Well, so much for the show not having huge book spoilers. Egads. So that’s how you make an Other!  …maybe. One thing is for sure – we already knew the Others had something to do with weirwoods, and with the children of the forest. In this sense, the show simply confirmed what has been telegraphed. I’ll talk about the black stone inserted into the Other at the bottom, but first, have a look at what I am talking about.

The Others are tied to two things via symbolism: the children of the forest, and weirwood trees. My favorite line is Cotter Pyke talking to Sam Tarly, incredulous at the tale of Sam slaying an Other:

“Sam the Slayer!” he said, by way of greeting. “Are you sure you stabbed an Other, and not some child’s snow knight?”

This isn’t starting well. “It was the dragonglass that killed it, my lord,” Sam explained feebly. (ASOS, Sam)

Some child’s snow knight. That’s what the Others are. Apparently, there’s a rumor of this in Ironborn folklore:

Asha saw only trees and shadows, the moonlit hills and the snowy peaks beyond. Then she realized that trees were creeping closer. “Oho,” she laughed, “these mountain goats have cloaked themselves in pine boughs.” The woods were on the move, creeping toward the castle like a slow green tide. She thought back to a tale she had heard as a child, about the children of the forest and their battles with the First Men, when the greenseers turned the trees to warriors. (ADWD, The Wayward Bride)

Trees as warriors is an idea we see all over the place in the books, with my favorite being Jon Snow perceiving the trees as warriors waiting to storm the Fist of the Fist Men right before the Fist is attacked by wights and probably Others:

The trees stood beneath him, warriors armored in bark and leaf, deployed in their silent ranks awaiting the command to storm the hill. Black, they seemed … it was only when his torchlight brushed against them that Jon glimpsed a flash of green. (ACOK, Jon)

And again, this is right before the Others launch their wight attack on the Fist.

The Others also have a tree-related nickname which isn’t used as often:

The horn blew thrice long, three long blasts means Others. The white walkers of the wood, the cold shadows, the monsters of the tales that made him squeak and tremble as a boy, riding their giant ice-spiders, hungry for blood …

White Walkers of the Wood.

The term “white shadow” or “pale shadow” is used to describe the Others many times in the books, including twice in the prologue of AGOT. Interestingly, there’s one occasion when a weirwood is described as a pale shadow, just like an Other, and it happens when a tree is frozen in ice:

Outside, the night was white as death; pale thin clouds danced attendance on a silver moon, while a thousand stars watched coldly. He could see the humped shapes of other huts buried beneath drifts of snow, and beyond them the pale shadow of a weirwood armored in ice. (ADWD, Prologue)

Dany’s dream of slaying Others on dragon back at the Trident involves warriors armored in ice, which everyone takes for the Others. So a tree which is a pale shadow and armored in ice has two references to the Others, who wear ice armor.

The Others’ bones are pale and shiny like milkglass, and their flesh milky white; while their swords shine with faint moonlight:

The Other slid forward on silent feet. In its hand was a longsword like none that Will had ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge- on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost- light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor. (AGOT, prologue)

The Other slid gracefully from the saddle to stand upon the snow. Sword-slim it was, and milky white. (ASOS, Sam)

Milk and moonlight and a faint glow – these things are associated with the Others… and the weirwood face known as the Black Gate:

It was white weirwood, and there was a face on it.

A glow came from the wood, like milk and moonlight, so faint it scarcely seemed to touch anything beyond the door itself, not even Sam standing right before it. The face was old and pale, wrinkled and shrunken. It looks dead. Its mouth was closed, and its eyes; its cheeks were sunken, its brow withered, its chin sagging. If a man could live for a thousand years and never die but just grow older, his face might come to look like that.

The Others are also known as the “white walkers of the wood”

And finally, we have the prologue of AGOT, which basically spells out the whole thing, with repeated anthropomorphizations of the trees as being antagonistic to the Night’s Watch (way mar in particular) right before the confrontation with the Others:

Down below, the lordling called out suddenly, “Who goes there?” Will heard uncertainty in the challenge. He stopped climbing; he listened; he watched. The woods gave answer: the rustle of leaves, the icy rush of the stream, a distant hoot of a snow owl. The Others made no sound. Will saw movement from the corner of his eye. Pale shapes gliding through the wood. He turned his head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness. Then it was gone. Branches stirred gently in the wind, scratching at one another with wooden fingers.

Right after the shadows come through the wood, the tree is portray as humanoid with its clutching fingers. Lots more of this all through the scene:

Behind him, he heard the soft metallic slither of the lordling’s ringmail, the rustle of leaves, and muttered curses as reaching branches grabbed at his longsword and tugged on his splendid sable cloak.

I won’t quote all of them – just re-read the prologue and think about the trees as symbols for tree warriors who become Others.

In the show scene, we have a person up agains the weirwood when they are transformed by insertion of the black stone. What the show did not touch on is what role the WW really plays in Other creation – I’m talking book canon here. I suspect it has to be a skinchanger or greenseer who is transformed, perhaps a greenseer bonded to a tree. The Other would then be a kind of ghost of the tree / greenseer union.

What I want to know is: was there anything special about the human victim? Was he a skinchanger or greenseer? What role did the weirwood play?

Also, why is Night’s King so different looking than the rest of the Others? He’s got those spiky horns around his head, much like the cotf, whereas the other White Walkers do not. I have to suspect the NK is something other than a simple human transformed like the other WWs, perhaps a male cotf or some related species.

As for Bran being told to leave but also that he has to take Bloodraven’s place, the only possible answer is that he is to sit beneath the weirwood at Winterfell, probably deep in the lowest level of the crypts or something.

Also interesting was the Ironborn imagery present. We saw a resurrection and then a horny crown – tree branches are very similar to stag antlers, and can symbolize each other. I think there is some ancient horned lord creature – the Green Men on the Isle of Faces – which is related to the children. People all over Westeros remember these horny folk. The Storm Kings wear an antlered helm. What are they remembering? Garth the Green, the progenitor of many First Men houses, is taken directly from real myths of Cerrunos and the larger horned god archetype. The Gardener Kings wore crowns of vines and twigs, a livelier version of the driftwood crown. Those Gardener kings sat on a living tree throne also. The old Ironborn sit on a tree throne, the one made of Nagga’s fangs, which means weirwood, and wear tree crowns too, but the emphasis is on death. The lord of the vale sits in a weirwood throne, and the Velaryons have a driftwood throne. The Marsh Kings were chosen for their gifts of greensight, indicating that greenseers may have been kings.

In other words, I think the First Men have a collective memory of greenseer kings with horned helms or horned heads. He juxtaposition of the resurrection and driftwood crown with the horned NK and horned cotf was quite interesting, to say the least.

As for the black stone which transformed the victim, and the black obelisks surrounding that tree, I believe those are oily black stones, and in turn, I believe the oily black stone to be moon meteors from the second moon which exploded in the Dawn Age. I have theorized that these black moon meteors can be used to work dark magic, and I even postulated that these black meteors may have been used to make the Others. I can’t help but think the black stone which created the Other in the show is reference to this idea.

Now we don’t know what is the same between show and books of course, but the broad strokes should be similar, and I don’t think the answers to major things like “who is Jon’s father” and “where do the Others come from” will be different.

And creating Others is apparently accomplished by inserting a black stone into a man’s chest while he’s tied to a weirwood.

Now this is an idea I haven’t gotten into too much – I’ve been saving it for a proper episode – but I have discussed in comment threads that I believe there may be a piece of black fire moon – one of the black meteors – lodged in the hypothetical “ice moon,” which is the moon that survived and still exists. This frozen fire would be the thing which animates the forces of ice with a burning quality, as in the burning star eyes of the Others. I keep finding examples of black moon meteor symbols which become encased in ice or buried in snow and ice, and I believe it’s talking about a black meteor lodging inside the ice of the ice moon. Parallels to this idea would be black stone under the Wall, a moon meteor in the Heart of Winter… or a piece of moon meteor inside an Other.

I’m not sure if the show creators were thinking of that black stone as obsidian or not, but the fact that the tree was surrounded by spirals of black obelisks, which are definitely not obsidian, suggests some other kind of black stone being involved there. And I don’t think that it makes sense for WW to be created with obsidian if they can be killed by obsidian.

Ergo, my theory about a black fire moon meteor being lodged in the ice moon gained a lot of support when the children shoved that black stone into that dude’s chest. I’ve speculated that black moon meteors were somehow used to create the Others, and it’s REALLY damn tempting to think that’s what we just saw.

And of course, the Hodor scene was done brilliantly and was quite moving. That was really something.

So, about that episode, and Tyrion’s scene with the dragons… (if you didn’t see it, Tyrion dares to go into the dragon chamber under the pyramid, tells the dragons his story about wanting a dragon for his birthday – which was taken from the above quote, bravo –  and is able to remove the collar chains binding the dragons without being eaten).  So raise your hand if you watched that scene and thought to yourself, “that guy is a mother-bleeping Targaryen!”  I know I sure did.  I’ve always been a believer, so it’s pretty easy for me to see the dragons being friendly or at least tolerant of Tyrion as a pretty good clue pointing in that direction.  Most people took it for a sign that he would, at the least, be a dragon-rider, if not an actual Targaryen.  The show has not spent time establishing any sort of criteria about who can ride a dragon, and even in the books we don’t know for sure whether having Targaryen or Valyrian blood is absolutely necessary to bond with dragons, though it certainly seems to help and may in fact be necessary.  There is some ambiguity raised by the tale of Nettles in The Princess and the Queen – she seems to tame a dragon purely through feeding it sheep every day, however, she may have been a Targaryen descendent.

Disclaimers aside, I think it makes a lot of sense for Tyrion to be the son of Mad King Aerys and Joanna Lannister, and I think the clues for this are abundant.  I also think it makes sense for him to be a Targaryen if he is going to be a dragonrider – and I think it’s pretty clear George wants him to be a dragonrider.  After all, we know he is George’s favorite character and probably the one which contains the most of George’s own personality.  As you saw in the quote above, and as we will see in the following quotes, George has written him to have dragon dreams, dragon associations, and just plain old dragons on the brain.  It just makes too much sense.

A little earlier in the chapter cited above where Tyrion drinks firewine and hopes to dream of dragons, George hits us with another strong clue, as Tyrion thinks to himself about Illyrio’s unbelievable tales:

Next you will be offering me a suit of magic armor and a palace in Valyria.

Tyrion is a lost Targaryen princeling / Valyrian dragonlord who rides dragons through the night, has a palace in Valyria, and wears a suit of magic armor.  Got it?  Good.  Case closed. Thanks for coming everyone.

Many have noticed that the vision Moquorro sees of Tyrion snarling amidst various types of dragons may well imply that Tyrion himself is a dragon.  Have a look, and this is from A Dance with Dragons:

“Someone told me that the night is dark and full of terrors. What do you see in those flames?”

“Dragons,” Moqorro said in the Common Tongue of Westeros. He spoke it very well, with hardly a trace of accent. No doubt that was one reason the high priest Benerro had chosen him to bring the faith of R’hllor to Daenerys Targaryen. “Dragons old and young, true and false, bright and dark. And you. A small man with a big shadow, snarling in the midst of all.”

Dragons… and Tyrion. Why is Tyrion in the midst of dragons here?  He doesn’t sound like a victim, but rather more like a dragon himself: he’s got a big shadow and he snarls.  Sounds like he is a part of the great dragon dance, to me.  If nothing else, this quote indicates that Tyrion’s fate will be intertwined with various types of dragons and dragon people.

Although a lot of Tyrion’s dragon associations are found in the appropriately titled A Dance with Dragons, they actually appeared all the way back in the first book:

“What are you reading about?” he asked.

“Dragons,” Tyrion told him.

“What good is that? There are no more dragons,” the boy said with the easy certainty of youth.

“So they say,” Tyrion replied. “Sad, isn’t it? When I was your age, I used to dream of having a dragon of my own.”

“You did?” the boy said suspiciously. Perhaps he thought Tyrion was making fun of him.

“Oh, yes. Even a stunted, twisted, ugly little boy can look down over the world when he’s seated on a dragon’s back.” Tyrion pushed the bearskin aside and climbed to his feet. “I used to start fires in the bowels of Casterly Rock and stare at the flames for hours, pretending they were dragonfire. Sometimes I’d imagine my father burning. At other times, my sister.” Jon Snow was staring at him, a look equal parts horror and fascination. Tyrion guffawed. “Don’t look at me that way, bastard. I know your secret. You’ve dreamt the same kind of dreams.”

“No,” Jon Snow said, horrified. “I wouldn’t …”

This quote really stands out when you re-read it: Tyrion stares into the fires and dreams of riding dragons and burning people.  What the hell is that?  It’s the sort of behavior we’d expect from a Red Priest or a Targaryen, quite frankly.

In addition to this startling revelation of Tyrion’s childhood obsession with dragons, I think George is doing a little tricky wording thing in this passage from A Game of Thrones, taking advantage of ambiguous phrasing to imply a double meaning.  Tyrion lists two kinds of dreams that he had as a boy: dreams of riding dragons, and dreams of burning his family in dragon fire.  Then he says to Jon, “you’ve dreamt the same kinds of dreams,” without specifying which dreams he is referring to.  The reader is led to assume the meaning has to do with taking vengeance against a family that doesn’t quite accept you, as Jon and Tyrion are both outsiders amongst their family, and this is certainly the main intent of this passage – but it can also be read to imply that Jon too has dreamt of dragons.  Jon Snow is of course in all probability a secret Targaryen himself, so this interpretation would make a lot of sense.  Tyrion specifically mentions staring into the flames and seeing visions of a sort – again, very like a red priest – and this chapter ends with Jon doing the same:

One by one the company drifted off to their shelters and to sleep, all but Jon Snow, who had drawn the night’s first watch. Tyrion was the last to retire, as always. As he stepped into the shelter his men had built for him, he paused and looked back at Jon Snow. The boy stood near the fire, his face still and hard, looking deep into the flames. Tyrion Lannister smiled sadly and went to bed.

Look, it’s Jon Snow, staring into the fire and perhaps having “the same kind of dreams.” Now I’m actually not suggesting that Jon has had literal dragon dreams, as he has never mentioned any, but I think the wording here might be implying the potential shared dragon lineage between these two would-be “heads of the dragon.”  Jon does have a waking dream-like almost-vision of dragons in A Dance with Dragons, however, which we’ll get to in a moment.

But first, we need to talk about dragon dreams themselves: what they are, and what they imply.

I Dream of Dragons

The phenomena of the “dragon dream” generally refers to a dream about dragons – duh – but more specifically, it refers to the idea of a Targaryen dreaming of dragons which do not exist.  After the Targaryen dragons went extinct, members of House Targaryen continued to dream of dragons, even people who had never seen one.  Maester Aemon confides as much to us while he is on his deathbed in Braavos in a very memorable scene from A Feast for Crows:

“I remember, Sam. I still remember.”

He was not making sense. “Remember what?”

“Dragons,” Aemon whispered. “The grief and glory of my House, they were.”

“The last dragon died before you were born,” said Sam. “How could you remember them?”

“I see them in my dreams, Sam. I see a red star bleeding in the sky. I still remember red. I see their shadows on the snow, hear the crack of leathern wings, feel their hot breath. My brothers dreamed of dragons too, and the dreams killed them, every one. Sam, we tremble on the cusp of half- remembered prophecies, of wonders and terrors that no man now living could hope to comprehend … or …”

“Or?” said Sam.

“… or not.”

Or… yes!  Let’s comprehend them.  Aemon pretty much lays it out here – there’s something in that Targaryen blood which causes them to dream of dragons, even people who have never seen them.  And it’s such a visceral experience – not only seeing them, but hearing the wings cracking and seeing their shadows on the ground as they fly overhead.  Do you know what a dragon’s wings sound like?  Unless Maester Aemon has been on one of those illegal wyvern hunting expeditions you hear about in Sothoryos, I’m not sure how he would know what leathern wings sound like.  It’s pretty hard to dream of something you’ve never seen or heard in such detail.  Aemon even refers to his dreams of dragons as memories, and Martin has Sam call our attention to the strange wording and the mystery of remembering or dreaming of something you’ve never seen, just to make sure we take notice.

Aemon also dreams of the red comet, interestingly enough, which he also has not seen. This might be a clue that the red comet is tied to the magical legacy of House Targaryen, just as dragons are.  I’ve certainly proposed as much!  This is also a basic clue that comets can be dragons – notice how Aemon seamlessly mentions the red comet in the middle of his diatribe about dragons, as if it too were a dragon.  He said “I see them in my dreams, Sam.  I see a red star bleeding in the sky.  I see their shadows on the snow.” Dragons, then the red comet, then dragons again – because they are the same thing, in a certain sense.  This is old news to us now, but when Martin wrote this, nobody had caught on to the red comet / moon disaster / Long Night thing yet, so he was presumably still trying to clue people in to that.  Now that we’re on to his trail, I’m sure he’ll make the clues more cryptic from here on out (chuckle chuckle).

The line about the dragon’s shadows on the snow is really fascinating – it matches Melisandre’s vision of the dragons fighting in the snow, and the logical conclusion here would be that these are references to the dragons fighting the Others at some point, in some fashion.  Aemon may well be having a prophetic dream here without even realizing it!  I’ve never heard anyone raise this possibility, but ask yourself – why does Aemon see dragons in the snow?  When Mel sees them in the snow, it makes sense because she is at the Wall and we all know that she believes you need a dragon to fight the Others.  But we don’t really know what Aemon believes about fighting the Others and dragons, and Aemon is gone from the Wall when he has these visions.  I think he very well might have been receiving a vision of the future here, just as Melisandre probably was.

As for these dragon dreams being the grief of his house and the death of his brothers, Aemon seems to be referencing his brothers Aegon V (Egg of Dunk and Egg) and the monstrous and insane Aerion Brightflame.  King Aegon V’s obsession with dragons led to the death of himself, friends, and members of his family at Summerhall, where an attempt to hatch dragon’s eggs turned to “farce and tragedy”, while his older brother Aerion Brightflame killed himself drinking wildfire, thinking that he would transform into a dragon.  Aemon seems to be implying that both of them experienced dragon dreams, and this idea is reinforced by the following passage from A Storm of Swords.  This is Aleister Florent speaking to Davos in the dungeon of Dragonstone:

“This talk of a stone dragon … madness, I tell you, sheer madness. Did we learn nothing from Aerion Brightfire, from the nine mages, from the alchemists? Did we learn nothing from Summerhall? No good has ever come from these dreams of dragons..”

Aerion’s foolishness came from dreams of dragons in a general sense, and quite possibly in a specific sense.  There’s also a cool line about Aerion from Jaime in the bathtub scene from A Storm of Swords where he also mentions Mad King Aerys, dragons, and fire transformation:

The Targaryens never bury their dead, they burn them. Aerys meant to have the greatest funeral pyre of them all. Though if truth be told, I do not believe he truly expected to die. Like Aerion Brightfire before him, Aerys thought the fire would transform him … that he would rise again, reborn as a dragon, and turn all his enemies to ash.

Now we don’t know if Aerys specifically had dragon dreams, but it sure seems possible.  Prophetic abilities or gifts of magical sight are often thought to be tinged with madness, both with the real world concept of shamanic ecstasy and in ASOIAF and many other works of literature, and Aerys was plenty mad.  It seems quite possible his delusions about dragon transformation may hint at the same type of dragon dreams that have led so many Targaryens down the path of madness.  What’s especially interesting is how closely this statement from Jamie about Aerys matches what his daughter Daenerys actually did: being reborn in a great funeral pyre and waking dragons.

As we saw in episode four, John the Fiddler a.k.a. Daemon II Blackfyre had the gift of prophetic dreams, and dreamt of a dragon hatching at Whitewalls, though it turned out to be Egg coming into his own as a Targaryen. The poor fiddling dragon neither hatched a dragon nor transformed into a dragon… or even much of a warrior, or jouster, or leader… ok so we won’t pile on.  It didn’t go very well, suffice it to say.   As Gorghan of Old Ghis says, “prophecy will bite your prick off every time,” even when it’s true and valid.  He may never have stood a chance at sitting the iron throne, but the Fiddler most definitely dreamt of dragons which did not exist and which he had never seen.

Of course the best example of Targaryens dreaming of dragons that don’t exist yet would be Daenerys herself, who twice dreams of Drogon before his egg hatches.  Success!  Finally.  Of course Dany might have been led to perform an abomination, blood magic and human sacrifice, but hey, they hatched, right?  The dragon dreams help guide Dany’s course of action and eventually lead to her successful attempt to “call forth her children” from the pyre, just as the dragon dreams of Aegon the V, John the Fiddler, and all the rest created a longing for dragons.   The point is: dreaming of dragons is something Targaryens do.

Targaryens… and Tyrion.

Outside the litter night had fallen. Inside all was dark. Tyrion listened to Illyrio’s snores, the creak of the leather straps, the slow clop clop of the team’s ironshod hooves on the hard Valyrian road, but his heart was listening for the beat of leathern wings.

That was from that same Dance chapter we pulled from earlier, as Tyrion drifts off to sleep, full on firewine.  Later in that same chapter, Tyrion actually has a dragon dream, right ‘onscreen:’

That night Tyrion Lannister dreamed of a battle that turned the hills of Westeros as red as blood. He was in the midst of it, dealing death with an axe as big as he was, fighting side by side with Barristan the Bold and Bittersteel as dragons wheeled across the sky above them.

This dream is mostly remembered for its end, where Tyrion has two heads – one laughing, and one weeping.  I believe this is a reference to Nissa Nissa’s cry of anguish and ecstasy, since Tyrion is a moon child in the Azor Ahai reborn sense of the phrase.  The idea of Westeros itself running red with blood hearkens back to the symbolic motif of the blood tide we’ve talked so much about, the one which goes back to Mithras and his slaying of the White Bull which washes the earth in blood.  But also notable in this dream is the presence of dragons!  Tyrion has never seen a dragon, and yet he dreams of them here, and actually, all through his life.  He dreams of them frequently as a boy, as we saw in the previous quotes. Then, as an adult, he tells Jon Snow that “I seldom even dream of dragons anymore. There are no dragons.”  But even the word seldom here implies that he does still occasionally have them.  And sure enough, by book five, he’s dreaming of dragons again.  He even sees them in the clouds:

The clouds in the sky were aglow: pink and purple, maroon and gold, pearl and saffron. One looked like a dragon. Once a man has seen a dragon in flight, let him stay at home and tend his garden in content, someone had written once, for this wide world has no greater wonder. Tyrion scratched at his scar and tried to recall the author’s name. Dragons had been much in his thoughts of late.

Tyrions just seems to have dragons on the brain.  He dreams about them, he reads about them, he sees them in the clouds.   In my opinion, Tyrion’s dragon dreams and the increasing presence of dragon-related themes in his storyline are perhaps the strongest evidence that the blood of the dragon does indeed flow through his veins.

The only other characters we ever hear of dreaming of dragons have Targaryen blood, so far as I can determine.  You might recall that in the prologue of A Clash of Kings, we learn that Shireen dreams of dragons eating her.  Shireen is a Baratheon, but she inherited a bit of the dragon blood from her great grandmother, Rhaelle Targaryen, who married Stannis’s grandfather, Ormund Baratheon, so it may be that she’s turned up a bit of that Targaryen prophetic dreaming ability.

Now, Targaryens do occasionally have a more general gift of prophetic dream, which the dragon dreams seem to be but one manifestation of.  Daenys the Dreamer, author of Signs and Portents, famously dreamt of the Doom of Valyria twelve years before it occurred, giving the ancient ancestors of House Targaryen time to relocate to Dragonstone and survive the Doom.  John the Fiddler not only dreamt of a dragon hatching, but also of Dunk wearing the white armor of the Kingsguard – a thing which did come to pass years later.  While this prophetic gift is certainly not exclusive to Targaryens by any means, it does appear that the dragon dreams might be the specific province of those who contain the blood of the dragon.

Even if this isn’t a hard and fast rule, we have definitely been shown repeated instances of Targaryens who have never seen a dragon having vivid dreams of dragons which are more like memories of real experiences, so it seems likely this is a connection Martin has intended to create in the mind of the reader.  From a narrative standpoint, I just don’t think it makes sense to give a character like Tyrion repeated occurrences of dragon dreams unless he has a dragon heritage, especially in a universe where it’s been well established that dragon people dream of dragons in a prophetic way.   Sometimes, the simple answer is the right one: Tyrion probably dreams of dragons because he has Targaryen blood.

Now, about that waking dream-like thing of Jon Snow’s that I mentioned… this is Jon having a conversation with Val about Mance and Dalla’s baby, soon to be named Aemond Battleborn, in A Dance with Dragons:

“See that he stays safe and warm. For his mother’s sake, and mine. And keep him away from the red woman. She knows who he is. She sees things in her fires.”

Arya , he thought, hoping it was so. “Ashes and cinders.”

“Kings and dragons.”

Dragons again . For a moment Jon could almost see them too, coiling in the night, their dark wings outlined against a sea of flame.

We’ve seen clues before about Jon being a king several times, with the idea being that if Jon is Rhaegar’s son, then he is ‘royalty’ in some form or another.  This isn’t about Jon vs. Dany in the line of succession, mind you, merely about his royal lineage in a general sense.  So when Val says that Mel sees “kings and dragons” in her fire, I think Martin is really talking about Jon Snow, a king and a dragon.  We saw what was in Mel’s fire vision – both dragons and Jon Snow – but the only other king she could have seen in her fire would be Stannis, who is conspicuously absent.  In other words, Jon is the only possible king that she saw.   Ergo, if Mel is seeing kings and dragons in her fire, I think it can only be the potential dragon king (or ice dragon king, to be accurate), Jon Snowgaryen.  You’ll recall the talk of staring into the fire with Jon and Tyrion in the scene where Tyrion talks about his dragon dreams, and here these two ideas come up again, side by side.  The fire is where you have to look if you want to see dragons or dragon kings.

The language here of Jon almost being able to see the dragons is very close to the description of someone who has seen dragons remembering her dragon.  This one isn’t conclusive, so I don’t want to make too much out of it, but the experience Jon has here is interesting: someone mentions dragons, and then for a moment, Jon can almost see them.  If this were the only evidence that Jon is a Targaryen, it would be pretty weak, but since we know that’s far from the case, I think Martin may well be feeding us a clue here about old Johnny boy.  Anyway, the point is that Jon’s “almost seeing” of the dragons sounds a lot like what happens when Dany thinks of her missing Drogon, a dragon which she has a psychic connection to.  This is Dany’s inner monologue from A Dance with Dragons:

And the dragons, what am I to do with them? “Drogon,” she whispered softly, “where are you?” For a moment she could almost see him sweeping across the sky, his black wings swallowing the stars.

It makes sense that she can picture Drogon in her mind, because she has seen him many times, and again, she has a psychic connection to him.  But what dragon is Jon almost seeing?  I’m not sure exactly what Martin is intending with this passage, but it may be a little dragon-dreamlet to clue us in to the idea that Jon is a dragon person, just as the scene with Tyrion talking about his dragon dreams and then telling Jon he’s had the same types of dreams might be a sly wink at the idea of Jon having dragon dreams.

What is funny to me is that the Jon Targaryen theory has gained much more traction and widespread acceptance than Tyrion Targaryen theory, but in a way, the clues are actually stronger for Tyrion, with his flagrant and repeated dragon dreams.  Remember, we heard about Tyrion having dragon dreams all the way back in the first half of book one, and George continues to feed us clues pointing in that direction all the way through A Dance with Dragons and The World of Ice and Fire.  Logistically, we may have more evidence for R+L=J than A+J=T, but I’ll leave that sort of thing for others to hash out.  When people start up the whole debate around who was were during Robert’s Rebellion I quickly collapse into a coma-like state of boredom and a puddle of my own drool.  I don’t believe that’s how the mysteries of the books are to be solved, myself – I tend to prefer analysis of the narrative themes and symbolism, as you all know, and to me, those things scream out “Tyrion of House Targaryen.”

And yes, I know he’d actually be Tyrion Hill by the inheritance laws of Westeros, but again, let’s not get too technical.  He’s a dragonspawn, that’s the important thing.  If his lineage comes into play, it will be the magical ramifications of that lineage that matter – his ability to ride a dragon, in other words – and not a tangential claim to the throne.  I believe it is the same with Jon – the point of R+L=J is magical lineage, not a claim to the throne.

---

Your own… personal… Mithras…

Jon is Mithras, as we’ve discussed extensively, and as was laid out in Schmendrick’s legendary “R + L = Lightbringer” essay which I like to talk about now and again.  And wouldn’t you know it, Tyrion has his own legend of a rock-born hero who wields the fiery weapon of a dragon, and that’s the Chinese monkey demon king, “Sun Wukong.”  I discovered this by doing a little research on one of Tyrion’s more interesting nicknames: “twisted little monkey demon.”  Apologies for the long quote here, but I simply can’t resist crazy street prophets talking about the red comet and snakes:

The sound of some hubbub in the street intruded on his worries. Tyrion peered out cautiously between the curtains. They were passing through Cobbler’s Square, where a sizable crowd had gathered beneath the leather awnings to listen to the rantings of a prophet. A robe of undyed wool belted with a hempen rope marked him for one of the begging brothers.

“Corruption!” the man cried shrilly. “There is the warning! Behold the Father’s scourge!” He pointed at the fuzzy red wound in the sky. From this vantage, the distant castle on Aegon’s High Hill was directly behind him, with the comet hanging forebodingly over its towers. A clever choice of stage, Tyrion reflected. “We have become swollen, bloated, foul. Brother couples with sister in the bed of kings, and the fruit of their incest capers in his palace to the piping of a twisted little monkey demon. Highborn ladies fornicate with fools and give birth to monsters! Even the High Septon has forgotten the gods! He bathes in scented waters and grows fat on lark and lamprey while his people starve! Pride comes before prayer, maggots rule our castles, and gold is all . . . but no more! The Rotten Summer is at an end, and the Whoremonger King is brought low! When the boar did open him, a great stench rose to heaven and a thousand snakes slid forth from his belly, hissing and biting!” He jabbed his bony finger back at comet and castle. “There comes the Harbinger! Cleanse yourselves, the gods cry out, lest ye be cleansed! Bathe in the wine of righteousness, or you shall be bathed in fire! Fire!”

“Fire!” other voices echoed, but the hoots of derision almost drowned them out,  Tyrion took solace from that.  He gave the command to continue, and the litter rocked like a ship on a rough sea as the Burned Men cleared a path.  Twisted little monkey demon indeed.

We’ll get to the monkey demon thing a second, but first a wee bit of mythical astronomy, because this paragraph is loaded and I can’t just skip on past it.  So, take notice of the thousand snakes pouring forth from Robert’s belly, which was opened by a “black devil” of a boar.  Robert, with his antlered helm, seems to be playing the role of sacrificed moon here, just as the antlered Renly does when his throat is cut by the shadowsword of Stannis’s shadowbaby assassin.  The stag and the bull are both horned animals, and both can be associated with the moon (particularly the horned moon), in real world mythology as well as Martin’s own.  Robert’s death unleashes biting snakes, and Renly’s a dark tide of blood – both very recognizable symbols of the disasters which came from the second moon.  Think of Sansa’s hairnet of poisonous purple snakes, also representative of the moon dragons, and all the examples of the black and bloody tide which we’ve examined in past episodes.  In turn, the weapons which sliced open our sacrificial stag men – the shadowsword and the tusk of the black devil boar – both represent Lightbringer, a.k.a. the red comet, and here we see the comet prominently featured in the scene behind the mad prophet.  It’s even specifically compared to a wound, which seems like a clue to associate the comet and Robert’s sliced-open belly which pours forth the biting snakes.

You’ll notice the idea of the stench rising to heaven when Robert is sliced open – this is referring to the idea that the moon-breaking was in fact an abomination, as was Lightbringer.  The stench that rose to heaven would have been the column of smoke and ash that quite literally rises to the heaven and blot out the sun and stars. The sun and moon and stars are in turn regarded as gods by many people in A Song of Ice and Fire and the real world, so we can see that the stench did indeed rise into the skies, and a bath of fire did indeed follow after.  This idea of a cleansing fire has parallels to Dany’s dragon dream and alchemical wedding experience, as well as the idea of the blood tide from Mithras’s white bull cleansing and renewing the earth.  The stealing of heavenly knowledge – the forging of Lightbringer – was the abomination, and the resulting fallout of fire and blood was the cleansing agent, destroying and punishing like the Lion of Night but also wiping the slate clean to start anew.

Finally, the idea of Tyrion being served and attended by the Burned Men from the Mountains of the Moon is entirely in keeping with him as an Azor Ahai reborn figure.  Azor Ahai wakes dragons from stone, and we have interpreted those woken dragons as the storm of moon meteors, with Azor Ahai reborn himself being the transformed red comet, at least from a certain perspective.  The xor Ahai reborn figures follow this pattern, with a legion of fiery servants of some kind to attend them.  Daenerys, the “Last Dragon,” represents Azor Ahai reborn as the red comet, and she is served by her dragon children, who represent the firestorm of moon dragon meteors.  Jon is another Azor Ahai reborn figure, and when he dreams of wielding the burning red sword, he’s attended by the burning scarecrow brothers, fiery black-blooded black crows that tumble down like meteors.  Tyrion is a reborn red comet, a dragon-spawn, and he’s attended by burned moon men that come from Moon Mountains, as well as other clans with names like “moon brothers,” “stone crows,” and a few others.   Tyrion’s burned moon men, Dany’s fire-made-flesh dragons, and Jon’s fiery black-blooded crows – all the same idea.  They are the dragons woken by Azor Ahai’s rebirth.

And wouldn’t  you know, I almost forgot – Tyrion was slashed across the face with a sword, just like the moon.

And now we come to it: Tyrion is a twisted monkey demon.  This cute little nickname is actually brought up four different times in A Clash of Kings, so we can be sure that it’s no idle turn of phrase.  Besides being called a monkey demon, Tyrion is separately associated with both demons and monkeys.  This is from A Dance with Dragons:

That night at supper Tyrion surprised his sire by walking the length of the high table on his hands. Lord Tywin was not pleased. “The gods made you a dwarf. Must you be a fool as well? You were born a lion, not a monkey.” 

And you’re a corpse, Father, so I’ll caper as I please.

Both of Azor Ahai reborn’s parents are corpses – a dead sun and a dead moon, that’s the idea.  But yeah, Tyrion is a monkey, and he’ll caper as he pleases.  Tyrion’s monkeyhood comes up again in the same book when Illyrio has to make up a false name for Tyrion on the fly:

Illyrio spoke up quickly. “Yollo, he is called.”

Yollo? Yollo sounds like something you might name a monkey.

And then again in Dance, when Tyrion is playing chess with Young Griff a.k.a. fAegon Blackfyre:

The dwarf pushed his black dragon across a range of mountains. “But what do I know? Your false father is a great lord, and I am just some twisted little monkey man.”

That’s pretty nice, the black dragon reference right next to the Tyrion as a monkey reference.  There’s actually two more quotes in Dance which refer to Tyrion as a monkey:

“A pity. I once had a monkey who could perform all sorts of clever tricks. Your dwarf reminds me of him. Is he a gift?”

And then later, when he’s becomes one of Yezzen’s pets:

“You know who I am. Yollo. One of our lord’s treasures. Now do as I told you.”

The soldiers laughed. “Go on, Scar,” one mocked, “and be quick about it. Yezzan’s monkey gave you a command.”

Cersei also has nightmares of Tyrion, in which he is twice referred to as a monkey or as being monkey-like.  So, I think it’s pretty clear: Tyrion is a monkey.

He’s also a demon, and not only in the twisted monkey demon quotes.  First of all, an “imp” can be thought of as a type of goblin, or sometimes a demon.  More of a mischievous demon than an evil one, but there it is.  Recall also that “nissa” means “helpful elf” or “mischievous elf” in Scandinavian languages, and that fits with Tyrion being an imp that comes from the moon, since Nissa Nissa is the archetypal moon maiden.

Then we have this quote from A Clash of Kings:

“I would suggest a demon’s head for a helm, crowned with tall golden horns. When you ride into battle, men will shrink away in fear.”

A demon’s head, Tyrion thought ruefully, now what does that say of me? “Master Salloreon, I plan to fight the rest of my battles from this chair.  It’s links I need, not demon horns.”

What does it say of you?  Well, it says you are in fact monkey demon, Tyrion.  A monkey demon who rides dragons and wears magic armor in his palace in Valyria while having vivid dreams of dragons and patricide.  It’s worth noting that Tyrion fought the Battle of Blackwater Baym which is what he’s preparing for here in this scene, by unleashing the pyromancers’ wildfire, which is called “the Jade Demon.”

Martin has also drawn general associations between monkeys and demons, such as with this line from Victarion in A Dance with Dragons:

The monkeys, though … the monkeys were a plague. Victarion had forbidden his men to bring any of the demonic creatures aboard ship, yet somehow half his fleet was now infested with them, even his own Iron Victory.

Might this foreshadow a conflict between Tyrion the monkey demon and Victarion? It would make a lot sense, since Tyion might be in a position to advise Daenerys, and since a good advisor will probably suggest steering clear of the Ironborn.  In any case… monkeys are demonic, it seems.

So one day I asked myself: What’s the deal with this whole monkey demon thing anyway? I wondered if there might be a mythological inspiration out there somewhere, and so I typed “monkey demon mythology” into the google box.  There was one prominent result, and that’s Sun Wukong of Chinese myth (he also has parallel incarnations in other related mythologies from that region of the world).  He’s a monkey demon king born from a rock whose eyes shine like beams of light and who wields a fiery spear he stole from a dragon, as well as magic armor that he also stole from a dragon.

I kid you not – this is a real thing, and it existed long before George R. R. Martin did.

To be more specific, I will draw from one of the four major novels of Chinese history, published during the Ming Dynasty all the way back in in 1592, whose title is translated as “Journey to the West” and which is often simply called “Monkey,” because the stone monkey demon king Sun Wukong is the central character.  It’s attributed to a fellow named Wu Cheng-en, and I’ll be pulling from a translation done by W. J. F. Jenner.  Although I did first learn about Sun Wukong by using Google, I’ve now read most of this novel to gain a better understanding of his character and deeds.  It’s a terrific read – the battle scenes are quite epic, and the whole thing is packed with mythical astronomy. Most of the main characters are tied to stars, planets, and constellations in vivid fashion.  For a great six minute synopsis, I recommend this youtube video by a couple of guys known as “Off the Great Wall” who do fun re-tellings of Chinese myths and folklore.

In any case, here’s the deal.  Sun Wukong was born from a magic stone which sits atop something called “the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit.”  The magic stone develops a magic womb which, after thousands of years of absorbing the essence of the sun and the moon – stop me if this sounds familiar – bursts open to reveal a stone egg.  Then the wind comes along and blows on the egg, causing it to turn into a stone monkey.  Upon waking, two golden beams of light shoot out of his eyes and startle someone called the Jade Emperor.

Again, this is not ASOIAF, but ancient Chinese mythology, and as we can see, George has borrowed from it quite a bit – the Jade Emperor is one of the rulers of the Great Empire of the Dawn, for example, and both the Great Empire of the Dawn and the Golden Empire of Yi Ti which followed after seem to be based loosely on Far Eastern culture and mythology.  Obviously a stone demon animal waking from a stone egg sets of a few buzzers and sirens, and the “magic rock” reminds us of the pale stone of magical powers from which the sword Dawn was made, as well as the evil black stone that the Bloodstone Emperor worshipped which I believe was the source of the metal for Lightbringer.  Lightbringer is a dragon sword, and it was hatched from a magic stone, just as Drogon was hatched from a stone egg.

Even though he’s a demon monkey, he’s called “heaven born” because he was born at the top of a mountain, which the Chinese equated with the heavens.  This is a symbolic association shared by many cultures throughout the world, and it’s one George has carried over into A Song of Ice and Fire.  You’ve heard me say that a few times, but’s important and bears repeating.  Anything that happens at the top of a tower or mountain… pay close attention and think about the celestial realm.

As for those fiery eyes which shoot beams of light, the Lannisters are also noted for their luminous green and gold eyes, and of course we’ve seen the wider phenomena of fiery eyes with people and animals who symbolize moon meteors.  Elsewhere in the novel, it’s said of Sun Wukong that “his devil eyes shone like stars.”  Surely the equivalency between eyes and stars can found all over the place in world mythology, but my point here is that Sun Wukong is a convenient fit for George’s world building because of his various attributes.

Sun Wukong’s fiery eyes can also see through illusion – he’s constantly exposing  body-snatching demons posing as normal people and destroying them.  Tyrion doesn’t spot any changelings, but he is very perceptive in King’s Landing and uses elaborate ruses and misdirection to sniff out Cersei’s informant, which turns out to be Pycelle.  Could be coincidence, or it could be an echo of Sun Wukong’s magical perception.

There’s more: Sun Wukong can change his form into that of other creatures, a shapeshifting ability somewhat akin to skinchanging.  That doesn’t have anything to do with Tyrion, but it might have something to do with the original Azor Ahai being a skinchanger or greenseer, just as Jon Snow is a skinchanger and soon to be resurrected skinchanger.

Sun Wukong simply loves to steal weapons – he’s basically obsessed with it.  He travels to the bottom of the ocean and defeats a dragon king of the Eastern Seas, taking from him a glowing iron staff which turns out to be Sun Wukong’s most identifiable and well-known weapon.  This staff is really something – it’s made of black iron and and banded in gold, a terrific Lightbringer weapon, you must admit.  Even better, Sun Wukong’s gold-banded dragon staff can multiply into a thousand flying staffs, which are described as being like filling the sky with dragons.  This amazing staff is actually depicted as the pillar of the heavens and the Milky Way which keeps the seas calm –  that’s the same pillar of the universe role played by Yggdrasil and other mythological world trees, or sometimes by an “omphalos” or navel-stone.  The general phenomena of representing the celestial axis in mythology is called the ‘axis mundi,’ by the way.  Sun Wukong’s possession of this staff makes him the master of the heavens; similarly, he takes on titles like “The Great Sage” and “The Great Sage Who Equals Heaven.”  It also gives him great potential for mischief, which is what monkeys are known for.

Sun Wukong then went on to defeat the dragons of the four seas and take from them a golden chain mail shirt, a purple and gold phoenix-winged helmet, and cloud-walking boots – pretty sweet haul, right?  Basically, if there is a sea dragon anywhere out there in the wide world who has magical weapons or armor, Sun Wukong tracks them down and takes their stuff.  The end result is that Sun Wukong is a rock-born demon king who is decked out in fiery black and gold dragon weapons and black and gold dragon armor.  He’s a child of the sun and moon and he can fill the air with a thousand dragons.  And we are just getting started.

As an aside, notice that dragons in Chinese myth tend be associated with water, as I’ve mentioned before, and I believe this stems from experiences with violent tsunamis triggered by comet and meteor impacts in the Pacific Ocean.  This idea is paralleled in the Ironborn legend of the sea dragon Nagga which drowns whole islands.

One of the major, defining themes of Sun Wukong’s character is that he challenges heaven and rebels against the gods, and even the very order of nature itself.  He defies hell’s attempt to collect his soul, barging into hell and dramatically wiping his name from the book of life and death, along with those of his monkey hordes, breaking the reincarnation cycle.  He’s literally said to have broken the balance between yin and yang, between light and dark, day and night, male and female.  Check out this passage, a plea to the Jade Emperor by a concerned Bodhisattva:

That’s the very essence of that the Long Night is about, breaking the cycle of the seasons and of life and death.  The gods are of course very disturbed at Sun Wukong’s actions, and so they decide to invite Sun Wukong to heaven as a ploy to fool him into thinking he is being honored –  but the real goal is to control him.  This backfires as Sun Wukong sees through their scheme and steals a bunch of really cool stuff from heaven, like the peaches of immortality and the royal wine of the gods, then returns to earth.  For this, he is called “the wrecker of the heavenly palace.”  Sun Wukong is pretty much on a life-long quest to gain immortality, which he actually does several times over – stealing the peaches here and crossing his name from Death’s book previously.  All of this fits very nicely with the themes of the Azor Ahai story – challenging the gods and stealing fire from heaven; breaking the cycles of life and nature and seeking to escape death and live forever.  Tyrion himself challenges, defies, and eventually kills his own father, in violation of the most sacred laws of the gods.

Sun Wukong goes on to seriously whoop ass against the army of heaven, who are depicted as star warriors, defeating 100,000 of them single handedly.  He doesn’t just defeat them – he makes a mockery of them.  In fact, that’s a major part of Sun Wukong’s character, and this is a very good match for Tyrion – he basically talks shit to everyone, without exception.  Sun Wukong is even described as impish in the Chinese epic novel, or at least the English translation of it.  Basically, Sun Wukong talks a big game, and then backs it up, destroying or driving off everyone that the Jade Emperor can throw at him with his unbeatable black fire staff and various other tricks and weapons and magics.

An egg learned to be a man, cultivated his conduct, and achieved the way. Heaven had been undisturbed for the thousand kappas, until one day the spirits and gods were scattered.  The rebel against heaven, wanting high position, insulted immortals, stole the pills, and destroyed morality.

