had been seen: seven stars, gleaming in the grey dawn sky. "  Corona borealis has seven stars and can be seen at dawn in the western sky in July.

 

“An old legend told in Pentos claims that the Andals slew the swan maidens who lured travelers to their deaths in the Velvet Hills that lie to the east of the Free City. A hero whom the Pentoshi singers call Hukko led the Andals at that time, and it is said that he slew the seven maids not for their crimes but instead as sacrifice to his gods. There are some maesters who have noted that Hukko may well be a rendering of the name of Hugor. But even more so than in the Seven Kingdoms, ancient legends from the east must be distrusted.”

 

Maidens being sacrificed parallels the myth of the Minotaur, Hugel means hill in german,

 

 

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I like the idea, although the obvious thing that jumps out at me is that in this analysis Mars is not the warrior, and while I can see what you're going for, the Mars = war association is so definitive that it's hard to get past. Is there any way it could be reconfigured such that Mercury is the Smith and Mars the Warrior?

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The Horned Lord/Stallion is Pegasus and Andromeda.  Together they look like a horse galloping or rearing on it hind legs, or viewed backward, like a horned animal (with no front legs).  The Audubon Guide shows the two constellations connected.

“Jon sat between two merlons with only a scarecrow for company and watched the Stallion gallop up the sky. Or was it the Horned Lord?”

 

“and he could see the Stallion rearing”  “the Stallion was the Horned Lord”

 

“Pegasus, the Winged Horse, in Greco-Roman mythology Pegasus was a horse born from the blood of the Gorgon Medusa.  When Perseus severed the head of the hideous Medusa, drops of her blood fell into the sea, mixing with seafoam, and Pegasus sprang forth.  Poseidon god of the sea, is sometimes said to be Pegasus’ father.  Pegasus is always depicted as white. . . Pegaus was befriended by the youth Bellerophon, who was commanded to slay the dreadful Chimera, a fire-breathing monster with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a dragon.  With the help of Pegasus, Bellerophon killed the beast, and he and Pegasus went on to perform other labors.  Bellerophon eventually succumbed to the sin of hubris, and he went so far as to try to ride Pegasus to MountOlympus to join the gods.  Outraged, Zeus sent a gadfly to sting Pegasus, who bucked and threw Bellerophon.  The youth plummeted to the Earth and spent the rest of his days wandering, lame and blinded.  Pegasus did join the gods in the sky, where we see him today.”

 

Lml thinks the Horned Lord is Taurus, but Jaime wouldn’t be able to see Taurus and Virgo at the same time, but you can see Pegasus and Virgo at the same time.

 

 

 

The Shadowcat is Leo, the Lion

 

The Shadow cat’s fur is black with white stripes.  In ancient Middle Eastern astronomy Leo was a lion, in Incan lore it was a springing puma.  In India it was called the dark lion. Its brightest star is Regulus (“little king”) or Cor Leonis is the “lion’s heart” and has long been associated with things mighty and regal (also called Basiliskos,).  Being a zodiac constellation on the ecliptic, Mars passes through Leo.  Azor Ahai plunging a sword into the heart of a Lion, Mars launching a red comet in the direction of Cor Leonis while in the constellation Leo.

 

Tyrion wears a shadowskin cloak, and he is a little lion.  Casterly Rock is lion-shaped and is described as casting shadows. 

 

 

 

The Ghost might be Cancer, the crab. 

 

In Welsh, gwyll means “ghost” and gwyllt  means “cancer”

 

One of the least conspicuous and dimmest constellations, in Chinese astronomy, 4 of the stars of Cancer make up the Ghost asterism Guǐ Su.  “Cancer was often considered the ‘Dark Sign’, quaintly described as black and without eyes.”  In the Egyptian it was the Scarab, the sacred emblem of immortality. In Babylonia the constellation was known as MUL.AL.LUL, a name which can refer to both a crab and a snapping turtle. There also appears to be a strong connection between the Babylonian constellation and ideas of death and a passage to the underworld.

 

The Ghost could be Bootes, which is abbreviated “Boo” in the Audubon manual.