Eventually, however, and not without great effort, Sun Wukong is captured and trapped inside some kind of sacred crucible to be incinerated by a pair of immortal warriors of the Jade Emperor.  But after 49 days of burning, the crucible is opened and out pops Sun Wukong, stronger than ever, and now armed with fiery, enhanced magical sight.  In other words, Sun Wukong was forged like a sword and reborn in the sacred fires.  That’s an amazingly tight correlation to the wording of the Lightbringer myth, and to Dany’s experiences of being forged like a sword and reborn in fire, and more generally to the idea of a flying meteor sword that was born from a burning moon rock.

As for Tyrion, there may be a humorous echo of this story in A Dance with Dragons, when he was trapped inside a wine barrel on his voyage across the Narrow Sea.  Not exactly a crucible, but it is a very small box that he was locked in for an extended period of time.  Instead of emerging more powerful, he emerged more drunk, but hey, you have to change a few details to make things work for the scene, right?

The Jade Emperor then appeals to the Buddha, who contrives to trap Sun Wukong in his enormous fist and then seal him under a mountain for five centuries (though he is eventually set free and earns honors for himself, and is even granted buddhahood for his service and strength).  The idea of Sun Wukong being stuck inside a fist and inside a mountain, or being born from the top a mountain are very reminiscent of George’s fiery hand and riding mountain symbolic motifs which we examined in the last episode, you’ll notice.  The moon turning into things is what Azor Ahai’s rebirth is all about, and several of these symbols appear in Sun Wukong’s story: stone demons, fiery dragon spears, huge mountains and divine fists.  You can see why George wove this into his Azor Ahai tapestry of ideas – it’s a natural fit.

Personally, I think it would have been funny if George had decided to have Melisandre spend a bunch of time talking about waking monkeys from stone, but hey, artistic freedom and all.

This brings up another potential Tyrion connection: Sun Wukong is from the Mountain of Fruit and Flowers, which is in the east – it is from atop this mountain that the “heaven-born monkey king’s” stone egg hatched.  On this mountain lives the monkey army of Sun Wukong… could this be a parallel to the great mountains of the Vale of Arryn, in the east, from which Tyrion gains his mountain clan army?  The vale is known for it’s fecundity, and although Tyrion wasn’t born there, he was almost thrown from atop the mountain via the moon door.

Saving the best Sun Wukong correlations for last, it seems that one of the many weapons and magics he can employ is to summon up a storm which sounds a lot like the Long Night.  This is Sun Wukong trying to break in to a great city to steal even more magic weapons (the guy can’t get enough weapons, it seems).   Actually, in this scene, Sun Wukong is specifically trying to steal weapons to arm his monkey hordes, which reminds us of Tyrion obtaining weapons to arm the mountain clans.

Sun Wukong can summon the Long Night, apparently. That’s pretty potent, I’m not sure why you’d need more weapons if you could do that.  In any case, I’m making the claim that Sun Wukong plays into the myth of Azor Ahai reborn, and also that Azor Ahai caused the Long Night, so it’s pretty sweet to see that Sun Wukong carries the Long Night in his back pocket.

On a different occasion, Sun Wukong is battling the demon king of the North (who fights with a shining sword, a helmet of dark gold, and black steel armor, it should be noted) and Sun Wukong actually threatens to pull down the moon with his two hands and bash the demon king with it, I kid you not.

The Long Night parallels continue in another line, where he’s called a “hairy-faced thunder god.”  And don’t forget, he pulled out the pillar of the milky way and carries it about with him, giving him true dominion over the heavens and the earth.  This also gives him the ability to disrupt the cycles of nature, block out the sun, pull down the moon, shake the world to its foundations, fill the air with flying dragons, and destroy the star-army of heaven.

In addition to the parallels with Tyrion’s story, you can see that the basic elements of the Sun Wukong myth are also very analogous to that of Mithras and Azor Ahai, and that’s not a coincidence.  Here’s what I think is going on. Essentially, at some point early in the writing process, Martin  must have decided he wanted to create a central fable for his world involving a flaming sword, dragons, comets and meteors, and resurrection.  At this point I believe Martin began collecting all the interesting myths of flaming swords, comets, dragons, and resurrection – best of all, stories which contained more than one of these elements.  Then, he uses these various myths as starting points for different characters in the story, particularly the major characters which manifest Azor Ahai reborn symbolism.

Let’s very briefly run through a few flaming sword myths and their ASOIAF correlations so you can see what I mean.

• The Azor Ahai myth as a whole draws heavily from Mithras of course, and of all the various Azor Ahai reborn manifestations, Jon Snow in particular is often a specific avatar of Mithras.
• Tyrion seems to draw many things from Sun Wukong the monkey demon king with the fiery spear.
• In Norse mythology, there’s a “devil giant” named Sutr (which means “black” or “swarthy” in Old Norse) who wields a shining sun sword that eventually brings forth flames that engulf the entire world.  I’m sure you can see the clear parallels to Azor Ahai there, and possibly to Jon Snow, who dresses and armors in black but dreams of wielding a burning sword, and to Daenerys, who is poised to engulf large parts of the world in blood and fire, and whose dragons are like a flaming sword above the world.  Tyrion, besides being a demon, is also a giant on many occasions, so perhaps he’s channeling a bit of Sutr as well.
• Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, and his alive with light sword Dawn, borrows quite a bit from King Arthur’s glowing sword Excalibur.  Excalibur was a sword which shone so bright at times that it actually blinded his enemies – a real light-bringer, you might say.  In some tales, Excalibur is the same as the sword Arthur pulled from the stone, which might have been part of the basis for the idea of Dawn being made from a magical stone.  In other versions, the sword pulled from the stone is eventually broken and replaced by Excalibur, which reminds us quite sharply of the Last Hero and the idea that he broke his sword and later ended up slaying Others with something remembered as dragonsteel.  There’s actually a ton of Arthurian references in ASOIAF, as Lady Gwyn of Radio Westeros can tell you, but let’s keep moving for now.
• I’ve even mentioned the old Hanna Barbara cartoon Thundarr as a potential influence on the Azor Ahai / Long Night mythos, because good old Thundarr the Barbarian has a “sun sword” which is kind of like a light saber and the backstory of the show is a red comet streaking in between earth and the moon and causing such environmental disaster that the modern, technical world is thrown back into a kind of medieval “swords and sorcery” environment.  Sounds familiar right?  Well George is hugely into cartoons and comics, and Thundarr came out way back in 1984, so don’t doubt that he might get an idea from a show like Thundarr.  If you do doubt me in any way, just look up the intro to the Thundarr show on YouTube and prepare to lose your mind, it’s like the events of the Long Night animated by Hanna Barbara.

In summary, my hypothesis is that George decided he wanted to write about flaming swords, and so he looked for all the cool flaming sword myths he could find and worked them in wherever it made sense.  Sun Wukong works so nicely for Tyrion because Sun Wukong’s story shares so many elements with Mithras, and the idea of Tyrion as a monkey makes a lot of sense with his character and stature.  It’s his own personal Mithras!

The conclusion I draw from all of this Sun Wukong stuff, besides “wow that’s pretty cool that George is into Chinese mythology” is that Tyrion gets his own rock-born, flaming weapon-wielding mythological forefather because he is one of the three heads of the dragon and a secret Targaryen.  We’ve seen many characters who are definitely not Targaryens play the role of Azor Ahai reborn, but none with the kind of extensive correlations to myths of warriors with flaming weapons which we find in Tyrion, Jon Snow, and Daenerys… with one notable exception.

As for that exception, it’s Arthur Dayne and his Arthurian symbolism, and he’s definitely not a Targaryen.  However, I have proposed in an older essay that the occasionally purple-eyed and silver haired Daynes have a common ancestor with Valyria, the vanished Great Empire of the Dawn – and specifically, the purple-eyed Amethyst Empress.  Also, the Sword of the Morning archetype seems to be the light half of the Lightbringer yin and yang, with Azor Ahai’s black sword being the dark side, naturally, and so it makes sense to see extensive manifestation of a well-known flaming sword myth like that of King Arthur and Excalibur in the person of Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning.  There can be little doubt that Dawn and House Dayne have something to do with the Lightbringer legend, no matter how you see the details shaking out.

And while we’re talking about yin and yang, I neglected to point out previously in our essay about the Bloodstone Emperor is that yin is the dark side of yin and yang, and, one o fthe names of Azor Ahai is Yin Tar.  If you wanted a clue that Azor Ahai and lightbringer are from the dark side… then there you .  They are literally the force of yin.

As for Tyrion as a manifestation of Azor Ahai reborn, there are couple of other details about him which fit with the Azor Ahai archetype.

• Like Mithras and Sun Wukong, he was born from a rock – Casterly Rock, that is.  That’s the rock in whose bowels he sits while lighting fires and dreaming of dragons.
• His mother died at his birth, which is a standard for any real Azor Ahai reborn player.  The moon dying at Azor Ahai’s rebirth is kind of the central event to this whole drama, after all.  Jon and Dany’s mothers both die in conjunction with giving birth, and Joanna Lannister does the same.
• We’ve seen Azor Ahai reborn depicted as a monster in the case of dead lizard baby, Rhaego, as well as a dragon which came to life with human sacrifice… and there may be a nod to this in the form of the monstrous rumors about Tyrion’s birth which Oberyn repeats right before his fight with the Mountain.  He tells Tyrion that he heard he had been born with a tail, a monstrously large head, thick black hair, an evil eye, lion’s claws, and teeth so large he couldn’t close his mouth.
• Azor Ahai’s re-birth heralded the fall of the Long Night – this is one of my biggest claims in all of my research – and there’s a clue about this in that same scene with Oberyn and Tyrion.  Oberyn continues on to say that Tyrion ‘s birth was a curse for Tywin (the sun) and an ill omen for the realm, to which Tyrion quips: “Famine, plague, and war, no doubt. It’s always famine, plague, and war. Oh, and winter, and the long night that never ends.” George is telling us the truth about Tyrion and Azor Ahai in plain language, but he’s hiding it with sarcasm.  “Oh yes, his birth heralded the Long Night.  He’s got magic armor and a palace in Valyria,” eye-roll eye-roll.  “He must be some sort of lost Targaryen prince,” chuckle chuckle, wink wink. Say no more, George, say no more.

To sum up, we have seen that Mr. Martin based large parts of his Lightbringer legend on Mithras, and that he chose to manifest those elements in Jon’s arc specifically.  Having already conceived of the character of Tyrion as a Targaryen early on and one of the “three heads of the dragon,” he must have seen the Sun Wukong figure as a kind of personal Mithras-type myth for Tyrion’s character.  Sun Wukong is basically the monkey version of Azor Ahai, and that’s more or less what George has done with Tyrion’s character by making him a monkey demon dragon-spawn.  Sun Wukong is a chaos agent who has the potential to tip the balance of world events, and I think that is exactly the kind of role Tyrion is shaping up to play.  He had a dramatic effect on young Jon Snow, he took many momentous actions at King’s Landing, he had a dramatic effect on Young Griff’s course of action, and soon he’ll be in a position to have an effect on the mother of dragons. “Dragons old and young, true and false, bright and dark. And you. A small man with a big shadow, snarling in the midst of all.”

---

Gargoyles and Bran Muffins

Now it’s time to talk about gargoyles, something Tyrion is associated with all throughout the series, as many of you may recall.  The second half of this episode will primarily deal with the connection between Tyrion and gargoyles and its implications for the story, but interwoven throughout will be talk of Winterfell, Bran, and the Last Hero.  It turns out to be impossible to talk about Tyrion the gargoyle without bringing up Winterfell, Bran, and the Last Hero, so that’s what we will do.  For example, the first place where we see Tyrion described as a gargoyle is Winterfell, and Winterfell is in turn famously decorated with gargoyles.  Gargoyles feature prominently in Bran’s early story arc in A Game of Thrones, particularly his fall from the tower, and in turn Tyrion the Gargoyle is connected to Bran by the saddle he designed for him after his accident, and by Catelyn’s fateful decision to accuse Tyrion of attempting to murder Bran which basically shapes the entire story of A Game of Thrones.

And as you guys know, I can never resist a little Last Hero talk when it’s there to be had.

The first mention of gargoyles in A Song of Ice and Fire comes at Winterfell, but refers not to the actual gargoyles on the walls of the keep, but to Tyrion Lannister on the walls of the keep:

The sounds of music and song spilled through the open windows behind him. They were the last things Jon wanted to hear. He wiped away his tears on the sleeve of his shirt, furious that he had let them fall, and turned to go.

“Boy,” a voice called out to him. Jon turned. Tyrion Lannister was sitting on the ledge above the door to the Great Hall, looking for all the world like a gargoyle. The dwarf grinned down at him.

Twenty three pages later, we start hearing about gargoyles on the tops of buildings at Winterfell, and by this time, we’ve most likely forgotten about Tyrion being called a gargoyle as her perched atop a building at Winterfell.  But I would suggest that there’s a deliberate connection being drawn.  Tyrion is called a gargoyle many, many times in the series, and I believe the reason is this: gargoyles are flying stone beasts associated with hell and dragons, both in the real world and in A Song of Ice and Fire.

The term gargoyle generally refers to any grotesque stone creature which adorns the roof of a buildings, and they come in all different forms.  In fact, the same thing is said of gargoyles that is said of snowflakes: no two are alike.  There are several variations on the story of how the first gargoyle came to be, but they all involve a fellow named St. Romanus capturing and burning a dragon.  The head and neck  of the dragon, having been hardened by years of breathing fire, would not burn, and so St. Romanus mounted the head and neck of the dragon on the walls of the newly built church to scare off evil spirits.

Gargoyles come in many forms, but they are first and foremost stone dragons.  Most legends of gargoyles involve them waking in the night and flying around, so you’ve got the ‘dragons waking from stone’ idea present in the mythos of the gargoyle as well.  Calling Tyrion a gargoyle is very close to naming him a dragon, and at the very least, it’s naming him a hell-beast which wakes from stone, just like the demon monkey king Sun Wukong.  In other words, both of Tyrion’s nicknames point towards hellish demons waking from stone, and dragons.  Both of them point to … Tyrion Targaryen.

A nice touch on Tyrion’s gargoyle association is the fact that gargoyle statues often have chains about their neck, which reminds us of Tyrion’s famous chain which saved King’s Landing.

As for the gargoyles of Winterfell, they are so worn that you cannot make out their shape,  but the truth about them is revealed when they are seen in dream form by Bran.  This is from A Game of Thrones:

In his dream he was climbing again, pulling himself up an ancient windowless tower, his fingers forcing themselves between blackened stones, his feet scrabbling for purchase. Higher and higher he climbed, through the clouds and into the night sky, and still the tower rose before him. When he paused to look down, his head swam dizzily and he felt his fingers slipping. Bran cried out and clung for dear life. The earth was a thousand miles beneath him and he could not fly. He could not fly. He waited until his heart had stopped pounding, until he could breathe, and he began to climb again. There was no way to go but up. Far above him, outlined against a vast pale moon, he thought he could see the shapes of gargoyles. His arms were sore and aching, but he dared not rest. He forced himself to climb faster. The gargoyles watched him ascend. Their eyes glowed red as hot coals in a brazier. Perhaps once they had been lions, but now they were twisted and grotesque. Bran could hear them whispering to each other in soft stone voices terrible to hear. He must not listen, he told himself, he must not hear, so long as he did not hear them he was safe. But when the gargoyles pulled themselves loose from the stone and padded down the side of the tower to where Bran clung, he knew he was not safe after all. “I didn’t hear,” he wept as they came closer and closer, “I didn’t, I didn’t.”

He woke gasping, lost in darkness, and saw a vast shadow looming over him. “I didn’t hear,” he whispered, trembling in fear, but then the shadow said “Hodor,” and lit the candle by the bedside, and Bran sighed with relief.

This dream occurs immediately after Tyrion returns to Winterfell on his way back from the Wall and offers up the design for a saddle that will enable the crippled Bran to ride horses – this is done to put is mind of Tyrion right before the dream about fiery-eyed gargoyles, perhaps.  In any case, let’s discuss the fiery associations of the gargoyles.  They watch Bran with red eyes like hot coals, a match for descriptions of the eyes of Melisandre, Bloodraven, Ghost, and most importantly one the dragons, Viserion.   They “might have been lions once,” suggesting a correlation between the gargoyles and the Lannisters, and this of course follows up on the labeling of Tyrion as a gargoyle earlier in the book.  It’s also quite suggestive of the gargoyles as an Azor Ahai reborn / moon meteor symbol.  Azor Ahai and his meteors “used to be lions” in that they represent a transformed sun – a sun which has transformed into something more monstrous.  Those monstrous moon meteors drank the fire of the sun, but they also came from the moon, and indeed, when Bran sees the gargoyles, they appear superimposed over the moon, right at the top of the tower, where heavenly bodies belong.  Then the gargoyles “pulled themselves loose from the stone,” implying a detachment from the stone moon, and descend the black tower with red eyes like hot coals.  This is all just as it should be if the gargoyle are intended to represent Azor Ahai reborn and his flying dragon meteors.

There can be little doubt this scene is a case of mythical astronomy, with Bran climbing up a black tower through the clouds and into the night sky and the earth a thousand miles below him – that’s about as clear as it gets.  The moon appears at the top of the black tower , showing us the idea that the tops of towers are equivalent to the celestial bodies,  and then a fiery gargoyle comes down from the moon – that’s also pretty easy to understand.  This falling gargoyle idea is an echo of that first scene with Tyrion as a gargoyle when he jumps down from the roof:

“Can you climb down, or shall I bring a ladder?”

“Oh, bleed that,” the little man said. He pushed himself off the ledge into empty air. Jon gasped, then watched with awe as Tyrion Lannister spun around in a tight ball, landed lightly on his hands, then vaulted backward onto his legs.

George has said that he actually regrets depicting Tyrion as being so nimble, because for most of the rest of the series George gives him a limp and a waddling gait.  Regardless, Tyrion the gargoyle jumps down from the sky spinning like a ball, giving us the image of a falling moon meteor, just as the gargoyle coming down from the moon in Bran’s dream did.  Gargoyles come from the moon because they represent one aspect of the moon meteors.  George puts the words “bleed that” into his mouth as he falls, which is the only time anyone uses that expression in the novels, and I think the purpose is to create the image of a bleeding star or a bloody stone falling from the sky.  Jon watches with awe.

Since Bran is the one who falls from the tower, it’s pretty clear Bran is also representing the moon’s fall from the heavens.  He’s specifically pushed out of the top of a tower by a sun figure, so there’s really not much wiggle room here.  His head swims, which creates the image of a moon face going swimming in the ocean, the familiar moon-drowning symbol.  Bran weeps with fear, and of course the moon crying meteor tears is a  symbol you guys are well familiar with.  Then he wakes lost in darkness, just as Azor Ahai reborn wakes lost in the darkness of the Long Night.

As always, the various incarnations of the moon meteors all tell us different things about Azor Ahai reborn and Lightbringer.  It may seem weird that Bran and the gargoyles are representing the same thing, but we can learn different lessons from each.  We’ll start with Tyrion.

Generally speaking, the fiery gargoyles show us monsters coming from the moon, which is easy to understand, but I should also point out that gargoyles are pretty consistently associated with protection and warding against evil spirits.  We’ve seen Azor Ahai reborn sometimes depicted in this role, such as with Sandor protecting and avenging moon maiden Sansa Stark, and with the idea of Oathkeeper being used to avenge and protect Ned’s children.  Tyrion himself also protects Sansa from Joffrey’s abuse, and later plays a protective role for Penny, the dwarf girl, with a gargoyle reference specifically hung on Tyrion in one of those scenes – we’ll check that out in a moment, actually.   Tyrion also successfully saves King’s Landing from Stannis – that’s quite the act of protection, and there’s again a great gargoyle quote right in the middle of the battle.  Stannis is seen by those in King’s Landing as “the Stranger comes to judge us” who serves a “demon god,” so in this sense Tyrion’s definitely warding King’s Landing against evil.

I also wouldn’t be surprised to see him play a similar protective role to Daenerys.  In fact, there’s a clue about Tyrion helping Dany in The World of Ice and Fire.  One story from Yi Ti is that “a woman with a monkey’s tail” somehow helped to end the Long Night.  A tail is also the name for the attendants of a monarch, and a monkey for a tail might be Tyrion as an advisor to a woman who might help end the new Long Night – Daenerys.

In any case, the protection aspect of the gargoyle, illustrated by Tyrion, has some potentially serious implications.  We’ve seen the protection theme as one aspect of Azor Ahai reborn a few times now, and I think this almost certainly applies to the idea of Azor Ahai protecting all warm-blooded life from the Others with Lightbringer, whether that deed was performed by Azor Ahai’s son, the Last Hero,  who would have been righting the wrongs of his father, or else by a reformed Azor Ahai doing something similar, atoning for his own actions.  At this point, I think it’s an inescapable conclusion – although Azor Ahai broke the moon when he forged Lightbringer, which seems to have been the cause of the Long Night, Lightbringer and some version of Azor Ahai reborn seem to have later fought off the Long Night and returned the sun to the sky.  This makes sense, when you think about it. Azor Ahai is a solar character, and his fall from grace depicts the darkening of the sun.  If the sun eventually came back out to shine, as we know it did, it follows that Azor Ahai gained some level of redemption, either through penitence and on his own part or that of his descendent.  Thus, the gargoyle actually shows us two things about Azor Ahai reborn and Lightbringer – it’s a fiery monster descending from the sky, but there is some aspect of it which can protect or avenge.

What does Bran as a moon meteor symbol tell us?  Well, I think the message has to do with Bran becoming a greenseer.  Bloodraven is draped in a certain type of Azor Ahai symbolism, as we’ve discussed before, and he is of course THE greenseer of the north.  We’ve also seen many instances of crossover between fire magic and old god / greenseer magic – Jon Snow, Beric Dondarrion, Bloodraven, the leaves of the weirwoods being like fiery and bloody hands, and many more.  Azor Ahai broke the moon, and the greenseers supposedly called down the Hammer of the Waters – but I have laid out a strong case that the Hammer was a moon meteor.  If Azor Ahai was a greenseer, or worked with greenseers or their magic somehow, then both stories contain an element of truth, which is usually how Martin does things.  I actually have a ton to say about the intersection of greenseer magic and fire magic, which will be its own episode, so for now I’ll have to simply say that Bran as a reborn moon child almost certainly plays into that idea.

A bit more on Bran as an Azor Ahai reborn person: Bran skinchanges Hodor, and Hodor too gets the Azor Ahai symbols on occasion – a sword and a torch, one eye wound, etc – and he specifically gets those symbols in scenes where Bran is skinchanging him.  There are some great Lightbringer forging metaphors in those scenes, particularly at Queenscrown with all the lightning and it’s broken tower top and the scene at the Nightfort.  Another time… another time.  This could indicate that Azor Ahai might have done a bit of body snatching, which is exactly the kind of thing we should expect from him if indeed he was a greenseer, as I am coming to suspect he was.  His rebirth might have been… well… you know.  A body-snatching.

Some people have guessed that Bran will actually skinchange a dragon, and wouldn’t that be just badass!  I’ve always liked the idea… and it would totally fit with the symbolism of Bran’s fall from the tower as a parallel to the hatching of the moon dragons.  If Azor Ahai was a dragon riding greenseer, then it kind of makes sense for a greenseer like bran to become a kind of dragon rider.  So now, read this quote from A Game of Thrones, remembering what the gargoyles represent:

Bran pulled himself up, climbed over the gargoyle, crawled out onto the roof. This was the easy way. He moved across the roof to the next gargoyle, right above the window of the room where they were talking.

“All this talk is getting very tiresome, sister,” the man said. “Come here and be quiet.”

Bran sat astride the gargoyle, tightened his legs around it, and swung himself around, upside down. He hung by his legs and slowly stretched his head down toward the window. The world looked strange upside down. A courtyard swam dizzily below him, its stones still wet with melted snow. Bran looked in the window.

Bran sat astride the gargoyle. <dun dun dun> 

I’m not sure if we can interpret this as a foreshadowing of Bran riding a dragon in the future or not, because he’s sitting astride the gargoyle right before the sun figure pushes him out of the tower, which is more like Bran riding a moon dragon down to a fateful impact with the earth.  However, we can note that Bran is learning to “fly,” as is said many times, and he’s being taught to do so by a Targaryen greenseer.  Who knows – we’ll just have to see what happens.  As a side-note, the idea of Bran hanging upside-down from a dragon’s belly like an expertly skilled horsemen is pretty entertaining.

I’ve talked about the theme of the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai being one of stealing from heaven, of trying to climb too high, just like the Morningstar is perceived to be trying to rise before the sun and steal it’s glory as if itself were the sun, the high god, only to fail and fall back down to earth.  The Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai tries to gain the starry wisdom, the heavenly fire of the gods.  There’s an echo of this theme in Bran’s scene, as he’s literally climbing a tower into the heavens, only to be pushed out of the tower because of something he knows.  Forbidden knowledge that almost cost him his life.  He tries to unhear what he has heard, screaming “I didn’t hear!” but of course he did hear, and he does know, and this knowledge cost him a fall from the tower. Ultimately, this event resulted in a transformation.  Bran dreams while in his coma, and actually seems to begin to tap into his greenseer abilities before waking, when he finally learns to fly and astrally projects himself all over Westeros and sees events that are actually occurring, albeit in somewhat symbolic fashion.  This is the Azor Ahai reborn story, a man who reached for the stars and got burned, and was transformed.  The big question now is, “how did his story end?”

Perhaps the most obvious and important implication of the idea of Bran as an Azor Ahai reborn figure is that Bran seems to be closely mimicking the arc of the Last Hero, and here we will deviate for the aforementioned Last Hero talk.  The Last Hero journeyed into the frozen, dead lands seeking out the children of the forest and ended up working against the Others and the Long Night – pretty much Bran’s storyline so far.  The Last Hero had a sword, which broke, and twelve companions, who died, as well as a dog and a horse who also died.  Bran himself may be the broken sword, if you want to take it that far, with a wolf for a dog and an elk for a horse.  My buddy from the Westeros.org forums known as the Last Melnibonean has an interesting theory that Bran has met twelve people on his journey that have either died or will die as a correlation to the Last Hero’s twelve dead companions.  Regardless of the smaller details, he’s definitely retracing the important footsteps of the Last Hero (ironic metaphor alert… Bran… footsteps…).  Bran as both a falling moon meteor figure and a Last Hero figure is another corroboration that the Last Hero story is somehow connected to the idea of Azor Ahai reborn.

Now, Bran being a Last Hero figure also clues us in to the idea that the Starks are probably connected to the Last Hero as well – an idea we already had, of course – and thus to Azor Ahai reborn.  The mystery of how  the Starks, the Last Hero, and the Last Hero’s blade of dragonsteel are connected with the myth of Azor Ahai and Lightbringer is one of the biggest mysteries in the books, in my opinion.  It’s the whole reason that Jon being half Targyen and half Stark is significant, for one thing, and I believe it will figure into the ultimate endgame of the series.

I mean ask yourself – why all this to-do about Azor Ahai and Lightbringer, a fantastical myth from the other side of the world, in a story which is squarely centered on Westeros and the Starks?  There must be some connection, right?  I’m claiming Azor Ahai, also called the Bloodstone Emperor, caused the Long Night, but the most famous effect of the Long Night besides the general darkness was the invasion of the Others, in Westeros.  In order for all this Azor Ahai stuff to be relevant, there needs to be connection to the main events in Westeros.  Everyone can see that the dragons and the Others are on some sort of collision course – people can sense there’s a connection, a date with destiny.   Many think the solution to the ice demons might involve heroes who are dragon-blooded people riding dragons, the “three heads of the dragon.”  I mean you could look at it the other way round – pun intended – and say that the elegant ice elves are the solution to the fire monsters, but the point is – what’s the connection?  Because all things come round again in A Song of Ice and Fire, the same must have happened in the past –  this would be the place where Azor Ahai and Lightbringer connect to the Last Hero, dragonsteel, and the Starks.

Similarly, everyone can see the parallels between Jon and Dany, that they both are the clearest manifestations of Azor Ahai reborn – but one is associated with fire, and the other with ice, pun intended again.  Now let me tell you – I think the debate about which one is “really” Azor Ahai reborn is quite silly.  They’re both Azor Ahai reborn, but one is Azor Ahai reborn in any icy sheath.  The interaction between Jon and Dany stands to figure prominently in the conclusion of the story, however you envision that meeting going down.  The question is, what happens?  What is the interaction between ice and fire, between Other and dragon?  I have some ideas about that actually… it’s one of the big conclusions which all of my essays are building up to.

Here’s a bit of a clue about that, and it brings us back to gargoyles again – the real ones carved from stone this time, not people symbolized by gargoyles.  I’ve actually been waiting to bring up this topic for a long time… so check this out.  There are actually only two castles in all of Westeros – nay, in all of A Song of Ice and Fire – which are warded with gargoyles.  And those two castles are: the First Keep of Winterfell, the oldest part which was built by Brandon the Builder, and Dragonstone, the ancestral home of House Targaryen which was built by the Valyrians.  That’s quite a fascinating parallel, don’t you think?  Putting gargoyles on castle walls is nothing special – that’s where you’d expect to see them, after all – and if George had randomly sprinkled them on various castles throughout the land, we wouldn’t think much of it.  But instead, we find them exclusively at these two extremely significant castles.  This tells us much and more, I believe.

The gargoyles of Dragonstone are all hell beasts of various kinds, with dragons being chief among them.  The two on Cressen’s balcony are a hellhound and wyvern, for example, and of course the dragons are everywhere.  The stone gargoyles and dragons are specifically used as meteor symbols in scenes on Dragonstone such as the Cressen prologue of Clash and the burning of the Seven scene, also from Clash, where Stannis and Mel do their little Lightbringer re-enactment ceremony.  The gargoyles of Dragonstone themselves are made of fused black stone – stone burnt black and super-hardened by dragonfire, which makes for a very clear and vivid parallel to our burning black moon meteor dragons.

In that scene where they burn the Seven and draw forth fake Lightbringer, the gargoyles and dragons look as though they are about come to life in, just as Winterfell’s gargoyles come to life with fire in their eyes in Bran’s dream:

Heat rose shimmering through the chill air; behind, the gargoyles and stone dragons on the castle walls seemed blurred, as if Davos were seeing them through a veil of tears.  Or as if the beasts were trembling, stirring…

This entire scene is laced with talk of waking dragons, and we can see here in the second paragraph of the chapter that the idea of waking gargoyles is akin to waking dragons – they’re lumped in together as stone hell beasts that might be stirring.  The veil of tears is an expression which refers to the barrier between life and death, so the resurrection symbolism is really pretty think here.  Not only are the dragons and gargoyles coming to life, they are coming back from the dead, through the veil of tears, but in the wrong direction.  In the prologue of Clash, Cressen actually talks to his gargoyles and thinks about them talking back, only to scold himself for being crazy.  He’s not crazy, but again we see the idea of the gargoyles coming to life.  I think it’s all pretty clear – gargoyles in A Song of Ice and Fire are fiery hell beasts woken from stone, and they make up one aspect of Azor Ahai reborn, the flying moon meteor.

And there they are, sitting atop the oldest part of Winterfell.

What does this mean?  Well, the fact that the Winterfell gargoyles are so worn that you cannot tell what specific creatures they are is quite suspicious, to me.  If George had put dragons on the walls of Winterfell, after all, we’d all look at it quite differently, wouldn’t we?   I suggested last time that Winterfell and Ned himself are symbols of the destroyed second moon that gave birth to dragons – this would be the fire moon in my hypothesized ice moon / fire moon scenario.  But wait, isn’t Winterfell and House Stark a symbol of the North, the cold and frozen lands?  Well, actually, what Winterfell is is a bulwark against the cold.   It’s situated on top of a geothermal hot spot, as evidenced by its hot pools which are pumped through it s walls like veins of warm blood:

Of all the rooms in Winterfell’s Great Keep, Catelyn’s bedchambers were the hottest. She seldom had to light a fire. The castle had been built over natural hot springs, and the scalding waters rushed through its walls and chambers like blood through a man’s body, driving the chill from the stone halls, filling the glass gardens with a moist warmth, keeping the earth from freezing. Open pools smoked day and night in a dozen small courtyards. That was a little thing, in summer; in winter, it was the difference between life and death.

Winterfell is warm and smoking.  It’s a beating heart which may be the difference between life and death.  Here’s Jon Snow making the same analogy between hot blood and the hot water at Winterfell in A Game of Thrones:

So cold, he thought, remembering the warm halls of Winterfell, where the hot waters ran through the walls like blood through a man’s body. There was scant warmth to be found in Castle Black; the walls were cold here, and the people colder.

It’s often said that Winterfell is the heart of the north, and we can see that it is a warm heart which pumps hot water through its stone walls like blood.  At the heart of Winterfell, of course, we have the heart tree, with its bloody hands and mouth and eyes weeping tears of blood.  That’s a lot of warmth!

Many have suggested that the name Winterfell might imply that it was the place where winter fell, and that’s fell as in defeated.  The King of Winter rules over winter like a defeated subject, in other words.  This idea is reinforced by the description of the crown of the King of Winter, which we receive in A Clash of Kings:

Lord Hoster’s smith had done his work well, and Robb’s crown looked much as the other was said to have looked in the tales told of the Stark kings of old; an open circlet of hammered bronze incised with the runes of the First Men, surmounted by nine black iron spikes wrought in the shape of longswords. Of gold and silver and gemstones, it had none; bronze and iron were the metals of winter, dark and strong to fight against the cold.

To fight against the cold.  The King of Winter fights against the cold, and his castle is a warm beating heart and a bulwark against the cold… and its covered in hellish gargoyles of one sort or another.  The King of Winter has a beast at his side, too – the direwolf.  We’ve seen that all the Stark direwolves have eyes explicitly described to be fiery, and we’ve seen that the direwolves seem to be playing into the archetype of the fiery hellhound, guardians of the underworld.  Who is this King of Winter anyway, with his dark metals and fiery hellhounds, and his loathing of the forces of the cold?

Gargoyles ward against evil spirits, and the evilest spirits around are of course the Others, demons made of ice.  It makes sense to see fiery gargoyles and hellhounds warding against icy demons, right?

This seems like the right time to mention that Winterfell, as a proper second moon symbol, is burnt and cracked open.  Theon reflects in A Dance with Dragons:

The great stronghold of House Stark was a scorched desolation. 

And later in the same book, Theon again:

Only a shell remained, one side open to the elements and filling up with snow. Rubble was strewn all about it: great chunks of shattered masonry, burned beams, broken gargoyles. The falling snow had covered almost all of it, but part of one gargoyle still poked above the drift, its grotesque face snarling sightless at the sky. This is where they found Bran when he fell.

That’s a nice tie between falling Brans and falling gargoyles.  One gargoyle lies broken, staring sightlessly, just as Bran lay broken in that very spot.  This also the spot where the dead body of Little Walder was found – the line was “under that ruined keep, my lord, the one with the old gargoyles.”  You’ll recall that Little Walder appears to Theon in the haze of the snow and mist of the godswood as a red bull, and sacrificed bulls are a recognizable sacrificed moon symbol.  Fallen moon children, fallen gargoyles, and fallen red bulls – all the same idea.  These are dragons which hatch from the moon in a burst of blood and fire and fall to earth, landing with great trauma.  The thing I really want to draw your attention to in this passage is the use of the word “shell” to describe Winterfell, something which occurs several times.  This is Jon, also in Dance:

“The castle is a shell,” he said, “not Winterfell, but the ghost of Winterfell.”

When Bran surveys the devastation of Ramsay’s burning, he observes:

The First Keep had not been used for many hundreds of years, but now it was more of a shell than ever. The floors had burned inside it, and all the beams. Where the wall had fallen away, they could see right into the rooms, even into the privy.

It’s a burnt out shell,once again.  And of course we know what hatched from that shell:

The smoke and ash clouded his eyes, and in the sky he saw a great winged snake whose roar was a river of flame. He bared his teeth, but then the snake was gone. Behind the cliffs tall fires were eating up the stars.

That was Bran’s vision through Summer’s eyes of what sounds an awful lot like a dragon, taken from A Clash of Kings.  I will address whether or not I think that was a real dragon on some other occasion – tease tease – but for now it serves to make the point that when Winterfell was burned and cracked open like a shell, a dragon hatching is depicted.  A bit later in the chapter, right after that quote about the First Keep being more of a shell than ever before, Osha declares that they “made enough noise to wake a dragon.”

Right before that, we get this paragraph:

The sky was a pale grey, and smoke eddied all around them. They stood in the shadow of the First Keep, or what remained of it. One whole side of the building had torn loose and fallen away. Stone and shattered gargoyles lay strewn across the yard. They fell just where I did, Bran thought when he saw them. Some of the gargoyles had broken into so many pieces it made him wonder how he was alive at all. Nearby some crows were pecking at a body crushed beneath the tumbled stone, but he lay facedown and Bran could not say who he was.

Here we can another equation between Bran and the gargoyles, both of which fell from the tower and landed in the same spot – it’s an identical comparison to the one Theon made in book 5, here in a Bran chapter of book 2.   Bran’s fall was depicting the moon disaster, just as the fire which gutted Winterfell was, the body which tumbled facedown in this scene is more of the same – the moon fell face down, that’s the idea.  All of the fallen objects are broken or dead or crushed, indicating the dead / undead nature of Azor Ahai reborn and the association of death which Lightbringer bears.

It’s worth noting that the gargoyles of Dragonstone also fell from the walls when Daenerys was born:

Daenerys Stormborn, she was called, for she had come howling into the world on distant Dragonstone as the greatest storm in the memory of Westeros howled outside,  a storm so fierce that it ripped gargoyles from the castle walls and smashed her father’s fleet to kindling.

 We’ve talked about the idea of incredible storms accompanying the birth of Azor Ahai reborn – the storm of sword meteors, to be specific – and how this is manifest in this story of Dany being born during a legendary storm which flung gargoyles from the walls of “dragon-stone.”  Dragonstone is one of the first symbols of the second moon and its meteor children that we discovered, and like Winterfell, we have gargoyles falling to the ground or coming to life when symbolic Lightbringer forgings occur.  These repeated parallels between the two fortresses further solidify the interpretation of Winterfell as a symbol of the moon which was destroyed by fire and gave birth to dragon meteors.

Returning to Bran surveying the ruins of Winterfell, we have this:

It took the rest of the morning to make a slow circuit of the castle. The great granite walls remained, blackened here and there by fire but otherwise untouched. But within, all was death and destruction. 

Walls blackened by fire may be another parallel to Dragonstone, whose walls were all burnt black by dragon fire.  More importantly, this quote reinforces the shell idea – the blackened walls are the shell, and inside the egg is fire and death and destruction.  Dragons, in other words.  Or, if you prefer, the fiery heart of a star, one which becomes a flying dragon.

I’m tempted to wonder if Martin is making a super nerdy joke about Lightbringer and electricity – they make a circuit of the broken shell, get it?

So, to sum up, Winterfell is a symbol of the destroyed second moon, the potential “fire moon,” which gave birth to dragons.  The King of Winter has hellhounds and dark metals to fight the cold.  He lives in an oasis of warmth, the warm heart of the north.  And his castle is festooned with gargoyles, just like a dragonlord fortress.  What’s going on here?

Well, if there’s a connection between Azor Ahai, who is definitely from the east and affiliated with dragons and fire magic, and the Last Hero, who is from Westeros and strongly affiliated with the Starks, then somehow, the Starks should have some ancient connection with dragons and fire magic…  and indeed, they seem to be.  I think George has hidden this fact in plain sight.  Consider: the first time we saw Winterfell, we saw Ned Stark cleaning the blood off of his smoke-dark, dragon-forged sword in the black waters of the godswood pond.  This is clearly one of the most important early scenes in the book, and in it, we find Lord Stark, our stand-in the for the King of Winter, honing and admiring his black dragonsword with the dark glow.  The very first scene with Eddard was the execution of the runaway Night’s Watchbrother, and again his black Ice sword features prominently.  Think about it: the first thing we ever see Ned do is cover his dragon sword in human blood.  Yes, that’s deserving of another dun-dun-dun.

I have come to the opinion that here, right at the beginning of the first book, we are being shown the King of Winter archetype.  Dark metals to fight the cold – honestly, that sounds like the idea of Lightbringer the black sword fighting the forces of winter, a.k.a. the Others.  That’s just what Jon dreams of – fighting the cold forces from the lands of always winter with a black Valyrian steel sword which burns red, with black ice armor to remind us of Ned’s black sword called Ice.  And speaking of Jon and heroes, we have this from A Dance with Dragons:

When Jon had been a boy at Winterfell, his hero had been the Young Dragon, the boy king who had conquered Dorne at the age of fourteen. Despite his bastard birth, or perhaps because of it, Jon Snow had dreamed of leading men to glory just as King Daeron had, of growing up to be a conqueror.

From young dragon to Lord Snow – meaning “King of Winter” – is this the path of Azor Ahai the conqueror, or perhaps his son?  It’s definitely a nice clue about Jon being a dragon person…  AeJon the Conqueror, if you will.  Kidding aside, let me be clear: I think the clues indicate that the King of Winter, who may or may not have been Brandon the Builder or the Last hero of the Night’s King or any combination of the three, may have at least some dragon lineage.  In particular, I am thinking of Azor Ahai or his son marrying a Westerosi woman of First Men heritage to found the line of House Stark, the Kings of Winter who fight the cold with dark metals and hot castles and fiery hellhounds and gargoyles.

Whew, that was exciting.  Dragons in Winterfell and the King of Winter unmasked as a fiery dude who actually is not so fond of the cold!  You better believe I am going to come back to all of that.  As I mentioned last time, the Last Hero clues just kind of seem to come in drips and drabs as we study other things.  This essay is mainly about Tyrion, but the clues about the gargoyles led to that mini-episode about Winterfell and the King of Winter and the Last Hero, and far be it from me to edit cool stuff like that out of my podcast.  I hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, I’m glad I included it.

Now, let’s bring things back to Tyrion by examining a couple of the passages in which he is called a gargoyle, and we’ll just sort of see what we find.  We already covered the first occurrence of Tyrion the gargoyle at Winterfell, and the next one is to be found in A Clash of Kings…  it’s a hum-dinger, and it opens the chapter:

Motionless as a gargoyle, Tyrion Lannister hunched on one knee atop a merlon. Beyond the Mud Gate and the desolation that had once been the fishmarket and wharves, the river itself seemed to have taken fire. Half of Stannis’s fleet was ablaze, along with most of Joffrey’s. The kiss of wildfire turned proud ships into funeral pyres and men into living torches. The air was full of smoke and arrows and screams. 

Right off the bat, we take note of the fact that King’s Landing was built by dragon people, and thus it’s entirely fitting to place a gargoyle like Tyrion atop its walls.  That gargoyle is a dragon, after all, according to theory.  We see a burned hellscape of desolation, and the deadly kiss of fire which consumes everything it touches, just like the sun kissed the moon and cracked it open.  Notice what the fiery kiss does – it turns men into living torches.  Think of Beric, animated by fire magic, who was brought back by the fiery kiss, and thus we see once again the idea that undead fire beings were a result of the forging of Lightbringer.  Human torches, if you will.  The kiss also turns wooden ships into funeral pyres, evoking the funeral pyre of Khal Drogo and the smoke which rises from the meteor impacts to blot out the stars.

As I mentioned before, Tyrion is the protector of King’s Landing, and here he is, literally perching on its walls like a gargoyle, overseeing his efforts to ward the city.  This is actually the chapter where Tyrion rides out into battle in defense of the city, making his protection role a direct and visceral one.  Besides his own person, the main weapon which he employed to save King’s Landing was his wildfire – the jade demon, as it is called during the battle.  The next paragraph:

Downstream, commoners and highborn captains alike could see the hot green death swirling toward their rafts and carracks and ferries, borne on the current of the Blackwater.

Black water and green fire – a match for Tyrion’s green and black eyes, perhaps?  Color symbolism is always quite subjective, so who knows, but I thought I would point it out. The chapter continues with an appearance of the Last Hero math: a group of twelve great fires led by one even more terrible fire, which is Tyrion’s demon:

A dozen great fires raged under the city walls, where casks of burning pitch had exploded, but the wildfire reduced them to no more than candles in a burning house, their orange and scarlet pennons fluttering insignificantly against the jade holocaust. The low clouds caught the color of the burning river and roofed the sky in shades of shifting green, eerily beautiful. A terrible beauty. Like dragonfire. Tyrion wondered if Aegon the Conqueror had felt like this as he flew above his Field of Fire.

Well, that was fairly on the nose, wasn’t it?  Oh that’s right, I guess shouldn’t make nose jokes about Tyrion.  It kind of goes without saying, but in this scene, we see Tyrion’s jade demon compared to dragonfire, and Tyrion might feel kinda like Aegon the Conqueror.  Because he’s a secret Targaryen.

There’s also not one, but two monkey-demon references connected to Tyrion’s protection of King’s Landing, which I saved for just this moment.  As one of the chapters before the Battle of the Blackwater closes with Tyrion musing about how the people of the city don’t have one of their shining heroic knights to save them, but only the one they hate, “the dwarf, the evil counselor, the twisted little monkey demon.”  In another scene before the battle, Tyrion commands Bronn to gather a hundred men and “burn everything you see here between the waters edge and the city walls” in order to deny Stannis wood for scaling ladders.  Bronn suggests that the lowly peasants won’t take kindly to that, to which Tyrion quips that “they’ll have something else to curse the evil monkey demon for.”   Tyrion the monkey demon is employing fire as a weapon to protect the city on multiple occasions , and sometimes the fire itself is a demon, and sometimes it looks like dragon fire.  This all plays in to the themes of using dark weapons and dark powers related to fire to potentially save the day which we’ve seen many times now.

Well, that was a pretty good one.  Let’s go to out next Tyrion as gargoyle quote, from a Sansa chapter of A Storm of Swords:

Queen Cersei studied her critically. “A few gems, I think. The moonstones Joffrey gave her.”

“At once, Your Grace,” her maid replied.

When the moonstones hung from Sansa’s ears and about her neck, the queen nodded. “Yes. The gods have been kind to you, Sansa. You are a lovely girl. It seems almost obscene to squander such sweet innocence on that gargoyle.”

“What gargoyle?” Sansa did not understand. 

Besides the moon stones draped over Sansa’s kissed by fire head of auburn hair, Cersei also fastens a white maiden’s cloak about Sansa which is “heavy with pearls.”  Moonstones and pearls – white ones, at least –  are both symbols of pure, shining moon – one that has not been penetrated by burning dragon seed or burning dragon swords.  It’s such a shame, wasting such an excellent moon maiden on a gargoyle like Tyrion.

Tyrion represents the gargoyle version of Azor Ahai reborn, which is a child of sun and moon.  His lion nature reflects his “dad’s genes,” if you will – the fact that the sun is Azor Ahai reborn’s father.  Azor Ahai transforms into Azor Ahai reborn when Lightbringer is forged and the moon cracks, when the Long Night falls and the sun turns dark, and so we can see that giving an innocent moon maiden to the likes of an Azor Ahai reborn character is indeed an obscene act.  The thing is, Tyrion is not like his father the sun, who’s all about Tyrion forcing himself on Sansa.  Tyrion refuses to do this, and instead he protects Sansa’s chastity and autonomy, like a true gargoyle, leaving the choice of consummation up to her.  He also protected Sansa from the beatings of the Kingsguard which came at the behest of another ravenous sun king, Joffrey.

Again, this protection role is a match for Sandor, a hellhound version of Azor Ahai reborn, who also protects Sansa from rape at the hands of the mob during the riot, and from Joffrey when Sansa speaks up for Dontos at Joffrey’s nameday tournament.  You remember that whole thing about what a man sows on his name day, he reaps throughout the year, right?  In other words, the takeaway here is that moon maiden Sansa is protected by hellhounds and gargoyles.  Once again, if Tyrion were to end up protecting Daenerys, it would match the symbolism perfectly.  Sansa and Daenerys are moon maidens with very similar imagery, as we have seen.

Consider also that Tyrion’s great shame is that he did not protect his first love Tysha – instead he did nothing while a hundred of his father’s guardsman raped her.  This is a deep violation of Tyrion’s calling to protect moon maidens, and accordingly, it haunts him throughout his storyline.  Similarly, he choked Shae until her face turned black – and this too haunts his memories.  Of course Shae’s face turning black is a vivid depiction of the moon turning black when it was killed.  The opening of the fiery hand of the king in the sky was the death of the moon, and Shae dies with golden hands embedded in her flesh.

Moving right along, there’s another occasion of Tyrion being called a gargoyle in Storm, when Sandor curses out Tyrion to Arya as he sets out to take her to the Twins for “your uncle’s bloody wedding,” a.k.a. the Red Wedding.  That passage is mostly about Sandor, so I have chosen not to quote it, but it involves Sandor declaring that he is through with the Lannisters and leaving King’s Landing, which is a depiction of the hellhounds flying from the sun, landing, and then turning against the sun as they throw up the smoke which blots out the sun’s face.  This may also be another clue about the Last Hero turning against his evil father Azor Ahai, or perhaps his sword being taken from him and used to undo his evil deeds.

In A Feast for Crows, we get a Tyrion gargoyle reference when Cersei receives a severed dwarf’s head which is not Tyrion’s, and says..

There are gargoyles on Dragonstone that look more like the Imp than this creature.

That’s a pretty sweet tie-in to Dragonstone.  Tyrion has now been associated with gargoyles on all three of the castles we’ve discussed: Winterfell, King’s Landing, and now Dragonstone.  The plot didn’t provide a convenient way for Tyrion to perch on Dragonstone’s walls like a gargoyle, as he did at Winterfell and King’s Landing, but this comparison by Cersei does the trick nicely.  Once again, the fact that King’s Landing and Dragonstone were both built by dragon people kind of raises the possibility that the First Keep of Winterfell was built by dragon people too.

There’s a few lines worth looking at leading up to Cersei’s line about Tyrion, as the would-be informers present Cersei with their head:

He laid his hand upon his chest. “I bring you justice. I bring you the head of your valonqar.”

The old Valyrian word sent a chill through her, though it also gave her a tingle of hope. “The Imp is no longer my brother, if he ever was,” she declared. “Nor will I say his name. It was a proud name once, before he dishonored it.”

“In Tyrosh we name him Redhands, for the blood running from his fingers. A king’s blood, and a father’s. Some say he slew his mother too, ripping his way from her womb with savage claws.”

What nonsense, Cersei thought. “ ’Tis true,” she said. “If the Imp’s head is in that chest, I shall raise you to lordship and grant you rich lands and keeps.”

That’s a fabulous description of Azor Ahai reborn, the dragon, ripping its way out of its moon-mother shell.  Red hands is a nice one, tying into the well-established bleeding and burning hands symbolic motif.  Well-established, anyway, if you’ve been listening to these podcasts in order, which I highly recommend.  Tyrion killed his father too, as everyone well remembers, and this is simply another depiction of the moon meteors, children of sun and moon, turning against their sun father by darkening the sky with ash and smoke.

I have to say, I think it’s becoming increasingly likely that the original Azor Ahai had a son who turned against him.  Remember that Azor Ahai “reborn” can refer to either a child of Azor Ahai or to a resurrected Azor Ahai, and my best guess is that we had both the first time around.  An undead dad and a son who went against his father.  Perhaps the son slew the father, who was then resurrected.  That’s taking the whole odeipus thing to a whole new level, right?  Son slays father, father rises from the dead, sacrifices son in bloodmagic ritual on alter made of ice?  Something like that, surely.

We saw this idea of two Azor Ahai reborn figures clashing a moment ago in the idea that Sandor, the hellhound version of Azor Ahai reborn, wishes death on Tyrion, the gargoyle version of reborn Azor Ahai.  We also see it in the Battle of Blackwater Bay itself, when the army led by Tyrion clashes against that of Stannis, a distinct Azor Ahai reborn figure in his own right.  I think we have to ask the question: Is this a conflict between Azor Ahai reborn the resurrected dad and Azor Ahai reborn the child?  Or were there more than one child?  It seems possible, since we have all this in the current story about three heads of the dragon, and the original three heads of the dragon – Aegon, Visenya, and Rhaenys – were all siblings.  That’s a hole we’ll have to fall down another time.  It’s safe to say there is a lot of familial conflict of every sort in A Song of Ice and Fire, and it’s likely a lot of this is echoing familial conflicts from the Dawn Age.

Our final Tyrion as gargoyle reference comes from A Dance with Dragons, and it’s actually from the same chapter where Moqorro sees Tyrion snarling amidst all the dragons in a fire vision.  This is from the page before that vision, as Tyrion feels empathy for Penny, the dwarf girl:

And the sight of me can only be salt in her wound. They hacked off her brother’s head in the hope that it was mine, yet here I sit like some bloody gargoyle, offering empty consolations. If I were her, I’d want nothing more than to shove me into the sea.

Tyrion does indeed play the protective gargoyle for Penny all through their time together, so we can see that this is an apt evocation of the gargoyle aspect of Tyrion’s character.  Tyrion is a bloody gargoyle, even better, and perhaps he should be shoved into the sea like some sort of falling sea dragon.  We’ve seen many references to moon or moon meteor drowning throughout these essays, and this is yet another.  The equivalency drawn between Tyrion and Penny’s dead brother is another suggestion of Azor Ahai reborn as being a dead person.

The quote continues:

He felt nothing but pity for the girl. She did not deserve the horror visited on her in Volantis, any more than her brother had. The last time he had seen her, just before they left port, her eyes had been raw from crying, two ghastly red holes in a wan, pale face. By the time they raised sail she had locked herself in her cabin with her dog and her pig, but at night they could hear her weeping. Only yesterday he had heard one of the mates say that they ought to throw her overboard before her tears could swamp the ship. Tyrion was not entirely sure he had been japing.

Penny is playing a pure moon maiden role here – she’s a weeping maiden with two ghastly red holes for eyes, and she has a wan, pale face.  That’s the wan light of a moon pale face and the torn out eyes of the moon which became the bleeding stars.  The side-by-side appearance of tears and torn-out eyes is impossible to miss at this point, and unmistakable as well.  I don’t have to summarize the whole moon tears / eyeless skulls thing again do I?  We’ve talked about it enough, I trust.  Penny’s tears might even swamp the ship – that’s a flood tide of tears, in other words, enough to drown things.

Finally, we see a parallel to the idea of throwing Tyrion into the sea, as moon maiden Penny is also associated with being thrown into the sea.  Elsewhere in the same chapter, there’s also a mention Penny becoming suicidal and jumping into the sea.  Sea dragon moon meteors drown in the ocean, and then then drown whole islands, get it?  Also recall that pennies are called copper stars in Westeros, so the weeping, eyeless, moon-faced Penny who is drowned in the sea also shows us a star having its eyes torn out, weeping a flood tide, and drowning in the sea.  Once again, I am left to marvel at the density of Martin’s mythical astronomy – he touched on all these ideas in multiple ways in the space of just two paragraphs.

And then, just a moment later, Moquorro sees Tyrion snarling and casting long shadows in the midst of dragons. There’s another line about Penny here, as Tyrion suggests that perhaps it was Penny he saw in his dream – this makes sense because Penny is a moon maiden, and dragons come from the moon.

Well, that does it for the gargoyle – I think it’s a fabulous use of real-world myth, and we can see that Tyrion has a well-established track record of protecting moon maidens.    Again, I think it’s pretty likely Tyrion will be doing the same for the penultimate moon maiden, Daenerys Targaryen.  What better way to protect a moon maiden like Daenerys than by riding on the back of a dragon?

And so, I will close this essay by leaving you with a possible foreshadowing of Tyrion’s future dragon-riding, and this is the very mild spoiler from one of Tyrion’s Winds of Winter sample chapters which I spoke of at the beginning.  I left it to the end so that you can tune out if you don’t want Winds of Winter spoilers, for whatever reason.  This scene takes place in the command tent of the Second Sons, where a Yunkishman comes in to give more incredibly foolish battle commands to the Brown Ben Plumm, the captain of the Second Sons.  You’ll recall that the Second Sons betrayed Daenerys by turning their cloaks and going over to the Yunkish forces – in this scene, Tyrion has been trying to convince Brown Ben to go back over to Daenerys, who seems like the wining side.  The Yunkish man arrives with his crappy orders:

Out went Kem. When he returned, he held the tent flap open for a Yunkish nobleman in a cloak of yellow silk and matching pantaloons. The man’s oily black hair had been tortured, twisted, and lacquered to make it seem as if a hundred tiny roses were sprouting from his head. On his breastplate was a scene of such delightful depravity that Tyrion sensed a kindred spirit.

Oily black roses which have been tortured and and twisted – you guys caught that one right?  That’s the moon flower of oily black stone, unfolding like an iron rose such as we saw with Tywin’s army at the battle of the Green Fork.  The Yunkishman is called kindred and wears yellow to draw an analogy to Tywin, the solar character, who wields the iron rose.  In fact, Tyrion recalls that battle scene in this Winds chapter, just a couple of pages previous, and uses the same symbolic language that we saw all the way back in the first book:

“I was just recalling my first battle. The Green Fork. We fought between a river and a road. When I saw my father’s host deploy, I remember thinking how beautiful it was. Like a flower opening its petals to the sun. A crimson rose with iron thorns. And my father, ah, he had never looked so resplendent. He wore crimson armor, with this huge greatcloak made of cloth-of-gold. A pair of golden lions on his shoulders, another on his helm. His stallion was magnificent. His lordship watched the whole battle from atop that horse and never got within a hundred yards of any foe. He never moved, never smiled, never broke a sweat, whilst thousands died below him. Picture me perched on a camp stool, gazing down upon a cyvasse board. We could almost be twins… if I had a horse, some crimson armor, and a greatcloak sewn from cloth-of-gold. He was taller too. I have more hair.” 

Penny kissed him.

The moon wandered too close to the sun and kissed it, chuckle chuckle.

The choice to use the same symbolic language about the iron rose six books and twenty years apart shows specific intention on the part of the author, I would suggest, and the black rose theme is reinforced by the oily black hair of the Yunkishman that is tortured to look like roses.  Previously on Mythical Astronomy of Ice and Fire, we have examined a long series of solar characters who have some sort of black moon weapon symbol, beginning with Tywin’s unfolding iron rose and also including Jon Snow’s rivers of black ice and black ice armor, Drogo’s oily black hair which is like a river of darkness, Jamie and Joffrey’s “waves of blood and night” swords , and Oberyn’s oily black sun-spear.  I forgot to mention last time that Oberyn’s eyes are described as being “as black and shiny as coal oil.”  As you can see, the oily black rose hair of the yellow-cloaked Yunkishman fits very tightly into this established pattern, and presented in close proximity the repetition of the iron rose army of Tywin Lannister idea… well let’s just say it’s not a coincidence.  The thing to remember is that this a depiction of the sun using the moon as a black weapon – so while all these characters are solar figures, their symbolism also includes the moon, and that is where there black and bloody tides and the black sword meteors come from.

In Tyrion’s memory of the battle scene, Tywin watches from atop his horse like a sun in the sky, and this is compared to Tyrion watching the cyvasse table from atop his stool.  They could almost be twins!  Tywin’s iron rose army is drawn as an equivalent to Tyrion’s chess pieces, and this is where the dragon-riding clue comes in.  After our oily-rose head Yunkishman gives his commands, Jorah has a second opinion:

Mormont’s longsword was in his hand. As the rider turned, Ser Jorah thrust it through his throat. The point came out the back of the Yunkishman’s neck, red and wet. Blood bubbled from his lips and down his chin. The man took two wobbly steps and fell across the cyvasse board, scattering the wooden armies everywhere. He twitched a few more times, grasping the blade of Mormont’s sword with one hand as the other clawed feebly at the overturned table. Only then did the Yunkishman seem to realize he was dead. He lay facedown on the carpet in a welter of red blood and oily black roses. Ser Jorah wrenched his sword free of the dead man’s neck. Blood ran down its fullers.

A bloody sword, a face-down sun figure, a pool of blood and oily black roses.  That’s a nice summary of episodes 2 and 3 of the podcast, complete with references to blood tides, black roses, oily black stone.  Just as Tyrion the twisted monkey demon killed his solar father figure, this oily Yunkish solar figure has been killed by Jorah, who wears the demon mask.  Once again, we see the idea that sun is killed by a demon-spawn, which would Azor Ahai reborn, the sun’s own son.  And then comes the dragon reference:

The white cyvasse dragon ended up at Tyrion’s feet. He scooped it off the carpet and wiped it on his sleeve, but some of the Yunkish blood had collected in the fine grooves of the carving, so the pale wood seemed veined with red. “All hail our beloved queen, Daenerys.” Be she alive or be she dead. He tossed the bloody dragon in the air, caught it, grinned. “We have always been the queen’s men,” announced Brown Ben Plumm. “Rejoining the Yunkai’i was just a ploy.”

“And what a clever ploy it was.” Tyrion gave the dead man a shove with his boot. “If that breastplate fits, I want it.”  

Viserion, the white dragon, has just been flying above the battle scene and eating corpses as they are flung into the air by the catapults – so I think there can be little doubt that this bloody white dragon which Tyrion claims is a reference to Viserion, if it’s a reference to anything.  There’s also a link drawn to weirwood, pale wood veined with red – and of course, this makes be think of Bloodraven, who’s sigil is a white dragon, and who is transforming into a weirwood.  There’s a whole mysterious connection between white dragons and weirwood – you’ll notice this coloring matches Ghost’s as well – and that we will have to save for another day.

But the chess analogy here is quite clear: Tyrion deploys the chess pieces just as Tywin deploys his army.  Tywin’s army is a black iron rose, and Tyrion’s is a bloody white dragon.  This connection was reinforced with a line earlier, which was Tyrion saying “This is just a cyvasse game to the Wise Masters. We’re the pieces.  They have that in common with my lord father, these slavers.”  We are the pieces, he says, and the pieces are a bloody white dragon.  Tyrion is a bloody white dragon, in other words, and perhaps he will ride one too, deploying it like a chess piece to protect his dragon queen.  Tyrion tosses the dragon into the air – that’s where you ride them, after all – and says ‘all hail queen Daenerys.’

Last but not least, Tyrion wants the armor of the dead sun figure, the one with all those depraved scenes, despite the fact that it might have blood and black oil on it.  Tyrion has always wanted that magic armor from Valyria, right?  As a monkey demon following in the tradition of Sun Wukong, he needs a suit of magic armor.  Earlier, Tyrion remarks that he’d be like Tywin, if only he had that splendid armor.  Well, he’s getting the armor of the sun, but it’s the armor of a dead sun – the dead solar king we know as the black dragon, Azor Ahai reborn.

Attentive listeners will remember that we quoted a scene earlier where Tyrion plays cyvasse with Young Griff, a.k.a. probably fAegon Blackfyre, and Tyrion was noted to move the black dragon around the board instead of the white in this scene.  Like chess, cyvasse has a black and a white “wooden army,” as they are called, and it’s interesting to compare Tyrion’s role as dragon advisor in the two scenes.  When he had the black dragon, the yin side if you will, he was deceiving Young Griff, both on the game board and his strategic advice and manipulation.  In this scene here with the white dragon, it certainly appears that Tyrion genuinely is on team Daenerys.  This recalls Sun Wukong’s nature as a trickster god who can push the balance in either direction.

I’ll close by mentioning that there’s actually a white dragon in the story of Sun Wukong told in “Journey to the West.”  Later in life, after escaping from the mountain under which the Buddha had imprisoned him, Sun Wukong works to atone for his evil deeds by playing the role of protector to the main character in the second half of the story, Tang Sanzang.  That’s a nice overlap to the protection aspect of gargoyles.  Tangs horse is eaten by this a dragon prince who takes the form of a white dragon.  Sun Wukong fights and drives off the white dragon, who retreats underwater.  Sun Wukong tracks him down, after which the white dragon transforms into a kind of dragon-horse and serves as Tang’s new steed for the rest of the journey.  Sun Wukong himself doesn’t ride the whet dragon, but he subdues it and gains it’s loyalty, and then Sun Wuong serves the rider of the dragon.  As we have seen, George never writes his stories and characters as exact, one-to-one correlations to their mythological forefathers, so I think the important takeaway here is simply that Sunk Wukong has a white dragon on his team, and it is my prediction that Tyrion will soon have the same.

---

Thanks for listening everyone, and I need to give a bit of credit where credit is due.  There were a few essays by others that proved handy as I was writing this, which I will have links to on the wordpress version of this essay.  My buddy from the Westeros.org forums known as Mithras has two essays worthy of note: one is called “A Theory on The Evil Twisted Litlle Monkey-Demon,” which has analysis on the monkey demon quotes, and another one which is simply recommended reading, called “Dany’s Dragonriders” which talks about the idea of Tyrion riding Viserion.  My Pobeb from the ASOIAF sunreddit has written a nice piece called “Tyrion, Gargoyles, and the Implications.”  I’m pretty sure that’s a clever imp word pun (imp-lications, get it?) and I recommend that as a supplement to this essay.  Pobeb made the astute observation that the gargoyles statues on top of medieval buildings served not only to ward off evil spirits, but to divert rainwater off the roof – and this is manifest in the fact that Tyrion was given the job of making sure all the drains and cisterns in Casterly Rock flowed smoothly, which he achieved with brilliant success.  Very clever gargoyle reference there, nice catch Pobeb.

As a final note on Sun Wukong, there’s actually a major-studio Chinese 3D action movie in the works based on Journey to the West., set for release some time in 2016. The white dragon horse is on the cover, and Sun Wukong will feature prominently.  I’m definitely looking forward to that one.  With any luck, the movie will be released right around the time of episode 9 of the HBO show when Tyrion rides a dragon.

 

Now, before we begin, I want to very briefly bring up two scenes which we’ve already analyzed the bejesus out of, because they set the stage for the symbolism we are about to see in this fight.  The first is Melisandre’s vision of the eyeless skulls with sockets weeping blood and the black and bloody tide from A Dance with Dragons, as well as its corresponding scene where Jon and Mel find the decapitated heads of three Night’s Watch brothers mounted on spears just north of the Wall. To sum up:

• The black and bloody tide and the blood coming from the eyeless sockets of the skulls represents the moon blood motif, and the moon blood refers to both the flood of bleeding stars in the sky and the resulting floods of seawater which came from one or more meteors landing in the ocean and triggering tsunamis.
• All of this blood is black because it refers to the general concept of fire transformation, such as the second moon experienced at the time of the Long Night.  Melisandre bleeds black blood when she sees this very vision in the flames, and has “the fire inside her, searing her and transforming her.”
• The skull motif in general represents the idea of a decapitated moon face, falling from the sky, and the multiple skulls in particular represent the moon meteors of the Long Night.  They weep blood because the meteors are bleeding stars which appear to trail blood, and they trigger a bloody tide rising from the depth because the real floods of the Long Night were triggered by moon meteors. For what it’s worth, the rock inside a comet or meteor is commonly referred to as the ‘head’ of the comet.
• The blindness / eyes torn out motif refers to the moon weeping blood or being blinded or both. Think of Lyanna weeping blood, or of the tears of the weeping Wall that appeared to Jon Snow as streaks of red fire and rivers of black ice, or think about the moon as an eye which is put out.
• The heads of the Nightswatch brothers found later that chapter, which were mounted on spears of ash wood with black and bloody holes for eye  sockets, combines all of these symbols.   Spears by themselves can represent meteors or comets, and the addition of a severed head on the tip simply adds to the imagery.  The spears of ash wood create the idea of a burning meteor trailing ash behind it as it falls to earth, weeping blood and flame.

There’s one other scene which is important to remember for this fight, and it’s the one I like to call “Benerro pantomimes the Mythical Astronomy theory.”  This one I will quote because it would take longer to summarize it:

The knight nodded.  “The red temple buys them as children and makes them priests or temple prostitutes or warriors.  Look there.”  He pointed at the steps, where a line of men in ornate armor and orange cloaks stood before the temple’s doors, clasping spears with points like writhing flames. “The Fiery Hand.  The Lord of Light’s sacred soldiers, defenders of the temple.”   

Fire knights. “And how many fingers does this hand have, pray?”   

“One thousand.  Never more, and never less.  A new flame is kindled for every one that gutters out.” 

Benerro jabbed a finger at the moon, made a fist, spread his hands wide.  When his voice rose in a crescendo, flames leapt from his fingerswith a sudden whoosh and made the crowd gasp.  The priest could trace fiery letters in the air as well. Valyrian glyphs.  Tyrion recognized perhaps two in ten; one was Doom, the other Darkness.  

The things I want to draw your attention to here are the fact that Benerro’s fist represents the moon, and when it opens in a burst of fire, the fingers represent the meteors.  In turn, the soldiers of the “Fiery Hand” are called fingers here, and they hold fiery spears.  Thus Benerro’s fiery fingers and the fiery spears are both meteor symbols. In the Mountain vs. the Viper trial by combat, we will see spears, fingers, and fists aplenty, all of which will build on the symbolism laid out here in the Benerro scene.

You’ll notice that Benerro’s fist only becomes the fiery hand when it opens and shoots out the fiery fingers.  That’s because the closed fist represents the moon before it kisses the sun; once it’s impregnated with the sun’s fiery dragon seed, it explodes in a burst of flame and becomes the fiery hand.  This correlates to the Qarthine “lunar origin of dragon” folktale, where the moon kisses the sun and cracks from the heat, and the emerging moon dragons “drink the fire of the sun.”  Of course, these sun-fertilized moon meteors represent the children of the sun and moon, which is Lightbringer.  Similarly, the ‘fiery hand’ is neither sun nor moon, but both.  It’s when the sun animates the moon with fire and the fiery fingers pour forth like spears and dragons.  Pretty much all of the severed, burned, or bloody hands in A Song of Ice and Fire play into this running symbolic motif.

Alright, now that we’ve brushed up on all that, let’s dig into the chapter.

---

The Viper and the Mountain

 A Storm of Swords, Tyrion

---

First, let’s identify our two combatants, starting with Oberyn Martell.

The Sun Snake 

Prince Oberyn Martell is from Sunspear, the capital of Dorne.  The sigil of Dorne is a red sun transfixed by a golden spear, so the obvious thing to connect Oberyn with is the sun.   Indeed, Oberyn is essentially a manifestation of this sigil.  He wears a “high golden helm with a copper disk mounted on the brow, the sun of Dorne,” wears red leather gloves, and wields a deadly spear.  Oberyn’s armor is more of the same: its made up of bright copper disks and referred to as “scales of gleaming armor.”  A snake would have armor made of scales, naturally.

Oberyn is called the “Red Viper,” which immediately puts us in mind of the red comet and the red sword remembered as Lightbringer.  Dragons, snakes, and wyrms are from the same mythological family tree, both in the real world and in A Song of Ice and Fire – Damon Targaryen named his red dragon “Bloodwyrm,” for example, and some believe that dragons were engineered from firewyrm stock, as Maester Yandel tells us in The World of Ice and Fire.  We’ve also seen quite a lot of serpentine vocabulary used to describe the dragons.  Oberyn the Red Viper is sometimes called “a snake” or “the snake,” in this chapter in particular.  Tyrion muses as follows:

The snake is eager, he thought. Let us hope he is venomous as well..

..and then:

I hope to seven hells that you know what you are doing, snake.  

He’s a venomous hell-snake, our Red Viper.  Towards the end of the fight, we get this line:

 “If you die before you say her name, ser, I will hunt you through all seven hells,” he promised.

The Dornish desert is pretty much the next best thing to hell, and there is this nasty place called the Hellholt, which used to be ruled by a Lord Lucifer Dryland who was sent to the Wall in golden fetters by Nymeria… but I have to think the hellish references ultimately go back to the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai and his luciferian influences.  This motif also pops up with the dragons and their brimstone stink and a few others quotes about other Azor Ahai reborn characters like Stannis, such as when Davos reflects on the horrific death toll of the Battle of Blackwater Bay:

Drowned or burned, with my sons and a thousand others, gone to make a king in hell. 

Adding to the devilish imagery is Oberyn’s squire, who is named Daemon, and then this bit, from the very beginning of the fight:

When the two men were ten yards apart, the Red Viper stopped and called out, “Have they told you who I am?”

Ser Gregor grunted through his breaths. “Some dead man.”

Azor Ahai, the walking dead, once again.  We cracked open that topic last time, so we don’t need to dwell on it here, but Azor Ahai was indeed a dead man at some point, or a resurrected man, something along those lines.  The dark solar king is a night sun, a dead or undead sun, in other words.

I think it’s safe to say Oberyn is playing into the Azor Ahai / dark solar king archetype, armed with a venomous sun-spear.  He reminds me of the Aztec and other related Mesoamerican solar deities who are depicted with bloodthirsty, outstretched tongues – and in fact there’s a line where Oberyn describes his younger self as “a monstrous young fellow,” and says that “someone should have sliced out my vile tongue.”  Of course we’ve seen tongues of flame used to describe the meteor shower, so the idea here is of fiery projectiles coming from the sun.  Spears, tongues, fiery fingers and hands and swords, poison darts, dragon flame, dragon’s teeth which are like swords or knives – they all create a similar picture.

Put it all together and you have the kind of dastardly solar king who would destroy the moon – a monstrous, vile fellow indeed.  The “red viper” aspect of Oberyn seems like a great symbol of the red comet wielded by the sun in the Azor Ahai myth.  This also nails the poisoning idea related to bloodstone and the notion of the moon having been poisoned and sickened, since vipers are among the most poisonous snakes in the world.  Oberyn’s offspring are even called sand snakes, which seems a good parallel to Azor Ahai being the father of the moon dragons.

Young Oberyn was also described as being “quick as a water snake” by Doran who reflects on how Oberyn would always win the contests played amongst the children at the Water Gardens.  That’s a pretty great “sea dragon” reference, and you know I always get excited to see the sea dragon pop up.  Remember that this is the sea dragon that drowns whole islands, which seems like a fairly on-the-nose description for a dragon meteor landing in the sea and causing floods that drown the land.   We’re going to talk about the Hammer of the Waters in a little bit, which certainly involved drowning a lot of land, and I think both of these events are simply different descriptions of moon meteor impacts.

In that same chapter with Doran, Obara also says that “the Red Viper of Dorne went where he would,” which evokes a bit of the red wanderer idea, perhaps.

Oberyn’s shield adds to the bloodstone ideas:

His round steel shield was brightly polished, and showed the sun-and-spear in red gold, yellow gold, white gold, and copper.

The other name for bloodstone is heliotrope, which means “sun,” “to turn,” or “to turn the sun” or “to turn towards the sun.”  There’s also a device called a heliotrope which uses mirrors to refract focused sunlight.  Oberyn will actually use his brightly polished shield to reflect the sun at a crucial moment in the fight, just like the heliotrope device.  It’s a mirror-shield, in other words.

Now recall all the copper shield / sun imagery we saw with Drogon and the eyes of the dragons.  If the pointy weapons like spears and swords make for good meteor symbols, the round, shiny shields make for good sun and full moon symbols, and we will see George use shields in just this way in the fight here.

Speaking of spears and meteors, we’ve seen the meteors symbolized as spears on many occasions, including the two passages I highlighted at the beginning – Mel’s chapter with the Night’s Watch brothers’ decapitated heads on ash wood spears, and the scene at the red temple with the fire knights of R’hllor who hold spears that look like writhing flames.  As you can see, the idea of a solar character like Oberyn wielding a big ass spear also shows us the sun wielding the giant red comet, the moon-killer.  If the red comet is a spear, then it would surely be a sun-spear, as would the fiery dragon meteors children of the sun and the moon. There’s a line about the two weapons of the Dornish being the sun and the spear, with the sun being the more deadly of the two.  Now imagine the sun actually throwing fiery meteorite spears at you…  yeah.  Real bad news.

The Sun Spear

Saving the best for last, let’s have a look at that poisonous sun spear, shall we?

“We are fond of spears in Dorne. Besides, it is the only way to counter his reach. Have a look, Lord Imp, but see you do not touch.” The spear was turned ash eight feet long, the shaft smooth, thick, and heavy. The last two feet of that was steel: a slender leaf-shaped spearhead narrowing to a wicked spike. The edges looked sharp enough to shave with. When Oberyn spun the haft between the palms of his hand, they glistened black. Oil? Or poison?    

The spear is tipped in black poison, which looks like black oil.  This is a great connection, tying the magically toxic oily black stones to the idea of a poisonous sun-spear.  I have proposed that the oily black stones are moon meteors, black bloodstones, and here we see that the steel blade of the sun-spear is coated in black poison that looks like oil.  That’s pretty sweet symbolism, right?  I’ll say it again: the sun’s spear is an oily black blade.  And I say to you: are you not entertained?

One of the bloodstone ideas we explored last time was its association with drawing out snake venom, and we saw that George seems to have inverted this, making his bloodstone toxic and poisonous itself.  Think of Asshai and Yeen, where no plants will grow anywhere near the greasy black stone found in those locations.  My idea about this oily black stone is that it is either moon meteorite ore, or stone burnt black by moon meteor impacts.  Comets and meteors which enter the Earth’s atmosphere push a wave of super-heated air in front of it hot enough to melt stone, and there’s really too much oily black stone to all be meteorite ore, so I’m guessing a lot of it was created by these moon meteor firestorms.  Additionally, if a meteor or comet strikes a rocky part of the earth, the meteor itself will melt or vaporize and fuse with the bedrock.  I’m not sure exactly how this shakes out, but I do know that we are seeing these repeated clues tying the oily black stone to the moon meteors, so I think we can feel confident there is a very close connection.

The toxicity of the oily black stone does seem likely to be magical in nature, particularly in Asshai, and this correlates nicely with Qyburn’s assessment that the snake venom on Oberyn’s spear was thickened by magic.

There’s another link between Oberyn and the oily black stone, which is his “water snake” description.  The only place water snakes are mentioned in the books that I can find is at Moat Cailin, and as we saw last time, the objects in the bog of Moat Cailin symbolize different aspects of the moon meteors – the poison kisses flowers, the lizard lions, venemous water snakes, and most of all, the oily-looking black stones that lay strewn about the bog “like some god’s abandoned toys.” 

Most importantly, the Red Viper’s oily black snake-poisoned sun-spear ultimately turns Gregor’s blood black, just as the the Lightbringer comet turned the moon’s blood black when it plunged into its heart.  I mentioned before that I think the oil or grease on the black stone is George’s depiction of blackened moon blood.  Don’t get too literal here, but that’s the picture being drawn – the greasy or oily black stones are somehow covered in black moon blood, which is poisonous.  This also fits with the notion of the red comet being a bleeding star, Dany’s dream of her black dragon child being covered in her blood, Nissa Nissa’s blood coating Lightbringer, the eyeless skulls weeping blood, and all the other times dying moon maidens have bled upon stone to create bloodstone that we discussed in the past two episodes.  Gregor is no maiden, but his blood is turned black by a Lightbringer symbol, and that symbol is Oberyn’s spear which is covered in black, oily poison.

And now we’ll break from all the esoteric symbolism with a word from NASA’s website about the nature of comets.  This is taken from an article titled “What’s in the heart of a comet?”  Their list of factoids includes:

• The surface is very black.The very black material on the surface is carbon-based material similar to the greasy black goo that burns onto your barbecue grill. Comets originally form from ices (mostly water ice), silicate dust (like powdered beach sand), and this type of black space gunk.

That’s quite the interesting cocktail: greasy black space gunk, dirty ice, and the basic elements of glass. Don’t forget stone and iron, of course, which is mentioned elsewhere in the article.  We can see all the elements here George is working with to make his magical weapons which symbolize comets.  A comet is made of ice and has a blue and white or silver tail, which can suggest Dawn or perhaps a white sword made of ice, or even an icy sword which burns with pale flame.  The idea of dragonglass is present as well, and as I’ve mentioned before, one of the side effects of a comet impact can be falling pieces of obsidian know as tektites.  Most of all, the idea that comets are coated in greasy black space gunk gives us a pretty clear indicator of what George was thinking about with his comet and moon meteors being tied to greasy black stone, weapons with black oil to symbolize Lightbringer and the moon meteors, and so on.  The red comet, in other words, shows is us greasy black stone and black ice burning red, and that is exactly how I see Lightbringer, with the extra detail that it may have been black fire shot through with red to match that of the black dragons, Drogon and Balerion, and the name of the ancestral sword of House Targaryen, which is called Blackfyre.

To finish up with Oberyn’s sun-spear, consider the shaft, which is called “turned ash.” This is referring to ash wood, but the image created is of a turning spearhead trailing ash behind it like a falling meteor.  The “trail of ash” motif  may also refer to the description of Azor Ahai’s sword as “white hot and smoking” before he thrust it into Nissa Nissa’s heart.

The turning phrase applied to the spear is another bloodstone match: a turned ash sun-spear evokes the “sun-turning” meaning of heliotrope.  We are going to see a whole damn lot of turning in this scene, primarily Gregor turning to face the sun, just as the heliotrope plant does.  You remember Klytie, the goddess who pined away after the sun every day for nine days, and eventually took root and turned into the heliotropium flower?  I wouldn’t call Ser Gregor a flower to his face, but regardless, that’s what’s going on, as you’ll soon see.

Oberyn’s ash wood spear is a direct parallel to the ash wood spears on which the heads of the eyeless Night’s Watch brothers were found, and this parallel again points to the oily black stone being some kind of black bloodstone which is associated with moon meteors.  I’ve shown that both of these ash wood spears represent meteors, as much as anything does, and severed heads and black blades in general make fantastic moon meteor symbols, so let’s compare the objects on the tips of the spears, because they are both describing the same thing in different ways.  Oberyn’s spear is topped with an oily black steel blade, the ones north of the Wall with the heads of the Night’s Watch brothers.  Night’s Watch brothers are said to have “black blood” as a manner of speaking; here, the severed heads actually have black and bloody holes where their eyes used to be; and in Mels’ dream, they weep the black and bloody tide.  Compare that to the poisonous black oil on Oberyn’s spear, and you can see that the black blood of these heads and the black oil of Oberyn’s blade are parallel symbols.  If the oil on the infamous oily black stones is to be understood as “moon blood,” then the black blood and black oil should be placed in parallel, and indeed they are in this scene, both appearing atop significant spears of ash wood.

We saw the same blood and oil parallel in the Sansa moon blood scene from the Waves of Night and Moon Blood episode, where Sansa balled up the sheets that were literally coated in her moon blood and then doused them in oil before burning them and filling the room with smoke.

One of the main hypothesis I have made in these podcasts is that Azor Ahai and the Bloodstone Emperor were the same person, and I’ve pointed out people like Jon and Daenerys who seem to combine the symbols and actions of both as evidence that they were the same person.  Consider Oberyn, a distinctly solar character whose red viper symbolism and undead symbolism tie him to Azor Ahai, not to mention his slaughter of a moon character. As we just saw, he has multiple bloodstone symbols about him as well, with the heliotropic mirror shield, oily black sun-spear, and the tangential water snake connection to the oily black stone.  Consider Oberyn to be another example of characters who seem to combine Azor Ahai and Bloodstone Emperor symbols.

That’s it for Oberyn, the vengeful and bloodthirsty sun character who wields an oily black sun spear and gives birth to snakes.  But before we move on to the Mountain that Rides, I want to briefly point out a third ash wood weapon which I believe parallels the two we just discussed.  This would be Areo Hotah’s longaxe, his “ash-and-iron wife.”  Oberyn’s ashen spear has a blade atop it and the ones north of the Wall have severed heads, but Areo’s has both:

When she appeared beneath the triple arch, Areo Hotah swung his longaxe sideways to block the way. The head was on a shaft of mountain ash six feet long, so she could not go around.

Did you catch that?  The blade of the axe is the head.  This is the same longaxe which decapitates Ser Arys Oakheart, he with the white silk cloak which is “as pale as moonlight.”  Killing moon characters is what sun-spears do, and it seems Areo’s longaxe is in the same class.  It’s interesting that it is called “mountain” ash, since Oberyn’s ash wood spear end up planted firmly in the Mountain’s chest, and Gregor is also decapitated, like Ser Arys.  We’ll come back to this idea in a moment.

Lightbringer drank Nissa Nissa’s blood and soul, the Lightbringer meteors are made of moon, and according to my theory, Lightbringer the actual sword was made from a black moon meteor.  These meteors represent Nissa Nissa and the moon maiden who was the wife of the sun.  Areo’s longaxe plays into this idea – it’s called his “ash and iron wife,” and Areo thinks about it as a woman in a slightly creepy and ominous kind of way:

Hotah strode forward, one hand wrapped about his longaxe. The ash felt as smooth as a woman’s skin against his palm.

He even sleeps beside it – like I said, it’s a little weird.  We’ll talk a little more about Arys and weapons of ash as we go, and now we’re ready to move on to Ser Gregor of House Clegane, the “Mountain that Rides.”

The Stone Giant

Martin always depicts people in symbolic terms inside of dreams or visions, and since we are primarily concerned with symbolism here, we will take a look at how Gregor appears in vision form.  Think of the Ghost of High Heart, who perceives people in terms of their sigils or personal symbolism, or Dany’s visions in the House of the Undying of the blue rose (Jon Snow) or the cloth dragon swaying on poles (Young Griff a.k.a. fAegon).  It’s the same with the sigils themselves – Martin uses them to build up the set of symbols which apply to a certain character or house.  A third technique for building up a character’s personal symbolism is the type of language used to describe them in the main action of the text.  For example, Melisandre’s adjectives are always fiery, some characters are often called “giant,” sometimes people have a “moon face” – things like that.  We’ll take a look at Gregor’s symbolism from all of these angles, starting with his appearance in a famous vision.  This is Bran’s coma-dream vision of the three shadows from A Game of Thrones:

There were shadows all around them. One shadow was dark as ash, with the terrible face of a hound. Another was armored like the sun, golden and beautiful. Over them both loomed a giant in armor made of stone, but when he opened his visor, there was nothing inside but darkness and thick black blood.

Knowing what we know now, it’s pretty easy to decode the celestial symbolism here.  We have Jaime Lannister as the sun, but appearing as a shadow – there’s our dark solar king, our darkened sun.  He’s golden and beautiful, but it’s a terrible beauty, especially to Bran who also seems Jamie’s golden face in his reoccurring nightmares of falling from the tower.

The second shadow is the Hound’s.  It’s as dark as ash to show us the black meteors in their hellhound form, trailing ash as they fall and of course kicking up a ton more ash when they land.  It’s a parallel to the ash wood of Oberyn’s spear and the spears which hold the bloody and eyeless skulls of the Night’s Watch brothers, both of which represent burning moon meteors trailing ash behind them.  You’ll recall from the last chapter where we examined Sandor and Sansa at King’s Landing that the hellhound figure seems to be another facet of Azor Ahai reborn, and of course Azor Ahai reborn can refer to the surviving red comet or the black moon meteors.  The hellhound in particular seems to refer to the meteors as opposed to the comet – more on hellhounds in a minute.

Finally, we have Gregor the stone giant, the third shadow in Bran’s vision.  As you are about to see, the symbolism of Gregor as a stone giant is 100% consistent with Gregor’s symbolism in the fight against Oberyn and elsewhere.  The most important part here is the empty visor spewing “darkness and thick black blood.”  That really clinches this interpretation of the stone giant in Bran’s dream being Gregor, because Gregor is eventually decapitated (leaving his helmet empty and dark) and his blood turns black.  Here’s the passage, from A Storm of Swords, and this is Pycelle talking to the small council:

The veins in his arm are turning black. When I leeched him, all the leeches died.

Of course we mythical astronomers recognize this symbolism very well: “darkness and thick black blood” is just another way of saying “waves of blood and night” or “black and bloody tide.”  The darkness and blood comes from the moon when it is decapitated, and this gives us the tip off as to what role Gregor plays: he is the moon.

We’ve seen that decapitating a moon figure is a good way to show the moon falling from the sky, such as with the eyeless skulls with sockets weeping blood in Mel’s vision of the black and bloody tide, and it works even better if the moon figure is a giant made of stone.   The head of the stone giant represents the moon in the sky, and when it’s decapitated, darkness and black blood flow from the black hole it leaves.  The severed stone head becomes a storm of stony moon meteors or hellhounds, burning through the atmosphere and trailing ash.  The sun turns into a shadow sun as ash and smoke darken the sky and the Long Night falls.

When Gregor’s skull is presented to the Martells by Arys Oakheart’s replacement, the white knight Ser Balon Swan, the skull is noted to shine in the candle light as white as Ser Balon’s cloak.  Balon’s cloak is the same pure white as Arys Oakheart’s white cloak which was called “as pale as moonlight,” so we are right back to the idea of a moon-pale skull.  I can’t help but notice that Gregor’s skull is presented in a box of black felt, making it look all the more like a moon in the sky, and is then placed on a pillar of black marble, perhaps to invoke the shadow tower / black tower idea we looked at last time, or perhaps just to keep it looking like it is suspended in space.  Remember that if the moon or the sun in the sky is the head of a “giant,” then we are talking about giants with invisible bodies, and the Mountain’s head on a black pillar accomplishes something similar.

The third shadow in Bran’s vision is called “a giant in armor made of stone,” and Gregor’s ‘stone giant’ symbolism is essentially ubiquitous.  We know that he is often called a giant and his nickname is “The Mountain that Rides, ” or just “the Mountain.”  Mountains are giants made of stone, of course – Martin periodically uses the word giant to describe a mountain in the books – but just to make sure we get the picture, he often describes Gregor in stony terminology.  This is a good one, taken from A Game of Thrones, where one of the surviving victims of Ser Gregor’s rampage through the Riverlands tells the tale :

“..the one who led them, he was armored like the rest, but there was no mistaking him all the same. It was the size of him, m’lord. Those as say the giants are all dead never saw this one, I swear. Big as an ox he was, and a voice like stone breaking.”

Giants and stone, once again.  Mountains are made of stone, and a mountain that rides – that moves – creates the image of a flying stone, or perhaps a falling mountain.  That’s an apt fit for a falling chunk of moon, of course.  If you decapitate a stone giant, you get a falling mountain.  Think again of Areo Hotah’s longaxe, with its head mounted on a shaft of mountain ash, but think about it as the decapitated head of the moon mountain, falling through the sky like a blade and trailing ash.  Mountain ash.