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4 minutes ago, Alester Florent said:

I like the idea, although the obvious thing that jumps out at me is that in this analysis Mars is not the warrior, and while I can see what you're going for, the Mars = war association is so definitive that it's hard to get past. Is there any way it could be reconfigured such that Mercury is the Smith and Mars the Warrior?

"the red wanderer that septons preached was sacred to their Smith up here was called the Thief."

The Smith/Thief is Mars, the red planet.

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The Milky Way

 

“Do you see the white one, Quentyn? That is Nymeria's star, burning bright, and that milky band behind her, those are ten thousand ships.”

 

The milky band is the Milky Way, and Nymeria’s star is either Canopus or Sirius, those are the two brightest stars in the night sky, and they are near the Milky Way.  Canopus is a better fit because it is part of the ship constellation Argo Navis.  Canopus was the navigator for the fleet of Menelaus King of Sparta in the Iliad.  Canopus is also the name of a ruined Egyptian port in the Nile delta, which parallels Nymeria and her people abandoning their homeland. 

The phrase “a nimeri” in Romanian means “to come, to find oneself, to get somewhere, to guess, to happen, to hit, to succeed”

 

Stars are ships that mythical figures travel in across space.

 

The Galley is Vela, the Sail of Argo Navis. 

 

Argo was a galley sailed by Jason and the Argonauts on their quest for the Golden Fleece.   Others say the constellation was the first ship ever to sail, while others claim it was the ship that carried the Greek warrior Menelaus, husband of Helen, home from the Trojan War.  The Egyptians said Argo was the boat that carried Isis and Osiris during a global deluge.”

This constellation is far to the south, and at mid-northern latitudes never fully rises; but its brightest star Canopus, is one of the brightest stars in the sky.  It can be seen near the southern horizon, at least briefly, at all points south of latitude 38 north.   

Canopus is one the principal sighting stars used by modern spacecraft for celestial navigation.

Sails westward along “the river of the Milky Way”

 

Canopus is Nymeria’s Star

“Do you see the white one, Quentyn? That is Nymeria's star, burning bright, and that milky band behind her, those are ten thousand ships.”

 

The milky band is the Milky Way, and Nymeria’s star is Canopus.  Argo sails along the Milky Way.  Canopus was the navigator for the fleet of Menelaus King of Sparta in the Iliad.  Canopus is also the name of a ruined Egyptian port in the Nile delta, which parallels Nymeria and her people abandoning their homeland. 

 

In Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, it is suggested that the Sithi came to Earth guided by Ruyan the Navigator, and when they arrived at Earth they burned the ships and were stuck here.   The story of Nymeria directly parallels this story.

 

Argo Navis is a celestial ship, Canopus is a star used by spacecraft for celestial navigation. 

 

 

The Swan is Cygnus, the swan.

 


 

Although not mentioned in the text, Cetus, the Sea Monster features the star Mira (“wonderful”) in its neck.  One of the stars in Cetus is Diphda, which means “second frog” 

 

And the constellation Volans or Volantis, is the Flying Fish.

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Constellations Jaime sees:

“Jaime lay on his back afterward, staring at the night sky, trying not to feel the pain that snaked up his right arm every time he moved it. The night was strangely beautiful. The moon was a graceful crescent, and it seemed as though he had never seen so many stars. The King's Crown was at the zenith, and he could see the Stallion rearing, and there the Swan. The Moonmaid, shy as ever, was half-hidden behind a pine tree. How can such a night be beautiful? he asked himself. Why would the stars want to look down on such as me?”

 

Corona borealis/King’s Crown is at the zenith, and there is Virgo/Moonmaid, and the Pegasus/Stallion, and Cygnus/Swan.  In the Guidebook, Pegasus is hiding behind a tree instead of the Moonmaid.   

 

 

Constellations Davos sees:

“Davos could see familiar stars. There was the Galley, sailing west; there the Crone's Lantern, four bright stars that enclosed a golden haze. The clouds hid most of the Ice Dragon, all but the bright blue eye that marked due north.”

 

 

Constellations Dunk sees:

“There were stars in the sky as well, more stars than any man could ever hope to count, even if he lived to be as old as King Jaehaerys. Dunk need only lift his eyes to find familiar friends: the Stallion and the Sow, the King's Crown and the Crone's Lantern, the Galley, Ghost, and Moonmaid. But there were clouds to the north, and the blue eye of the Ice Dragon was lost to him, the blue eye that pointed north.”