When we recall that the Dothraki see the stars as fiery stallions and Daenerys perceives the red comet as Drogo’s fiery stallion, we can see that the idea of the falling meteors as mountains that “ride” makes a lot of sense.  One even thinks of the stallion who mounts the world – perhaps that is a reference to the mountain that rides.  Most people see the Stallion prophecy pointing towards Dany, Drogon, or both, and of course Dany is a symbol of the moon transforming into the red comet while Drogon represents the moon transforming into black dragon meteors… both are mountains that ride, in this sense.   I have some more ideas about the Stallion that Mounts the world, but you know… another time.

Gregor was called “as big as an ox” by the surviving villager here, and we’ve seen a lot of slain bulls symbolize the moon, echoing the myth of Mithras and the white bull.  We’ll see more bull language applied to Gregor in the fight, so I don’t think it’s coincidence.  The idea of his voice being like “stone breaking” kind of implies the moon breaking, which is how you get a falling chunk of moon.   Keep that in mind and listen to one of the first quotes about Gregor from the trial by combat chapter, where Tyrion sees Gregor ‘step into the ring:

Cersei seemed half a child herself beside Ser Gregor. In his armor, the Mountain looked bigger than any man had any right to be. Beneath a long yellow surcoat bearing the three black dogs of Clegane, he wore heavy plate over chainmail, dull grey steel dinted and scarred in battle. Beneath that would be boiled leather and a layer of quilting. A flat-topped greathelm was bolted to his gorget, with breaths around the mouth and nose and a narrow slit for vision. The crest atop it was a stone fist.

If Ser Gregor was suffering from wounds, Tyrion could see no sign of it from across the yard. He looks as though he was chiseled out of rock, standing there. His greatsword was planted in the ground before him, six feet of scarred metal. Ser Gregor’s huge hands, clad in gauntlets of lobstered steel, clasped the crosshilt to either side of the grip. Even Prince Oberyn’s paramour paled at the sight of him. “You are going to fight that?” Ellaria Sand said in a hushed voice.

“I am going to kill that,” her lover replied carelessly.

Gregor is chiseled out of rock, perhaps out of moon rock?  It seems like a match to his voice sounding like stone breaking – one way to say it would be that Gregor represents chiseling and breaking stone.  His steel is dinted and scarred, his sword is scarred too, which could imply the craters of the moon and the general idea of a battered moon.  Together with the stone fist, it all implies the moon exploding and turning into falling mountains that punch down through the atmosphere and land with a thud.  Notice the language around Gregor’s huge sword: it is “planted in the ground.”

Earlier in the chapter, Tyrion breaks it down to Oberyn, telling him just how ridiculous Gregor is:

“He is almost eight feet tall and must weigh thirty stone, all of it muscle. He fights with a two-handed greatsword, but needs only one hand to wield it. He has been known to cut men in half with a single blow. His armor is so heavy that no lesser man could bear the weight, let alone move in it.”

Of course a stone is a British unit of measurement, but it’s one George doesn’t use very often, so taken with the other references to Gregor being made of stone, I don’t think it’s coincidence.  Oberyn speaks of getting the Mountain off of his feet, and that’s exactly what happens to the moon.

Ser Gregor, the giant stone mountain that rides, is playing the role of the moon, but I think we can get more specific than that – he represents the moon breaking and turning into things.   Gregor is a giant, stony moon warrior that transforms into a black-blooded mountain that falls like a stone fist.  His decapitation leads to darkness and waves of thick black blood.

Now we’ve seen both solar characters and lunar characters transform into an “Azor Ahai reborn” figure, because Azor Ahai reborn is the child of the sun and the moon.  To call them all “Azor Ahai reborn” characters is true in a sense, but it’s also an oversimplification.  Each Azor Ahai reborn character shows us different aspects of the transition from either sun or moon into moon meteor.  Don’t think about them as all being exactly the same – the differences between the various characters show us important things about the moon disaster and Azor Ahai reborn.  Dany’s transformation shows how the moon gives birth to dragon meteors and a transformed red comet, while Gregor’s transformation tells a story about a variety of disasters which come from the fractured moon, such as the darkness, black blood, stone fists, and falling mountains.  Gregor’s status as a giant also implies giants waking in the earth – meaning earthquakes – which we’ll discuss a bit later.

As terrifying as all of that is, some people still don’t take it seriously enough:

Prince Oberyn was unimpressed. “I have killed large men before. The trick is to get them off their feet. Once they go down, they’re dead.”

That’s quite true – we’ve seen that Lightbringer and the moon meteors are heavily associated with death when they come down from the sky, and that Azor Ahai reborn seems to have been a dead or undead person.  We’ve talked a lot about those skulls with eyeless sockets representing moon meteors in Mel’s vision of the bloody tide, and of course a skull is an obvious death symbol.  But that vision also seemed to foreshadow the resurrection of Jon Snow, an Azor Ahai reborn character, when Mel sees him as a man, then a wolf, then a man again.  This is the dream where Mel famously asks to see Azor Ahai and sees “only (capital ‘S’) Snow,” and so once again we get the Azor Ahai figure associated with resurrection.

We’ve seen dead babies represent Lightbringer too, from dead lizard baby Rhaego to Melisandre’s shadow-baby assassin, and even Ashara’s Dayne’s miscarriage fits the bill, since Ashara plays the role of moon maiden when she “dies of a broken heart” and leaps into the sea.  I suppose now might be a good time to point out that “moon tea” in ASOIAF is an abortifacient.  I’ve been meaning too bring that up – I think it plays into the moon meteors and black moon blood as being poisonous and Azor Ahai reborn being a dead person in some way.  Of course right at the outset of this fight, Gregor names the Red Viper as “some dead man.”, and Gregor himself becomes the undead Ser Robert Strong after Qyburn does his Dr. Frankenstein thing.

I’ve mentioned this before, but A Song of Ice and Fire is really all about zombies.  It only masquerades as historical-fiction flavored dark fantasy… it’s really a much, much better version of the walking dead.  Perhaps that’s why HBO picked it up!  Martin was like “don’t worry, it only seems like Tolkien-esque fantasy fiction, but it ends up as your standard zombie thing.  You guys will love it.”

Returning to the idea of Gregor being a stone giant that becomes a riding mountain also known as Azor Ahai reborn the falling moon meteor, it’s worth noting that Mithras, one of the main inspirations of the Azor Ahai fable, is born from a rock.  That’s the depiction of him commonly referred to as “rock-born Mithras,” where he emerges from stone holding the sword and torch.  George has translated this idea into Azor Ahai reborn being a meteor which emerged from the moon, and this is why Gregor is made from stone and chiseled from rock, etc.  Gregor is showing us the transformation of a moon into a flying rock, one which we know as Azor Ahai reborn and Lightbringer.

Check out this quote about Ser Gregor being “born from a rock,” from A Game of Thrones.

Ser Gregor Clegane’s face might have been hewn from rock. The fire in the hearth gave a somber orange cast to his skin and put deep shadows in the hollows of his eyes.

Notice what George has done with the firelight: his skin is lit up by the fire, just as the moon drank the fire of the sun and was burned by its heat, but his eyes are hollows, deep in shadow, which sounds a lot like Melisandre’s eyeless skulls and the heads with empty eye sockets.  This of course plays into all the bloody tears and blinding motifs associated with the moon.  Then, just to reinforce the idea, Gregor hears the report from the sentry and commands that the outrider who didn’t do his job should have his eyes torn out, and the man after him and so on until the the job is done correctly.

After shadow-eyed Gregor gives the command to have people’s eyes torn out, we get a little sun-turning action:

Lord Tywin Lannister turned his face to study Ser Gregor. Tyrion saw a glimmer of gold as the light shone off his father’s pupils, but he could not have said whether the look was one of approval or disgust.

I included this bit just to show the consistency of using eyes as symbols in this scene, as Tywin’s golden eyes shine, in marked contrast to Gregor’s shadowed, hollow eyes.  It just goes to show that George can manipulate things however he wants to create the desired symbolism: two men stand in a room with a fire, but one man’s eyes appear to shine with light while the other’s eyes are lost in shadow.  Why?  Because the symbolism demands it, and so it is.

The Tower of the Hand

A moving or riding mountain is a good description of a large meteor, just by itself, but the clincher is the stone fist atop his helm.  You’ll recall Benerro using his fist to symbolize the moon, which then opens in a burst of fire to become the fiery hand of god, flinging black meteors like flaming spears and spreading doom and darkness.  Thus, Gregor’s stone fist is entirely consistent with his status as a riding Mountain and a moon warrior.  Later in the fight we will see Gregor’s actual hands used in interesting ways which add to the moon meteor / fist imagery.  And by ‘interesting,’ I mean ‘horrifically violent yet symbolically significant.’

Oberyn, our solar character has a matching symbol: his red gloves which suggest bloody hands.  Why do both solar and lunar characters share in this fiery and bloody hand symbolism?  The easiest way to picture it is like this: imagine the moon as a sock puppet shaped like a hand, and when the sun stands behind the moon and sticks it’s fiery hand up the puppet’s… ah, “puppet hole” I guess we’ll call it, the puppet is animated with fire and becomes the ‘fiery hand.’ If the sun is the king, the exploding moon can be seen as the hand of the king, the one which holds Lightbringer, or which IS Lightbringer.  Naturally, this should be a bloody and / or flaming hand, like Oberyn’s red gloves, Jon’s burned hand or occasionally bloody hands, Jamie’s severed hand, Davos’s severed fingers, Benerro’s fiery hand, Timmet son of Timmet, who is the Red Hand of the Burned Men in the Mountains of the Moon, the five pointed red leaves of the weirwood tree which are said to resemble bloody hands or a blaze of flame – you guys get the picture.  The moon becomes the weapon of the solar king’s wrath, which can be his hand or his sword or his black iron rose, and so on and so forth.

Gregor shows us the moon turning into falling objects like riding mountains and stone fists, which is what the opening of the fiery hand is about.  All Gregor the stone fist is missing is a little drinking of the sun’s fire, a little impregnation via sun-spear, if you will, and that is of course exactly what Gregor has coming to him.

We are well familiar with the idea that the tops of the towers and mountains and people can symbolize heavenly bodies, so think about the fact that the “Hand of the King” sits at the top of the Tower of the Hand, just as Gregor’s stone fist is at the top of his head.  Down in Sunspear, the ruling Prince of Dorne sits atop the “Tower of the Sun,” and Oberyn has a sun atop his visor.  It’s almost like they’re wearing name cards above their heads, like those stupid little “Hello, my name is _____” stickers.  “Hello, my name is snaky sun man.”  “Hello, my name is stone moon-fist giant.”  The stone fist, which is the fiery hand of the king, comes from the heavens, which can be depicted as the top of a tower, the top of a mountain, or the top of a person.  In this case, it’s the top of a person called “the Mountain” whose flat-topped helm looks like a tower.

George even places the Tower of the Hand between the two combatants like a kind of symbolic reminder:

A platform had been erected beside the Tower of the Hand, halfway between the two champions. That was where Lord Tywin sat with his brother Ser Kevan. 

The Tower of the Hand is the moon symbol, and so fittingly, right beside it we have the solar tower, with Tywin the Lion sitting atop it.  That’s kind of creating an eclipse alignment, with the solar tower next to the moon tower (depending on where you are standing, I suppose).  We should be seeing signs of the eclipse here, because this battle is a fight between sun and moon.  We’ll actually see several of them as we go along, and I think this is the first.  There’s also a mention of the sun being hid behind the clouds and of the day being grey.

Just to follow up on this, the Tower of the Hand, symbol of moon and moon fist, is eventually burned and collapsed in grandiose fashion.  Think of our other collapsed moon towers such as Mel’s towers by the sea, the Children’s Tower at Moat Cailin, or the Tower of Joy.   The burning of the Tower of the Hand scene is loaded with symbolism, so we’ll certainly come back to that another time – it’s a prime candidate for a chapter review.  For now, I’m content to point out the tight correlation between the Tower of the Hand and Gregor’s helm with its stone fist, and to briefly introduce the concept of the Hand of the King playing the moon role to the king’s sun role.

As I mentioned a moment ago, the ‘fiery hand’ symbol comes about when the sun animates the moon fist with fire.  In other words, the fiery hand is the child of sun and moon, just like Lightbringer.  And just as both solar and lunar characters can show us the fiery or bloody hand symbolism, both sun and moon people can transform into an Azor Ahai reborn character, as we’ve seen.

Additionally, and for the same reasons, both solar and lunar warriors can wield Lightbringer weapons.  The important thing to realize is this: Lightbringer is a child of both sun and moon, and therefore can be depicted in the hands of either.  Accordingly, both our solar warrior and our lunar warrior will wield a version of Lightbringer, as we are about to see.  Oberyn has his sun-spear, while Gregor’s huge longsword is described as “flashing” twice during the fight.

On a basic human level, what we are talking about with mythical astronomy in general is people looking up at the sky at a celestial events and thinking of creative allegorical ways to describe what they see.  Since the moon explosion was preceded by an eclipse alignment, with the moon positioned in front of the sun, you can choose who you want to see as holding the comet sword, in other words.  You can choose to see the whole thing as a battle between sun and moon, or as the copulation of two lovers.  The comet might look like a sword or a spear or a dragon’s tail, depending on your culture.  It might even look like a sperm fertilizing a moon egg.  That’s the fun part about all of these myths we are talking about – how many different ways can George take this one event and spin it into little mini-fables?  The answer is, a whole damn lot.

Now some scenes give us very straightforward symbolism: Drogo is a sun, Dany is a moon, and when the moon wanders too close to the sun’s fire, the dragons hatch.  Nice and clean.  But other times, such as with this duel between Oberyn and Gregor, it’s not so neat.  Here’s the thing you need to understand: George does not look at the various pieces – the sun, the comet, the moon, and the moon meteor children – and divvy them up between Oberyn and Gregor, like a draft.  “You get the sun and the comet, and he gets the moon and the moon meteors” – no, it’s not like that.  Each character can use all of the objects.  Each characters is approached independently, which is why Oberyn and Gregor can both hold a weapon that symbolizes Lightbringer, and both can show us the fiery or bloody hand symbol.  And even though Gregor himself represents the second moon, Oberyn’s shield – the sun-mirror – can also represent the second moon.   If you think about it, it kind of has to be this way – if both weapons in this duel symbolize the Lightbringer comet, then both shields need to represent the moon, because Lightbringer strikes the moon.  Oberyn’s shield shows us the heliotropic, sun-drinking aspect of the second moon, and Gregor’s shield shows us something completely different, which we are about to discuss.

To say it another way: when George designs Oberyn’s symbolism, he’s free to use all the celestial bits.  The second moon – the sun mirror – sits in front of the sun to create the eclipse, and you can easily perceive this as the sun holding a moon shield in front of him, with the comet as his spear.   Seeing the moon as the sun’s shield is the same as seeing the moon as the sun’s fiery hand, or as the sun’s weapon.

As for this fiery hand of the king, in order to become a falling fist or a rain of steel fingers, that hand needs to get chopped off.  You’re thinking of jaime’s hand – yes, absolutely, but check out this quote from Jaime about Aerys and the Hands of the King who served him:

But the Mad King was always chopping off his Hands. He had chopped Lord Jon after the Battle of the Bells, stripping him of honors, lands, and wealth, and packing him off across the sea to die in exile, where he soon drank himself to death.

That’s Jon Connigton, the “griffin reborn,” who is “not quite dead” after all.  As a reborn red griffin with flaming red hair, he makes a fine fiery hand to be chopped off.  The King is always chopping off his hands, ya know?

And now, a little comet-related potty humor.  You know how they say the King eats, and the hand takes the shit?  Well, more than one ancient culture regarded comets and shooting stars as the feces of stars.  In other words… if the moon is the hand of the king, the cause of the Long Night could be said to be the hand taking a giant, kingly star-shit all over the place.  Yes, you’re welcome for that.  One thinks of Tywin, the fiery Hand of the King, whose shitty odor was remarked upon many times.

The Hounds of Hell

Returning to Gregor’s symbols, we have his sigil to consider: three black dogs on a golden field.  This means that it’s time to talk about Cerberus, the three-headed hell hound of Greek myth, and how it relates to the idea of a three headed dragon.  George’s three-headed dragon idea which is both the sigil of House Targaryen and some sort of cryptic prophecy about dragon riders seems to be a kind of bastard offspring of Cerberus and the Hydra, a seven headed sea dragon of Greek myth.  Cerberus is the ultimate hellhound – he’s called “the Hound of Hades” because he guards the entrance to the underworld and prevents the dead from leaving.  As we’ve discussed, one ramification of the “three heads has the dragon” motif would be three large moon meteors which struck Planetos, with one of those perhaps exploding in the sky to create the thousand dragon meteor shower.  This would of course parallel the three dragons which Daenerys hatched at the alchemical wedding.

Therefore, I interpret the three black dogs to represent the three dragon meteors that come from the moon – this is just another way of saying that the hell hound idea applies to Azor Ahai reborn the flying meteor.  The golden field that forms the background of the Clegane sigil probably represents the sun, which was positioned behind the exploding moon.  Again, the eclipse alignment.  It’s very like the Blackfyre sigil, the three-headed black dragon on red.  Red and gold both work for the sun, and both are typically found with our solar characters.  Azor Ahai reborn is associated with the color red and the idea of a red sun, and of course during an eclipse the ring of the sun and the sky usually appears red.

This interpretation is enhanced by the fact that Gregor has also painted over his three-black-dogs-on-yellow sigil on his shield with a seven pointed star.  As the fight progresses, the paint is scratched off and “a dog’s head peeped out from under the star,” creating the image of a star which breaks apart to unleash three black apex predators (dogs instead of dragons).  Gregor’s shield tells the story of the Long Night – a moon star has it’s face scratched by a sun-spear, and then we get the three hellhounds, black dogs with fiery eyes.  Pretty clever stuff, and again, if you’re listening to this podcast, it’s for moments like this.  One of the reasons I write and make this podcast is because this stuff George has done with symbolism and mythology is just too clever not to be able to share and talk about with you guys and gals.

When Gregor’s brother, “the Hound” Sandor Clegane, fights a duel with Azor Ahai stand-in Beric Dondarrion, the three black dogs on his shield are set on fire and cut from the shield by Beric’s flaming sword, which I believe is the same symbolism. There’s even a point in that fight where Arya yells “you go to hell, Hound!”  It’s clever wordplay, and a direct reference to Cerberus, the fiery three headed hellhound.   This also creates a parallel between Oberyn’s spear which uncovers the dogs on Gregor’s shield and Beric’s flaming sword which cut the dogs free from Sandor’s, and this makes perfect sense if Oberyn’s oily black spear is meant to be a Lightbringer symbol as I suggest.  In myth speak, we’d simply say that the sun’s flaming sword is really an oily black spear.  We’ll break down that scene in full sometime, as there’s a lot going on there, including a flaming sword which is split in half, black blood, and one of the many Beric resurrections.  This is another prime candidate for a mythical astronomy chapter review.

Last time, we saw the Hound take on the form of a hellhound in Sansa’s moon blood scene in King’s Landing, and in that scene, hellhound-Sandor is playing the role of Azor Ahai reborn: he’s burned, covered in blood, “transformed,” and has the fiery glowing eyes of a dog.  This corroborates the conclusion we just came too: the hellhound is one aspect of Azor Ahai reborn and refers to the black moon meteors.  We see an interesting hellhound scene when Theon briefly occupies Winterfell in A Clash of Kings.  He has a well-deserved nightmare of Bran and Rickon’s direwolves having human heads and dripping burning black blood, chasing him through an antagonistic wood…

Mercy, he sobbed. From behind came a shuddering howl that curdled his blood. Mercy, mercy. When he glanced back over his shoulder he saw them coming, great wolves the size of horses with the heads of small children. Oh, mercy, mercy. Blood dripped from their mouths black as pitch, burning holes in the snow where it fell. Every stride brought them closer. Theon tried to run faster, but his legs would not obey. The trees all had faces, and they were laughing at him, laughing, and the howl came again. He could smell the hot breath of the beasts behind him, a stink of brimstone and corruption. They’re dead, dead, I saw them killed, he tried to shout, I saw their heads dipped in tar,

We know what black blood signifies – the fire transformation of the moon into the black bloodstone meteors which represent Azor Ahai reborn.  The direwolf hell-hounds in that scene are as big as horses, another prime meteor symbol, and sound very like dragons, with the burning black blood leaving smoking holes where it drips, just as Drogon’s burning black blood does in Daznak’s pit.  They even smell of brimstone, just as the dragons do.  All the scenes seem to agree – hellhounds in general and the wild dogs of House Clegane in particular are associated with fire and can be used to symbolize the black moon meteors and Azor Ahai reborn.  Therefore it makes a great deal of sense when the star on Gregor’s shield gives way to the three black dogs – it’s pretty detailed mythical astronomy.

To bring things back to Gregor, consider that he’s known as one of “Tywin’s dogs,” along with Amory Lorch and Vargo Hoat, because of the raiding, burning, and pillaging they do on behalf of Lord Tywin.  That’s entirely in keeping with Tywin as the sun and Gregor as a moon-turned-hellhound meteor weapon.  I like the fact that Tywin has three dogs – like the three dogs of the Clegane sigil and three-headed cerberus, it correlates to the idea of three moon meteor impacts and the three heads of the dragon motif.  It also places the solar king in the position of Hades, king of hell, and that’s a great match to how we have come to see Azor Ahai, the king of hell on earth and the night lands, avatar of the Lion of Night.  It’s also quite interesting because Hades famously stole a moon maiden, Persephone.  A king of the underworld who steals moon maidens and commands hellhounds seems like the kind of thing Martin can work with, and we can see that he’s building on these ideas by having his lord of night, Azor Ahai reborn, steal a moon maiden, and by assigning the hellhound as an aspect of Azor Ahai reborn a.k.a.the moon meteors.  We’ll talk some more about Persephone when we return to the subject of moon maidens whose abduction prevents spring from coming – it’s a common theme in world mythology and it’s one Martin has seamlessly integrated into his Long Night mythos.  The Long Night is a story of a reborn king of the afterlife and a stolen moon that causes a winter without end.

To be accurate, I should note that the Greek underworld is not “hell” as Christians might think of it, but more of an afterlife, which is typical of polytheistic religions.  Also, my friend and fellow blogger sweetsunray has a terrific series of essays about Hades and Persephone and their correlation to Eddard and Lyanna Stark and the crypts of Winterfell as a chthonic (underworld) realm on her amazing blog, Mythological Weave of Ice and Fire.  Those are some of my very favorite A Song of Ice and Fire essays, so I highly recommend them for more fantastic analysis on this subject.

The Fight

All right, so we’ve set the stage rather exhaustively.  Oberyn is a spear-wielding sun and Gregor is a moon-star that turns into a stone fist, we’re all clear.  You’re probably wondering if we are actually going to talk about the fight.  So let’s get ready to rumble!

The Dornishman slid sideways. “I am Oberyn Martell, a prince of Dorne,” he said, as the Mountain turned to keep him in sight. “Princess Elia was my sister.”

“Who?” asked Gregor Clegane. Oberyn’s long spear jabbed, but Ser Gregor took the point on his shield, shoved it aside, and bulled back at the prince, his great sword flashing.

Here begins Gregor’s sun-turning, which will go throughout the fight.  We see a bull reference hung on Gregor, and we will see another a bit later in the fight.  Gregor’s sword flashes here, making it a sword of light, or perhaps even lightning, as in the Storm God’s thunderbolt from the Grey King myth.

The long spear lanced in above his sword.  Like a serpent’s tongue it flickered in and out, feinting low and landing high, jabbing at groin, shield, eyes. The Mountain makes for a big target, at the least, Tyrion thought. Prince Oberyn could scarcely miss, though none of his blows were penetrating Ser Gregor’s heavy plate. The Dornishman kept circling, jabbing, then darting back again, forcing the bigger man to turn and turn again.  Clegane is losing sight of him. The Mountain’s helm had a narrow eyeslit, severely limiting his vision. Oberyn was making good use of that, and the length of his spear, and his quickness.

It went on that way for what seemed a long time. Back and forth they moved across the yard, and round and round in spirals, Ser Gregor slashing at the air while Oberyn’s spear struck at arm, and leg, twice at his temple.  Gregor’s big wooden shield took its share of hits as well, until a dog’s head peeped out from under the star, and elsewhere the raw oak showed through.

Oberyn and Gregor are acting like orbiting planetary bodies here, moving round and round in spirals.  Oberyn circles, like the sun appears to do in the sky, while Gregor turns and turns again, creating the image of a moon turning on its axis.  Of course, it’s turning to follow the sun – a sun-turning heliotrope, like the goddess Klytie and the heliotropium flower.  We see the dog’s head peeping out from the star as it is scratched by Oberyn’s spear that I referred to earlier as telling the story of a three headed monster emerging from the destroyed moon. The blindness motif appears again with Gregor losing sight of Oberyn, and Gregor’s vision being “severely” limited.

We also see a direct comparison between the spear and a serpent’s tongue, confirming our association of these two symbols.  I am reminded of the death of Biter in A Feast for Crows, where Gendry shoves a sword through the back of BIter’s throat, and Brienne sees his snake-like tongue turn into the bloody sword:

Biter threw back his head and opened his mouth again, howling, and stuck his tongue out at her. It was sharply pointed, dripping blood, longer than any tongue should be. Sliding from his mouth, out and out and out, red and wet and glistening, it made a hideous sight, obscene. His tongue is a foot long, Brienne thought, just before the darkness took her. Why, it looks almost like a sword.

Brienne is a character with rich symbolism that we’ll dissect another time (although perhaps ‘dissect’ is the wrong word given that Biter was just eating her face in this scene), but she is, at the very least a maiden taken by darkness right at the moment she sees the “hideous, obscene” bloody sword.  That’s why Jamie and others are constantly calling her a cow – that’s a reference to cows and bulls as sacrificed moon symbols.  And once again, we see the familiar signs that Lightbringer, the bloody sword, was obscene, an affront to the gods even.  It was longer than any tongue had a right to be, just as the Mountain was “taller than any man had a right to be.”  The Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai, the maker of Lightbringer, challenged the gods and stole from heaven.  He broke the moon, caused the Long Night, practiced dark arts, torture, and necromancy, yadda yadda yadda you guys know the rap sheet.  Every time we see these kind of associations with Lightbringer or Azor Ahai, it only strengthens the conclusion that he was an evil dude with an evil sword who challenged the gods.

Interestingly, this bloody sword tongue turns out not to have been a sword at all, as we hear from Thoros later in A Feast for Crows:

He’s dead. Gendry shoved a spearpoint through the back of his neck.

As we can see, bloody swords and bloody spears and bloody tongues are more or less interchangeable.

Picking up the Mountain and Viper duel again, we see Gregor yelling at Oberyn to “shut his bloody mouth,” continuing this line of symbolism.  As Gregor loses his temper, Tyrion notices that “He doesn’t use words, he just roars like an animal,” which of course puts us in mind of a roaring dragon.  It also implies Gregor being unable to speak, which will become a reality when he is resurrected as Ser Robert Strong.  Suns and moons, losing their tongues and spitting things, being choked and silenced and having their throats slit, I believe that’s the idea.  It’s definitely a running motif, and needs further investigation to see what George might be saying with all this silence.  I get the idea of the sun spitting fiery meteors and of the throat-slitting of ritual sacrifice, but I feel like there is something more here as well.  A lot of characters have their throats cut or speech taken from them in some way.  Returning to the fight, we have a blow to the throat which emits a loud screech:

“You raped her,” he called, feinting. “You murdered her,” he said, dodging a looping cut from Gregor’s greatsword. “You killed her children,” he shouted, slamming the spearpoint into the giant’s throat, only to have it glance off the thick steel gorget with a screech.

“Oberyn is toying with him,” said Ellaria Sand.

That is fool’s play, thought Tyrion. “The Mountain is too bloody big to be any man’s toy.”

The mountain’s sword does a “looping cut,” which I think again might imply the (approximately) circular orbit of moons and comets.  The references to toys here are worth pointing out… check this out.  The Hound was burnt by his older brother Gregor for playing with his toy, which was a toy knight.  Here, Tyrion says the Mountain is too “bloody” big to be any man’s toy – for a mortal, yes, but not for a god.  We’ve seen the black blocks of Moat Cailin – which, like Gregor, are also meteor symbols  – referred to as “some god’s abandoned toys,” and so we can see that Gregor, the stone fist and the mountain that rides, is indeed a toy knight – a god’s toy.  A bloody toy, at that.  That’s another clever one by George, and another link between oily black stone and moon meteors.

The fight continues with more bull symbolism:

Gregor tried to bull rush, but Oberyn skipped aside and circled round his back. “You raped her. You murdered her. You killed her children.”

“Be quiet.” Ser Gregor seemed to be moving a little slower, and his greatsword no longer rose quite so high as it had when the contest began. “Shut your bloody mouth.”

Gregor’s flashing sword represents Lightbringer, which, you know, no longer rises as high as it once did.  It’s come down to earth a bit, you know?  This may also be a direct reference to Venus, the Morningstar, which gradually rises less and less high above the horizon throughout it’s cycle until it finally switches over to the Evenstar position, becoming the lord of night.  As for roses, we’ve seen them used as moon symbols, and we’ve seen sentences like “Drogon rose, dark against the sun” and “a red sun rose and set and rose again.”  In the fight scene here, the word rose is being used in a similar fashion, referring to Lightbringer and the moon flower which holds it.  Did I just call Gregor a flower again?  I really got to watch out for that, guy has a temper.

“SHUT UP!” Gregor charged headlong, right at the point of the spear, which slammed into his right breast then slid aside with a hideous steel shriek. Suddenly the Mountain was close enough to strike, his huge sword flashing in a steel blur. The crowd was screaming as well. Oberyn slipped the first blow and let go of the spear, useless now that Ser Gregor was inside it.

Did you catch that?  Gregor got inside the spear.  That’s the moon, inside the oily black sun-spear. Get it?  The moon is inside the sun-spear, because the sun-spears are made of moon.  Heh heh heh.  This is George’s sense of humor folks, so I think it’s worth taking a minute to enjoy it.  He’s certainly fond of puns and basically any kind of wordplay you can think of.  Once the moon is inside the spear, our solar king Oberyn drops it, suggesting the idea of sun-spears falling out of the sky.  And don’t forget, that’s an oily black spear, so that’s a moon getting inside a oily black spear and the sun dropping an oily black blade – yet another tie between oily black stone and moon meteors.

Right before this, the sun-spear strikes the moon’s breast, suggesting Nissa Nissa’s bared breast which was pierced by Lightbringer, and it’s accompanied by another hideous steel shriek, a match for Nissa Nissa’s cry of anguish and ecstasy which cracked the moon.  Gregor’s sword flashes again, this time in a blur, which sounds like a suggestion of a glowing sword that looks blurry.  Oberyn dodges the first blow, then the second blow falls:

The second cut the Dornishman caught on his shield. Metal met metal with an ear-splitting clang, sending the Red Viper reeling.

This is a repeat of Nissa Nissa’s cry leaving a crack across the face of the moon: this time Oberyn’s mirror shield plays the moon role, and the Mountain’s sword the Lightbringer comet role. When the sword strikes the shield, there’s a sound which is ear-splitting.  Think of ear splitting as head splitting, and of the moon as a face, and once again we have a sound which splits the moon’s face open, just like Nissa Nissa’s cry which broke the moon.  This ear-splitting clang sends the Red Viper reeling, which is a depiction of the sun being injured from the moon explosion.  The language of the shield “catching” the flashing sword evokes the light-drinking heliotrope ideas – the sun mirror shield is catching the light of the flashing sword which represents Lightbringer, just as the moon drank the sun’s fire by ingesting the Lightbringer comet.

By the way, there might be a three attempts to forge Lightbringer pattern here.  I’m not entirely sure, but I thought I’d mention it.  The three attempts to temper Lightbringer are made in water, a lion’s heart, and then Nissa Nissa’s heart.  In the fight scene, once the Mountain gets inside the spear, the first and second blows are counted out: it says “Oberyn slipped the first blow” and then “the second cut the Dornishman caught on his shield.”  Well, the word “slipped” kind of implies water, and Oberyn’s dropped weapon might imply a failed attempt to forge Lightbringer.  The second cut makes the ear-splitting sound, which might be a match for the second attempt in the lion’s heart where the sword shattered and split.  I’ve interpreted that to refer to the splitting of the comet, so the word split in that line has always stood out as important – and here it is with the second cut from Ser Gregor.  The third cut definitely finds a sacrificial victim, though it doesn’t seem like Nissa Nissa:

The stable was behind him. Spectators screamed and shoved at each other to get out of the way. One stumbled into Oberyn’s back. Ser Gregor hacked down with all his savage strength. The Red Viper threw himself sideways, rolling. The luckless stableboy behind him was not so quick. As his arm rose to protect his face, Gregor’s sword took it off between elbow and shoulder. “Shut UP!” the Mountain howled at the stableboy’s scream, and this time he swung the blade sideways, sending the top half of the lad’s head across the yard in a spray of blood and brains.

The stableboy is no moon maiden, and he doesn’t have any obvious symbolism, but the face wound / decapitation and spray of blood is a match for the idea of moon decapitation or there being a crack across the face of the moon.  Like I said, I’m not sure if George is meaning to imply the three forgings or not, but I thought I’d show it to you so you can judge for yourselves.

Regardless, all of the sounds and blows in this sequence give us great symbolism – ear-splitting and shrieking sounds when a blow to the breast or mirror shield occurs, a rain of blood, a decapitation, a falling spear, the moon figure getting “inside” the spear” – it’s all pretty good stuff.  Even better, I am about to suggest that an arm wound inflicted by a Lightbringer symbol like Gregor’s sword can symbolize the moon meteor which I believe struck the Arm of Dorne and was remembered as the Hammer of the Waters.  But hold that thought for just a couple of paragraphs longer.

The Mountain whirled. Helm, shield, sword, surcoat; he was spattered with gore from head to heels. “You talk too much,” he grumbled. “You make my head hurt.”

The mountain is whirling like a planet again, and now he is covered in gore.  Gregor has become a true bloodstone moon, a stone covered in sacrificial blood.  And I can’t but wonder if there isn’t a word pun in Gregor’s name.  He armor is always noted to be grey, and he gets covered in gore – grey gore?  It wouldn’t be the first word pun in someone’s name from George.  In any case, Oberyn is making Gregor’s head hurt, which makes sense because it is Gregor’s head with it’s stone fist which symbolizes the second moon.  It contains darkness and thick black blood, and will soon be separated from his body.

The Mountain snorted contemptuously, and came on … and in that moment, the sun broke through the low clouds that had hidden the sky since dawn.

The sun of Dorne, Tyrion told himself, but it was Gregor Clegane who moved first to put the sun at his back. This is a dim and brutal man, but he has a warrior’s instincts.

If Gregor is the moon, then George has just created a solar eclipse, with the moon positioned in front  of the sun.  Let’s see if anything exciting happens!

The Red Viper crouched, squinting, and sent his spear darting forward again. Ser Gregor hacked at it, but the thrust had only been a feint. Off balance, he stumbled forward a step.

Prince Oberyn tilted his dinted metal shield. A shaft of sunlight blazed blindingly off polished gold and copper, into the narrow slit of his foe’s helm. Clegane lifted his own shield against the glare. Prince Oberyn’s spear flashed like lightning and found the gap in the heavy plate, the joint under the arm.  The point punched through mail and boiled leather. Gregor gave a choked grunt as the Dornishman twisted his spear and yanked it free. “Elia. Say it! Elia of Dorne!” He was circling, spear poised for another thrust. “Say it!” 

So, as soon as the moon warrior is positioned in front of the sun, he’s hit by a poisonous sun-spear.  Who would have guessed?!?  We would have, of course.  Now we see the mirror shield trick, evoking the Serwyn story and the concept of heliotrope as a sun-mirror. Notice the parallels between the story of Perseus and the Medusa: the Medusa is a goddess with a head full of snakes, which correlates to our second moon that gives birth to dragons, and that’s the role Gregor plays in this fight.  Perseus turns the Medusa to stone with the mirror shield trick, while Gregor, blinded by the sun’s reflection in the mirror, already is a stone giant.  It’s not a perfect one to one correlation with the Perseus myth, but all the elements are there, just reshuffled a bit.  We’ll talk more about Medusa a bit later when I revisit the idea of Sansa’s black amethyst hairnet being symbolized as a head full of snakes.

Oberyn’s shield plays the role of sun-mirror, and we know that heliotrope / bloodstone is a sun-mirror.   In the Qarthine legend, we are told that dragons can breathe flame because they drank the fire of the sun, just as bloodstone is seen as being imbued with the sun’s energy and power because it as a heliotrope, a sun-stone.  Oberyn’s heliotrope mirror shield does the same thing here, drinking in the sun and then shining with the sun’s fire and reflecting the sun’s light like a spear shaft (note the use of the word “shaft” to describe the light).  Like Oberyn’s shield, Gregor symbolizes the moon, and he too is bathed in the sun’s reflected fire.  This occurs right at the moment he’s stabbed with the sun-spear – the spear and shaft of light are parallel symbols, just as they are on the sigil of Dorne, and just as the sun and the spear are said to be the two weapons of the Dornish.

It may be that George is showing us a light and dark split – the bright shaft of sunlight and the oily black spear.  It’s kind of like when the shadow baby assassin, which takes the form of Stannis, wields a shadowsword, and it’s called “the shadow of a sword which isn’t there.”  It’s Lightbringer’s shadow.  Just as the Lion of Night is the shadow aspect of the sun and the Maiden-Made-of-Light the bright aspect, it seems possible that Lightbringer itself might have such a dichotomy… and if this is the case, it seems to me that Dawn and Azor Ahai’s black sword might well be that light / dark pair.

In any case, Gregor being bathed in sun fire at the time of his mortal wounding parallels the moon dragon meteors of the Qarthine myth drinking the sun’s fire, and more generally to the moon maiden being stabbed by Lightbringer the flaming sword of the sun.  It’s also a parallel to the alchemical wedding, where Daenerys the moon maiden is quire literally bathed in the sun’s fire as the dragon’s eggs crack open.

In addition to Gregor himself creating an eclipse, he also does it with his shield.  We’ve seen Gregor’s shield acting like the moon as well, a star which gives way to three black things.  Gregor tries to block the reflected shaft of sunlight with his shield, evoking the moon eclipsing the sun and blocking its light.  That’s two eclipses for the price of one!

At this important moment, the spear “punches” through the gap in Gregor’s plate, echoing the stone fist imagery on Gregor’s helm.  The fist motif is emphasized later in A Storm of Swords, and this is Qyburn talking to Cersei:

His squire tells me that he is plagued by blinding headaches and oft quaffs the milk of the poppy as lesser men quaff ale. Be that as it may, his veins have turned black from head to heel, his water is clouded with pus, and the venom has eaten a hole in his side as large as my fist.

Here we see the familiar blindness and black blood ideas associated with Gregor, and  the venomous sun-spear is again associated with a fist.  Like Gregor’s stone fist, the punching sun-spear is playing into the larger symbolic theme of the fiery hand of god which flings the black meteors.  This reinforces what I was saying about both the solar and lunar warriors having weapons that symbolize different aspects of lightbringer.  Both Oberyn and Gregor have hand and fist symbolism, and they both have Lightbringer weapons, but they show us different things about Lightbringer.  Gregor’s fist emphasizes the stone and falling mountain ideas, and Oberyn’s punching spear poisons, blackens blood, and leaves a hole.  Gregor’s fist shows us that the stone fists comes from the moon, and Oberyns’ punching spear shows us the sun is the one which blackened and poisoned the moon rock.  Oberyn’s red gloves pretty much parallel Gregor’s fist at the end of the scene, which is noted to be covered in blood at the high point of the scene, right before he smashes Oberyn’s face in.  As for their weapons, it may be that light / dark dichotomy again, as we have a huge flashing sword and an ash wood spear with a black oily blade.

Lightning and the Thunderer

So now, the lightning.  Prince Oberyn’s oily black spear flashed like lightning when it stabbed Gregor in the arm during the Gregor eclipse, and of course Oberyn’s spear is a prime moon meteor symbol.  This seems important, as I’ve been suggesting that both the Hammer of the Waters and the Storm God’s thunderbolt from the Grey King story also refer to moon meteor impacts.  It’s kind of an intuitive thing, since the Hammer of the Waters and the thunderbolt both just kind of sound like falling meteors.  Meteors were often called “thunder stones” by ancient people, and it’s not hard to understand why.

If there really was a moon disaster, we should see many myths about the falling moon meteors, so as I began looking for stories which might be about falling meteors, those two just seemed to fit.  The Grey King thunderbolt myth, as well as the sea dragon legend, involve stealing the fire of the gods, and we’ve seen that that is a central part of the Lightbringer myth.  But it goes much deeper than that of course.

For a start, we know Martin draws from Norse mythology quite a lot, and the Norse Storm God is none other than Thor, “the Thunderer,” who has a famous, ass-kicking hammer called Mjolnir which causes lightning and thunder when it strikes.   That’s a pretty big clue to associate hammers and lighting and storm gods right there, especially because in the Grey King legend, it is the Storm God who hurls the thunderbolt, just as Thor was a storm god.  Thor’s hammer and his thunderbolts are basically the same weapon, so if the Hammer of the Waters and the Storm God’s thunderbolt are both the same thing – moon meteors – it would really just make a damn lot of sense.   And indeed, this seems to be the case.

The Hammer of the Waters broke the arm of Dorne, and the Dornish city next to the broken arm is called Sunspear.  A “sun-spear” is a pretty recognizable description of our flaming meteors, so I’ve taken the naming of Sunspear next to the broken arm as a clue that the Hammer of the Waters was a sun-spear, a moon meteor.  Oberyn’s spear having a steel point covered in black poison which looks like oil clues us in to the idea that sun-spears and moon meteors have something to do with the oily black stone we find here and there.   And then here in this battle, the first hit scored by the oily sun-spear, the one which occurs during the Gregor eclipse and therefore symbolizes the forging of Lightbringer, is described as flashing like lightning, and strikes the joint under Gregor’s arm.  As I mentioned, I think that these conspicuous arm wounds that occur during Lightbringer reenactments are a clue about the Hammer of the Waters, which broke the Arm of Dorne, being a moon meteor.

That’s an awful lot of specific detail here to be coincidence, in my opinion, and it gets better – in addition to breaking the Arm of Dorne, the Hammer of the Waters was also supposed to have flooded the Neck, where the Crannogmen live, and here Gregor gives a “choked grunt” as his arm is hit – perhaps that’s a reference to choking of the Neck of Westeros.  Earlier in the fight, the stableboy received the same wounds – a severed arm and a severed head.  Gregor even strikes the second blow which severs his head specifically to silence him – he screams “SHUT UP!” as he kills him – and this may again be implying throat cutting or strangulation to go along with decapitation.

This is kind of a big deal, so we are going to pause the fight and talk about the Hammer of the Waters for bit. Having introduced the idea of a person’s arm and neck wounds symbolizing the damage that the Hammer of the Waters did to Westeros, I want to follow up on it a bit so you guys know that I didn’t just jump into a tinfoil canoe and start paddling off in the wrong direction.  If I’m going to claim to have solved the mystery, I have to offer up some corroborations.  As usual, George hides his patterns everywhere, so there’s no shortage of examples to cite; I won’t quote them all by any means, but I will offer up a few of my favorites.  These will all be examples of people taking the arm and neck wounds in the middle of a Lightbringer forging scene; I will refer to these as “the Hammer of the Waters injuries.”  We’re also going to talk about Moat Cailin, the lore around the Hammer of the Waters itself, and giants waking in the earth.

Ok, so remember the quote with Biter and Brienne and the bloody sword that was like a long tongue?  Brienne has her arm broken near the end of that fight, and Biter tries to choke her and tear her head off – arm and neck wounds, and specifically a “broken arm.”  There’s a ton of lightning all through that scene, including some cool wordplay which ties the hammer to the lightning:

Brienne sucked in her breath and drew Oathkeeper. Too many, she thought, with a start of fear, they are too many. “Gendry,” she said in a low voice, “you’ll want a sword, and armor. These are not your friends. They’re no one’s friends.”

“What are you talking about?” The boy came and stood beside her, his hammer in his hand.

Lightning cracked to the south as the riders swung down off their horses. 

Did you catch that?  One sentence ends with “his hammer in hand,” and the next one starts with “lightning cracked..”  There’s a lot going on in this scene – it’s another chapter review candidate, for sure – but I had to mention it here because it ties hammer and lightning to broken arms and choked necks, all amidst Lightbringer symbols like the bloody spear-tongue and Oathkeeper.  Later, when Brienne wakes up and recalls the fight and her broken arm, we get another lightning reference:

Even in the depths of dream the pain was there. Her face throbbed. Her shoulder bled. Breathing hurt. The pain crackled up her arm like lightning. She cried out for a maester.

Next we have Ser Arys Oakheart of the moon-pale white cloak, who receives the same set of wounds from Areo Hotah’s ash-and-iron wife – a severed arm and a severed head.  It too comes amidst heavy, heavy Lightbringer forging symbolism.  Right before Areo dismembers and decapitates Ser Arys, we get one of my favorite lines in the whole series, which I’ve been saving for just this moment.  Arianne Martell and Darkstar (a walking metaphor, that one) are traipsing around in the Dornish desert, and there’s a line which says:

“The sun was beating down like a fiery hammer, but it did not matter with their journey at its end.”  