 

He lists 8 constellations, but if the Stallion is Pegasus only 7 of the 8 are visible at one time, but if the Stallion is Taurus, all 8 are visible.  –but he was just listing constellations he knew, not necessarily ones he was seeing. (Coronis and Corvus are in alphabetical order, so are Vela and Virgo

 

 


 

So, what conclusions can we draw from this?  I think Planetos is Earth.  12 zodiac constellations, 12 moon turns to a year.  North star Vega from 14,000 years ago.  The constellations are only thinly disguised versions of our own, their attributes and positions taken straight out of an astronomy guide book.  The astronomy matches up almost perfectly with Earth’s, right down to the retrograde motion of Mars.   Planetos is Earth from 14,000 years ago. 

 

 

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57 minutes ago, Fun Guy from Yuggoth said:

The Planets and the Stranger

 

 

I think the gods in Faith of the Seven are the planets like in Greek and Roman mythology, the Greeks treated Venus Morningstar and Venus Evenstar as separate gods, Eosphorus and Hesperus, and I think George adopted that idea

  1. the Warrior is Mercury; ---a Merc  is a warrior for hire,  because it's orbit is fast Mercury is quicksilver in Alchemy, mercurial means "to have a volatile temperament" like a warrior
  2. the Maiden is Venus Morningstar; ---the brightest planet, Aphrodite is a maiden, rises in morning, represents youth and beauty and love, (venus means "beautiful" in Latin) and is a fertility goddess, is Lemon colored, in alchemy its metal is copper and Aphrodite has red hair
  3. the Mother is Venus Eveningstar; ---the Mother is a fertility goddess, and the Mother is the Maiden later in life after she has fulfilled her role as fertility goddess, but still bright and beautiful.
  4. the Smith is Mars; ---in Hindi the word for "Mars, red, blood" is right next to the word for "smith, forge"  lohit, lohar    In alchemy, Mars and its symbol, a stylized shield and sword, were used to represent the element iron.  (Mars is important to Martin because Mars is called Mairt  in Gaelic.)
  5. the Father is Jupiter; ---the word Jupiter  means "sky father" in Latin, its metal is tin is alchemy (stannus means "tin")
  6. the Crone is Saturn; ---Saturn is Cronos in Greek, it is the slowest visible planet, its metal is lead and the Crone's Lantern "leads the way"
  7. the Stranger is a black planet that is wanderer from far places;  (Planet X, Aex  means "goat" in Latin and Greek, so the Planet Aex is Yuggoth) ---The God of Death, is an outcast, unknown and unknowable, without a regular orbit.  The other planets have defined genders, but the Stranger is both male and female because it is the Black Goat Baphomet, which is a hermaphrodite,  and the Stranger is more and less than human and Baphomet is a half-human/half-goat god, and Baphomet in his classic depictions is twice associated with a black planet--he is pointing at a black moon and he is sitting on a black moon (very reminiscent of Satan's infernal council by John Martin, where Satan is sitting on a black orb)  and the Stranger is a black oval with stars for eyes.

 

The Stranger

The word "occult" means "hidden, concealed, secret" and in astronomy it means "one heavenly body (as the moon or a planet) hiding another (as a star, or a satellite) from view, by passing in front of it"   And the Occult is the worship of Baphomet, the Black Goat, and the Black Goat causes eclipses.  I have posted previously that the God they worship at the Church of Starry Wisdom is the Black Goat/the Stranger.  

In the World of Ice and Fire, all the maps of Westeros have these little glyphs on them that depict a partially occulted/eclipsed black sphere, a goat's horn, a depiction of a shadow, all inside a bell.  I think these are drawing our attention to the Shadow planet. 

Yuggoth partially comes from the Welsh word for "shadow" ysgod,   Maester Luwin was an astronomer who made "shadow maps" --that is, star charts that show the track of something occulting the stars.  lliwen  means "goat" in Welsh and luaineach  means "wandering" in Gaelic and luighe  means "cauldron, kettle" and  luan  means "moon"  and  "Judgment Day" and  llewen  means "focus"--Luwin was mapping the movements of the Stranger, the wandering black moon as it occulted known stars on his star chart.  And in The Whisperer in Darkness, part of the plot is that the fungi from Yuggoth will telepathically get Earth's astronomers to discover the Black Goat / the Shadow with their telescopes.