This is very clever wording, because the end of the journey symbolizes the landing of the fiery sun hammer.  They are parallel journeys.  Their journey ends with Arys Oakheart taking the Hammer of the Waters injuries (head and neck ) as well as Myrcella, another moon maiden, being slashed across the face by Darkstar.   I’ve mentioned that Darkstar is a Bloodstone Emperor symbol, which makes his face-slashing of Myrcella a Lightbringer forging scene to go along with Arys Oakheart’s Hammer of the Waters injuries.  All of this occurs immediately after the sun beats down like a fiery hammer.  Ser Arys’ head lands “among the reeds,” which I think suggests a meteor impact which strangles the Neck of Westeros, where House Reed reigns supreme.

Now you better believe that the first time I read this quote about the fiery hammer, it pretty much jumped off the page and hit me like a hammer.  And remember, this scene is in Dorne, next to where the Hammer fell.  The sun beat down like a fiery hammer and a sun-spear, y’all… that’s the deal.

If you’re still not convinced – I know you skeptics are out there, god bless you – one of the islands in the Stepstones is actually named “Bloodstone.”  It’s like a signature on a bathroom wall – “bloodstone was here.”  “For a good time, call Azor Ahai,” etc.   We have places called Bloodstone and Sunspear, right by the broken Arm, like giant “we did it” signs.  Watch out for fiery hammers and falling bloodstones, those are dangerous.

So, the Hammer of the Waters was a moon meteor with the name bloodstone attached to it, and according to legend, Azor Ahai broke the moon when he stabbed Nissa Nissa. This is more confirmation that the Bloodstone Emperor and Azor Ahai are in fact the same person – the person who broke the moon and dropped the Hammer of the Waters.

Said another way, the Hammer of the Waters was the cause of the Long Night.    Check out this major clue about the Hammer being the cause of the Long Night that George gave us way back in A Clash of Kings:

Theon was about to tell him what he ought to do with his wet nurse’s fable when Maester Luwin spoke up. “The histories say the crannogmen grew close to the children of the forest in the days when the greenseers tried to bring the hammer of the waters down upon the Neck.  It may be that they have secret knowledge.”  Suddenly the wood seemed a deal darker than it had a moment before, as if a cloud had passed before the sun.  It was one thing to have some fool boy spouting folly, but maesters were supposed to be wise.  

That’s a pretty clear one – the Hammer is discussed, and then everything darkens as if something was clouding the sun.  I should mention that I don’t think the children of the forest dropped the Hammer, not exactly, and certainly not to stop the First Men, though we’ll have to discuss that more another time.  But consider the logical inconsistency in this quote – if the children grew close to the people who lived in the Neck, the Crannogmen, why would they they try to destroy their home?  Personally I don’t see the children doing anything to destroy the earth.  I believe they would kill people if it was in the best interest of the earth – call them very aggressive environmentalists, perhaps – but causing massive earthquakes and having anything to do with causing the Long Night really doesn’t seem like something they would do in my opinion.

There are two different locations which are said to be ‘the place where the greenseers called down the hammer’: the Isle of Faces and the Children’s Tower of Moat Cailin. The latter really doesn’t make any sense, because the Hammer damaged the Neck, where Moat Cailin is.  That’s like dropping a Hammer on yourself.  And since when do children of the forest hang out in black castles and cast spells from the tops of towers?   That sounds more like someone else we know all too well, right?  Performing cataclysmic blood magic from the top of a tower made of black stone which may or nay not be oily black stone?

The Children’s tower itself has a few clues for us.  I mentioned before that the tower has a “broken crown,” and that it’s “slender as a spear.”  We talked about this applying to the slender-as-a-spear maidens such as we see on occasion, but given what we’ve seen with Oberyn’s spear, this stands out as a pretty awesome oily black spear reference, and directly associated with the Hammer of the Waters.  As icing on the cake, I will also tell you that when Robb’s party originally came down the causeway and stopped at Moat Cailin for a night, there were three standards noted to have been raised over the three towers that are left standing.  Robb unfurls the direwolf of Stark above one tower, the Karstarks put their sunburst sigil above another… and above the children’s tower, the Umbers place… their giant in shattered chains.

And the old gods stirred, and giants awoke in the earth, and all of Westeros shook and trembled.  Great cracks appeared in the earth, and hills and mountains collapsed and were swallowed up.  And then the seas came rushing in, and the Arm of Dorne was broken and shattered by the force of the water, until only a few bare rocky islands remained above the waves. . . . Or so the legends say. 

That last bit was taken from the section about the Hammer of the Waters in The World of Ice and Fire.  The only edit I would make here is that instead of saying that “the seas came rushing in,” I would say is that it was the sea dragon that came rushing in and broke the Arm of Dorne.  Otherwise Yandel pretty much nails it here.  And remember… one of those bare, rocky islands that remain is called Bloodstone.  If you think I’m going to mention that again, you’re right.  I wrote two giant essays about bloodstone and its correlation to A Song of Ice and Fire, so you have to understand how excited I was when I saw “Bloodstone” on the map in the middle of the broken arm.  Then I saw Oberyn stick his oily black blade into Gregor’s arm… well this is the stuff dreams and podcasts are made of, my friends.  It was actually only after I put all that together that I recalled that Thor’s hammer shoots lighting and thunder.

Speaking of giants waking in the earth as a metaphor for an earthquake, Gregor the stone giant gives us this symbolism early on in the fight:

There were fifty yards between them. Prince Oberyn advanced quickly, Ser Gregor more ominously. The ground does not shake when he walks, Tyrion told himself. That is only my heart fluttering.

Gregor represents various disasters that come from the moon – the black blood, darkness, stone fists, and riding mountains, and I think we can add earthquakes to the mix.  Comet and meteor impacts can in fact cause earthquakes, particularly if they land near a fault line, and even ones that explode in the atmosphere (like the meteor which caused the Tunguska Event) measure on the Richter scale like an earthquake.

I’ve noticed that all of the characters who take the Hammer of the Waters arm and neck wounds are giants in some sense.  Gregor is a stone giant, that much is clear.  Ser Arys Oakheart descends from John the Oak, who was sired by Garth the Green on a giantess, according to legend.  Brienne is freakish tall and may even be a descendent of Ser Duncan the tall (a.k.a. Dunk of Dunk and Egg), who is also called a giant.  Dunk’s horse is named Thunder, for what it’s worth, and he both takes and gives out significant arm wounds in his battle with Ser Lucas Longinch at the climax of The Sword Sword.  The poor stableboy who loses his arm and then his head to Gregor’s sword isn’t a giant, but another stableboy we know all too well certainly is, and that’s Hodor, who has interesting symbolism in his own right which we will get to in due course.  Tyrion has one of these arm  and neck wound incidents too, and he is called a giant many times.

All of these giants take wounds that represent the earth, and giants wake from the earth.  A moon meteor can surely cause an earthquake, and the Hammer of the Waters woke giants in the earth and certainly caused a great earthquake.  All of this makes makes me think that these characters are representing the earth itself – the giants that wake in the earth – or perhaps the union of meteor and earth.  Gregor’s stone fist shows us a meteor pounding the earth, so it seems this is the key – the characters are showing us transformations from one state into the next.  The transformation from moon meteor into a part of the earth is what wakes the giants in the earth, and so we see moon meteor characters who are giants taking the Hammer of the Waters injuries.

At the end of that last passage where Gregor makes the earth tremble, there’s bit about Tyrion having a fluttering heart, or perhaps a heart with wings that can fly.  The meteors can be described as the heart of a fallen star, or as a fiery heart such as we see on Stannis’s banners.  Tyrion, meanwhile, is a son of the sun and in all likelihood a dragon-spawn, so the idea of him having a fluttering heart creates the image a flying and burning meteor heart, the one we know as Azor Ahai reborn.

We kind of ignored Tyrion during this chapter because I eventually want to deal with Tyrion on his own, but the idea of him being a child of the lion and the dragon fits in with him being an Azor Ahai reborn type, and more specifically, one of the “three heads of the dragon.”  At the very end of the chapter, he’s dragged down the serpentine steps to the black cells, and calls himself a dead man.  That’s reinforcing the idea of Azor Ahai reborn as a dead man very nicely.

What’s that you say?  You like Tyrion, why I am teasing you like that and not giving you more Tyrion?  Well ok, just a little more Tyrion.  As I mentioned, Tyrion is many times described as a giant – my giant of Lannister, for example, and also when Maester Aemon says that Tyrion “is a giant come among us, here at the end of the world” – that’s a pretty nice one, a giant which comes among us at the end of the world.  Sounds catastrophic.   The point is, Tyrion the giant undergoes the Hammer of the Waters injuries at the Battle of the Green Fork in A Game of Thrones.  As you listen to this, imagine Tyrion as the moon being knocked from the sky, and recall that not only does the Latin word “lucifer”mean “light-bringer,” but also “morningstar.”

The knight came thundering down on him, swinging the spiked ball of a morningstar around his head. Their warhorses slammed together before Tyrion could so much as open his mouth to shout for Bronn. His right elbow exploded with pain as the spikes punched through the thin metal around the joint. His axe was gone, as fast as that. He clawed for his sword, but the morningstar was circling again, coming at his face. A sickening crunch, and he was falling. He did not recall hitting the ground, but when he looked up there was only sky above him. He rolled onto his side and tried to find his feet, but pain shuddered through him and the world throbbed. The knight who had felled him drew up above him. “Tyrion the Imp,” he boomed down. “You are mine. Do you yield, Lannister?”

Yes, Tyrion thought, but the word caught in his throat. He made a croaking sound and fought his way to his knees, fumbling for a weapon. His sword, his dirk, anything …

“Do you yield?” The knight loomed overhead on his armored warhorse. Man and horse both seemed immense. The spiked ball swung in a lazy circle. Tyrion’s hands were numb, his vision blurred, his scabbard empty. “Yield or die,” the knight declared, his flail whirling faster and faster.

That’s a pretty spectacular one – a thundering morningstar knocking our giant moon character out of the sky and punching and exploding his arm.  Not so sweet for Tyrion, but it’s terrific mythical astronomy.  Tyrion “claws” for his sword, implying dragon claws like a true moon dragon.  He had an axe in hand until he was hit with the morningstar, whereupon he lost it, just as Gregor’s sword flies from his hand when he is hit with the lightning-like sun-spear.  Tyrion seems to have lost his sword on the way down as well, which is more of the same idea.  We also see the neck wound implied as Tyrion’s words catch in his throat and he croaks like a frog, and the implication of frogs in turn implies the Neck, where the “frog-eaters” live.

Notice the line about “the world throbbed” – that’s our giants waking in the earth, surely, and right as Tyrion falls from the sky and lands on the earth.  The northmen who felled him, meanwhile, looms immense overhead with his orbiting morningstar, his voice booming.  Of course, Tyrion is able to turn the tide when he stands up and accidentally kills the horse of his foe, causing the horse to fall atop his enemy and… break his arm.

It’s particularly notable that this battle took place at the Green Fork, the same place where Robert’s mighty warhammer felled a dragon in night black armor.  Not only is this significant because it features a very famous hammer and a black dragon falling into the water, but it also takes place at a crossing of a body of water which lies between two landmasses, which is now called the Ruby Ford.  The same goes for the fight between Areo and Arys, where Arys takes the arm and neck wounds – Arys is chopped up as he and his horse leap over the river onto the boat.  Ser Duncan and Lucas Longinch also had their fight in a stream between the lands of two rivals.  The reason for all of this is apparent – the Arm of Dorne is a crossing.  Creating  Hammer of the Waters metaphors at a crossing of a body of water simply adds detail to the picture, and it’s pretty consistent.  Also, keep an eye out for broken bridges and bridges in general – it’s the same idea.  The Arm of Dorne was a land bridge.

So now, here is the recounting of Robert and Rhaegar from an Eddard chapter of A Game of Thrones:

They had come together at the ford of the Trident while the battle crashed around them, Robert with his warhammer and his great antlered helm, the Targaryen prince armored all in black.  On his breastplate was the three-headed dragon of his House, wrought all in rubies that flashed like fire in the sunlight.  The waters of the Trident ran red around the hooves of their destriers as they circled and clashed, again and again, until at last a crushing blow from Robert’s hammer stove in the dragon and the chest beneath it.  When Ned had finally come on the scene, Rhaegar lay dead in the stream, while men of both armies scrabbled in the swirling waters for rubies knocked free of his armor. 

I’ve always liked that line about Robert’s hammer having “stove in” the dragon, because the dragon here represents the second moon, and the second moon is some thing of a stove, if you will.  Now what we have here is a hammer crushing a dragon who falls into the water, instead of a hammer dragon crashing into the water, but for symbolism’s sake, the pattern is there.  Rhaegar is a dead and bloody black dragon with a “black heart” lying in the water where the ford is, just as the island Bloodstone sits in the crossing of the Narrow Sea among the Stepstones.  Rhaegar’s blood and his fiery rubies both fall into the Green Fork, giving us the image of fiery bloodstones falling from the sky and landing in the water at the place where the hammer fell.  Here we see the original bloodstone coloring – splashes of red blood and rubies on green (the green fork).  This exact image in the Areo Hotah scene as Ser Arys’s bloody head lands in the river called the Greenblood, and the line is “..the Greenblood swallowed the red with a soft splash.”  Rhaegar is also depicting the idea of bloodstone being submersed in water to create the image of blood in the water, a trick we see often with the sea dragon.

In The Princess and the Queen, George’s short story about the infamous Targaryen civil war known as “the dance of the dragons,” we learn that Daemon Targaryen, who rides the red dragon Bloodwyrm, sets himself up as King of the Narrow Sea and takes Bloodstone for his seat – pretty cool.  Daemon is somewhat of a usurper here, fittingly, and he’s even usurping his sibling, just as the Bloodstone Emperor usurped his sister, the Amethyst Empress.  Wyrms and serpents and dragons are all virtually interchangeable, and so the red dragon known as the Bloodwyrm is a symbolic match to the “Red Viper,” Oberyn Martell, and of course to the idea of a flaming red sword.  Daemon’s sword was Dark Sister, which I have long suspected is a reference to the second moon, a dark sister to the remaining one.

Daemon uses Dark Sister to blind his nephew Aemond “One Eye” Targaryen in a dragon on dragon battle above the God’s Eye lake, which plays into the running motif of the moon and occasionally the sun having it’s eyes torn out, and of the falling meteors being like fiery eyes.  There’s another element to this family of symbolism, which is the concept of the God’s Eye, but we have to save that for another essay.  That one is mostly written and will be coming up soon, so look out for that.

Most notable about Daemon’s dragon dance with Aemon One Eye are the dragons falling like thunderbolts and landing in the water.  This is particularly satisfying because it combines the thunderbolt and the sea dragon in one image:

The attack came sudden as a thunderbolt. Caraxes dove down upon Vhagar with a piercing shriek that was heard a dozen miles away, cloaked by the glare of the setting sun on Prince Aemond’s blind side. The Blood Wyrm slammed into the older dragon with terrible force. Their roars echoed across the Gods Eye as the two grappled and tore at one another, dark against a blood red sky. So bright did their flames burn that fisherfolk below feared the clouds themselves had caught fire.

Caraxes the bloodwyrm attacks while hidden in the glare of the sun – that means he’s between Aemon One-Eye and the sun, creating a dragon eclipse as the sun sets.  They are dark against the blood red sky, reminding us of Drogon turning dark against the sun and Darkstar standing outlined by a dying sun, and also of Lyanna’s blue roses blowing across a blood-streaked sky.  This scene gives the whole picture – dragon eclipse, sun setting, blood in the sky, the clouds catching fire, dragons falling like a thunderbolt, and then finally the sea dragon, as both dragons lock together and fall into the lake.  Pretty sweet.

Saving the best for last, one of the very finest clues about the breaking of the Arm of Dorne occurring when Lightbringer was forged comes in Dany’s Alchemical Wedding.  I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating, and here it is.  This is the second dragon’s egg cracking in the pyre:

And there came a second crack, loud and sharp as thunder..

And then the third egg:

With a belch of flame and smoke that reached thirty feet into the sky, the pyre collapsed and came down around her. Unafraid, Dany stepped forward into the firestorm, calling to her children.

The third crack was as loud and sharp as the breaking of the world.

So there you have it – the cracking of these dragon’s eggs represents the cracking of the moon, and here we see one that is like thunder and one which is like the breaking of the world.  The breaking of the world is a pretty good match to the Hammer of the Waters, which literally broke a single landmass in two.  This came about as a result of the moon giving birth to dragons.  The thunderbolt too, it seems, can be traced to the waking of moon dragons.  All of this happened when the comet came by, when there was a firestorm and smoke rose high into the sky, when the sun and moon burned together in holy wedlock.

With that, I rest my case – the Hammer of the Waters was a moon meteor, it fell during the time of the Long Night, and indeed, it brought on the Long Night.  If I am correct that Azor Ahai was in some way responsible for cracking the moon, that means that either the story of the children of the forest calling down the Hammer is wrong, or there must be some sort of overlap or collaboration between Azor Ahai and the children of the forest.

Gosh, that seems like a subject someone should make a podcast about.  Who knows, maybe someone will!

Finish Him… Fatality

We aren’t done with Oberyn and Gregor, so let’s finish up the trial by combat.  We paused the action right after Oberyn finally gave the Mountain a tickle with his poison spear, and that’s where we will pick it up.

Prince Oberyn had circled behind him. “ELIA OF DORNE!” he shouted. Ser Gregor started to turn, but too slow and too late. The spearhead went through the back of the knee this time, through the layers of chain and leather between the plates on thigh and calf. The Mountain reeled, swayed, then collapsed face first on the ground. His huge sword went flying from his hand. Slowly, ponderously, he rolled onto his back.

Gregor is still turning like a heliotrope, but too slowly.  He’s struck from behind.  What does this mean, I wonder?  Was the moon struck from behind?  Is this a dark side of the moon joke?  Gregor’s arm and neck wounds match the wounds of the planet, but Westeros doesn’t have an area named after a leg or knee.

Whatever the case, after being struck by the spear again, Ser Gregor collapses face-first on the ground, creating the perfect image of a moon-face falling to earth.   I have noticed that the Hammer of the Waters injuries usually occur when some is falling to the ground or is about to fall, I suppose because when they lay flat on the ground it makes them more like a map.  Makes sense, right?  Since Gregor fell face-first, the stone fist on Gregor’s helm struck the earth along with his face, reinforcing the fist aspect of the moon meteor family of symbolism.

Most importantly, his huge sword goes flying from his hand.  That’s perfect –  the moon is knocked off its feet and out of the sky, and that’s exactly when huge flying Lightbringer swords should appear.  And it’s a bloody huge sword, have no doubt.  Brandon would have liked the sight of it, we can be sure.

We’ve got a lot of flying weapons here, actually, and a flying snake as well:

The Dornishman flung away his ruined shield, grasped the spear in both hands, and sauntered away. Behind him the Mountain let out a groan, and pushed himself onto an elbow. Oberyn whirled cat-quick, and ran at his fallen foe.

“EEEEELLLLLLIIIIIAAAAA!” he screamed, as he drove the spear down with the whole weight of his body behind it. The crack of the ashwood shaft snapping was almost as sweet a sound as Cersei’s wail of fury, and for an instant Prince Oberyn had wings. The snake has vaulted over the Mountain. Four feet of broken spear jutted from Clegane’s belly as Prince Oberyn rolled, rose, and dusted himself off. He tossed aside the splintered spear and claimed his foe’s greatsword. 

Oberyn flings away his ruined sun-mirror shield, which perfectly depicts the sun destroying the moon, which was a sun-mirror, and knocking it out of the sky.  It’s a match for Gregor’s shield, the star that gives way to the three black dogs.  The flying snake is a clear reference to a dragon, and the “cat-quick” line is likely meant to imply the Lion of Night and solar lions in general.  The snake “vaulting over the mountain” sounds like a celestial snake flying through the vault of the sky, thrusting it’s sun-spear in the moon’s chest, just as Lightbringer was thrust into Nissa Nissa’s heart.

There’s an image of the comet splitting here, too: flying snake Oberyn and his serpentine sun-spear are one until colliding with the moon mountain, but are split as Oberyn leaves the spear in Gregor’s chest and flies over him.  That’s exactly the image of the comet splitting, with one half striking the moon and the other half flying through and past the explosion.  I think it’s a really nice, detailed parallel here.  The spear itself also breaks, giving us another version of the split comet motif.

The loud crack of the spear shaft as our moon figure is impaled calls to mind the loud cracks we saw in Dany’s Alchemical Wedding scene, which were “as loud as the breaking of the world” and “as loud as thunder.”  You’ll notice the crack of the shaft is noted to be as sweet as Cersei’s wail.  Cersei is a widow, so her wail is in fact a “widow’s wail” of anguish (no ecstasy this time, sorry Cersei).  Actually, the ecstasy is implied because the same sound that enrages Cersei is noted to bring sweet joy to Tyrion.

Post-impact Oberyn the sun warrior “rose” like the sun, but he was all dusty, and brushes the dust off of himself.  That sounds like a sun which is obscured by the dust and debris of the moon collision, and the brushing off of the dust implies dust and debris filling the air, falling from the sun-moon conjunction.

Finally, Oberyn the sun warrior claims the sword which came flying from the moon.  That’s the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai, making his sword from a piece of the moon. This is a really important detail, so I’ll say it again: after the moon crashes to earth, the Red Viper walks over and picks up the sword that came from the moon.

And now to the grisly end of the fight.

Ser Gregor tried to rise. The broken spear had gone through him, and was pinning him to the ground. He wrapped both hands about the shaft, grunting, but could not pull it out. Beneath him was a spreading pool of red.

The moon is down, and cannot rise.  It’s no longer in the sky – it disappeared, and it’s stuck on the earth.  Beneath Gregor is a “spreading pool of red,” depicting the moon blood and the moon flood, which we discussed extensively in episode three.  But just when our Bloodstone Emperor character is about to finish things off, Lightbringer in hand…  the moon has its revenge.

Clegane’s hand shot up and grabbed the Dornishman behind the knee. The Red Viper brought down the greatsword in a wild slash, but he was off-balance, and the edge did no more than put another dent in the Mountain’s vambrace. Then the sword was forgotten as Gregor’s hand tightened and twisted, yanking the Dornishman down on top of him.

“And then the sword was forgotten” – I guess that means we’ll never actually find Azor Ahai’s black sword.  Either that, or it’s hiding in plain sight and everyone has forgotten what it really is.

Now, in the original Long Night disaster, moon meteors crash to earth, but fill the air with smoke and debris and blot out the sun.  This is the mutual annihilation I’ve been referring to.  First the sun kills the moon, but the moon reaches out from the grave and strikes back, just as mortally wounded Gregor reaches up with his fist and pulls Oberyn down.   At least, that’s one way of seeing it, and that’s how it’s being depicted here.

Keep in mind, however, that the sun is not just killed, but transformed into a night sun, black sun, a black hole, dark star, etc. – or perhaps you might even say a dead sun.  Besides the smoke and debris of the meteor impacts on the planet, a cloud of smoke and ash would also gradually spread outward from the broken moon itself, like waves of night which hide the sun’s face and transform it into the dark sun of the Long Night.  This spreading darkness is the same as Lord Tywin’s army unfolding like an iron rose.  It’s one facet of Lightbringer; the “shadowsword” aspect you might call it.  This implies that forging lightbringer not only transformed Nissa Nissa, but also Azor Ahai.  Blood magic doesn’t come without cost, of course, and it seems Azor Ahai was transformed through his dark deeds.  Recall that the steel shriek of the spear hitting the moon character’s chest sent Oberyn reeling – it’s the same idea.

There’s a couple of things here to corroborate this notion of the moon’s revenge taking the form of the clouds of smoke and ash.  Consider the broken spear that is planted in the Mountain’s chest: it’s four feet of ash.  That’s very like a column of ash, rising from the fallen moon rock.  And there’s one more, a second later, right before the killing blow:

As he drew back his huge fist, the blood on his gauntlet seemed to smoke in the cold dawn air.

Gregor’s fist represents the stone fist motif, and it’s covered in blood, and smoking – it’s a bloody, smoking bloodstone, just as the ash wood depicts a column of smoke rising from Gregor himself.  His bloody, smoking fist is the thing which pulled down the sun and which smashed the sun’s face in. I’ll spare you that particular quote, we all know how it goes.  Point is, I believe this lunar vengeance rising up to kill the sun is the smoke which rose from the moon meteor impacts.  You’ll notice that at the alchemical wedding scene, the smoke rising high into the air from the pyre of the sun king is remarked upon, and it’s far from the only example.  It’s all over the place, actually.  We saw it at the end of that dragon rider vs. dragon rider battle between Daemon Targaryen and Aemond One-Eye, albeit in watery form:

Half a heartbeat later, the dragons struck the lake, sending up a gout of water so high that it was said to have been as tall as Kingspyre Tower.

By comparing the gout of water to a tower named “king’s pyre,” he’s created the image of a pyre of smoke towering into the air.  Those falling dragons represent Azor Ahai reborn the dark solar king in meteor form, and so we can see that when the king makes his landing, it throw’s up a king’s pyre.  Think again of the greasy smoke rising from solar king Khal Drogo’s funeral pyre – you can see that this is a running motif.  As a bonus, my friend from the Westeros.org forums known as “Mithras” has predicted that the wildfire caches under King’s Landing will be set off before the end of the story and King’s Landing will burn and be destroyed.  I have to say, it makes a lot of sense and it fits the symbolism.  We’ve already seen King Stannis “land” at King’s Landing and fill the air with smoke during the battle of the Blackwater, when Sansa has her moon blood scene up in one of the towers of the Red Keep.

Another great example of the column of smoke coming from a moon dragon meteor landing is found in the third Dunk and Egg novella, the Mystery Knight, and so here will take a detour for some Dunk and Egg action.

I love the Blackfyre Rebellion’s first album, but everything after that…

Ok, now just leave Oberyn and Gregor right where they are for a minute, frozen in time like the Matrix.  We’re more or less done with the fight – there’s just a couple other things to wrap up.  But let’s roll with this idea about the column of smoke rising from moon meteor dragon landings for a bit and talk some Dunk and Egg, because this in an important idea, and everyone likes Dunk and Egg.  When I say it’s an important idea, consider that this is essentially the mechanism which causes the Long Night.  It’s the smoke and ash thrown up by the landing of the meteors which blots out the sun, so if Martin wants us to figure it out, then he’s got to show us this smoke, and in fact it does appear in many many scenes.  This is at the conclusion of the Mystery Knight, when Lord Bloodraven has come to Whitewalls to put down the more or less impotent second Blackfyre rebellion:

In the end, the second Daemon Blackfyre rode forth alone, reined up before the royal host, and challenged Lord Bloodraven to single combat. “I will fight you, or the coward Aerys, or any champion you care to name.” Instead Lord Bloodraven’s men surrounded him, pulled him off his horse, and clasped him into golden fetters. The banner he had carried was planted in the muddy ground and set afire.  It burned for a long time, sending up a twisted plume of smoke that could be seen for leagues around.

That’s a black dragon banner burning there and sending up the twisted plume of smoke.  Think of black dragon meteors burning as they fall to the ground, landing, and sending up twisted plumes of smoke – that’s the idea.  In the Ironborn legend of the Grey King stealing the fire of the Storm God, the Grey King accomplishes his fiery theft by tricking the Storm God into setting a tree ablaze with his mighty thunderbolt.  Thus, burning trees are directly linked to the thunderbolt, and here the burning black dragon standard is “planted” in the ground like a tree, and it was the same with Gregor’s longsword at the beginning of the fight.  Weirwoods, the screaming trees with leaves like bits of flame, may tie into this burning tree motif as well.

Only a page before Daemon II Blackfyre a.k.a. John the Fiddler rode out to be captured and had his banner burned, there is a parallel event.  Daemon was unhorsed in a joust by Glyndon Ball a.k.a. “Fireball.”  Fireball’s sigil is the most comet-like of any sigil in A Song of Ice and Fire, I’m sure you’ll agree: it’s literally a streaking ball of fire on a night black field.  This duel between streaking fireball and black dragon creates the image of a fiery comet slamming into the second moon, the moon which becomes the black dragons.  Check out the quote here:

Somewhere in the east, lightning cracked across a pale pink sky. Daemon raked his stallion’s side with golden spurs and leapt forward like a thunderclap, lowering his war lance with its deadly iron point.

Daemon’s black stallion emerges, riderless, as Daemon himself lies facedown in the mud and the crowd jeers about the “brown dragon.”  Daemon the black dragon is planted in the mud just like his black dragon banner is planted in the mud before it burns and sends up the plume of smoke.  The language here very nicely ties the lightning to the black dragon, as Daemon’s charge is worded as the answering thunderclap to the lightning in the sky. I don’t mean to beat a dead horse here (chuckle chuckle), but I think this is another clue about the thunderbolt of the Storm God in the Grey King myth being a black moon meteor, a blackfyre dragon.

The idea of this entire scene showing us black meteors landing is reinforced as Dunk later goes out to Bloodraven’s tent and sees the severed heads of two of the Blackfyre conspirators mounted on spears – Lord Gormon Peake of Starkpike and Black Tom Heddle of Whitewalls.  Severed heads on spears ?  We know what that’s about.

First of all, consider the word “Starpike.” We could be talking about a star which is a pike, as in the spear-like weapon known as a pike, in which case we have a “star-spear.” If we are talking about the fish called a pike, then we have a star which falls into the sea and becomes a fish – a sea dragon, in other words.  Starpike’s sigil, which Dunk sees on the shield planted in the ground before the severed head, is of three black castles on a field of orange, so again we have the implication of the three-headed dragon and three black dragon meteors.  The castle aspect of it makes us think of fortresses built of oily black stone, such as Moat Cailin, Yeen, and the entire city of Asshai, and also of the black castles of other Azor Ahai figures like Dragonstone (Aegon, Rhaegar, Stannis), Castle Black (Jon Snow), and Blackhaven (Beric Dondarrion).  Black Tom Heddle has no sigil but wears a demon helm when going into battle, so his severed head also gives us a pretty strong resemblance to the black dragon meteors.

Finally, Lord Peake’s eyes are noted to be flinty, and of course flint is a stone which can produce fire. There is talk of the crows eating Lord Peake’s eyes soon, a nice tie in to the eyeless skulls in Mel’s vision and the severed Night’s Watch brothers’  heads on spears who are also eyeless.  Not sure if I’ve mentioned this, but those heads were left there by a wildling who is known as “The Weeper” because he cuts out the eyes of his victims.  This connects the bloody tears of the moon idea to the spear-like and sword-like meteors, just as Jon’s scene with the Wall weeping to produce streaks of red fire and black ice does.

There’s a scene where Obara, one of the Sand Snakes, tells of the day her father Oberyn came to claim her.  Oberyn gave young Obara a choice between his spear and his mother’s tears, referring to it as a choice of weapons.  The joke is that the mother’s tears are spears.  Obara adds that her mother died weeping… indeed.

One final note on this passage is that according to Bloodraven, the main event which takes place at this tourney turns out to be the fulfillment of John the Fiddler’s dream of a dragon’s egg hatching at Whitewalls – but that dragon turns out to be Egg coming into his own as a Dragon of House Targaryen.  There is also a literal dragon’s egg at the tourney, but Bloodraven has the dwarf mummers climb up the privy shaft and steal it in the night.  In other words, everything about this tourney represents the waking of dragon’s from the lunar egg, with the white castle of Whitewalls playing the part of eggshell. Thus all the symbols I’ve highlighted here can safely be interpreted as applying to the forging of Lightbringer and all the rest.

Dunk and Egg stories are densely packed with mythical astronomy, and this tournament at Whitewalls in particular is pretty great, so we’ll have to come back to that some other time.  I thought that it fit in well here because it has the black dragon meteors landing and throwing up a high column of smoke, the thunder and lightning references which tie into the Storm God’s thunderbolt, and the by-now-familiar  severed heads on spears make a conspicuous appearance.  I’ve been looking for an excuse to talk a little Dunk and Egg, so there you go.

Kissing, Wailing, and the Last Hero

There is just a couple more items to wrap up from the Oberyn and Gregor fight, so let’s go back to that frozen moment where Gregor has just pulled Oberyn down on top of him, seconds before Oberyn could chop his head off.  The first topic is the sexual procreation aspect of the Lightbringer myth.  Just because this is a super manly fight between two fearsome warriors doesn’t mean George can’t slip in a little sexy talk!  I’m betting you don’t even remember these lines are in here (you might have been too busy throwing up into the trashcan or weeping violently), so here it is:

Tyrion saw with horror that the Mountain had wrapped one huge arm around the prince, drawing him tight against his chest, like a lover. “Elia of Dorne,” they all heard Ser Gregor say, when they were close enough to kiss. His deep voice boomed within the helm.

So that’s two references to procreation, kissing and being lovers.  Slipped it right in there, like a smooth operator!  And this occurs when the sun and moon are pressed close together, creating yet another eclipse alignment at the moment a lightbringer forging is symbolized.  Gregor’s voice “boomed” within his helm to tell us what is happening here – this is a moon explosion, blowing up right in the sun’s face.  The second moon kissed the sun, and then blew up in his face.  Boom.

Next we have the symbolic wounds that take place at the end.  Tyrion thinks that he would never know whether Oberyn intended to “hack off Gregor’s head or shove the point through his eyeslit,” while Gregor pushes “steel fingers” into Oberyn’s eyes before smashing his head in.  Head wounds and blinding, familiar symbolic wounds which the sun and moon undergo.  The steel fingers re-emphasize the symbolism of Gregor’s stone fist, which was bloody and smoking – fingers in particular represent meteors in the Benerro scene at the Red Temple, where the spear wielding soldiers are the fingers of the “Fiery hand.”  Steel fingers give us the idea of meteors that can make steel swords, which makes a lot of sense, and these fingers blind the sun, destroying its face.  Again I think this reinforces the idea that it was the smoke of the moon meteors which blotted out the sun.  Note that the black dragon swords known as Valyrian steel are “smoke-dark,” and I think there’s a distinct possibility that all Valyrian steel contains black moon meteorite stone.  That’s even more of a link between the idea of smoke and these meteors, or the swords that symbolize the meteors.

There’s one more notable injury, which is the Mountain making splinters of Oberyn’s teeth.  I’ve mentioned a few times that dragon’s teeth are described as black swords or knives as well as black diamond, and the Viper’s fangs or teeth serve the same purpose.  Thus, the splintered teeth imply a shower of black meteors, the infamous storm of swords.  Oberyn’s oily sunspear was also described as “splintered” when Oberyn tossed it aside after stabbing the Mountain, so once again the symbolism correlates very tightly, showing us that Oberyn’s splintered teeth and the splintered spear are the same thing.

There was a sickening crunch. Ellaria Sand wailed in terror, and Tyrion’s breakfast came boiling back up. He found himself on his knees retching bacon and sausage and applecakes, and that double helping of fried eggs cooked up with onions and fiery Dornish peppers.

Fried and boiled eggs – the moon was an egg which was scalded, as we’ve seen, so that’s not too hard to understand.  And look, a double helping – because there were two moons, I take it.  Fiery Dornish peppers – why not.  I won’t comment on the sausages.  The mention of sickness fits with all the poison imagery, and refers back to the moon being poisoned and sick.  More importantly, Ellaria, who is a newly-made widow, gives us the widow’s wail of terror (I suppose the other wailing widow, Cersei,  has now found joy again).

So that’s it for the fight itself!  Whew!  Get up and stretch your legs a bit if you need to, unless you’re driving a car, in which case it’s probably not a good idea.  “Everybody Hurts” by REM is a great music video but it’s pretty lousy for the people stuck behind you.  Ninenteen-nineties pop cultural references aside, we are finished with the fight and the chapter proper, but I want to keep going with the widow’s wail idea for a minute because we’ve just received a healthy dose of wailing widows and ear-splitting metallic screeches and shrieks, and the sword Widow’s Wail is just such a damn cool piece of symbolism which relates back to many of the ideas we have covered today.

It seems like all of the wailing widows which pop up in these lightbringer scenes refer to Nissa Nissa’s cry of anguish and ecstasy which broke the moon, and to the idea of the moon meteors being seen as the moon’s tears.  The sword Widow’s Wail has those waves of blood and night which show us a vivid depiction of the things that came from the moon when it was destroyed, making it a kind of moon meteor sword already.  Widow’s Wail and Oathkeeper, made from Ned’s nearly black sword called Ice, represent black ice covered in blood, another reference to the bloodstone moon meteors we know and love.  Those are the moon’s tears, and thus we can see that Widow’s Wail is basically a symbol of the moon’s tears which is named after the moon’s death cry.

Consider the course of Widow’s Wail’s life: it starts off as black ice, then becomes soiled in blood sacrifice of a sort.  When it is split and reforged, it still appears as though it is covered in blood – but now it also has the cross guard which flames gold and the golden lion’s head.  This sequence is showing us the life cycle of the red comet.   It starts as a comet with no tail – basically a ball of black ice and iron – and then it’s covered in moon blood to become a bleeding star, and finally it lights up with red fire, making it a burning star as well.  You’ll notice this is more or less the sequence for the forging of Lightbringer according to the myth – from smoking sword to bloody sword to burning sword.  Pretty cool, right?  Ned’s sword is covered in blood, and then reappears as two swords with flaming hilts, just as Lightbringer was covered with sacrificial blood in order to be lit on fire.  The lion head pommels of Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail in particular shows us that it has been fertilized by the sun, that it has drank the fire of the sun – and indeed, as we have seen a few times now, those swords are specifically said to drink the sun in the scene where we first see them.  Essentially, blood and fire are added to black ice, and the result is Lightbringer the red sword or red comet.

The splitting of the comet is emphasized not only be the splitting of Ice into two red and black swords, but also by the scene where Lady Stoneheart sees Oathkeeper after capturing Brienne: the ruby eyes of the lion’s head in the pommel appear as two red stars.  Two red stars for two halves of the red comet – I’m not really sure what else they could be referring two.  Since they seem to work in parallel with the split sword itself, I think it’s a safe conclusion.

I mentioned Oberyn’s broken spear as a reference to the split comet, and I want to add that all of these comet splittings may ultimately be referring to the broken sword of the Last Hero – I think that’s what is important here.  Beric’s flaming sword broke in half, Oberyn’s spear broke in half, the Titan of Bravos has a broken sword, Ned’s sword was split in half… and the Last Hero’s sword was said to have snapped from the cold.  There’s a nice tie in to broken Lightbringer weapons and possibly the Last Hero in the scene at the purple wedding where Joffrey names Widow’s Wail:

Lord Tywin waited until last to present the king with his own gift: a longsword. Its scabbard was made of cherrywood, gold, and oiled red leather, studded with golden lions’ heads. The lions had ruby eyes, she saw. The ballroom fell silent as Joffrey unsheathed the blade and thrust the sword above his head. Red and black ripples in the steel shimmered in the morning light.

The sword of the morning?  It’s certainly not a white sword, and Joffrey is no white knight.  Does this mean that the Last Hero’s sword was a black sword, and not the white one we know as the Sword of the Morning?  I go back and forth on that all the time – it really seems like it could have been either.   Gregor’s bloody fist smoked in the “cold morning air,” so there may be something to this.  It could simply imply the War for the Dawn – that’s kind of what it seemed like at the Battle of the Green Fork, where Tywin’s army unfolded in the dawn light like an iron rose, throne gleaming.  The northmen in that scene were largely Karstarks, who are called “white star wolves” because of their white winter sun sigil, and that’s also the battle where one of those northmen hit Tyrion with the morningstar.  The point is, we might be seeing the white swords and morningstar symbols on one side, and the black iron / dark solar king forces on the other – the War for the Dawn.  So I don’t think that every weapon that shines in the morning light is necessarily a sword of the morning symbol, although it’s something we always have to consider.

In any case, it’s nice to see some oil incorporated into Widow’s Wail, and that’s the oiled red leather scabbard.  The scabbard is also made of “cherrywood,” which might be meant to imply burning wood, since an ember in a fire can be called a cherry, and cherrywood is presumably red.  As always, Widow’s Wail’s red and black ripples are made note of.  The scene continues:

“Magnificent,” declared Mathis Rowan.

“A sword to sing of, sire,” said Lord Redwyne.

“A king’s sword,” said Ser Kevan Lannister.

A king’s sword, a sun sword, a sword associated with song.  We’ve talked about the theme of singing as it relates to dragons and the moon, but of course we have the Moonsingers of the Jogos Nhai, the devotees of Starry Wisdom church who sing to the stars, the direwolves singing to the stars, and the last line of A Game of Thrones is “..for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.” I think the dragonbinder horn and the “cry of anguish and ecstasy” / Widow’s Wail motifs play into this idea as well.  We’ll do a whole thing about sound at some point, but let’s continue with the scene:

King Joffrey looked as if he wanted to kill someone right then and there, he was so excited. He slashed at the air and laughed. “A great sword must have a great name, my lords! What shall I call it?”

Sansa remembered Lion’s Tooth, the sword Arya had flung into the Trident, and Hearteater, the one he’d made her kiss before the battle. She wondered if he’d want Margaery to kiss this one.

Making moon maidens kiss sun swords is what the sun is all about – that’s a pretty nice one.  Throwing swords that are like teeth into the river… sea dragon, ahoy!

The guests were shouting out names for the new blade. Joff dismissed a dozen before he heard one he liked. “Widow’s Wail!” he cried. “Yes! It shall make many a widow, too!” He slashed again. “And when I face my uncle Stannis it will break his magic sword clean in two.” Joff tried a downcut, forcing Ser Balon Swann to take a hasty step backward. Laughter rang through the hall at the look on Ser Balon’s face.

I suggested before that Balon Swann is probably a moon character, and he’s almost struck by the sun’s black sword – the look on his “face” is particularly amusing, it seems.  As for that broken Lightbringer idea, it’s represented here twice.  Ned’s sword represents Lightbringer and was split in half, and then Joffrey suggests splitting Stannis’s sword in half as well.

This is another clue that the Last Hero and probably his later sword made of dragonsteel are closely connected to Azor Ahai and his fiery sword.  You’ll notice that Joffrey dismissed a dozen names before choosing one, and anytime I see that 12 + 1 pattern, I tend to think of the Last Hero, whose twelve companions died before the end of his quest.  Here we have broken Lightbringer swords and the ‘Last Hero math’ together, so I’m inclined to think that is what this is all about.

As a matter of fact, Joffrey features in more Last Hero math in Jamie’s weirwood stump dream.  That’s the one where Jamie finds himself in the bowels of Casterly Rock, and he and Brienne both wield identical flaming swords.   That’s kind of like a split sword, particularly because we see one sword first, and then a few moments later, there are two.  Think of how Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail are two matching swords made from one original.  Oathkeeper’s waves of blood red and night black contrast nicely with the pale, silvery-blue flame of Jamie’s and Brienne’s swords, for what it’s worth.  Anyway, the line is:

Joffrey was there as well, the son they’d made together, and behind them a dozen more dark shapes with golden hair.

My best guess for the identity of the Last Hero so far has been that he’s a son of Azor Ahai – Azor Ahai reborn as a child carrying on the legacy of his father – or perhaps, going against the legacy of his father.  Whichever it may be, it’s tempting to see Jamie as the Azor Ahai figure here, since he wields the flaming sword and carries the significant hand and eye wounds (like Jon Snow, for example), and to see his son Joffrey as the Last Hero, leading twelve dark shapes that resemble him in some way.  The Last Hero’s companions died, which might be the meaning of these twelve shapes behind Joffrey being shadows.

Joffrey is the son of the sun, if you will, just like Quentyn Martell is called the “son’s sun” because he is a son of Dorne in general and a son of the ruler of Dorne specifically.  I believe that this “son’s sun” idea is the same thing as the “second son” motif we see here and there as well.  Comets and meteors, the children of the sun in our story, can indeed light up the sky to such a degree that they can be said to be like a second sun in the sky, as with the Ojibwa myth of the “long tailed heavenly climbing star” that we examined in the last chapter.  George does something similar when he describes the fires of the Hardhome disaster from 600 years ago, calling it “..a conflagration that burned so hot that watchers on the Wall far to the south had thought the sun was rising in the north.”  We’ll explore the second sun idea further some other time, but I will just point out that the banner of the  sellsword company known as the “Second Sons” is..  (wait for it)  ..a broken sword.

Dun dun dun.

Now I know what you’re saying, Joffrey isn’t very heroic – no, certainly not.  He’s a sadist and a budding psychopath.  However, a couple of things stand out about Joffrey which may apply to the Last Hero.   He died when he was thirteen, and in fact the red comet appeared bright in the sky the morning of his thirteenth name day, and was called Joffrey’s comet by the royal lackeys of the Red Keep.  Some people think that the Last Hero may the be same person as the Night’s King, who was the 13th Lord Commander and who ruled for thirteen years before being cast down, seeing a correlation between these 13’s and the Last Hero leading a group of thirteen (twelve plus himself).  Perhaps Joffrey’s psychotic nature is a clue about the Last Hero becoming the Night’s King and committing dark deeds.

In any case, besides being identified with the red comet, Joffrey of course wields Widow’s Wail, the perfect sword for an Azor Ahai reborn character to bear.  The two swords which he owned before Widow’s Wail tell an interesting story as well.  First he had’s Lion’s Tooth, which was thrown into the river – this was a hilarious scene, yes, but it shows us a meteor-as-tooth symbol being thrown into the water like a sea dragon.  His second sword was Hearteater, which seems like a good symbol for the comet that stabbed the moon’s heart, and perhaps a distant call-out to the Daenerys eating the horse heart which represented the comet.

Now I can’t help but notice that going through a progression of three swords which ends with the sword of night, blood, and fire seems like a dead ringer for the Azor Ahai story of forging three swords.  The three attempts to temper Lightbringer were made in water, a lion’s heart, and then Nissa Nissa, and Joffrey’s swords parallel this.  The first sword was thrown in the river, so that’s water.  The second one, Hearteater, has a lion’s head on the pommel, but then, all three swords have lion symbolism, so that’s not very helpful.  However, Hearteater’s pommel is a lion with a red ruby heart between its jaws – so the lion’s heart is specifically referred to with the second sword after all.  Then comes the third sword, Widow’s Wail, with its two red stars for eyes and all the blood and night and wailing symbolism we’ve already examined.  A dozen names for this kingly sword are inadequate, but the thirteenth one hits the mark.

Red star eyes are the same as red sun eyes, and you might recall that Ghost’s red eyes are described as “two red suns” in a scene from A Storm of Swords.  Ghost and Jon Snow both have Last Hero symbolism, so it’s interesting to find the second sun motif here.  Jon would be Rhaegar’s second son if R+L=J is true, and Tyrion would be Aery’s second son if Aerys was indeed his father, for what it’s worth.  Oathkeeper is a black sword with two red star eyes, while Ghost is a white wolf with two red sun eyes, and so once again, I am left wondering whether the “sword of the morning” was a black or a white sword.  Consider: Jon himself dreams of his father’s sword, ‘Black Ice,’ wields the black sword Longclaw, and dreams of wielding a red sword while armored in black ice, so he should wield a black sword, right?  On the other handJon is very strongly associated with the Sword of the Morning, as my friend Sly Wren demonstrated in her terrific essay on Westeros.org called “From Death til Dawn: Jon Will Rise as the Sword of the Morning.”  Even his black sword has a “pale stone” wolf’s head for a pommel, which makes us think of the pale stone from which Dawn was supposedly made. He’s also set to merge in some fashion with his white wolf, so…  he should wield a white sword!

Like I said, I can see evidence for both, so I really am not sure.  We can’t rule out some sort of weird mixing of two broken swords, either, as it would kind of jibe with the general Daoist / yin and yang / balance of opposites philosophy which permeates the series.

And that does it for our little detour into Last Hero talk.  The Last Hero is a subject which we kind of touch on here and there throughout all the essays, because it’s one of the more cryptic puzzles of ancient Westeros.  Eventually I am sure we can find the truth of the Last Hero, although we certainly need to take a look at him from the Stark side of things as well.  For now, we can see that the broken Lightbringer weapon motif seems to consistently appear with the Last Hero 12+1 pattern, and with an Azor Ahai reborn figure.  The Last Hero was said to have a broken sword, so this all seems to add up… to thirteen.

A Wedding and a Funeral… and Vengeance

Now, this is where a reasonable person would end this podcast.  And if you want, you can pretend I am a reasonable person and turn off the podcast right now!  However, I’ve always been a fan of long books ( I can think of five you’re a fan of too), long songs and albums – a one song album like Jethro Tull’s Passion Play hits the spot nicely,  as do fifteen-minute plus offerings from the Mars Volta, King Crimson, Tool, Pink Floyd, and the like; long podcasts like Dan Carlin’s sensational Hardcore History; and long sentences, like the one I’m drawing to a close at this very moment.  And so, as I am still ‘feeling it,’ I’ve got a little more mythical astronomy for you.   I could have chopped it off and saved it for a future essay – the voice of reason was crying out for this – but the thing is, all of it relates back to the fight and the symbols we have just explored, and now that you have all this stuff fresh in your mind, you have all the context needed to really get what is going on here with Sansa’s hairnet and the Purple Wedding.  If you want, you can pause the podcast and turn it back on again later and pretend it’s a new episode.  Presto!  You’re the editor I never had.

So, having stomped my conscience into submission, let’s talk about the purple wedding and Sansa Stark, the moon maiden Medusa.  We’ve discussed the purple wedding a bit, as the events of the purple wedding figure prominently in the Oberyn / Gregor duel – after all, the trial by combat is a direct fallout from the purple wedding.  There’s an interesting line in the fight which leads us right back to the purple wedding again, and specifically to Sansa’s hairnet. Back at the beginning of the fight, as the combat between Gregor and Oberyn is about to start, Tyrion observes the scene thusly:

Some had dragged out chairs to watch more comfortably, while others perched on barrels. We should have done this in the Dragonpit, Tyrion thought sourly. We could have charged a penny a head and paid for Joffrey’s wedding and funeral both.

Copper pennies are also called stars in A Song of Ice and Fire, so again we see the idea of heads being symbols of stars and celestial bodies.  The dragon pit is an excellent symbol for the destroyed moon – it’s a home of dragons which was destroyed in a great fire and collapse.  Just as the sun had two moon goddess wives, Aegon has Rhaenys and Visenya, and of course the Dragonpit is on the hill of Rhaenys, who died early, killed when she fell from dragon back at the Hellholt.  A dragon princess tumbling from the sky along with a dragon – there’s our falling moon maiden symbolism.  Her dragon Meraxes was shot in one eye, recalling the Serwyn tale of spearing the dragon Urrax through one eye.  I will have an essay coming on these two moons, as I mentioned earlier, but the point of bringing it up it here is that Rhaenys was Aegon’s “fire moon” bride, and all of her symbols align with the destroyed second moon.  The dragon pit being on the hill of Rhaenys is a prime example; thus talk of holding this fight in the dragonpit is simply another indication of what this fight is actually depicting – the destruction of the second moon.  Additionally, the Mountain was said to have killed princess Rhaenys, Elia and Rhaegar’s daughter who was named after the original Rhaenys, another link between those characters and the second moon.

Also notable in the previous quote was the idea of Joffrey, another solar king, having a wedding and funeral which are connected parallels the purple wedding.  Joff died at his wedding, just as the sun died when it coupled with the second moon, and just as Oberyn and Gregor kill each other in this fight.  When Joffrey was poisoned, his solar face turned dark, and the poison came from another moon maiden – Sansa.  This is a depiction of the waves of night (cloud of moon debris) which blotted out the face of the sun, the vengeance of the moon that we discussed.  When Dontos gives Sansa the hairnet containing the poison and instructs her to wear it to Joffrey’s wedding, he tells her that “It’s vengeance that you hold.”

Joffrey’s poison-darkened face is mirrored by Tywin’s reaction at the beginning of this Oberyn and Gregor chapter when Tyrion declares that he wants a trial by combat:

Lord Tywin’s face was so dark that for half a heartbeat Tyrion wondered if he’d drunk some poisoned wine as well. He slammed his fist down on the table, too angry to speak.

I like the touch of Tywin slamming his fist down on the table, a match for Gregor’s fist depicting a Lightbringer meteor landing when the sun turns dark.  Areo Hotah, too, thumps the butt of his longaxe on the ground frequently in lieu of communicating with actual words, including the signal which began the killing attack on moon character Arys Oakheart.  In addition to looking poisoned, Tywin cannot speak, evoking the choking, throat slitting, and severing of the Neck of Westeros ideas we saw in the Mountain and Viper fight to the death.  The poison used against Joffrey is called the Strangler, adding to this line of symbolism.

But enough about Tywin, let’s talk about Sansa and Joffrey and the wedding which was basically a funeral.  Technically, Sansa the moon maiden doesn’t die with the sun king at the “purple wedding,” but she does pull an epic disappearing act, and some of the rumors that spread about her escape match the moon maiden archetype: it’s said that Sansa “changed into a wolf with big leather wings like a bat, and flew out a tower window.”  The transformation and leather wings are reminiscent of Dany’s wake the dragon dream transformation, and of course the leaping from a tower window is a key part of the moon maiden package.

The Ghost of High Heart sees Sansa in a dream vision as a Medusa – a girl with snakes in her hair.   This is also from A Storm of Swords:

I dreamt of a maid at a feast with purple serpents in her hair, venom dripping from their fangs.

Those poisonous snakes in the dream are representative of the black amethyst crystals from Asshai in Sansa’s hairnet which contain “the Strangler.”  Just as poisonous snakes can come from the sun, as with Oberyn’s poison spear, they can also come from the moon, because the poisonous black Lightbringer meteors are the (say it with me) child of the sun and the moon.   They are released along with the death of the sun, and bring darkness to Joffrey’s solar face (so sad).

The amethysts invoke the Amethyst Empress – killed by the Bloodstone Emperor, here brother – and she is a second moon symbol, as well as the purple eyes of Targaryens (Dany’s eyes are referred to as amethyst by Euron and Victarion a couple of times).  Targaryens are dragon people and Dany is of course a symbol of the second moon as well, so we can see that the symbolism here runs many layers deep, and that the various symbols work to corroborate each other.  But wait, it goes deeper still.

Just as Gregor’s shield turning from one star to three black dogs tells a transformation story,  Sansa’s hairnets do the same.  The first one is made of moonstones, which are bluish-white and milky looking (and alive with light in a certain sense), and the fateful one has the black amethysts, symbolizing what the bright moon became after its transformation.  Gregor himself shows us the same thing – when alive, he constantly has the milk of the poppy flowing through his veins, but after he’s poisoned by the sun spear he has the black blood.

It was a hair net of fine-spun silver, the strands so thin and delicate the net seemed to weigh no more than a breath of air when Sansa took it in her fingers. Small gems were set wherever two strands crossed, so dark they drank the moonlight. “What stones are these?”

“Black amethysts from Asshai.  The rarest kind, a deep true purple by daylight.

The black amethysts being said to be “so dark they drank the moonlight”  is a clear indicator that these poison black amethysts which are like purple snakes represent the light-drinking bloodstone meteors (hat-tip to Evolett of Blue Winter Roses blog for that find).  The greasy black stone at Asshai drinks the light too, of course, as does Ned’s sword when it is reforged.  The description of the amethysts as looking black at night and dark purple in the sun is a perfect match for the eyes of Darkstar, Ser Gerold Dayne, and he too represents the sun and bright moon breeding dark stars which are poisonous.

Silver, by the way, is the color most strongly associated with the moon, along with white.  The light of the existing moon tends to paint things silver, and I believe that the destroyed second moon was associated with silver before it’s transformation as well – think of Dany riding her silver horse and being called the “silver lady” several times before she ever transforms in the funeral pyre and wakes the dragons.  Dany’s hair is also described as molten silver when it is wet, so this is yet another connection between Sansa and Daenerys.  Sansa’s hair is kissed by fire and covered in silver, which compares nicely to molten silver and gold hair and the idea of Dany being fire made flesh, like her dragons.

Comparing Dany as a moon mother of dragons and Sansa as birthing poisonous snakes from her head, we see that the black amethysts from Asshai are placed in parallel to the dragons, because both come from the moon.  In our recent collaboration with History of Westeros covering all things Asshai, we determined that it seems quite possible or perhaps even probable that dragons came from Asshai, like the black amethysts.  Since dragons and black amethysts alike both represent Lightbringer, this might be another clue that Lightbringer and Azor Ahai did in fact come from Asshai.  If the purple eyed Valyrians descend from the seemingly purple-eyed Amethyst Empress, then they may come from Asshai as well, because I believe Asshai was part of the Great Empire of the Dawn.

Maester Cressen tells us about the Strangler in the prologue of A Clash of Kings:

Cressen no longer recalled the name the Asshai’i gave the leaf, or the Lysene poisoners the crystal. In the Citadel, it was simply called the strangler. Dissolved in wine, it would make the muscles of a man’s throat clench tighter than any fist, shutting off his wind pipe. They said a man’s face turned as purple as the little crystal seed from which his death was grown, but so too did a man choking on a morsel of food.

In other words, these light-drinking black gems are all about turning things dark, and the parallels between dark purple faces and eyes and the dark purple amethysts is intentional.  There’s another parallel to Oberyn’s leaf-shaped blade, too – the poison disguised as a black amethyst comes from a leaf.  Calling it a seed is interesting too, since comets are sometimes known as star-seed.  Lightbringer can be seen as the sun’s fiery dragonseed as well.  There’s some pretty nice synergy going on here.

There’s actually a really terrific eclipse reference in that Cressen prologue too, as Cressen hides the crystals in the pocket of his robes.  He thinks that it’s really a shame he doesn’t have one of those “hollow rings” the Lysene poisoners favor – but a hollow ring is exactly what an eclipse looks like, and in fact eclipses are called a “diamond ring” eclipse when they produce a certain optical effect that makes it look as though there is a shining gem in one spot of the solar ring as you can see in this picture:

A slightly different solar ellipse optical effect is called the “ring of fire,” which you can see here, and note the red sky as well:

It’s a hollow ring everyone, and that’s where the black amethyst poison comes from.

Just as the moon can be a black hole in the sky when it becomes a dark star, the hairnet seems to do the same, and this is from A Storm of Swords:

When she pulled it free, her long auburn hair cascaded down her back and across her shoulders. The web of spun silver hung from her fingers, the fine metal glimmering softly, the stones black in the moonlight. Black amethysts from Asshai. One of them was missing. Sansa lifted the net for a closer look. There was a dark smudge in the silver socket where the stone had fallen out.

A dark smudge in the silver socket – that’s our black hole moon.  When Sansa pulls the silver covering off of her “kissed-by-fire” auburn hair, it “cascades down her back and across her shoulders” like a river of fire.  As I just mentioned, it seems the dragon moon which was destroyed was also associated with silver before it was burned and torn from the sky.  Now, check out the very next paragraph:

A sudden terror filled her. Her heart hammered against her ribs, and for an instant she held her breath. Why am I so scared, it’s only an amethyst, a black amethyst from Asshai, no more than that. It must have been loose in the setting, that’s all. It was loose and it fell out, and now it’s lying somewhere in the throne room, or in the yard, unless…

Uh oh, Sansa’s heart is in trouble.  A moment earlier, she ponders the reality of Joffrey finally being dead, and wonders

Why was she crying, when she wanted to dance? Were they tears of joy?

Agony and ecstasy, like Nissa Nissa, and Sansa’s heart is hammering.  Of course meteors are referred to as hearts of fallen stars in our story, and a falling moon meteor is exactly what the Hammer of the Waters was, according to our theory, so Sansa’s hammering heart is simply another confirmation that the Hammer was indeed the heart of a fallen moon star.

Her heart is hammering as she realizes the black amethyst, symbol of the black moon meteors, has fallen out, and it might have fallen out in the throne room of King’s Landing, where the dragon king sits on the iron throne.  As I mentioned before, the name King’s Landing refers to the landing of Azor Ahai reborn the black meteor, and this idea is also manifest in the landing of Azor Ahai figures Aegon the Conqueror and Stannis Baratheon at the site of King’s Landing.

At the heart of King’s Landing lies the red keep, and inside the red keep we find nothing but dragon meteor symbols, so the black amethyst crystal would fit right in.  First we have the iron throne, a “hulking black beast” of twisted swords burnt black by Balerion’s black fire.  A black dragon sword throne surrounded by red stone makes me think of a black dragon meteor surrounded by red flame, as with the sigil of House Blackfyre (a black dragon on red), House Peake (three black castles on orange), House Clegane (three black dogs on yellow), and the personal sigil of Bittersteel (a red stallion with black dragon wings  on an golden field), as well as Jon Snow’s motifs of black ice and red fire.   The throne room of King’s Landing also used to have the black dragon skulls, another dragon meteor symbol, and finally the dragon king himself, who generally seems to wear black armor, and whose kingly sword was named Blackfyre.

In other words, this last paragraph with Sansa and Dontos is a fabulous Hammer of the Waters clue – a moon maiden’s heart is hammering with agony and ecstasy when a black amethyst crystal falls to the ground at the Red Keep, where the black dragon king also landed.  And speaking of those dragon skulls and their teeth of black diamond, there’s actually a reference to missing teeth in the next paragraph of the Sansa scene:

Ser Dontos had said the hair net was magic, that it would take her home. He told her she must wear it tonight at Joffrey’s wedding feast. The silver wire stretched tight across her knuckles. Her thumb rubbed back and forth against the hole where the stone had been. She tried to stop, but her fingers were not her own. Her thumb was drawn to the hole as the tongue is drawn to a missing tooth. What kind of magic? The king was dead, the cruel king who had been her gallant prince a thousand years ago.

Azor Ahai was a gallant prince a thousand years ago – perhaps ten thousand –  but now he’s a dead king, got it?  Like Oberyn’s oily black sun spear whose poison was thickened with magic, we see the suggestion that the black amethysts are both poisonous and magical.  As for the black amethysts leaving a hole like that of a missing tooth, we’ve seen that dragon’s teeth make excellent dragon meteor symbols, and the fact that dragon’s teeth are described as black diamond makes a nice opposite to the idea of regular diamonds being equated with stars, as they often are.  The Sword of the Morning constellation, for example, has a bright white star in its hilt which “blazes like a diamond in the dawn,” but dragon’s teeth represent dark stars and therefore are black diamond, just as the black amethysts represent dark stars and black holes.

The line about Sansa’s fingers not being her own works with another line which appears a paragraph earlier:

She felt so numb and dreamy. My skin has turned to porcelain, to ivory, to steel. Her hands moved stiffly, awkwardly, as if they had never let down her hair before.

Sansa’s hands turning to porcelain and ivory makes us think of shiny white things, like milkglass and the white moon, while steel fingers hearken back to Gregor’s steel fingers and moon meteors as fingers or steel swords.  Letting her fiery hair down evokes the fire from the moon again, which is when we should see steel fingers.  Note the process here – she removes the silver hairnet, and let’s down her river of fire.   Sansa’s dress also has pearls in this scene, and pearls are a distinctly lunar symbol, but these pearls are covered up by Sandor’s soiled cloak, which Sansa has dyed a dark green.  Covering up the moon pearls is pretty clear symbolism, and a soiled cloak that used to be white and is now dark tells the same story.  In order to be sure we are dealing with a metaphorical passage, we are always looking for multiple symbols that say the same thing and make sense appearing together, and that’s just what we have here with Sansa’s symbolism.

The last thing we need to examine regarding the hairnet is the fact that Dontos tells Sansa that the hairnet is “vengeance for your father,” and here’s the quote:

“It’s very lovely,” Sansa said, thinking It is a ship I need, not a net for my hair.

“Lovelier than you know, sweet child, It’s magic, you see.  it’s justice you hold.  It’s vengeance for your father.”  Dontos leaned in close and kissed her again. “It’s home.”

Earlier, I presented the idea that the lunar vengeance is the smoke and ash from the explosion of the moon and the rising column of smoke and ash created by the impacts of the moon meteors.  The black amethysts represent the black meteors which throw up the ash and smoke – they kill the sun, in other words, just as Gregor’s upthrust smoking fist kills Oberyn.

You know what else has been labelled as vengeance for Ned?  The red comet, of course.  This is from A Clash of Kings:

Catelyn raised her eyes, to where the faint red line of the comet traced a path across the deep blue sky like a long scratch across the face of god.  “The Greatjon told Robb that the old gods have unfurled a red flag of vengeance for Ned.

The red comet shares all the black ice / red fire symbolism of the moon meteors. Like the moon meteors, the red comet is also a child of the sun and moon – you’ll remember that we kind of settled on the idea that Azor Ahai reborn is the red comet, and the moon meteors his dragons woken from stone, but that that they were really two parts of a greater whole with the same nature, just like Dany and Drogon or Jon and Ghost.  Both moon meteors and red comet show us the “waves of blood and night” symbolism, and these waves of blood and night are the lunar vengeance.  The black amethysts suggest the black meteors, Azor Ahai’s dragons, and the red comet suggests Azor Ahai reborn, so they make a nice pair.  Both of these can be regarded as the cause of the Long Night, and therefore the vengeance of the moon against the sun.

The waves of blood and night are found in the folds of Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail, which used to be Ned’s smoke-dark Valyrian steel sword called Ice.  The red comet is compared to vengeance for Ned by the Greatjon, but Arya compares it to Ned’s Ice, covered in Ned’s owns blood.  This brings Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail into the “lunar vengeance” category, and indeed, Jamie gives Brienne Oathkeeper and says “you’ll be defending Ned Stark’s daughter with Ned Stark’s own steel.”  Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail also drink the sun and darken color, as we’ve said many times, so we can see that the idea of darkening the sun is already baked into the swords made from Ned’s Ice.  Therefore it makes a particularly potent symbol of lunar vengeance against the sun.

Ned himself is a moon symbol, in case you haven’t guessed.  His own sword, “Black Ice” and which is a prime Lightbringer symbol itself, drinks his blood, just as Lightbringer, the sword made from the moon’s corpse, drank Nissa Nissa’s blood.  Ned was beheaded just like Ser Gregor, and just as Gregor has a sun character take his sword, Ned had his sword taken by Tywin.  Ned’s sword was turned against him, just as Oberyn turned Gregor’s sword against him (although not as successfully, of course).  Ned is also sick and fevered at the time of his beheading, like the moon maiden.

Ned was the Hand of the King as well, and he was indeed chopped off.  He lived in a grey stone castle before that, one which has warm water pumping through it’s stone walls like blood.  And you remember that time Winterfell burned, right?  That time when Summer and Bran saw something which might be a dragon hatching?  The walls crack open and Winterfell is called a shell, and the warm water spills out and pools up, showing us the moon blood flood.  The grey stone matches Gregor’s description as a grey stone giant, and in fact early on in A Game of Thrones, Ned appears as a giant to Bran:

He looked up. Wrapped in his furs and leathers, mounted on his great warhorse, his lord father loomed over him like a giant.

I’ve never seen anyone try to make anything of this quote, so it’s worth mentioning.    Basically, Ned and Winterfell are both moon symbols, and so therefore the two incarnations of Ned’s lunar vengeance, the red comet and the black amethysts, make a ton of sense.  The amethysts are light-drinking, venomous moon-snakes that are a part of his child, while the red comet symbolizes his sword.  The moon meteors, of course, can represent the moon’s sword or the moon’s children, and so we can see that the moon’s vengeance comes form it’s sword and it’s children.  You’ll remember from episode three that we saw Sandor Clegane playing the role of Azor Ahai reborn as a hellhound, and he was both protecting and avenging Sansa the moon maiden.

In a general sense, all of this basically says the same thing – the sun kills the moon, but then the moon has its vengeance by blotting out the sun.  I think it might also imply the idea of Azor Ahai having his own sword turned against him, perhaps by his son, who may be the Last Hero.

 

Mountains in the Wind

Ok!  We are almost out of here!  There’s just one last bit of Lightbringer symbolism woven into this trial by combat between Oberyn and Gregor.  Remember when we talked about Drogon as the Black Dread reborn, and Mirri’s seemingly impossible prophecy about Drogo would return to her only when she bears a living child and a bunch of other unbelievable things happen?

“When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east,” said Mirri Maz Duur. “When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before.”

The idea was that either Drogo being reborn or Dany bearing a living child would both represent Azor Ahai the flying moon meteor.  This will happen when mountains blow in the wind like leaves.  We’ve just established that Gregor ‘The Mountain that Rides’ is showing us Azor Ahai as a flying moon meteor, but do the meteors blow in the wind like leaves?  Recall that Oberyn’s oily black sun-spear, which can also symbolize a moon meteor, has a “leaf-shaped” blade.  The blade Mirri uses to sacrifice Drogo’s red stallion and bathe Drogo in blood is similar, and it’s described thusly:

It looked old; hammered red bronze, leaf-shaped, its blade covered with ancient glyphs. The maegi drew it across the stallion’s throat, under the noble head, and the horse screamed and shuddered as the blood poured out of him in a red rush.

Red bronze like a red sun, hammered like the Hammer of the Waters, and leaf shaped like mountains blowing in the wind.  Remember that the sun and moon both die when Lightbringer is forged, when the sun wanders too close to the moon and cracks it.  The tide of black blood that pours from Gregor’s visor in Bran’s vision was transformed by Oberyn’s leaf-shaped sun spear, and the red tide of blood from Drogo’s stallion is triggered by Mirri’s leaf shaped blade.  Drogo’s red stallion in turn represents the red comet, the bleeding star, and this is of course what triggers the tide of burning moon blood, just as Drogo’s horse gives us the blood tide.  In other words, leaves blow in the wind, leaf-shaped blades can represent Lightbringer, and Lightbringer can also be seen as a falling mountain.  But I wouldn’t base a conclusion like that on just one flimsy quote, heavens no…

This one involves Ser Balon Swann and the riot in King’s Landing with Sansa, the Hound, Tyrion, Joffrey, and the rest.

Tyrion saw Aron Santagar pulled from the saddle, the gold-and-black Baratheon stag torn from his grasp. Ser Balon Swann dropped the Lannister lion to draw his longsword.  He slashed left and right as the fallen banner was ripped apart, the thousand ragged pieces swirling away like crimson leaves in a storm wind.  In an instant, they were gone. Someone staggered in front of Joffrey’s horse and shrieked as the king rode him down.  Whether it had been man, woman or child Tyrion could not have said.

Pieces of the sun blowing like red leaves in a storm wind – you don’t say.  Remember that the falling moon meteor mountains are children of moon and sun, so either a fallen sun or a fallen moon can give us meteor-like things.  In an instant, the sun is gone, and right at this moment, someone staggers in front of Joffrey.  That’s someone standing in front of the sun, creating an eclipse, right when the sun banner births a fiery leaf storm.  And what does our solar king do to his would-be eclipser?  Why, he rides them down, of course.  The victim’s shriek would be a parallel to Nissa Nissa’s cry of agony and ecstasy.

Notice also that when Ser Balon drops the solar banner, he draws his sword, which makes sense because those thousand fiery leaves are of course the fiery moon meteors which are like swords and were perhaps made into swords.  Swords, leaf-shaped blades, you get the idea.

Azor Ahai reborn, the burning leaf everyone.

And lastly, we cannot talk about burning leaves and red leaves without mentioning the red leaves of the weirwood tree.  They are well-known for being said to look like bloody hands, but they are also described as bits of flame, such as in this Theon chapter in A Clash of Kings:

The red leaves of the weirwood were a blaze of flame among the green.

As we know, objects in the branches of mythological world trees like Yggdrasil, from which the weirwood ‘descends,’ in a manner of speaking, represent the celestial or heavenly realm.  Therefore, the weirwood having red leaves which resemble bloody hands or bits of flame creates the familiar image of blood-and-fire-associated things to represent meteors falling from the sky.  It makes for a nice parallel to the torn lion banner in the previous scene which became a storm of red leaves, and the idea of the meteors as bloody hands leads us right back to the stone fist and fiery hand symbols.

You see how all these ideas work together to corroborate each other?  This is the tangled knot of symbolism which I am always ‘ooh’ing and ‘ah’ing over.  Oberyn’s black oil covered, leaf-shaped spear mounted on a shaft of ash wood ties to several different ideas: oily black stone, leaves as meteors and thus weirwoods, and the ash wood spears with the heads of Night’s Watch brothers and thus the black and bloody tide.  The red leaves of the weirwood which are like flaming bloody hands tie in to the leaf shaped blades which unleash the blood tide, the fiery hand and fist ideas, and fire and blood in the heavens.  Mountains blowing in the wind like leaves ties several of these ideas together, while Gregor the Mountain has stone fists and waves of black blood and night, and so on and so forth.  Most of my time is spent trying to figure out how to explain this stuff in some sort of coherent order – it can be quite a challenge.  But now that we have journeyed this far together, we have all these ideas floating around in our noggins and we can see how the central ideas are corroborated from many angles, and that George’s use of symbolism seems highly intentional and consistent.  If it were not, we could never form any of the sort of hypothesis and tentative conclusions that we do here on this podcast.

As a special bonus on the weirwood leaves, I’ll give you this little nugget from an Arya chapter of A Clash of Kings, where she has just descended from the branches of the weirwood tree at Harrenhall:

The light of the moon painted the limbs of the weirwood silvery white as she made her way toward it, but the five-pointed red leaves turned black by night.

During the Long Night, the moon meteors were black.  Bits of flame, yes, but after they landed and caused the darkness, they were black.

I mentioned last time that there’s quite a lot of interesting crossover between greenseer / skinchanger / old gods ideas and Azor Ahai and fire magic, and the idea of burning leaves representing moon meteors seems to be of that.  We have Beric and Bloodraven both sitting in a type of throne of weirwood roots; Jon Snow the soon-to-be-resurrected skinchanger who is also an Azor Ahai reborn figure, like Beric; and that perplexing scene in A Dance with Dragons where Mel calls Ghost to her, seemingly overriding Jon’s skinchanger bond.  Mel even encourages Jon to develop his skinchanger abilities, which is perplexing since she is otherwise fond of burning weirwoods.

To top it all off, and to preview an upcoming episode which will develop these connections further, I will mention that the Storm God’s thunderbolt, which we now know to be a moon meteor, is famous for SETTING A TREE ON FIRE.  And what is a weirwood, but a screaming tree with burning hands?

 

Ah, right, of course. If you think about it, you could indeed describe the invasion of the Others as ‘an invasion of burning blue stars,’ could you not? Sounds kinda like a meteor shower to me – but a very cold one. Essentially, what I am observing is that the Others and the fire dragons are perfect symbolic opposites of each other, hot and cold versions of falling star symbols. And don’t forget – they are both falling stars that come from moon symbols.

It seems to me that all of this symbolism here is indicative of two opposite types of moon children, and two opposite types of moons. Melisandre and Night’s queen parallel each other wonderfully as lunar queens with parallel shadow children, but no one would ever confuse a fire priestess and an ice priestess, and nobody would mistake an Other for a shadowbaby or a dragon. Fire and ice transformation seem to mirror each other, but they are not at all the same thing.  If you have been transformed into a being of living fire… well, you’re just a long way from being a walking popsicle, you know? For this reason, many in the ASOIAF community have come to refer to ice and fire as inverted parallels of one another – opposite, yet parallel. That’s why I called ice and fire the yin and yang of the story, and that’s a theme we will return to many times.

As we go, we will continue to see the pairing of fire magic with shadow, darkness, and the color black, and ice magic with brightness, light, and the color white. This is an important dynamic, and it runs through all things having to do with ice and fire magic. Essentially, this is a reflection of the state of the two moons. The fire moon has been transformed into black, darkness-bringing meteors, while the ice moon still shines brightly in the sky. In a future Moons of Ice and Fire episode, we will explore the physical locations that mirror the two moons and develop these ideas further, but I just want to draw attention to this concept as we are about to see quite a lot of it with the Others and the dragons.

Now the idea of the dragons and the Others as representing a kind of ice and fire duality has occurred to many people – it’s not exactly super esoteric or anything. True, it’s not a one-for-one comparison, because the Others seem to be basically human-like (perhaps transformed humans themselves), while the dragons are animals, although they may be rather intelligent ones. I for one think there might even be more perfect one-to-one analogs out there, such as ice dragons or some kind of fire-demon equivalent of the Others. Perhaps this is what will happen to Melisandre given enough time – she’ll finish transforming and become a being of pure fire, in other words. The red priests tattoo themselves in flames and wear robes of flames – what are they trying to imitate exactly?  Beings made of fire? And why do shadowbinders always wear those masks? For that matter, we may also may see an actual ice dragon, which would make a more exact correlation to the fire dragons that the Others would. I put the odds at about 51/49 in favor of the ice dragon making an appearance, for what it’s worth, though I may be overly optimistic.

However, I don’t think these differences should concern us here. We’ve never directly seen fire demons or ice dragons, while the Others and the fire-made-flesh dragons are central to the story and come up often in every book.  From a narrative perspective, the dragons and the Others are the important things. They are the primary avatars of ice and fire, and of the ice and fire moons – or at least, pieces of those moons.

For that matter, we can observe that from a symbolic perspective, Others and ice dragons are basically parallel symbols, as they both represent the idea of an icy meteor.

Going back to the very first episode of Mythical Astronomy, we have found several instances of the meteor shower of dragons being symbolically depicted as fallen stars or a thousand fires, such as this classic from Cressen’s prologue in ACOK:

Torches flickered along the walls of Dragonstone, and in the camp beyond, he could see hundreds of cookfires burning, as if a field of stars had fallen to the earth. Above, the comet blazed red and malevolent.

That one is of course great because Cressen is on Dragonstone and looking at the red comet as the meteor shower is implied. Then we have this gem from AGOT in the middle of Dany’s “wake the dragon” fever dream:

But it was not the plains Dany saw then.  It was King’s Landing and the great Red Keep that Aegon the Conqueror had built.  It was Dragonstone where she had been born.  In her mind’s eye they burned with a thousand lights, a fire blazing in every window. In her mind’s eye, all the doors were red.

Both of these quotes are about Dragonstone.  Dragonstone, a fortress of stone burnt black by dragon fire, is a great example of a city which serves as an analog to one of the moons – the fire moon, of course. It contains sleeping stone dragons and a thousand fires and as many red doors, all of which express the potential to produce the thousand thousand fiery dragon meteors. This is the place where Stannis’s Lightbringer was drawn from the fire, just as the fire moon is the place where the Lightbringer meteors emerge from. Stannis is a dark solar king, and Melisandre represents the fire moon, and when the fire moon joined up with the sun king in the same place, when they copulated, Lightbringer appeared. This is what Dragonstone represents – the birth of the dragon meteors, the falling red stars, and so we see symbolic depictions of the meteor shower here.

But up in the north we see a symbolic depiction of a meteor shower… but instead of a fiery one, it’s the cold version:

Outside, the night was white as death; pale thin clouds danced attendance on a silver moon, while a thousand stars watched coldly.

That was from the Varamyr Sixskins prologue of A Dance with Dragons, a chapter that ends with a shambling army of wights with pale blue star eyes marching along, with Thistle’s corpse now among their ranks. This sentence certainly evokes the Others, and in multiple ways. The phrase “white as death” makes you think of the white shadows that kill without mercy; in fact, change the word night to knight with a “k,” and you have knights that are white as death… the Others, who wear armor, ride horses, and wield swords, just like knights. A thousand stars watching coldly make you think of the cold blue star eyes of the Others, who are called “watchers” twice in the prologue of A Game of Thrones. Then we have pale thin clouds dancing, which reminds us of how the pale and thin Others are referred to as a cold mist – clouds, basically – and of how Ser Waymar Royce invites them to “dance with me” when he fights them.

In this one sentence, George is essentially painting a portrait of the Others in the sky – the pale thin dancing clouds are the bodies, and the cold stars watching are the eyes. The dancing clouds and cold star watchers attend the silver moon, almost as if it was some sort of icy queen. Which it is!

Essentially, the Others are just a cold version of the moon meteor shower. They are white shadows instead of black ones. For what it’s worth, meteors which fall through the earth’s atmosphere often appear blue due to atmospheric conditions, so an invasion of the Others really is like a meteor shower. A very cold shower, as it were.

You may recall that the first section of our very first episode was called “comets, dragons, and flaming swords,” and the very first thing I did in that section and in that essay was to spell out how all three of these things can symbolize one another. Comets and meteors can be seen as dragons or flaming swords, Dany’s dragons are like a flaming sword over the world, the dragons were born when the comet appeared, Arya compares Ned’s bloody sword to the red comet, Valyrian steel swords are made with dragonfire, and so on and so forth. Most importantly, comets, dragons and flaming swords are the main ingredients of the Azor Ahai legend and the prophecy of his return.

At the risk of repeating myself, I must again highlight the fact that all of these fiery symbols are associated with darkness, shadow, and the color black. The swords forged in dragonfire come out smoke-dark and nearly black; the shadowbabies of course are creatures smoke and darkness, “a shadow with a burning heart” as the Ghost of High Heart says; the black moon meteors brought on the darkness of the Long Night, and the biggest and baddest dragons are always the black ones, like Drogon “the winged shadow” who is so fond of blotting out the sun and causing mini eclipses and breathing actual black fire. All dragons have black bones and teeth, no matter the rest of their coloring, and those teeth are like black swords made of darkness and shadow.

As the saying goes, “comets, dragons, and flaming swords,” and always tied to darkness and the color black.

Well, today I am here to tell you that on the icy side of things, we have a similar thing going on, but inverted in terms of light and color. We have ice dragons and the white shadows known as the Others as an opposite of the dragons; we have frozen, glowing white magic swords and other white sword symbols as opposites of the black, dragon-forged magic swords; and of course we have a very famous white meteor, the “pale stone of magic powers” from which the white sword Dawn was made, as an opposite to the black meteor of the Bloodstone Emperor and the oily stone found at Asshai and elsewhere.

---

A Tall Glass of Milk

This section brought to you by the stalwart Patreon support of Ser Harrison of House Casterly, the Noontide Sun, Guardian of the Celestial Shadowcat, whose words are “Deeper than did Ever Plummet Sound,” and Lady Diana, the ghosts huntress, pursuer of truth and guardian of the Celestial King’s Crown, which is the Cradle north of the Wall

---

You may be asking yourself: did he just group Dawn, the ancestral sword of House Dayne, in with the Others and ice magic? Yes, absolutely, and this is one of the things I was alluding to in the title of this episode, “Dawn of the Others.” It’s a reference to both the the origins of the Others with the Night’s Queen, and also to the theory that Dawn is actually the original “Ice” of House Stark, a sword tied to ice magic and the Others. This is a theory I have mentioned in passing before, and it’s a theory other people – such as Voice of the First Men – have arrived at as well. I wasn’t the first to think of it, although I did come to this conclusion on my own before I started putting my theories up on Westeros.org back in early 2015. It’s kind of an intuitive thing at its most basic level – after all, what better name for a huge white sword than “Ice?”

Let’s quickly recap what we know about the history of House Stark and a sword called Ice, so that you can be clear about what I am proposing. This is from the second chapter of Game of Thrones, when Catelyn comes upon Ned cleaning Ice in the godswood.

 Catelyn had no love for swords, but she could not deny that Ice had its own beauty. It had been forged in Valyria, before the Doom had come to the old Freehold, when the ironsmiths had worked their metal with spells as well as hammers. Four hundred years old it was, and as sharp as the day it was forged. The name it bore was older still, a legacy from the age of heroes, when the Starks were Kings in the North.

Two important facts here: to the best of Catleyn’s knowledge, Ned’s Valyrian steel Ice is around 400 years old, but the Starks have been naming a sword “Ice” for thousands of years (the Age of Heroes is regarded as taking place before the Long Night, and thus at least 6,000 – 8,000 years ago according to the best Westerosi history we have). So when I say “original Ice,” I am talking about the very first sword that would have inspired the name. I’m saying it was the big white sword we now know as Dawn, that it was originally called Ice and that it was carried by a Stark. This would be the sword that subsequent Starks named their swords after.  At the end of this section we’ll come back to the logistics of this and talk about the possible sequence of events that could have lead to Ice being renamed Dawn and left with the Daynes and how any of this squares with the myths we have and all the rest.. but first, the symbolism.

As I was drafting various versions of these first few essays about the Others and trying to figure out the best order to present the ideas in, I found that I simply cannot talk about the Others for very long without talking about the “Dawn is original Ice” theory. This is because, as you’ll see, Dawn shares roughly 99.9% of its symbolism with the Others and ice magic. They are so tightly interwoven it’s impossible to separate them, quite frankly. It would be like me trying to explain dragons without referencing flaming swords or comets, and you all know I could never do that.

Put simply, the symbol of the white sword is to the Others what the black sword symbol is to dragons.

We’re all quite familiar with Valyrian steel – swords forged in dragon flame with the use of sorcery and quite possibly blood magic, which come out smoke-dark, almost black in color. As I’ve mentioned before, this dark coloring should not be, because the purest steel is light silver in color, and pure steel comes from having very high forge temperatures.  Dragonfire is extremely hot and Valyrian steel is the strongest in the world, and yet these swords and all Valyrian steel come out very dark – clearly, magic of some kind is the suspect here.

Whatever the cause, the point is that Martin has gone out of his way to make Valyrian steel smoke dark, and I believe the reason is simply that the dragons represent the children of the fire moon, and those children are black moon meteors which caused the Long Night.  Like the dragons themselves, the dragon swords are symbols of the the moon meteor dragons, and thus their description as smoke-dark is actually a great clue about what caused the Long Night – black meteors that looked like swords and threw up a ton of smoke into the air.

Valyrian steel swords are associated with darkness by more than just their general dark coloring. You’ll recall that Ned’s sword did that thing where it “drank the sun” from the intended crimson when Tobho Mott tried to color it and turned it a dark blood red, just as those moon dragons “drank the fire of the sun” and just as the greasy black stones of Asshai “drinks the light.”  The new swords made from Ned’s Ice ended up looking like “waves of night and blood,” which I’m sure you remember because I made a fairly big deal about that.

The penultimate Valyrian steel sword is Blackfyre, the ancestral sword of House Targaryen, which is named after the color of the fire of the black dragon infamously remembered as Balerion the Black Dread.  Another of my favorites is Nightfall, the sword of the Red Kraken Dalton Greyjoy, and of late, House Harlaw.

In short, Valyrian steel swords are dark blades that symbolize dark meteors, and they are associated with drinking up the sunlight and bringing darkness. Darkbringers, in other words.

And then we have Dawn, which TWOIAF tells us is basically white Valyrian steel:

The Daynes of Starfall are one of the most ancient houses in the Seven Kingdoms, though their fame largely rests on their ancestral sword, called Dawn, and the men who wielded it. Its origins are lost to legend, but it seems likely that the Daynes have carried it for thousands of years. Those who have had the honor of examining it say it looks like no Valyrian steel they know, being pale as milkglass but in all other respects it seems to share the properties of Valyrian blades, being incredibly strong and sharp.

Not only is Dawn white instead of black, it apparently glows a bit, according to the description we are given of Dawn quite consistently in the novels: “as pale as milkglass and alive with light.” Like I said, it’s a luminescent white meteor sword instead of smoky, light-drinking black meteor sword.

Now, with all that in mind, let’s take a look at the swords of the Others, which we see in the prologue of AGOT:

The Other slid forward on silent feet. In its hand was a longsword like none that Will had ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge- on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost- light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor.

Like Dawn, the sword of the Other in this scene is pretty much the opposite of a light-drinking Valyrian steel sword – it’s a shimmering icy crystal blade giving off some kind of faint bluish glow. The “alive with moonlight” phrase basically just shoves the word ‘moon’ into Dawn’s “alive with light” description. I would say that is because the Others and their swords are meant to symbolize ice moon meteors, and the pale meteorite Dawn was made from seems like a similar symbol. As the action continues, the swords of the Others are twice described with the label “pale sword,” and are again implied to be glowing:

The pale sword came shivering through the air.
. . .
His blade was white with frost; the Other’s danced with pale blue light.
. . .
Swords rose and fell, all in a deathly silence. It was cold butchery. The pale blades sliced through ringmail as if it were silk.

The swords of Others are “alive with moonlight” in the last scene while Dawn is famously “alive with light.”  The Others’ swords are “pale swords” or “pale blades” which “dance with pale blue light,” while Dawn is “as pale as milkglass” and made from “a pale stone of magical powers,” and the white tower at Starfall where that pale stone was supposedly found has a tower named “The Palestone Sword.”  Pale swords, alive with light, carried by both the Sword of the Morning and the Others. And although it might be stating the obvious, Dawn and the Others both have falling star imagery – Dawn is made from the heart of a fallen star, and the Others are like an invasion of burning cold stars.

Now I want to be clear: I am not suggesting that Dawn is the exact same thing as an Other’s sword.  The Others’ swords are described as being translucent like crystal, while Dawn is never described as translucent, but rather as pale as milkglass, and though very shiny, actual milkglass tends to be opaque white. When they say that besides the color and glow, “it seems to share the properties of Valyrian blades,” it makes Dawn sound like some kind of metal, as opposed to just magical ice crystal. Also, Dawn is never described as being cold in Jaime’s POV where he remembered being knighted by Ser Arthur Dayne – he was actually cut a little bit by Dawn, if you recall, but feels no cold.

What I am saying is that Dawn and the swords of the Others share a lot of common symbolism, and that there may well be some icy connection, but they do not appear to be the same thing, in my opinion -although Voice of the First Men might disagree. Who knows? Maybe if an Other held Dawn it would become cold and appear translucent and glow blue. I don’t think I would complain if that happened – who wouldn’t get a thrill from an Other getting their hands on Dawn somehow? But for now, I just want to be clear about what I am proposing, which is that while Dawn and the swords of the Others do not seem to exactly the same physical substance, they share all the same symbolism, and I think this implies that Dawn has some link to ice magic and the Others.

We continue to find clues about Dawn lurking in the symbolism of the Others as we read about Sam Tarly’s confrontation with an Other in ASOS:

The Other slid gracefully from the saddle to stand upon the snow. Sword-slim it was, and milky white.