 

 

In Lovecraft's stories, Nyarlathotep ("the Black Stone") is called the "mad, faceless god" and it is another name for Yuggoth / the Black Goat / Shub Niggurath which means "wandering/mad Black Goat"  so the idea that the black wandering planet is known as a "faceless god" because it has no visible surface--it is hooded, or concealed.

 

And in the story that introduced the Church of Starry Wisdom, the shrine to the Black Goat/Nyarlathotep ("the black stone") is seven-sided and everything is in multiples of seven.  And the Stranger is one of the Seven, and is the seventh planet.  Because in Welsh the word for seven is saith /seith, and the word for Satan is sathan.  The Seventh Planet is Satan.  And one of the names of the Black Goat is Yog Sothoth, which is "Yuggoth" with "saith / sath" in the middle.  And in The Dunwich Horror, Yog Sothoth is an invisible moving mountain that tramples everything in its path, and sathr means "to trample" and Baphomet is a satyr.  satyr ~ sath ~ sathr ~ saith    Cthulhu is also a "mountain that walks" and cwth  means "goat"
 

In Arthur Machen's the Great God Pan, there is a hidden world parallel to ours, and to glimpse it is "to see the Great God Pan" and to see it destroys your mind.  hwdwl  means "stark mad" and hwrdd means "goat" and hoedus  means "goat" in Latin, and I think Hodor saw the Black Goat and lost his mind and he has been trying to tell us what he sawhudiwr means "deceiver" in Welsh and hudwy means "phantom, delusive vision" and hudd-- means "shade/shading/covering" and "darkening over" and hwdwg  means "bugbear"/"hobgoblin"/"object of dread"

 

We are told that Planetos used to have two moons, and one cracked during an eclipse and gave birth to dragons.  I think this idea comes from Jack Vance's Dying Earth series, where there is an invisible second moon that dragon-like alien creatures came from.  And from Jack Vance's Dragon Masters, where a planet with a very eccentric orbit comes close enough to Earth that dragons can land on our planet and they terrorize and enslave humans.  Vance was probably inspired by Lovecraft's Yuggoth.

 

 

The Stranger's name

So, I think its clear that George has adopted the mythology of Lovecraft's wandering black planet Yuggoth, and I was just browsing the Welsh dictionary and I think I found the origin for the black planet Yuggoth.

(and sorry in advance, Lovecraft was super racist, and just to be clear I am not endorsing his views, I am just reporting on how he came up with his names)

 

 

pellenigwr means "stranger"  and pellen  means "a round mass, a ball"  so the implication that "the Stranger" is a "black sphere"  [Pretty much everything related to Yuggoth follows this racist naming scheme: Shub Niggurath (means "wandering Black Goat" in Gaelic), and  Nyarlathotep (neyros  means "black" and lithos means "stone" in Greek)

pellynig  means "far-wandering"  and the word "planet" comes from the Greek which means "wanderer"

pell  means "periphery of a circle" and Yuggoth was at the rim of the solar system in the Whisperer in Darkness and pellddrych means "telescope" and Yuggoth is discovered by telescope

 

 

So the idea of a wanderer from far places, that is called "the Stranger" that causes the Long Night when it eclipses the sun is all directly taken from Lovecraft.  As in Lovecraft's the Tree on the Hill, the Black Goat Yuggoth caused an Endless Night on Earth during the Year of the Black Goat, when demons will torment mankind in absolute darkness.