Curious… the Other itself is described as milky white and sword-like as it “slides from the saddle” like a sword sliding from its scabbard. We’ve seen a milky white sword somewhere before, haven’t we?

“And now it begins,” said Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. He unsheathed Dawn and held it with both hands. The blade was pale as milkglass, alive with light.”

You saw that coming, right?  That classic was from A Game of Thrones, and the thing I’ll draw your attention to that the wielder of the milkglass-white sword is himself called a sword, the Sword of the Morning – he’s named after his own white sword, in other words. Compare that to the Other, who carries a pale sword and was described as being milky white and sword-like himself. Arthur Dayne and this Other here are both like milky white sword people with pale, alive-with-light swords, and both are associated with stars! They are pale swords and they wield pale swords, just as Azor Ahai reborn and his sword Lightbringer and his dragons are really all the same thing, just different ways of describing the moon meteors or the return of the red comet.

It’s also equivalent to the Black Brothers calling themselves “swords in the darkness” – the black brothers symbolize burning black meteors, and they themselves are thought of as swords. The Kingsguard too – they are sometimes called “the white swords” and live in the “White Sword Tower,” and that means Arthur Dayne was a white sword person twice over! We’ll talk more about the Kingsguard later in this episode.

So, Dawn is a milky white sword, and the Others are like milky white swords.  Dawn is as pale milkglass, and do you remember what we find when we look inside an Other?  That’s right, freaking milkglass.  This is from Storm, right after Sam stabs the Other and it begins to melt:

In twenty heartbeats its flesh was gone, swirling away in a fine white mist. Beneath were bones like milkglass, pale and shiny, and they were melting too.

Ah ha, that settles it!  Dawn is made from the femur of an Other!  Funny, but no – the Other’s bones melt away without the magic that animates them, so not very good for making swords.  But gods, this is tantalizing – the Others are milky white swords made of stuff that looks of milkglass.  Dawn is a milky white sword make of material that looks like milkglass. The Others have burning star eyes and Dawn is made from a fallen star.  What does it all mean?

Well, I think all of these clues are pointing at Dawn being the original Ice carried by an ancient Stark, and we’ll come back to that in a moment, but let’s consider the mythical astronomy angle first. The larger context of this exercise is to discuss the Others as a symbols of meteors from the ice moon, because that’s what they seem to be, and because it’s one of the main clues about there being an ice moon to begin with. Now the Others don’t actually come from the moon, just as dragons don’t actually come from the moon – the Others are the earthy symbolic representation of these hypothetical ice moon meteors, just as the dragons are for fire moon meteors.

But we also had actual fire moon meteors, as we’ve discussed, with the most concrete example being the black meteor that the Bloodstone Emperor worshiped during the Long Night (although I think the black meteors fell in a wide range across the planet, for what it’s worth). So if we have actual black dragon meteors, pieces of that burnt fire moon, might there be an actual ice moon meteor around somewhere?

How about the magical pale stone Dawn was made from?

This is, I believe, one of the main implications of Dawn and the Others having parallel symbolism, according to my hypothesis: the pale stone of magic powers that Dawn was made from was literally a piece of the ice moon. It would be a perfect opposite to the Bloodstone Emperor’s black meteor, which we believe to have come from the fire moon. In other words, I am suggesting that the Others symbolize ice moon meteors, and Dawn is an ice moon meteor.

Dawn is said to have been “forged from the heart of a fallen star,” and I am proposing that that star might have been the heart of the ice moon. Or maybe it’s fingernail clipping, or some frozen belly button lint. You get the point – it was a chip off the old icy block. This would be a good explanation for Dawn’s seeming link to ice magic. Remember that we have been given every indication that comets and meteors are probably magical in nature ASOIAF, and we’ll talk about this more in a future Moons of Ice and Fire episode.

---

Ice Comes from the Moon

A round of applause for valiant deeds of the child of the forest known as FeatherCrow, the Weircat Dryad, earthly avatar of Heavenly House Cancer, and for the magnificence of Wyrlane Dervish, woods-witch of the Wolfswood, Earthly Avatar of Celestial House Scorpio

---

So how did we get an ice moon fragment on Planetos? Well, the most straightforward explanation would be that when the fire moon blew up, some of those meteor fragments might have hit the ice moon, chipping off a nice icy meteor that fell from the sky along with all the black ones. Not only does appeal to our rational minds, because after all, if one moon in a two-moon system blew up, some shrapnel would surely strike the surviving moon, after all – but more importantly, I think there’s actually a ton of evidence for this. That’s going to be the subject of a future Moons of Ice and Fire episode, as a matter of fact, and it’s a theme we will come back to many times. I’ll be referring to this idea of black fire moon meteor shrapnel embedded in the ice moon as “the dragon locked in ice,” and it has a lot to do with Jon, as you will see.

It’s also possible the Dawn meteor comes from an even older moon collision event in the far distant past, before the Long Night, or perhaps even from the comet itself, pre-collision, but I think these are less likely. You know I follow the symbolism first and foremost, and Dawn has all the symbolism of an icy moon meteor… and of course Dawn is openly presented to us as being made from meteoric metal. Meteoric metal that just happens to resemble the shin-bone of a white walker, just saying.

There’s a huge clue about Dawn being an icy moon meteor chipped off by a fire moon meteor impact given to us in the form of the Temple of the moonsingers in Braavos. The Temple of the Moonsingers is really just one paragraph from AFFC, but again we find that it is one of those absolutely loaded passages. This is the son of the captain of the ship that takes Arya to Braavos, a boy named Denyo, playing tour guide to Arya as they arrive at the city:

“That is the Temple of the Moonsingers.” It was one of those that Arya had spied from the lagoon, a mighty mass of snow-white marble topped by a huge silvered dome whose milk-glass windows showed all the phases of the moon. A pair of marble maidens flanked its gates, tall as the Sealords, supporting a crescent-shaped lintel.

The Temple of the Moonsingers is explicitly stated as a moon temple, so we know it’s intended to serve as an analog to the moon if anything is. But there is no fire symbolism to be seen anywhere, no black stone, none of that. Instead, we find that it has snow-white marble, like many of castles and places that symbolize the ice moon, and it even has a silver dome. Silver is a color which can be used for ice or fire – think of Dany’s hair like molten silver – but it is always a moon color. Coupled here with the snow white marble and the milkglass moon-phase windows, it’s easy to see that the Temple of the Moonsingers is as obvious an ice moon symbol as you will find.

Wait, milkglass moon-phase windows? Some of those phases would be crescent moons, like sickles. Now in Bran’s all important greenseer training montage chapter in ADWD, the crescent moon is four times described as being “as thin and sharp as the blade of a knife,” so some of these moon phase windows on the temple of the Moonsingers would be… milkglass moon knives. Milkglass moon knives, which come from the icy moon temple. I am hoping you guys are picking up on the symbolism here!

The last thing I want to point out, and this is where the idea of a fire moon meteor striking the ice moon comes in, would be the pair of giant moon maidens holding up the crescent shaped lintel. This seems like a possible allusion to there having once been two moons – there are two giant moon maidens here, after all. And if a piece of the fire moon shrapnel happened to embed itself in the ice moon as I was proposing, then the ice moon would actually contain the corpse of the fire moon – some of it at least – and thus we should see two moon maidens in the ice moon, from a certain perspective.

We’ll be coming back to this idea in a major way in the next episode, so if you think I’m making too big a deal about the pair of moon maidens – maybe you just need two to hold up a lintel, right? – just absorb the snow white moon temple with milkglass moon windows and observe that the pairing of milkglass with ice symbolism and moon symbolism rears its head once again, just as it did with the Others and with Dawn.

I suppose I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a few supporting details form the moonsingers themselves. “Moonsinger” is the term give by the Jogos Nhai to their priestesses, and the Jogos Nhai, if you don’t know, are a nomadic horse people in the far, far east, something like the Dothraki only much shorter and they ride zebras – I mean zorses, zorses. What’s cool is that the moonsingers shave all the hair from their body – to make them better resemble moons, I suppose. Very occasionally males can be moonsingers, but they have to dress and act as women, so the Temple of the Moonsingers is explicitly female, even before we observe the stone moon maidens flanking the entrance.

Finally, moonsingers were amongst the Valyrian slaves who escaped Valyria and founded Braavos, and it was these moonsingers who saved everyone’s bacon by prophesying the location of Braavos, which was so foggy as to provide them cover from prowling dragonlords trying to find them from the air. That’s why the moonsingers have such a grand temple in Braavos – it’s the biggest of all the temples in the city, in fact. My point however is that the moonsingers that go to the ice moon milkglass temple are fighting against the dragonlords. Against the fire moon symbols.

Ok, so look. I have a ton of stuff to say about the Wall, and I’m saving most of that for a section when we can focus on it specifically, but I do have to tell you that the Wall is analogous to both Dawn and the swords of the Others, and it’s also perhaps the best symbol of the ice moon that exists. I’m going to save the full analysis and quote pulls for later, but we really do need to mention the sword symbolism, because it supports the idea the Dawn is a big icy sword.

First of all, when the Wall catches the sunlight, it shines, “alive with light,” just like Dawn and the swords of the Others – ah ha. It’s also described as “blazing blue and crystalline in the sunlight,” but still giving Jon the shivers when he looks at it, giving us the idea of a crystal blue sword, like the swords of the Others, or of a sword blazing with cold light or cold fire.

There’s a memorable line about the Wall being “a sword east of Castle Black, but a snake to the west.” On the surface, that’s a reference to how the Wall runs straight on level ground to the east, but runs rather crookedly to the west, due to all the hills and mountains. But we can see this as the Wall being labelled a snake sword – an icy snake sword that is alive with light. Even better, when Jon walks through the tunnel beneath the Wall, he describes it as being as “cold as the belly of an ice dragon and as twisty as a serpent.” It’s an ice dragon sword, alive with light.

And if that isn’t enough, there’s a really cool scene where Jon and Stannis are standing over a map of Westeros and arguing about manning the various castles on the Wall, and when Jon starts talking about “I am the sword in the darkness and the watcher on the walls,” Stannis actually pulls out his fake Lightbringer and lays it down on the map, right along the Wall. It’s almost as if to say, “the Wall is Lightbringer,” which makes sense. It’s definitely easy to see the Wall as the shield that guards the realms of men, another part of the Night’s Watch vows, but we also just saw that it’s an alive with light ice dragon sword too. Jon periodically thinks to himself, “the Wall is mine,” and indeed, Jon might look good with with an alive-with-light ice dragon sword, the one which we know as Dawn but which I am claiming may have been the original “Ice,” perhaps once wielded by a Stark like Jon.

You’ll have to pardon my flair for the dramatic there, but it’s really pretty simple; we’re just going on the descriptions Martin is giving us. The Wall is like a sword, and it’s alive with light, but it’s made of ice and compared to an ice dragon. That’s exactly how I have been describing Dawn, again, based on the symbolism we are being given: Dawn is an alive-with-light ice dragon sword that may, in some sense, be Lightbringer.

---

Ice Dragon Steel

This section is brought to you by the longtime patreon support of two priestess of the Church of Starry wisdom: Lord Commander Daenyra Flint of the Nightfort, LC of the History of Westeros Night’s Watch, whose words are “avenging the memory of Brave Danny”, and Ennovy, Shadowbinder from the Eastern Mountains and Lakes

---

The idea about Dawn having once been the original Ice of House Stark should actually not be controversial at all. Think about it, and set aside all my mythical astronomy stuff for a moment and just think about some of the popular speculation in the fandom that has been around for years. Many people think Dawn has something to do with the myth of “Lightbringer” and / or the last hero’s blade of “dragonsteel.” A strange, glowing magic sword named Dawn which is associated with the morning could is obviously a strong contender to be Lightbringer and / or the “dragonsteel” of the last hero, the two swords remembered as playing a role in ending the Long Night. Assuming Dawn is indeed forged from a meteorite, then it could well be regarded as dragonsteel, because meteors can be perceived as dragons, as we well know.

Another thing that many people think is that the last hero was a Stark, and Old Nan says the Night’s King was a Stark too for that matter. We don’t know for sure if the last hero was a Stark, but it’s certainly a strong possibility, and that’s my point: the last hero might have been a Stark, and the last hero’s dragonsteel might have been Dawn. So the notion of Dawn having once been called Ice when in the hands of an ancient Stark really isn’t all that strange. It’s something we have to consider.

If all of this came together the right way and Dawn is made from an icy meteorite, that would make Dawn an ice dragon sword. Ice-dragon-steel, if you will, in the hands of a Stark last hero. And doesn’t that sound badass. It has to be true!

If you prefer a more twisted interpretation, imagine this ‘ice dragon sword’ in the hands of a Stark Night’s King. Winter is coming, right?! Some think the Night’s King and the last hero were the same person anyway, and I would think they are related at the least. You guys know I like the idea of a magic sword duel with a black and white sword, so maybe the last hero had a black, dragon forged blade and Night King had the giant white sword that glows like milkglass.

If Dawn was the original Ice of House Stark, one of the big questions floating out there is the question of how it got to Starfall and came to be carried by House Dayne. As we all know, ASOIAF is packed with events in the main story which mirror those of the past, and the Tower of Joy is one of the most important events of the story. Lyanna Stark, she of the blue winter rose, is a signature icy moon maiden, and she died giving birth at the Tower of Joy, which makes the Tower of Joy a symbol of icy moon impregnation and ice dragon birth. I’ve referred to Jon as a kind of ice dragon many times, because of his RLJ lineage, so that fits.

And what happened after the fight at the Tower of Joy? Ned, who represents the King of Winter archetype, carried Dawn to Starfall. Not only is this another symbol of an ice moon meteor emerging form the Tower of Joy – Dawn in this case – but I also can’t help but wonder whether this might be an echo of the past, when, for reasons unknown, the King of Winter took his white sword, once called Ice, to Starfall, leaving it there under the care of House Dayne.

Ned, of course, keeps a smoke-dark, dragon-forged sword back at Winterfell, so there may be an implied “sword-swapping” in the past where a white sword is taken south and a black one taken north, presumably to fight the Others. We generally think of the events of the War for the Dawn as taking place in the North, but I think there is also a set of events in the south revolving around Battle Isle, where the ancient dragonlords from Asshai seem to have built a fused stone fortress. Perhaps there was a confrontation with Azor Ahai / the Bloodstone Emperor there, one which went down before the final fight with the Others, one which involved sword swapping.

The Hightowers of Oldtown built their famous tower on top of the fused stone fortress, and I find the sigil of House Hightower most intriguing: “A white tower crowned with flames on smoke grey.” Their words are “we light the way” – so that’s a flaming white tower that lights the way at a time when the air was filled with smoke… very intriguing, indeed.

As we discussed in our Great Empire of the Dawn and House Dayne episodes with History of Westeros, House Dayne and House Hightower are two of the Houses most likely to have been founded by travelers from the Great Empire of the Dawn, and they both built white towers on islands at the mouth of a river, and they both have similar light-bringing symbolism. All the evidence points to Azor Ahai invading Westeros at Oldtown, where his culture had built the black, fused stone fortress on Battle Isle, so it’s definitely noteworthy to see the white tower symbolism and the light-bringing symbolism that reminds us of House Dayne here as well. It speaks of conflict, as does the name Battle Isle.

I can’t resist busting out one of my house sigil symbolism nuggets, one squirreled away for quite some time. Behold the sigil of House Farring:  two knights combatant crossing swords counterchanged, purple and white. In other words, a white knight with a white sword on a purple field on the left half, and a purple knight with a purple sword on a white field on the right side. There’s a hard dividing line down the middle, and where the swords cross over the center line, they switch colors. The white sword’s tip turns purple, and vise versa.

The reason why any of this is relevant though is because when Stannis sticks his fake Lightbringer into the sand on the beach of Dragonstone after drawing it from the fire, it is picked up by two people, one of which is the son of Ser Davos Seaworth, and the other a member of House Farring:

By the time the song was done, only charwood remained of the gods, and the king’s patience had run its course. He took the queen by the elbow and escorted her back into Dragonstone, leaving Lightbringer where it stood. The red woman remained a moment to watch as Devan knelt with Byren Farring and rolled up the burnt and blackened sword in the king’s leather cloak. The Red Sword of Heroes looks a proper mess, thought Davos.

Lightbringer is a blackened sword – that’s something I’ve pointed out before as evidence of my theory that Azor Ahai made his Lightbringer from the black meteor in the Bloodstone Emperor story. But the people who pick up Lightbringer have interesting symbolism: House Seaworth has the black ship and the white onion which looks like a moon in the sky, and House Farring has this white and purple swordsman thing going on.

At the most basic level, I think the sigil of House Farring implies that we should be thinking about two important swords – two Lightbringer swords, but opposite in nature, as I have proposed since the very beginning. It’s easy to see how the purple sword in the Farring sigil could stand in for a black sword, since purple is the color of the eyes of dragon-blooded people. The counterchanged nature of the design – the fact that the swords swap colors – might be a clue about the sword swap idea I proposed.

That might be why, way  up north, the icy Starks have a black sword forged in dragonfire, and why  we find the Daynes in possession of the white sword symbolic of all things ice, even though they live in southernmost part of Westeros near the edge of the Dornish desert and even though they seem to descend from the ancestors of the Valyrians who came from Asshai. Heck, even the song “The Dornishman’s Wife” say that “the Dornishman’s blade was made of black steel, and it’s kiss was a terrible thing.” The Dornish Daynes really should not have the big white sword, but rather a black dragon sword like Ned’s. The white sword that resembles white walker bones is rather conspicuously out of place there, but it would make a ton of sense if we had seen someone named the King of Winter holding it and calling it Ice… and maybe once, people saw that very thing… which might have been the last thing they saw.

We’ll come back to trying to piece together these long-ago events of the War for the Dawn in the future as we uncover more symbolism, but for now, you can see why it is very tempting to look for the link between Dawn and ice magic. In fact, you can, in a manner of speaking, find Dawn by looking north, and north..

---

Dawn of the North

This section is sponsored by, appropriately, Ser Imriel Jordayne of Heavenly House Orion, earthly avatar of the Sword of the Morning and spinner of the great wheel, and by Direliz, the Alpha Patron, descendant of Gilbert of the Vines and earthly avatar of Aquarius the Water-Bearer

---

Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him. And he looked past the Wall, past endless forests cloaked in snow, past the frozen shore and the great blue-white rivers of ice and the dead plains where nothing grew or lived. North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks.

That was, of course, from Bran’s coma dream in AGOT. That curtain of light is almost certainly the aurora borealis, a Latin phrase which translates to “dawn of the north.” And George R. R. Martin chose to speak of these lights, the dawn of the north, in the same breath as the terrifying heart of winter. We also got a glimpse of Jon the ice dragon, sleeping and growing cold in the ice of the Wall. But seriously – Dawn of the North!

The Aurora Borealis makes one other appearance in ASOIAF folklore, and it comes to us in TWOIAF in the section describing the Shivering Sea, which is north of Essos and serves as the equivalent to the Arctic Ocean here on Earth:

Sailors, by nature a gullible and superstitious lot, as fond of their fancies as singers, tell many tales of these frigid northern waters. They speak of queer lights shimmering in the sky, where the demon mother of the ice giants dances eternally through the night, seeking to lure men northward to their doom. They whisper of Cannibal Bay, where ships enter at their peril only to find themselves trapped forever when the sea freezes hard behind them.

Moons can be seen as goddesses, and the “demon mother of the ice giants” sounds like a fantastic name for the goddess of the ice moon. Those ice giants would be the icy moon meteors, of course, and this section of TWOIAF also happens to be the one where we the full description of the ice dragon, because those are also supposedly seen here near the dancing curtain of light / demon mother of the ice giants.  These “queer lights shimmering in the sky” is another clear reference to the Aurora Borealis, the dawn of the north. Is there any sensible link between the idea of Dawn as an icy sword from the north and idea of the demon mother of the ice giants? Well, yes, when you think of the icy demon mother as a symbol of the ice moon, and Dawn as a icy moon meteor, an ice dragon.

I’ll also point out that Aurora, the Latin word for dawn, is the name of a Roman goddess of the dawn, who is Eos in Greek myth. In George’s mind, it seems that when a dawn goddess appears in the north, she becomes the demon mother of the ice giants.

Next up, we have Jon, Mr. Ice Dragon himself, gets a glimpse of “Dawn” while he’s in the North:

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, but the blacks and greys of the darkling forest were turning once again to greens and golds, reds and russets. And above the soldier pines and oaks and ash and sentinels stood the Wall, the ice pale and glimmering beneath the dust and dirt that pocked its surface.

Notice the ice of the Wall is pale and glimmering right after the white star in the hilt of the Sword of the Morning constellation is blazing like a diamond in the dawn. This is simply more paralleling of the Wall and Dawn, the Sword of the Morning.

Does this foreshadow Jon becoming the new Sword of the Morning, in some sense? It seems possible. That might happen even if he doesn’t get his hands on Dawn – the main thing you have to do to win this title in the most meaningful sense is to literally help to end a Long Night and win a War for the Dawn, both of which I believe are on Jon’s to-do list. He’s already got the Wall, which is the biggest ice dragon sword this side of a frozen moon meteor.

For those who are fans of one of our beloved heroes wielding Dawn, yet are perplexed at the lack of Dayne main characters available to wield it, the “Dawn is the Original Ice of House Stark” theory may be the answer. Aziz from History of Westeros and I speculated that perhaps Darkstar will steal Dawn as a way of getting it out into the fray, only to end up in the hands of Jon when the time is right. Jon’s Stark heritage from his ice queen mother, Lyanna, might give Jon an even better claim to the sword than Arthur Dayne himself – if indeed this giant white sword was originally called Ice.

This is the opinion of Voice of the First Men, as well as another forum friend by the name of SlyWren who wrote a really nice essay about Jon’s connection to Sword of the Morning symbolism that you can read here. She’s been talking about Jon as the Sword of the Morning for a long time, so I have to give her her due. In particular, SlyWren believes that this scene where Jon sees the Sword of the Morning constellation foreshadows Jon as the new Sword of the Morning, an idea which has obvious appeal.

There are some other great clues about Jon being the Sword of the Morning and possibly wielding Dawn. Consider his sword, Longclaw: although the blade is dark Valyrian steel, the white wolf’s head pommel is made of “pale stone,” the same phrase used to describe the Dawn meteor. Jon has a pale stone sword, just saying. It’s interesting that both Longclaw and Ned’s Ice can seem to symbolize either an icy white sword or a black dragon sword. Both are black, dragon-forged Valyrian steel, but Jon’s has the pale stone pommel and Ned’s is called Ice and possibly named after an older white sword made from a pale stone. Thus it is hard to say which sword – the black or the white – belongs in the hands of the King of Winter or the last hero.

As we discussed in the Sacred Order of Green Zombies series, Longclaw is described as shining with “morning light” twice in one chapter – the one where Jon executes Janos Slynt in true Ned Stark fashion. Here’s the first scene, at the beginning of the chapter, and notice the Ned-ness that saturates this bit:

Half the morning passed before Lord Janos reported as commanded. Jon was cleaning Longclaw. Some men would have given that task to a steward or a squire, but Lord Eddard had taught his sons to care for their own weapons. When Kegs and Dolorous Edd arrived with Slynt, Jon thanked them and bid Lord Janos sit.

That he did, albeit with poor grace, crossing his arms, scowling, and ignoring the naked steel in his lord commander’s hands. Jon slid the oilcloth down his bastard sword, watching the play of morning light across the ripples, thinking how easily the blade would slide through skin and fat and sinew to part Slynt’s ugly head from his body. All of a man’s crimes were wiped away when he took the black, and all of his allegiances as well, yet he found it hard to think of Janos Slynt as a brother. There is blood between us. This man helped slay my father and did his best to have me killed as well.

Then at the end of that same Jon chapter when he actually executes Janos, something similar happens:

The smile that Lord Janos Slynt smiled then had all the sweetness of rancid butter. Until Jon said, “Edd, fetch me a block,” and unsheathed Longclaw.

By the time a suitable chopping block was found, Lord Janos had retreated into the winch cage, but Iron Emmett went in after him and dragged him out. “No,” Slynt cried, as Emmett half-shoved and halfpulled him across the yard. “Unhand me … you cannot … when Tywin Lannister hears of this, you will all rue—”

Emmett kicked his legs out from under him. Dolorous Edd planted a foot on his back to keep him on his knees as Emmett shoved the block beneath his head. “This will go easier if you stay still,” Jon Snow promised him. “Move to avoid the cut, and you will still die, but your dying will be uglier. Stretch out your neck, my lord.”

The pale morning sunlight ran up and down his blade as Jon clasped the hilt of the bastard sword with both hands and raised it high. “If you have any last words, now is the time to speak them,” he said, expecting one last curse.

The first time we saw Ned Stark, he was cutting someone’s head off. The trademark pose of the Kings of Winter has them sitting on a throne with a bared sword across their lap, a sign which warns of hostility and denial of guest right. There’s a message here: the King of Winter is a hard man. He’s an executioner. He carries out hard justice, and he does it with just Ice, ha ha. I kid, but my point is that Jon is doing a quintessential Ned Stark impression in this chapter where his sword shines with morning light… twice.

There are only two other instances of a sword shining with morning light, and one of those is when Joffrey holds aloft Widows Wail at his wedding, only hours before he dies. Joffrey is no Stark, but Widow’s Wail is one half of what used to be Ned’s Valyrian steel Ice. But again, it’s black dragon steel, so we still cannot say whether the true sword of the morning should be a black one or a white one.

The other example of a sword with Morning Light definitely points back to the King of Winter. This is Robb, the first time we see him in ACOK after being crowned King in the North, which is basically just a more modern title for “King of Winter” – Mage Mormont shouts out “King of Winter” while everyone else is shouting “King in the North” as Robb is proclaimed king, if you recall. So here’s King Robb, receiving Ser Cleos Frey, who is a prisoner of war, with a bared sword across his lap and a direwolf at his side, the traditional pose of the Kings of Winter:

When the guards brought in the captive, Robb called for his sword. Olyvar Frey offered it up hilt first, and her son drew the blade and laid it bare across his knees, a threat plain for all to see. “Your Grace, here is the man you asked for,” announced Ser Robin Ryger, captain of the Tully household guard. “Kneel before the king, Lannister!” Theon Greyjoy shouted. Ser Robin forced the prisoner to his knees.

“Rise, Ser Cleos.” Her son’s voice was not as icy as his father’s would have been, but he did not sound a boy of fifteen either. War had made a man of him before his time. Morning light glimmered faintly against the edge of the steel across his knees.

That’s the King of Winter personified in Robb, with morning light glimmering on his blade. Needless to say, this may be a clue that the original sword of the King of Winter was the one now known as the Sword of the Morning. Here’s a quick refresher on the language used for those stone Kings of Winter in the crypts of Winterfell, from one of Ned’s dreams in AGOT:

He was walking through the crypts beneath Winterfell, as he had walked a thousand times before. The Kings of Winter watched him pass with eyes of ice, and the direwolves at their feet turned their great stone heads and snarled.

Stone Kings of Winter with eyes of ice, aye? Again I say they might look good with the icy-looking sword made from a pale stone, as Robb indicates with his chilly voice, King of Winter crown, and that morning light glimmering on his sword. Once again we see that the King of Winter role is one of stern judgement.

Robb does the King of Winter pose one other time, when Tyrion swings back by Winterfell on his way back from the Wall. Tyrion recalls the encounter later in ACOK:

Tyrion could hear the rumble of the foemen’s drums now. He remembered Robb Stark as he had last seen him, in his father’s high seat in the Great Hall of Winterfell, a sword naked and shining in his hands.

No morning light, but it’s still a shining sword in the King of Winter’s lap, so I thought I would mention it.

Now that chapter at Riverrun with Robb sitting enthroned as King in the North and receiving Ser Cleos is Catelyn’s first in ACOK. Check out the opening of the second Catleyn chapter, as it has more clues about Dawn and the cold King of Winter:

As she slept amidst the rolling grasslands, Catelyn dreamt that Bran was whole again, that Arya and Sansa held hands, that Rickon was still a babe at her breast. Robb, crownless, played with a wooden sword, and when all were safe asleep, she found Ned in her bed, smiling.

Sweet it was, sweet and gone too soon. Dawn came cruel, a dagger of light.

With Dawn comes the realization that Robb has been crowned the King in the North, which, again, is just a modern form of the older “King of Winter” title. We see that Dawn is cruel, and it’s a dagger of light – the opposite of the daggers of darkness dragon’s teeth we saw earlier, or of the shadowsword the shadowbaby version of Stannis carried. It may well be that Dawn, the glowing milkglass sword, is a dagger of light which belongs in the hands of the King of Winter, just as the curtain of light which guards the Heart of Winter is the Dawn of the North.

After all, there IS magic north of the Wall, as Jon sees on his very first journey beyond it:

He woke to the sight of his own breath misting in the cold morning air. When he moved, his bones ached. Ghost was gone, the fire burnt out. Jon reached to pull aside the cloak he’d hung over the rock, and found it stiff and frozen. He crept beneath it and stood up in a forest turned to crystal. 

The pale pink light of dawn sparkled on branch and leaf and stone. Every blade of grass was carved from emerald, every drip of water turned to diamond.  Flowers and mushrooms alike wore coats of glass. Even the mud puddles had a bright brown sheen. Through the shimmering greenery, the black tents of his brothers were encased in a fine glaze of ice. So there is magic beyond the Wall after all.

“Lord Snow?” he heard. Soft and meek. He turned.

So there is magic beyond the Wall – and it’s the magic of a cold dawn, which coats everything in ice that looks like glass. The frozen blades of grass are “carved,” which makes me think of a carved, icy milkglass blade, or a carved icy crystal blade, and the frozen water drops are now diamonds – this is a direct parallel being drawn between ice and diamonds, like the white diamond star in the hilt of the Sword of the Morning constellation. We also see an ice-coated flower that “wears a coat of glass,” which reminds of us blue winter roses which grow in the glass gardens of Winterfell, a favorite of Lyanna Stark as we know. Indeed, the entire forest is turned to crystal, and of course the swords of the Others look like crystal, as does the Wall. Ice and crystal are interchangeable symbols in ASOIAF, in other words, and we will expand on that in future episodes when we look at the Wall and the Sept of Baelor and other icy places.

Even the black tents of the black brothers are encased in ice, as is Jon’s black cloak. I believe this is showing us that the black brother symbolize black ice, which, again, refers to Ned’s black Valyrian steel sword named Ice (black Ice) and to dragonglass, which is black frozen fire – black ice. Valyrian steel and dragonglass are what the black brothers need to fight the Others, and when Jon dreams of defending the Wall against the forces of the North with a burning red blade, he is “armored in black ice.” So, black ice is a great symbol for the Black Brothers, the black swords in the darkness who fight the Others with frozen fire, and this means that this magical scene in the cold morning air sets up the battlefield – black frozen fire brothers versus the pale icy Others whose eyes burn like cold stars. Frozen fire, burning ice – we’ll talk about this more in the future.

But the thing I want you to take away here is that the icy magic north of the Wall comes with a cold dawn. And with it comes Gilly, calling Jon “Lord Snow” and asking him to help save her baby. From what, Jon asks?

“The cold gods,” she said. “The ones in the night. The white shadows.”

Right. Jon and Gilly’s entire conversation about the Others  and icy transformation of humans into white shadows comes during this magical icy cold dawn, just before the sun fully rises. When it does, Gilly flees, as does the icy magic, and then the party is over:

Jon watched her go, his joy in the morning’s brittle beauty gone.  (. . .) The magic was already faded, icy brightness turning back to common dew in the light of the rising sun.

Melting away like the Others, the icy brightness of dawn. The talk of the Others came with the cold dawn magic, and disappeared when the sun came out, leaving only Jon. When Jon first woke and saw this icy dawn brightness, he thinks of it as the magic north of the Wall – but we know the main form of magic north of the Wall is the Others and the terrifying Heart of Winter.. and so fittingly, Jon and Gilly talk about the Others. But if Dawn is the original Ice, the “Dawn of the North” if you will, then it too is “the magic north of the Wall,” and it is the cold dawn light shining on the icy coats of glass which Jon labels northern magic.

---

Time Out for Speculation

---

Let me offer a bit of speculation based on what we’ve explored so far. If Valyrian steel kills the Others, as it most probably does, and if Dawn is the original Ice of House Stark and has some connection to ice magic, is it possible that Dawn, or “original Ice” I guess we can call it, has some magical ability to kill dragons? perhaps that’s too much symmetry, but it would answer the question of why the King of Winter might leave it in the south in the hands of the Daynes. Starfall is very close to Oldtown, the place which all signs point to as being the location of Azor Ahai’s invasion of Westeros. Perhaps the idea is to have dragonglass and later, Valyrian steel, at the Wall and at Winterfell, ready to kill the Others if they should come prowling… and in the south, it’s good to have a dragon-killer sword ready in case those dragonlords come again. The TV show gave their version of the Night King an icy weapon that can kill dragons, and perhaps Dawn is that something in the books. Just a crazy idea though, I wouldn’t put any money on it.

I have long thought that if the Hightowers and Daynes descend from the Great Empire of the Dawn, they were probably what I would call “Amethyst Empress loyalists,” meaning that they turned again the evil Bloodstone Emperor – whom I think was also Azor Ahai, the King of the Long Night. They would be dragon people fighting on team Westeros, and this might explain the Daynes and Hightowers in general, and would explain why they would be entrusted with a dragon-killing weapon, if that’s what Dawn is. The Hightowers at the very least may have been involved in helping to kill off the Targaryen dragons during the Dance of the Dragons civil war according to some speculation, and the most ancient legends have the first Hightowers exterminating actual winged dragons who they found roosting on the mysterious fused stone fortress. Those Hightowers might be dragon-exterminators, in other words.

Or perhaps the hypothetical sword swapping is precautionary. Maybe the idea is to keep the milkglass sword as far away from the King of Winter or the Night’s King or just the Others in general, because Dawn in the hands of such would be unstoppable. Perhaps that’s why only worthy knights can carry it, and no one else. We’ll be coming back to that scene at the Tower of Joy a few times in this series, as it it just seems loaded with import.

Alright, let’s get back to the subject of white swords, Dawn, and the Others. By now we’ve gotten our feet wet in this chilly pond of symbolism, but believe me, it gets worse. And by worse, I mean that our socks are wet and cold and we don’t have any towels or a fresh pair of socks and it really sucks and… oh, no, I mean it gets worse in that we’re about to crack open one of the most ridiculous bits of symbolism I have found anywhere in ASOIAF, one which I’ve never actually heard anyone talk about. It’s so obvious, you will be stunned you didn’t see it yourself when I show it to you, I promise.

---

The White Sword Brothers

This final section is brought to you by three acolytes of the Church of Starry Wisdom: Arande Nim, spearwife of the Red Mountains and secret witness to the Tower of Joy; Mallory Sand, Storm Witch, Rider of Zulfric the Black Beast; and Greenfoot the Gorgeous

---

A moment ago, I mentioned that the Kingsguard are sometimes called “the white swords,” and in fact their home base is called “The White Sword Tower.” That’s especially funny when it comes to Arthur Dayne, because before he joined the Kingsguard, Arthur was already a person referred to as white sword, because he bears the title “the Sword of the Morning” (meaning  that he is named after the white sword known as Dawn), and he already lived in a tower named after a white sword, the Palestone Sword tower at Starfall. Then he went to King’s Landing and became a white sword in a second sense – a Kingsguard – and lived in another tower named after a white sword – the White Sword Tower. Why the redundant white sword symbolism for Arthur? What is George saying to us here?

The answer is that awesome bit of symbolism I just hyped up, which is this: the Kingsguard are being used as a symbolic proxy for the Others, throughout all the books. We see the Others on page very seldom, but we see the Kingsguard a lot and they usually seem to be playing the role of the Others. It’s pretty startling when you look at all their descriptions one after another… which is what we’ll do.

By now we are well familiar with the “white shadow” symbolism of the Others – in total, the Others are referred to as white shadows at least four, possibly five times (one is ambiguous), beginning with the prologue of AGOT where we first see them. Interestingly, the Kingsguard are called white shadows on four separate occasions (that’s including Ser Barristan, who still wears his white Kingsguard armor), and twice more they are called “pale shadows.”

The only other being labelled a white shadow is Ghost, who gets the white shadow moniker on three occasions and the pale shadow once, and there’s one occasion of an ice-encrusted weirwood tree being called a pale shadow.  I think Ghost and weirwood trees do both play in to the symbolic mystery of the white shadows, and we know Ghost himself is explicitly stated by Jon to be a parallel of the weirwoods, but let’s focus on the Kingsguard and the Others for now.

In ACOK, Tyrion looks at Joffrey and thinks:

His two white shadows were always with him; Balon Swann and Mandon Moore, beautiful in their pale plate.

Recall that George describes the Others as ‘beautiful’ in interviews. Earlier in ACOK, Tyrion observes Joffrey again:

Joffrey was galloping at his side, whey-faced, with Ser Mandon Moore a white shadow on his left.

At the Battle of the Blackwater, on the bridge of ships, a fallen Tyrion looks up at Ser Mandon:

Finally he rolled over the side and lay breathless and exhausted, flat on his back. Balls of green and orange flame crackled overhead, leaving streaks between the stars. He had a moment to think how pretty it was before Ser Mandon blocked out the view. The knight was a white steel shadow, his eyes shining darkly behind his helm.

That’s a nice one because the streaks of fire between the stars implies a meteor shower, and then we get the white shadow Ser Mandon, his eyes shining darkly. The way the sky is blocked out when the white shadow appears reminds us of the Long Night, of course, when the sun, moon, and stars would have been hidden, and I think that’s when the Others invaded, if my memory serves me right.

It’s a similar white shadow routine with Dany and Ser Barristan in ADWD:

Dany glimpsed Ser Barristan sliding closer, a white shadow at her side.

Here’s Barristan again, meeting with Skahaz the Shavepate inthe dark corridors of the Great Pyramid of Meereen in ADWD:

A pale shadow and a dark, the two conspirators came together in the quiet of the armory on the Great Pyramid’s second level, amongst racks of spears, sheaves of quarrels, and walls hung with trophies from forgotten battles.

“Tonight,” said Skahaz mo Kandaq. The brass face of a blood bat peered out from beneath the hood of his patchwork cloak. “All my men will be in place. The word is Groleo.”

The dark shadow is a blood bat, an excellent symbol for dark Lightbringer and the waves of blood and night motif that defines it, with the brass working to imply a dim sun or dark sun. There’s also a callout to Harrenhall via the Black Bat sigil of Lothston, and Harrenhall – a twisted black fortress made with blood sacrifice and then melted by dragonfire – is one of those places which seems to serve as an analog to the destroyed fire moon. Barristan is the pale shadow of course, and once again we see the pairing of a white shadow and a black one who are quite different and yet have an inverted parallel relationship.

This is a nice one, from AFFC as Cersei sits in the throne room:

The torches on the back wall threw the long, barbed shadow of the Iron Throne halfway to the doors. The far end of the hall was lost in darkness, and Cersei could not but feel that the shadows were closing around her too. My enemies are everywhere, and my friends are useless. She had only to glance at her councillors to know that; only Lord Qyburn and Aurane Waters seemed awake. The others had been roused from bed by Margaery’s messengers pounding on their doors, and stood there rumpled and confused. Outside the night was black and still. The castle and the city slept. Boros Blount and Meryn Trant seemed to be sleeping too, albeit on their feet. Even Osmund Kettleblack was yawning. Not Loras, though. Not our Knight of Flowers. He stood behind his little sister, a pale shadow with a longsword on his hip.

Cersei feels the shadows closing in around her, and actually everyone in the room around her is implied as an Other. We have her councilors, “the others” who had been “roused from sleep,” as well as the Kingsguard, some of whom are also sleepy, and Loras who is actually named as a pale shadow. Qyburn wears a white robe, while Aurane Waters is more complex… he has pale Targaryen hair and the sea dragon symbolism of the Velaryons, but we aren’t ready to broach the topic of the connection between weirwood and the Others just yet, so just put a pin in that one. But you get the point – the Kingsguard are pale shadows or white shadows, and the tie to sleeping and dreaming here may be a clue about the Others having a link to greenseers and weirwoods.

So, Kingsguard and Others are both white shadows, and they are both pale and sword-like (remember that one of the Others is described as “sword slim”). Now, let’s refresh our memory of the language used to depict the Others with the description of the first Other Will saw from his perch in the tree during the prologue of AGOT:

A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce. Tall, it was, and gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took.

With all that language as fresh in your mind as a field of new-fallen snow, let’s check out some quotes about the Kingsguard. This first one is from ACOK, and this is the Hound:

The white cloak of the Kingsguard was draped over his broad shoulders and fastened with a jeweled brooch, the snowy cloth looking somehow unnatural against his brown roughspun tunic and studded leather jerkin. 

An unnatural snowy cloak – that’s good. Here’s another from Clash:

“Ser Meryn Trant of the Kingsguard,” a herald called. Ser Meryn entered from the west side of the yard, clad in gleaming white plate chased with gold and mounted on a milk- white charger with a flowing grey mane. His cloak streamed behind him like a field of snow. He carried a twelve- foot lance.  

In addition to simply noticing the snow and milk symbolism, notice that the milk-white charger has a flowing mane, the the cloak streams like a field of snow. It reminds us of the moonlight on water description of the Others’ armor, and it implies Ser Meryn and his horse melting into a puddle, streaming and flowing like the melting Other Sam stabbed with a dragonglass knife… which , by the way, went like this:

And then he was stumbling forward, falling more than running, really, closing his eyes and shoving the dagger blindly out before him with both hands. He heard a crack, like the sound ice makes when it breaks beneath a man’s foot, and then a screech so shrill and sharp that he went staggering backward with his hands over his muffled ears, and fell hard on his arse. When he opened his eyes the Other’s armor was running down its legs in rivulets as pale blue blood hissed and steamed around the black dragonglass dagger in its throat. It reached down with two bone- white hands to pull out the knife, but where its fingers touched the obsidian they smoked. Sam rolled onto his side, eyes wide as the Other shrank and puddled, dissolving away. In twenty heartbeats its flesh was gone, swirling away in a fine white mist. Beneath were bones like milkglass, pale and shiny, and they were melting too. Finally only the dragonglass dagger remained, wreathed in steam as if it were alive and sweating. Grenn bent to scoop it up and flung it down again at once. “Mother, that’s cold. ”

We only get two on-page appearances of the Others, so I figured I would go ahead and pull that quote. Plus, Sam is so heroic in that scene. You will notice the dragon locked in ice motif with the dragonglass knife and the Other, and it’s especially cool that the knife seems to have absorbed the cold of the Other – it’s now frozen fire for real!

When Sansa first meets Ser Barristan the Bold on the road to Kings Landing in AGOT, the description is as follows:

One knight wore an intricate suit of white enameled scales, brilliant as a field of new-fallen snow, with silver chasings and clasps that glittered in the sun. When he removed his helm, Sansa saw that he was an old man with hair as pale as his armor, yet he seemed strong and graceful for all that. From his shoulders hung the pure white cloak of the Kingsguard.

Snowy armor and matching hair to go along with the snowy cloaks of the Kingsguard. There might even be a whiff of the ice dragon here, with the snow white “scales” worn by Barristan, who, by the way, has blue eyes.

When Sansa sees the Kingsguard at the Tourney of the Hand later in AGOT, it goes like this:

They watched the heroes of a hundred songs ride forth, each more fabulous than the last. The seven knights of the Kingsguard took the field, all but Jaime Lannister in scaled armor the color of milk, their cloaks as white as fresh-fallen snow.

Milk and snow, just like the Others and like the hypothetical ice moon. Once again, we find the ‘scales’ to maybe, just maybe, imply something about an ice dragon. And keep in mind that when I say ‘ice dragon,’ I am referring to the larger symbol of the ice dragon which would include an icy dragon meteor from the ice moon.

Here’s another quote along these lines, this one from ADWD. It’s a little bit longer, but it’s just really nice writing and it’s packed with symbolism. Thus, I give you, Ser Barristan the Bold, taking a bath:

When the last light had faded in the west, behind the sails of the prowling ships on Slaver’s Bay, Ser Barristan went back inside, summoned a pair of serving men, and told them to heat some water for a bath. Sparring with his squires in the afternoon heat had left him feeling soiled and sweaty.

The water, when it came, was only lukewarm, but Selmy lingered in the bath until it had grown cold and scrubbed his skin till it was raw. Clean as he had ever been, he rose, dried himself, and clad himself in whites. Stockings, smallclothes, silken tunic, padded jerkin, all fresh-washed and bleached. Over that he donned the armor that the queen had given him as a token of her esteem. The mail was gilded, finely wrought, the links as supple as good leather, the plate enameled, hard as ice and bright as new-fallen snow. His dagger went on one hip, his longsword on the other, hung from a white leather belt with golden buckles. Last of all he took down his long white cloak and fastened it about his shoulders.

The helm he left upon its hook. The narrow eye slit limited his vision, and he needed to be able to see for what was to come. The halls of the pyramid were dark at night, and foes could come at you from either side. Besides, though the ornate dragon’s wings that adorned the helm were splendid to look upon, they could too easily catch a sword or axe. He would leave them for his next tourney if the Seven should grant him one.