[Pelennor Fields from Lord of the Rings comes from this same root, as they are far-extending fields around Minas Tirith, as pellynu / pellynol means "afar off, far-extending"]

 

 

 

Earth's Shadow

And the name Yuggoth comes from the Welsh:

gwth / ysgwth / yscuth / ysgeth  which means "goat" [as in the Black Goat Baphomet, which is always depicted alongside a black planet] and is associated with the Stranger

ysgod  "shadow"  [is-god, and the Shadow is god]

ysgodogion means "men of the shades, hobgoblins, black devils, Scottish" [and the Starks are Scottish] 

ysgodog means "shadowing, sheltering" 

ygoed means "hollow"  and ysgoeg means "empty"  [Yuggoth is a hollow planet]

ygoth means "to purge" [and Yuggoth will purge the Earth in the year of the Black Goat/Endless Night/Long Night/Judgment Day]

ysgud means "shield, tarian"

 

 

Yuggoth is the Shadow, Earth's Shadow, and the Others are the "men of the shadow" who are sheltering under its shadow in permanent darkness.  Ghost Grass lives under the Shadow, and is it a metaphor for the White Walkers; Ghost = Shade/Shadow, Grass = Sward/Blades, Ghost Grass = Shadow Swords.  gwellt  [ghoul] means "grass" in Welsh

 

 

 

 

The Wanderer (from far places)

One of Lovecraft's disciples was Fritz Leiber, and he expanded the idea of Yuggoth coming to Earth and wrote a book called the Wanderer  where the premise is that a planet-sized spaceship has visited Earth many times in the past, and it has a changing design on its face so as it rotates it looks different, and thus its appearance was incorporated in human mythology variously as Fenrir the wolf the moon-swallower, a Cthulhu-like octopus, a Tyrannosaurus Rex/dragon, a Hooded Man, a Yin-Yang symbol, a Cross or Planet X, a Shield, etc.  

On this visit it accidentally cracks the moon in half like an egg and causes massive destruction on Earth, and the moon fragments fall to Earth as meteors.  And at the end of the story another even bigger planet-sized spaceship shows up in pursuit of the Wanderer, and its hull is polished gunmetal grey armor, and is compared to a mirror, and it is called the Stranger.  

The Stranger has come to punish the Wanderer for disturbing our planet and destroying our moon, and they have an epic laser battle, then they both leave.

 

 

In Bran's coma dream he sees a man with hounds head armor (the Wanderer) and a giant hollow stone giant (the Stranger) eclipse the sun.

And the myth of Serwyn of the Mirror Shield, cerwyn means "vat, tub"--a hollow metallic vessel, ysgud  means "shield", and the Stranger has a mirrored hull, and in Gaelic, sgath / sgail  means "mirror" and "eclipse"

Well done! And very insightful!

This has nothing to do with you at all and you're right about the Smith=Mars/Warrior=Mercury comparison, but I would've attributed the Warrior to Mars and the Smith to Mercury:

  • the Warrior to Mars for obvious reasons and for the parallel sake. Venus and Mars are complimentary as are the Warrior and the Maiden
  • the Smith to Mercury in that Mercury in Roman mythology is a helper/messenger god that is always busy working somewhere and that Smith actively plays a support role for the other gods, particularly for the Warrior and the Maiden.

That's nothing against you. That's more of a negative commentary towards Martin though.

But still very good job. I love astronomy and astrology so this is cool.

It's also worth mentioning that in every mythos outside of Greco-Roman that I've encountered, Saturn is feminine. In Vedic astronomy, Saturn is called Shani, which has a become a common name for girls. From my understanding, Shani means "slow" and "calculating" which is what Saturn is: it's the slowest and dimmest planet that one can reliably see with the naked eye**. Saturn is also universally associated with old age as well.

 

 

@Craving Peaches has this one brilliant theory in that the Seven are actually aliens. And I have a slightly different theory of how the Others are aliens of a sort and how the Long Night is somehow caused when a planet (probably the Planet X represented by the Stranger) passes in between the Sun and the Earth.

 

 

**You can see Ceres and Uranus with the naked eye but only occasionally and not so clearly. Uranus, in particular, is such a slow-moving that the ancestors thought it was just another fixed star instead of being a planet.

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29 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

I thought someone else already came up with that? Or am I actually the creator?

I never heard of anything like that anywhere before you wrote about it

27 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

Speaking of astronomy and related matters I think the 'Flat Earth' theory is very boring and my own 'Heliocentrism is a lie' theory is much more exciting. However I am also a fan of the 'Counter-Earth' theory...

What's counter-earth theory?

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17 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

 In Vedic astronomy, Saturn is called Shani, which has a become a common name for girls. From my understanding, Shani means "slow" and "calculating" which is what Saturn is: it's the slowest and dimmest planet that one can reliably see with the naked eye**. Saturn is also universally associated with old age as well.

Shani rides a crow also, so that is another crone/corone wordplay.

 

With regards to Mars being the Smith/Thief, its is part of a much larger theory incorporating H.G Wells' War of the Worlds, and Clark Ashton Smith's the Seedling of Mars

In short, in the Seedling of Mars, Mars is covered by a single plant that wraps all the way around the planet, and its central hub is a God's Eye and it shoots Red Comets to other planets to colonize other planets.  Which is very similar to the plot of Vulthoom, where a subterranean devil plant landed on Mars as a falling star, and wants to launch itself to Earth and dominate humanity.

And in War of the Worlds, the Martians build a gigantic cannon and fire red comets at Earth to take over our planet, and Mars is red because it is covered in a red creeping plants.

 

In Old Norse Mars is called the Bloody Star, and i think Mars generates the Red Comets which are Bleeding Stars.  And I think that in ASoIaF, Mars is red because it is covered with weirwoods.  Which launch themselves to other planets, like the Volcryn, and the Greywater fungus. 

And those definitions link The Thief with the color red, and Mars is the Thief.  I have theorized that Mars is red because it is covered in weirwoods.  Weirwood leaves are red hands, and red-handed = Thief.  And a thief steals ~ steels.

And Mars is the Smith, and in Hindi lohit means "red, Mars" and loh means "blacksmith" and lohi means "dawn" and loha means "iron, weapon" and loharin means "a smith's wife"

 

And in Vulthoom the Martians are called Ahai, and they are green men, and Vulthoom has three-headed dragons.  So I think the whole legend about Azor Ahai and Lightbringer is really about Mars launching Red Comets during the Long Night.  The first into water ~ in the constellation Aquarius.  The second into the Lion's Heart, Cor Leonis in Leo.  The third into Virgo's Heart which made it all the way to Earth and hit the Stranger.

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2 hours ago, Fun Guy from Yuggoth said:

I think the gods in Faith of the Seven are the planets like in Greek and Roman mythology, the Greeks treated Venus Morningstar and Venus Evenstar as separate gods, Eosphorus and Hesperus, and I think George adopted that idea

  1. the Warrior is Mercury; ---a Merc  is a warrior for hire,  because it's orbit is fast Mercury is quicksilver in Alchemy, mercurial means "to have a volatile temperament" like a warrior
  2. the Maiden is Venus Morningstar; ---the brightest planet, Aphrodite is a maiden, rises in morning, represents youth and beauty and love, (venus means "beautiful" in Latin) and is a fertility goddess, is Lemon colored, in alchemy its metal is copper and Aphrodite has red hair
  3. the Mother is Venus Eveningstar; ---the Mother is a fertility goddess, and the Mother is the Maiden later in life after she has fulfilled her role as fertility goddess, but still bright and beautiful.
  4. the Smith is Mars; ---in Hindi the word for "Mars, red, blood" is right next to the word for "smith, forge"  lohit, lohar    In alchemy, Mars and its symbol, a stylized shield and sword, were used to represent the element iron.  (Mars is important to Martin because Mars is called Mairt  in Gaelic.)
  5. the Father is Jupiter; ---the word Jupiter  means "sky father" in Latin, its metal is tin is alchemy (stannus means "tin")
  6. the Crone is Saturn; ---Saturn is Cronos in Greek, it is the slowest visible planet, its metal is lead and the Crone's Lantern "leads the way"
  7. the Stranger is a black planet that is wanderer from far places;  (Planet X, Aex  means "goat" in Latin and Greek, so the Planet Aex is Yuggoth) ---The God of Death, is an outcast, unknown and unknowable, without a regular orbit.  The other planets have defined genders, but the Stranger is both male and female because it is the Black Goat Baphomet, which is a hermaphrodite,  and the Stranger is more and less than human and Baphomet is a half-human/half-goat god, and Baphomet in his classic depictions is twice associated with a black planet--he is pointing at a black moon and he is sitting on a black moon (very reminiscent of Satan's infernal council by John Martin, where Satan is sitting on a black orb)  and the Stranger is a black oval with stars for eyes.

 

I think this is a fun topic, and I've seen it discussed here before, but happy to see it revisited.

I agree that there is a connection between the Seven of ASoIaF, the seven wanderers, and the classical seven "planets", or wandering Stars.

However, those seven are classically; the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

In my opinion these would probably line up as:

Mother - Moon

Maiden - Venus

Crone - Saturn

Father - Jupiter

Warrior - Sun

Smith - Mars

Stranger - Mercury

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The Red Comet

 

When Halley's comet came by in 1986 a bunch of comet books were published, and I have a few of them.    One is called Ice and Fire, and Carl Sagan's Comet shows a Reddish Comet with the word Rag on it.  And Rag means "song"  And several comet illustrations are flaming swords. 

Several mention the Tunguska Event where in Northern Siberia a comet exploded midair and flattened a huge part of forest.  This is very similar to the Hardhome Event, where something exploded underground and blew up the town, and opened the mouth to hell.  I think this was a failed Red Comet launch, and that it burst midair and flattened the area.

I just learned that in Welsh hwrdd means  "to push, to thrust" and "to ram" [~goat]  right above that hwr means "to take off"  which is might be a reference to the Color Out of Space, where the Black Goat launches itself into space as a meteor.

And one of the usages of goat is "a fiery meteor" 

and hwm means "to sink"

hwrdd + hwm

Hardhome was a smaller version of the Doom of Valyria, where the whole country exploded into the air, and what was left sunk under the waves.  Which is a reference to Lord of the Rings where Valinor/Avallone got launched into space and Numenor sunk beneath the waves.  Which is in turn a reference to the Celtic Otherworld, which is the Land of Always Summer, and the Land Beneath the Waves. 

 

Elio and Linda did an interview where they called Hardhome a "magical Chernobyl" --that is to say, a nuclear explosion. 

And Chernobyl means "wormwood", and Nagadaun means "wormwood", and Mormont means "wormwood" and the Red Comet is Mormont's Torch.

And I think the Weirwoods excrete wildfire and store it in underground reservoirs in order to launch themselves into space.

 

And I just finished reading Baphomets' Meteor, where Baphomet is an alien that gives the Knights Templar nuclear bombs.  And the cover shows Baphomet handing a black sphere to the Templars.

 

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12 minutes ago, Fun Guy from Yuggoth said:

I just learned that in Welsh hwrdd means  "to push, to thrust" and "to ram" [~goat]  right above that hwr means "to take off"  which is might be a reference to the Color Out of Space, where the Black Goat launches itself into space as a meteor.

And one of the usages of goat is "a fiery meteor" 

and hwm means "to sink"

hwrdd + hwm

Ohhh, I just got it, in The Color Out of Space, when the Black Goat launches into space at the end, one little piece fails to escape Earth's gravity and falls back to Earth,  

The goat launches -->  hwrdd

and part sinks back down --> hwm

 

And several words that begin with cwl-- mean "to drop" and "to flag" and "faulty"

 

And also Color Out of Space is also a Black Planet reference, because callawr  means "kettle, caldron" in Welsh.  and callawydd means "wandering"  and the Stranger is a wandering hollow metal vessel.

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I just accidentally figured out where the Harry Potter terms "parseltongue" and "parselmouth" came from.  I was listening to the Dunwich Horror today and he mentioned Wilbur having a second mouth on his anus.

In Harry Potter they are witches, and witches greeted the Black Goat by giving him the Osculum Infame, they kissed his anus

In Welsh parsel  means "a butt" and the word goat is synonymous with "to butt" in many languages--which is probably where the term came from in the first place.

 

"parsel mouth" means "mouth to butt"  and the Satan worshiping Slytherins can speak it.  The Osculum Infame/"Parsel Mouth" is how the Satan worshipers greet their master, The Serpent. 

 

JK Rowling said that parselmouth was an old fashioned term for cleft lip, and parsel does mean "marked" and Harry is marked and he is a parselmouth.

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1 hour ago, BlackLightning said:

I never heard of anything like that anywhere before you wrote about it

Oh, I'm quite pleased then if I did come up with it.

1 hour ago, BlackLightning said:

What's counter-earth theory?

There is another earth directly opposite us on the other side of the sun.

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