If this isn’t ice dragon symbolism, I don’t know what is. Blue-eyed Ser Barristan has ice armor that is as white as snow, dragon wings on his helm, and he puts all this on and goes out into the world after the last light fades. And after a good cold bath, of course. Once again I will simply highlight the fact that white sword, white shadow, and ice dragon symbolism is applied to both the Kingsguard and the Others.

Ice dragons meteors come from icy moons, and the Kingsguard’s white steel armor, which can look as white as snow or as hard as ice, can also look as pale as the moon, as we see in a Sansa chapter of ACOK:

Below, she could see a short knight in moon-pale armor and a heavy white cloak pacing the drawbridge. From his height, it could only be Ser Preston Greenfield.

I’ll briefly mention that Ser Preston and all of the Greenfields live in a weirwood castle called the Bower – it’s true, look it up – just as the “white walkers of the wood” probably come from the weirwoods in some sense. More on that in a future episode.

Now back in AGOT, Ned sees a Kingsguard on that same bridge and the description again fits the Others, but in a slightly different way:

Ser Boros Blount guarded the far end of the bridge, white steel armor ghostly in the moonlight.

The Others are ghosts in some sense, and of course they are known to love that pale moonlight. The one Will saw in the prologue had a sword which was “alive with moonlight” and which had “a ghost-light that played around its edges,” and the Ser Boros of the Kingsguard is himself a white sword, and his white steel is looking ghostly in the moonlight.

Think about the idea of a white sword which glows with ghost light for a second… this idea is repeated in one other place I can think of, and it’s associated with milkglass too. It’s such a weird quote I just have to let Martin read it to you. And yeah, this is the part of the podcast where things get weird.

Down in the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai, they say there are oceans of ghost grass, taller than a man on horseback with stalks as pale as milkglass. It murders all other grass and glows in the dark with the spirits of the damned. The Dothraki claim that someday ghost grass will cover the entire world, and then all life will end.

Stalks of grass are also called blades of grass, and these murderous blades of ghost grass are taller than a man and as pale as milkglass. It’s a field of Dawn swords, essentially – and they glow in the dark with the spirits of the damned, just as the Others’s swords glow with ghost light. But the Others and their analogs in the Kingsguard are both like ghostly white swords themselves, so the prophecy of the ghost grass covering the world and ending all life really just sounds like a prophecy of the return of the Others, marching to exterminate mankind, pale glowing swords in hand.

I don’t know what that ghost grass really is – I assume it’s some kind of toxic weed, in actuality – but I also have to assume that the symbolically rich description is there to tell us about Dawn. The narrative makes the ghost grass sound like Dawn, but then it adds in the ghost light motif and the notion of the ghost grass covering the world and ending all life, both of which make us think of the Others and encourage us to think about them as having a link to Dawn.

The fact that this ghost grass is found around Asshai is yet another clue about there being a link between Azor Ahai, who comes from Asshai, and the Others and possibly the Night’s King, but we aren’t quite ready to talk about that yet. Next episode though, I promise.

Returning to the subject of the Kingsguard, the last point I want to make is that besides these ties to icy symbolism and ghost symbolism and moon symbolism, the white swords of the Kingsguard also have ties to Dawn symbolism, and this is another scene from the Tourney of the Hand in AGOT:

The shields displayed outside each tent heralded its occupant: the silver eagle of Seagard, Bryce Caron’s field of nightingales, a cluster of grapes for the Redwynes, brindled boar, red ox, burning tree, white ram, triple spiral, purple unicorn, dancing maiden, blackadder, twin towers, horned owl, and last the pure white blazons of the Kingsguard, shining like the dawn. 

Hello. The blazon of the white sword brothers is shining like the dawn. Go back in time 20 years or so, and you might find one Ser Arthur Dayne standing under that pure white blazon, with his shining white sword Dawn.

This scene has to remind us of the very poetic description of the Sword of the Morning constellation which Jon gives us in ASOS which we quoted a little bit earlier – you will recall the white star in its hilt blazing like a diamond in the dawn. It’s nice to see similar language used to describe the white banners of the Kingsguard, who symbolize the Others, and the Sword of the Morning constellation.

Ser Mandon on the bridge of ships was called “a white steel shadow,” while Ser Boros’ white steel armor looked ghostly in the moonlight, and in TWOAIF Dawn is described by the maesters as being some kind of white steel, looking “like no Valyrian steel they know, being pale as milkglass but in all other respects it seems to share the properties of Valyrian blades, being incredibly strong and sharp.” Dawn is a white steel sword, and so are the Kingsguard, whose white blazons shine like the dawn.

Now you can see why it is so perfect that Arthur Dayne joined the Kingsguard. He’s walking around with what I believe to be the sword of the King of Winter, and so he found an order of knights who like to dress up as Others and signed up as quick as he could. I’ll close this section with a quote about Ser Arthur Dayne, taken from Jaime’s inner monologue as he stands inside the White Sword Tower:

And he’d held his own against the Smiling Knight, though it was Ser Arthur who slew him. What a fight that was, and what a foe. The Smiling Knight was a madman, cruelty and chivalry all jumbled up together, but he did not know the meaning of fear. And Dayne, with Dawn in hand . . . The outlaw’s longsword had so many notches by the end that Ser Arthur had stopped to let him fetch a new one. “It’s that white sword of yours I want,” the robber knight told him as they resumed, though he was bleeding from a dozen wounds by then. “Then you shall have it, ser,” the Sword of the Morning replied, and made an end of it.

Notice that Dawn is referred to here as “that white sword” – this drives home the symbolic correlation to the white sword tower in which Jaime stands as he thinks this. Jaime is, at this moment, a white sword standing inside a white sword and thinking of another white sword and his white sword.

So…  with everything we’ve seen today… I don’t think there can be any question that George is creating a high level of symbolic unity between the Kingsguard, the Others, and Dawn. I mean he’s practically beating us over the head with it. But as ever, the question is, what does it mean?

Well, we’ve started to answer that question already.  George wants to keep the Others fairly mysterious for as long as possible, as it increases their mystique and terror, so he does not give us many encounters or records of the Others to go on. Thus, the Kingsguard serve as a symbolic proxy to slip us clues about the Others. That’s the first thing. Having just shown you all the symbolism which establishes this connection, we can know periodically examine scenes with Kingsguard in them and learn about the Others… and we’ll be doing just that throughout the moons of ice and fire series.

In my opinion, the Kingsguard – Others symbolic parallel also aids the conclusion that the sword known as Dawn is almost certainly the original Ice of House Stark. In general, the Kingsguard are simply combining the icy symbolism of the Others with the symbolism of the sword Dawn: being called white swords, the blazing like the dawn symbolism, and Arthur Dayne serving as the ultimate example of a Kingsguard. I would say that one of the main purposes of making the Kingsguard symbolic stand-ins for the Others is so that we see Arthur Dayne as a symbolic Other when he unsheathes that glowing milkglass blade and understand that this was an originally a sword tied to ice magic and the Others.

But, there’s something bigger than that, having to do with the creation of the Others.

And I’ll be happy to answer that question… in Moons of Ice and Fire 3! which will be called Visenya Draconis. We’ll  examine some of the various “solar king with two lunar wives” love triangles that define ASOIAF, such as Aegon the Conqueror, Rhaenys, and Visenya; Stannis, Melisandre, and Selyse; Jon, Ygritte, and Val, and of course Rhaegar, Elia of Dorne, and Lyanna Stark.

But before we get to that, we’ll be having a Q&A livestream on the LucifermeansLightbringer youtube channel, this upcoming Saturday October 14″, at 3:30 Eastern, 12:30 Pacific, or 7:30 Greenwich Mean Time for our European friends. Send me your questions or comments by leaving a comment here on the wordpress page, or on the YouTube version of this episode, or you can catch me on Twitter, @thedragonLmL. The first one went great, and we’ll be doing this every month going forward, so don’t miss it! See you Saturday!

Pliny the Elder, Bloody Sun Mirrors, Eclipses, and Sun-Drinking

The name “heliotrope” (from Greek ήλιος helios, “Sun,” τρέπειν trepein, “to turn”) derives from the ancient belief that bloodstone had the ability to bend and alter the sun’s reflection.  The source of this information is Pliny the Elder’s Natural History:

Heliotropium is found in Æthiopia, Africa, and Cyprus: it is of a leek-green colour, streaked with blood-red veins. It has been thus named, from the circumstance that, if placed in a vessel of water and exposed to the full light of the sun, it changes to a reflected colour like that of blood; this being the case with the stone of Æthiopia more particularly.  Out of the water, too, it reflects the figure of the sun like a mirror, and it discovers eclipses of that luminary by showing the moon passing over its disk.

Based on this quote, probably the most well known concerning bloodstone / heliotrope, this section will discuss three main concepts: bloody sun mirrors, darkening or drinking the sun, and eclipses.  All of these ideas kind of work together, as they all have to do with turning the sun in some way.  The bloodstone submerged in water turns the color of the sun’s reflection to that of blood – meaning, it darkens the sun’s light.  Out of water, it reflects the sun like a mirror – now the bloodstone is turning the sun’s light by bending and refracting it.  Eclipses represent a darkening of the sun, and we see that bloodstone can not only darken the color of sunlight, but also discover eclipses.

All three of these concepts also describe qualities and actions of the bloodstone moon meteors – that’s the whole point of talking about them, of course.

First, bloodstone is a sun-mirror, a stone which reflects the light of the sun.  That makes for a great correlation with the moon itself, which only shines with reflected sunlight.  After the moon kisses the sun and explodes, its meteor children the drank the fire of the sun, which also speaks of the sun shining on to the bloodstone.

Next we have the association with eclipses.  This idea is pretty simple – in order for the moon to be perceived as “wandering too close to the sun,” and in order for the comet to look “connected” to the sun and create the image of a sun holding a comet sword, we need an eclipse alignment at the moment of impact.  Thematically, too, the moon explosion blots out the sun, eclipsing it for the duration of the Long Night.  We talked about the idea of the Bloodstone Emperor representing the darkened solar king and the Lion of Night.  Just as Azor Ahai becomes the Bloodstone Emperor by destroying the moon, the actual sun becomes a darkened sun when the moon explodes and hides its face.  This idea of a darkened sun spills out into various related ideas about shadow and drinking light, black fire or shadow fire, etc.  Anything which darkens or drinks light, anything which inverts the bright qualities of fire and light – these ought to put us in mind of the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai, Lightbringer the black sword, and the bloodstone moon meteors.

The third idea, the submerged bloodstone darkening the sun’s light to the color of blood seems like a good fit with the notion of a bloodstone moon meteor which drinks the sun’s fire and lands in the ocean.  The bloodstone is said to darken the sun’s reflection to the color of blood – and since we are dealing with black blood instead of red blood when we speak of the moon’s fire transformation, we get stones covered in black blood instead of red.

To really fit the description, our black bloodstones need to be submersed in water.  This would take the form of the island-drowning sea dragon which the Grey King supposedly slew, I believe – if falling meteors can be perceived as dragons, then a meteor which falls into the sea and triggers tsunamis would make an excellent sea dragon.  The island drowning makes sense, since this legend comes to us from a people who live on islands which probably used to be connected to the main land.  A large moon meteor impact anywhere near the Iron Islands would produce horrible tsunamis which would wash over the entire area, likely killing thousands and reshaping the land.  It’s the kind of event which would be remembered in local myth, as the sea dragon Nagga certainly is.

This deadly flood tide is associated with blood on two counts.  First, it was triggered by the drowning of the moon – the impact of bloody moon meteors in the ocean.  Secondly, the ensuing flood itself can be perceived as a blood tide – specifically, a tide of moon blood.

We’re going to be tackling quite a lot of symbolism, so keep in mind that there are three actual, physical, non-metaphorical things which we are really talking about: the moon meteors, the floods they caused when they landed, and the darkness that they caused when they landed.  We’re kind of always talking about the original Azor Ahai and Lightbringer, that’s a given, but keep the meteors, floods, and darkness in mind as we go along.

I believe there is an overarching Lightbringer motif of blood and darkness, and of red and black, and that it pertains to the floods and darkness triggered by the meteors in particular.  It appears in three slightly different forms: the black and bloody tides, waves of night and blood, and streaks of red fire and rivers of black ice.  In the process of showing the next several mythical associations of heliotrope and bloodstone, we will tackle these three symbolic motifs, and we will try to learn more about the meteors, the floods, and the darkness…. because that’s what Lightbringer has to offer us.

---

The Dark Tide of the Moon

We’ve seen that symbolically speaking, the moon bleeds and burns when it is stabbed by the Lightbringer comet, and the blackened “moon blood” then coats the black moon meteors.  This makes them bloodstones in the sense that they are now consecrated with the blood of the dying moon goddess.  Lyanna’s bed of blood symbolizes this perfectly – it’s the place where the moon maiden dies, bloodying the stones, but also the place where Azor Ahai reborn and Lightbringer emerge from (Jon Snow in this case).  So to for the bleeding and burning heart of Nissa Nissa – the scene of her death, and the birth of Lightbringer.  Like the meteors, Lightbringer is covered in Nissa Nissa’s blood as it is born.  But the moon blood is not done – oh no.  The symbol of the moon blood does not end with bleeding on the bloodstones, meteors, and swords – it also represents the floods triggered by the sea dragon impact, the drowning of the moon.

The idea of a bloody tide caused by a bloodstone meteor fits well with the idea of a bloodstone creating the image of blood in the water which we saw in Pliny the Elder’s quote just now.  Stick a bloodstone in the water, and you get blood in the water, that’s the idea.  But of course it’s not just blood in the water, but a dark, bloody tide.   This is like a trumped up version of the fact that the normal tides are produced by the moon’s gravity.  Moons in the sky produce normal tides, but drowning moons produce bloody tides.  The image here is of blood in the water, a bloody stone in the water, etc.  I actually think Melisandre’s vision of a dark tide in A Dance with Dragons contains clues about this:

Visions danced before her, gold and scarlet, flickering, forming and melting and dissolving into one another, shapes strange and terrifying and seductive. She saw the eyeless faces again, staring out at her from sockets weeping blood. Then the towers by the sea, crumbling as the dark tide came sweeping over them, rising from the depths.  

And later in that chapter, when she’s describing her vision to Jon Snow:

“I saw towers by the sea, submerged beneath a black and bloody tide.”  

I mentioned last time that the tops of towers and mountains can be used to symbolize the celestial realm, and so a crumbling tower can certainly symbolize a falling heavenly body, as it did at the long-fallen Tower of Joy.  The towers by the sea in Mel’s vision are submerged by the bloody tide, which also recalls the bloody stones of the Tower of Joy – both are crumbled towers covered in blood.  The Tower of Joy symbolized the moon death and the forging of Lightbringer, and I believe this vision does so as well.  To corroborate this conclusion, check out the clear Lightbringer symbols with which this vision ends:

Through curtains of fire great winged shadows wheeled against a hard blue sky. 

A thousand red eyes floated in the rising flames.

The red priestess shuddered.  Blood trickled down her thigh, black and smoking.  The fire was inside her, an agony, an ecstasy, filling her, searing her, transforming her. Shimmers of heat traced patterns on her skin, insistent as a lover’s hand.

These ideas all have terrestrial meanings – Mel is literally seeing dragons flying, a likely reference to Dany’s dragons fighting the Others,  and the thousand red eyes refer to Bloodraven’s “thousand eyes and one,” (there’s also a mention of his wooden, corpse white face to go along with it).  But these ideas also have celestial meanings as well – the thousand red eyes surrounded by flame is our thousand dragon meteor shower, and the dragons as winged shadows is a reference to the black dragon meteors which bring darkness, which in turn relates to the concept of eclipsing the sun.

The black blood and the fire inside someone are flashing red lights indicating fire transformation, which refers to both literal fire transformation as Mel undergoes here and Beric does elsewhere, as well as the more symbolic fire transformation of the moon.  The agony and ecstasy language is a specific callout to Nissa Nissa’s cry of anguish and ecstasy, and the fire which is like a lover implies the procreative side of the Lightbringer myth.  We’ve covered these ideas before, and I point them out here to firm up the conclusion that this vision is talking about the forging of Lightbringer.  Even better, Mel begins the vision by wishing for one more glimpse of Azor Ahai, and ends it by musing:

I pray for a glimpse of Azor Ahai, and R’hllor shows me only Snow.

Having established this vision as a Lightbringer metaphor, let’s go back to the beginning where we see the skulls weeping blood and the black and bloody tide rising from the depths and sweeping over the crumbling towers by the sea.  In addition to the idea that the tops of towers and mountains can be used to symbolize the celestial realm, I would suggest that the tops of people – heads and crowns – can serve the same purpose.  Decapitation or throat-slitting can therefore symbolize the fall of a moon or heavenly body.  This also fits with the idea of the sun and moon sometimes being perceived as heads with faces, both in A Song of Ice and Fire and in the real world.  The sun and moon are like very, very tall people with invisible bodies, in other words.

The eyeless skulls in Mel’s vision, therefore, would seem to symbolize dead and fallen heavenly bodies, which would be our fallen moon, and the bloodstone meteors that came from the moon.  Their sockets weep blood, suggesting that the black and bloody tide in the vision is coming from the eyes of the skulls.  This would also seem to put the skulls in the position of the moon meteors.  When they land as sea dragons, the dark tide rises from the depths.  That’s our Long Night tsunami.  It’s a flood that is symbolically perceived as blood because it came from the death of the moon, and is triggered by the bloodstone moon meteors.  If those thousand red, fiery eyes can be meteors, then the eyeless skulls also speak of a moon with its eyes torn out.  The idea of the sockets weeping blood also speaks of the blood tide coming from the moon itself, since a decapitated skull – singular – can represent the dead moon.  And later in this chapter, they find the decapitated heads of three Nightswatch brothers stuck on spears of ash wood:

Where their eyes had been, only empty sockets remained, black and bloody holes that stared down in silent accusation.

A head mounted on a spear makes for a great comet symbol, and it’s one Martin has used a few times.  The shaft of ash wood creates the image of a trail of ash behind the head of the comet, while the head represents the actual meteorite, just as the eyeless skulls do.  And just as the eyeless skulls of Mel’s vision weep the black and bloody tide, here we see the empty sockets of the severed heads are black and bloody holes.  This is what I meant about Martin’s use of symbolism being internally consistent – he often gives us different versions of the same symbol in close proximity so that we can piece everything together.  The black and bloody sockets even “stare down” at Jon and the rest, like stars falling from the heavens.  The black and bloody tide first falls from the heavens, and then it rises from the depths – this is that two part association with the blood tide that I was referring to – first, bloody meteors fall from the sky, then they trigger a bloody tide from the ocean.

Lightbringer is like the fat kid at the pool doing a massive cannonball off the diving board, except the pool is filled with blood and everyone dies.  Well, almost everyone.  That’s what you get for calling people fat, that’s really mean and you should have known better.  Totally inappropriate.  So the moon is a little round – it’s just big boned, you know?  Festively plump.

Martin often seems to hide complementary symbols and concepts in his sigils and house words, particularly of obscure houses.  For example, there’s a house Blacktyde on the Iron Islands.  We know of two Blacktydes: Baelor Blacktyde, and Blind Beron Blacktyde, one of Aeron Damphair’s drowned men.  Their sigil is an interlocking pattern of black on green, creating the image of black tides flooding green lands.  This idea manifests again with Baelor Blacktyde:

Nightflyer was seized, Lord Blacktyde delivered to the king in chains. Euron’s mutes and mongrels had cut him into seven parts, to feed the seven green land gods he worshiped.

A black tide to feed the green lands, once again, and associated with sacrifice.  Baelor being cut apart to make the black tides is very similar to the moon being cut up to make black bloodstone meteors.  Those moon meteors were night flyers all right, just like the name of Baelor’s ship.  Damphair himself prophesies about this dark tide in A Clash of Kings:

Aeron Damphair raised his arms.  “And the waters of wrath will rise high, and the Drowned God will spread his dominion across the green lands!” 

As for Blind Beron the drowned man, we’ve just been given the image of the moon’s eyes being torn out and its sockets weeping the black and bloody tides, as well as the moon being drowned to unleash the dark tide… and here we see a drowned, blinded man who is a black tide.

We’ve seen eyes weeping tears of blood in a well known scene, of course, and that was Lyanna’s statue weeping blood in one of Eddard’s dreams.  And that brings us right back to the Tower of Joy once again, yet another parallel between it and Mel’s vision of the black and bloody tide.  Both have the bloody stones and crumbling towers, as well as Jon Snow, who was almost certainly born at the Tower of Joy in Lyanna’s bed of blood and who appears to Mel in her vision when she seeks Azor Ahai.

The fact that Lyanna, the dying moon maiden, is associated with tears of blood strengthens the idea that the eyeless skulls weeping blood represent the bloody moon meteors, the corpse of the dead moon goddess.  The parallels between this vision and the Tower of Joy are a good indication that Mel’s vision also refers to the moon’s death and the forging of Lightbringer.  And indeed, the idea of the bloodstone meteors triggering a black and bloody tide which rises from the depths is exactly what we are looking for, according to my premise that George is working with Pliny’s notion about submerged bloodstones creating bloody water.

As a follow up to the idea of the skulls as meteor symbols, I’d like to point out that Melisandre repeatedly sees the skulls surrounding Jon Snow, who is of course a dark solar king figure.  He’s Azor Ahai reborn, and his servants are the deadly meteors, his dragons woken from stone, and so they surround him:

The flames crackled softly, and in their crackling she heard the whispered name Jon Snow…. But the skulls were here as well, the skulls were all around him.

…and then again later in the same chapter:

 Skulls. A thousand skulls, and the bastard boy again. Jon Snow.

Of course the meteor shower is often depicted as a thousand of something, or some version of that.  It was a thousand thousand dragons in the Qarthine myth, and occasionally it’s ten thousand of something, but a thousand is the most common.  So what we are seeing here is the dark solar dragon surrounded by his thousand skull meteor children.

The same motif is repeated in the very same vision with Bloodraven, who appears as a corpse face surrounded by a thousand fiery eyes.  I’ve mentioned that Bloodraven seems to be playing into the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai archetype, and we will continue to explore the ramifications of this in the future, but for now I just want to point at the consistent groupings of symbols – Jon Snow surrounded by his thousand fiery or bloody skulls, and Bloodraven surrounded by his thousand fiery eyes.  Also, notice the watery language of Bloodraven’s eyes in Mel’s vision: it says “A thousand red eyes floated in the rising flames.”  That’s very similar to the blood tide of skulls rising from the depths that we saw in that same vision.

---

Moons and Sickles, The Tauroctony, and the Remaking of the World

The dark tide can come from eyes and eyeless sockets, but it also comes from decapitation, as is implied by the bodiless skulls as symbols of the dead moon and its moon meteor children.  Bran’s vision of Ser Gregor as a stone giant with an empty helmet in A Game of Thrones is instructive: behind the visor there is only darkness and thick black blood.  This foreshadows Gregor’s literal beheading and the blackening of his blood through the Red Viper’s poison spear, but it also gives us the black and bloody tide motif again, and associated with decapitation.  As we’ll see when we break down the Mountain and Viper trial by combat, Ser Gregor the Stone Giant is a tremendous moon symbol.  That’s right – not all moon symbols are feminine, and not all solar characters masculine either.  Nymeria, who brought the sun sigil to Dorne and sat in the sun shaped throne, is a good example, and of course we talked about the Maiden Made of Light of eastern legend being a representation of the bright face of the sun.  Male or female, it makes no matter – decapitating a moon character leads to darkness and black blood, another way of saying “black and bloody tide.”

We’ve made a habit out of referring to Mithras near the beginning of each essay, and it seems we need to do so again.  Many of the Azor Ahai and Lightbringer ideas are drawn from Mithras, and the idea of a blood tide covering the earth is to be found in his story as well.  Besides rock born Mithras with his sword and torch, the other very famous depiction of Mithras – the one which he appears in in over 60% of all Mithras statues – is called the Tauroctony, the slaying of the white bull.  This is a highly astronomical scene, packed with symbolism – just the sort of thing we go for around here!  As Mithras slays the bull, the sun and moon look down in favor, and the twelve constellations of the zodiac usually frame the scene.  The bull, as well as the scorpion, dog, and snake in the scene are thought to refer to constellations.  The exact meaning of the scene and its various elements are the subject of much scholarly debate, but it’s well known that observation of the stars was a central part of Roman Mithraism – they’ve even been called an astronomy cult.

Here are the important parts of the Tauronctony, the ones which pertain to Lightbringer’s forging and Azor Ahai’s rebirth.  First, Mithras looks away from the bull as he cuts its throat, because the bull is a friend to Mithras and actually represented a part of Mithras himself – just as Ghost the white direwolf is a part of Jon (yes, this is somewhat ominous).  Mithras has to kill the bull to be reborn, and the bull’s blood represents the life giving force, bringing life to the earth – the blood is sometimes depicted as ears of wheat to indicate the bounty of the harvest.  The blood of the sacrificed bull renews the world, and allows Mithras to be reborn.  There are other myths involving the slaying of a great monster – sometimes a dragon or serpent – that brings a global flood which transforms the world.  But we know George is already drawing on the Mithras lore, and so I suspect this might have been the place where he got the notion of symbolizing the flood as a blood tide.

Unfortunately, where Mithras is a solar king, Azor Ahai is an inverted solar king, and so the blood tide unleashed when he sacrificed the moon did the opposite of renewing the world and bringing life – it brought the Long Night, darkness and death.  The Worldbook speaks of the Great Empire of the Dawn legend and says that the world which survived the Long Night was “a broken place where every tribe went it’s own way, fearful of all the others..”  There’s also a reference to this idea of remaking the world as Tyrion and Haldon Halfmaester overhear the preaching of the red priests in Selhorys, who say that Benerro has decreed Daenerys to be Azor Ahai reborn, and that she was born from smoke and salt “to make the world anew.”  I suppose that “remaking the world” can cut both ways, but I’m pretty sure Azor Ahai’s remaking will involve a fair amount of blood and fire.

Let me share a bit of indigenous North American folklore concerning a comet remaking the world.  This information is from Graham Hancock’s newest book, Magicians of the Gods, which I very highly recommend, and I’m also borrowing here from an editorial he wrote for DailyMail.com about the book.  It turns out that in the real world, scientists have recently discovered evidence that the 1,200 year mini-ice age known as the Younger Dryas which lasted from 10,800 BCE to 9,600 BCE might have been triggered by a comet impact over the North American Ice Sheet.  A Long Night indeed – the comet seems to have broken apart and made multiple impacts along the northern ice sheets, destabilizing them.  As a result, large parts of the continent were simply erased with basically unfathomably violent flooding, and the ocean received vast amounts of ice cold water, which disrupted the ocean currents.  The atmosphere was also clouded with vaporized ice and tremendous amounts of debris – stop me if you’ve heard this one before.  The clouded sky and changed ocean currents kicked off a significant climate disruption, one which drove much of North America’s megafauna to extinction.  Essentially, George’s Long Night triggered by a comet is a very compressed version of this chain of events triggered by the Younger Dryas comet (as it’s now being called).

It’s nice to have science to tell us what happened ten thousand years ago, but the native peoples have seemingly kept alive stories of this event for that whole period of time (again, stop me if this sounds familiar).  I’m going to cite two in particular but there are many, many similar stories spread across North America.

The Brulé people of the Lakota nation in modern-day South Dakota have a legend of a  ‘fiery blast [that] shook the entire world, toppling mountain ranges and setting forests and prairies ablaze . . . Even the rocks glowed red-hot, and the giant animals and evil people burned up where they stood.  The rivers overflowed their banks and surged across the landscape. Finally, the Creator stamped the Earth, and with a great quake the Earth split open, sending torrents . . . across the entire world until only a few mountain peaks stood above the flood.’

The Ojibwa people of the Canadian grasslands refer to a comet called the Long-Tailed Heavenly Climbing Star which swept low through the skies, scorching the Earth and leaving behind ‘a different world. After that, survival was hard work. The weather was colder than before.’ 

Ojibwa shaman Fred Pine says “It came down here once, thousands of years ago. Just like a sun. It had radiation and burning heat in its tail.  It was just so hot that everything, even the stones, were cooked. The giant animals were killed off. You can find their bones today in the earth. It is said that the comet came down and spread his tail for miles and miles.”

This legend gives us a good idea of the kind of damage a comet or meteor impact can have.  They can literally set the entire sky on fire at temperatures that melt stone.  They leave behind a different world when they visit the earth,  just as Azor Ahai reborn will remake the world, and just as the Long Night left behind a broken world.

These descriptions could just as easily apply to the Long Night.  However, if George had given us myths this clear, it would have been too easy; so he’s made it just a bit more obscure by doling out pieces of the disaster in separate legends.  There’s so much going on in the story that you don’t really focus on the folktales, but when you line them up as we have done and will continue to do, you can see a picture almost as clear as the quotes we just read:  “The moon cracked open and the bleedings stars came down to earth like dragons and brought blood and flame everywhere they went, drowning islands and waking thunderous giants in the earth, hammering and breaking the world and blotting out the very sun.  The cold that came after was unstoppable and killed everything that the burning stars had spared.”

Also, notice in the above quote that the comet was “just like a sun” – a second sun, you might say, or perhaps “the sun’s son.”  The second sons are a sellsword company, of course, and Quentyn is described by Quaithe as the “sun’s son,” because he’s a child of House Martell, with their sun sigil.  I have a feeling those are all references to the comet – the sun spear – being like a second sun in the sky, as the Ojibwa myth describes their comet experience.

Just as the Dothraki say that one day the other moon will kiss the sun and crack as the first one did, the Ojibwa prophesy a return: ‘The star with the long, wide tail is going to destroy the world someday when it comes low again.’  So not only has this myth shaped the past of the Ojibwa and other peoples of North America, it continues to shape their perception of the future.  As you can see, George’s use of mythical astronomy which we’ve been chasing down in all of these podcasts has plenty of precedent in the real world.  I believe that George is essentially showing us a medieval society without the advantage of modern science to explain what happened 10,000 years ago –  all we have is the folklore and scattered bits of hard evidence, just as we did until very recently.  The moon destruction scenario is remembered all over the world, but George has cleverly hidden it in the folklore and legends and then has been sure to heap plenty of scorn on “anything heard at a woman’s tit.”  But it’s all right there, as we’ve been discovering – the moon’s sacrifice lead to tides of blood and darkness.       

Let’s return to the Tauroctony and Mithras’s slaying of the white bull whose blood remakes the world.  It’s easy to correlate the slain bull with the moon because after Mithras kills the white bull, it actually becomes the moon… simple enough.  The moon and the bull are sacrificed, and a blood tide washes over the earth – the correlation between the Mithras story and the Long Night story is striking.

The association between the moon and horned animals like cows, bulls, stags, boars, and goats is actually one of the most widespread notions in all of world mythology.  When the moon is a crescent, it’s called a “horned moon,” because it resembles the horns of these sacrificial animals.  In Egypt, lunar deities like Isis are depicted with cow horns to denote their lunar associations.  The Egyptians also have a tradition of slaughtering the sacred bull, which they called Apis.  His blood and sacrifice was also associated with harvest and fertility, and with the rebirth of the dead king – again, just as with Mithras and the White Bull.  Even more interesting is the idea that Apis was conceived by a ray of sunlight, while his mother was supposedly conceived by a flash of lightning from heaven, or by moon beams.  This is all right in the wheelhouse of the Lightbringer meteors – conceived by sun and moon, fallen to earth like a thunderbolt.  It’s just the kind of myth that George would find useful, and be able to rope into his evolving mythos.

It’s also no coincidence that at Jon’s birth at the Tower of Joy, we find a white bull being slaughtered – Ser Gerold Hightower, the white bull.  That’s a pretty great shout-out to the Mithras legend.  Calling Gerold a tower is even better, as it alludes to the heavenly realms.  Better still, the light of the Hightower’s beacon is described in A Feast for Crows as “a hazy orange moon.”  It seems like George has gone out of his way to equate the white bull with the moon, and the sacrifice of each with the birth of Azor Ahai reborn.

There’s another shoutout to this idea when Arya is getting her tour of the various temples in Bravos, which is where we found another Mithras reference last time, that of three headed Trios.

Beyond it, by the canal, that’s the temple of Aquan the Red Bull. Every thirteenth day, his priests slit the throat of a pure white calf, and offer bowls of blood to beggars.”

So, in the temple of the bull, we slit the throat of a white calf, and people drink the blood as nourishment, or perhaps asa way to invoke divine favor.  That’s a very close analog to the Tauroctony.  Lest we forget, Lightbringer the sword supposedly drank Nissa Nissa’s blood, which is why we see blood drinking ideas here and there.

The curved horns of the bull evoke the crescent moon, but they also evoke the curved knives which were often used in ritual sacrifice.

The moon was a crescent, thin and sharp as the blade of a knife.

Four times in Bran’s final chapter of A Dance with Dragons, we get this description of the moon.  That chapter is basically a montage, with the moon descriptions breaking up each mini-scene.  The chapter concludes with this vision:

Then, as he watched, a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickle in her hand.

“No,” said Bran, “no, don’t,” but they could not hear him, no more than his father had. The woman grabbed the captive by the hair, hooked the sickle round his throat, and slashed. And through the mist of centuries the broken boy could only watch as the man’s feet drummed against the earth … but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood. 

So there’s the blood tide unleashed by sacrifice, echoing the bloody tide unleashed by the sacrifice of the moon.  The sacrifice in Bran’s vision takes the form of a throat slitting, and with a sickle-shaped blade – a thin and curved blade, just like the crescent moon.  We’ve also got the blood drinking again, as with Aquan the Red Bull.

We find another slaughtered bull in A Dance with Dragons in the form of Little Walder (the big one).  He’s the one who’s mysterious murder sets off the Freys and Manderlys in Roose Bolton’s Winterfell.  “He was butchered like a hog..” says Ser Hosteen Frey.  The thing is, in an earlier chapter in the same book, during Ramsay and Jeyne’s travesty of a wedding, the mists play tricks with Theon’s eyes and he perceives everyone strangely… and Little Walder appears in the form of a red bull.  No matter what color bull, it seems the fate is the same – cold butchery.

There’s a matching story in The World of Ice and Fire about one of the children of Garth the Green –  Bors the Breaker, who founded House Bulwer.  Supposedly Bors “drank so much bulls blood he grew a pair of shiny black horns,” and this bulls’ blood supposedly gave him the strength of twenty men.   Again we see the same ideas – horns, sacrificing bulls, drinking their blood, and a kind of transformation.  The shiny black horns of course put us in mind of the black dragonbinder horn that demands blood sacrifice to operate, which is entirely in keeping with the theme here.

The tale of Bors the Breaker and House Bulwer creates a tie-in to Mel’s black and bloody tide and the decapitated heads on spears with their black and bloody holes for sockets – one of the heads belongs to Black Jack Bulwer, descendent of Bors.  That serves a direct equation between the idea of a severed bull’s head an a moon meteor, since the heads on spears represent the decapitated moon.  Black Jack’s eyeless head shows us a decapitated moon bull becoming a black and bloody moon meteor, in other words.   I don’t know about you, but these clever little links between scenes with the same symbolism amuse me to no end.  It’s basically like a little treasure hunt, to find all the links between occurrences of the various motifs.

So now, consider Jon Snow, and the Azor Ahai archetype in general as a parallel to Mithras, which we’ve mentioned many times.  Mithras is a solar figure, just as the Azor Ahai is, excepting that Azor Ahai is an inverted, dark solar figure.   Jon has a white animal familiar, Ghost, who is a part of him, just as the white bull is a part of Mithras.  The white bull is sacrificed in order to resurrect Mithras… so… (akward silence)… it may be that Jon’s resurrection will come at a heavy price.  As a silver lining, however, I’ll mention that Jon’s spirit is expected to be stored inside of Ghost for time before his body is resurrected, and when a warg’s spirit does this, it begins to merge with the wolf.  In other words, I think that it’s likely that if this scenario comes about, what we will see is the wolf body being sacrificed, and the merged Ghost-Jon spirit will be transferred back to Jon’s resurrected body.  So it’s not quite as sad, if that turns out to be the case.

Unfortunately, there’s a bit of foreshadowing of this when Arya is down in the underbelly of the Red Keep in A Game of Thrones, in the chamber of the dragon skulls.  She recalls a time when Robb led the other kids down into the Winterfell Crypts:

Old Nan had told her there were spiders down here, and rats as big as dogs. Robb smiled when she said that. “There are worse things than spiders and rats,” he whispered. “This is where the dead walk.” That was when they heard the sound, low and deep and shivery. Baby Bran had clutched at Arya’s hand. When the spirit stepped out of the open tomb, pale white and moaning for blood, Sansa ran shrieking for the stairs, and Bran wrapped himself around Robb’s leg, sobbing. Arya stood her ground and gave the spirit a punch. It was only Jon, covered with flour. “You stupid ,” she told him, “you scared the baby.”   

So that’s ghostly Jon, the walking dead, a pale white spirit who makes a shivery sound… It’s GhostJon.

Going back to the scene of the three eyeless heads on spears, one of which is Black Jack Bulwer, we see more foreshadowing:

His huge white direwolf prowled around the shafts, sniffing, then lifted his leg and pissed on the spear that held the head of Black Jack Bulwer.

Aww, no, Ghost, not the one with the decapitated bull’s head, sonuva… Say it ain’t so, Ghost!

There’s actually a lot of foreshadowing about Jon’s resurrection in general, so a dedicated study of all of those scenes is called for and might yield more clues about how it’s going to go down.  For now I refer you to Radio Westeros episode 6, “Jon Snow, Only the Cold” or the matching essay on their page, which deal with the mechanics of Jon’s potential resurrection and the foreshadowing which indicates it.  That’s one of my favorite episodes right there.  While we were talking about Mithras slaying the white bull to be reborn, I had to mention the parallel with Jon Snow and Ghost.  Sorry to be the bearer of bad news… but like I said, merged GhostJon is probably going to kick some serious ass, so there is that.

Now, where were we…  bloodstone, bloody stones in the water, bloody tides from sacrificed moons… got it.  Here’s one more little fun tidbit regarding bloody moons and sacrifice.  On the Iron Islands, we find House Wynch, whose sigil is a bloody crescent moon on a field of purple.  A winch is a thing which pulls heavy objects out of place – we’re going to need a very big winch for the moon, of course, but that’s another essay.  And that sigil – it’s a crescent moon which is literally in a bed of blood.  Said another way, a moon crescent could be seen as a blade made of moon – flaming sword moon meteors, in other words, the moon stones which were covered in blood, like the crescent moon of House Wynch.

House Winch really does not do anything important in any of the novels, nor even in Ironborn history.  Literally the only noteworthy thing that George has written about them is their sigil – and I suspect that’s because their sigil IS the important thing about them.  A bloody crescent moon is easy to understand, given what we’ve just looked at concerning sickles and crescent moons and blood sacrifice, and attached to the word winch, it speaks of pulling down the moon.  The purple background may be meant to remind us of the Amethyst Empress and Daenerys, the purple-eyed moon maidens.

The real-world phenomena of a blood moon is the result of the moon passing through the earth’s shadow, a kind of reverse-eclipse where the earth is eclipsing the moon. I’m not sure if this is part of George’s thinking, but it’s interesting and so I thought I would mention it, because it ties together bloody moons and eclipsed moons.

So, we’re almost ready to start making bad menstruation jokes – we are talking about “moon blood,” after all – but not quite yet.  That will come later when we talk about the idea of a maiden “flowering.”  To be honest, I may not need to make any bad jokes; Martin is already having a field day with this.  As it is, we can see why he chose to refer to a women’s monthly visitor as “moon blood,” as it makes for a useful metaphor to give us hints about the moon’s sacrifice during the Long Night.

In all seriousness, my purpose here is to introduce the concept the black and bloody tide as being parts of the Long Night shit-storm of magical and metaphorical disasters, and to show how it’s directly related to moon sacrifice.  We’ve seen it come from eye sockets and eyes, as well as decapitations and throat slitting.  We’ve seen it come from the sky and from the depths.  Bloody swords and bloody moons and bloody stones. Bloody blood, everywhere.  It’s like some kind of lunar abattoir.  Who else feels like they need to wash their hands?  See what we’re really doing here is learning the secrets of the bloody bed.  This is what Mirri Maz Duur had to go through – tons of of bloody symbolism.

I know I said I’d hold off on moon blood jokes, but I’m serious – the bloody bed and the bed of blood are the same thing.  Lyanna’s bed of blood is associated with her death, but it’s where Jon is born.  Mirri Maz Dur says she “learned the secrets of the bloody bed” as a way of referring to midwifery, while the Damphair thinks to himself that the world is a cold place where “women brought forth short-lived children from beds of blood and pain.”  It’s a core element of the Lightbringer monomyth, death and life.  It’s George’s own take on the idea of the sacrificial bull whose blood renews the world.  The bull dies, but he was a part of Mithras, and Mithras is reborn.  Remember that Jon’s blue rose in the chink in the Wall “fills the air with sweetness” – perhaps there is a renewal on the way, even though the first blood tide seems to have brought death and destruction.

---

Rivers of Ice and Darkness

While we’re still talking about Jon Snow, I think he’s got his own version of the black and bloody tide.  We discussed it last time – the red fire and black ice Jon thing, which is made up of two parallels scenes: his dream of being armored in black ice and wielding a burning red sword, and this optical illusion which appears in the cracks in the Wall:

Jon Snow turned away. The last light of the sun had begun to fade. He watched the cracks along the Wall go from red to grey to black, from streaks of fire to rivers of black ice. Down below, Lady Melisandre would be lighting her nightfire and chanting, Lord of Light, defend us, for the night is dark and full of terrors . “Winter is coming,” Jon said at last, breaking the awkward silence, “and with it the white walkers. The Wall is where we stop them. The Wall was made to stop them … but the Wall must be manned.

I interpreted the astronomy as follows: streaks of red fire turning to black ice as the sunlight disappears and people talk of white walkers and defending the Wall is a representation of fiery meteors streaking down to land and cause massive floods during the Long Night.  As you can see, that sequence fits very much with the black and bloody tide ideas, and I think it supports the idea that the rivers of black ice and black and bloody tide motifs do in fact refer to real floods – the rivers of black ice really sound like a flood.  It might be portrayed as icy because one of the meteors impacted a glacier in the north, as with the Younger Dryas comet here on earth, or perhaps it’s a cold flood simply because it came during the Long Night, a prolonged winter.

Right after Jon has his dream of being armored in black ice and defending the Wall with a burning red sword in A Dance with Dragons, we find this quote associating rotten ice – which is similar to black ice – with drowning:

“If the wildlings uphold the terms of the bargain, all will go as you’ve commanded.”

And if not, it may turn to blood and carnage. “Remember,” Jon said, “Tormund’s people are hungry, cold, and fearful. Some of them hate us as much as some of you hate them. We are dancing on rotten ice here, them and us. One crack, and we all drown. If blood should be shed today, it had best not be one of us who strikes the first blow, or I swear by the old gods and the new that I will have the head of the man who strikes it.”

So that’s rotten ice which leads to drowning, sandwiched by two mentions of bloodshed, with a side of decapitation.  Sounds delicious!

Consider the idea of tears in regards to the appearance of red streaks of fire turning to rivers of black ice in the cracks in the Wall.  When the Wall melts, as it does in this scene, it is said to weep.  In other words, it is the tears of the Wall which are the red streaks of fire and rivers of black ice.  Compare that to the idea of the moon crying tears of blood which are manifested as the bloodstone meteors and the blood tide.  Either way, the tears become Lightbringer meteors.  Even better, Ygitte tells Jon that the Wall is made of blood, so we can also think of the Wall’s tears as tears of blood in a sense.  Jon reinforces this by saying that one crack in the rotten ice means that “it may turn to blood.”  I could actually do a whole section on tears – Alyssa’s tears, frozen tears, the tears of Lys, Lyssa’s tears Cat’s tears – but I want to focus on the red fire and black ice right now.   Those are the moon’s tears, and they fall from the heavens like streaks of red fire or bleeding stars, and trigger rivers of black ice, the dark tide rising from the depths.  And all this goes down as the last light of the sun fades… in other words, as the sun turns dark.

So, Jon Snow, a manifestation of the dark solar king archetype, has his own black and bloody tides symbolism, from the black blood the black brothers are said to have to the streaks of red fire and rivers of black ice.  There’s a match to be found in another solar king, Khal Drogo.  Drogo is Dany’s “sun and stars,” of course, and like all Dothraki, he has those black “eyes of night.”  This is from the night of their wedding, as they prepare to consummate the union, and therefore this scene represents the forging of Lightbringer, when the sun and moon had sexy time together:

Drogo did not reply. His long heavy braid was coiled in the dirt beside him. He pulled it over his right shoulder and began to remove the bells from his hair, one by one. After a moment Dany leaned forward to help. When they were done, Drogo gestured. She understood. Slowly, carefully, she began to undo his braid. It took a long time. All the while he sat there silently, watching her. When she was done, he shook his head, and his hair spread out behind him like a river of darkness, oiled and gleaming. She had never seen hair so long, so black, so thick.

The solar king unleashes a river of darkness  when he copulates with the moon.  That river of darkness begins coiled, like a black snake, and then spreads out like black oil.  The disappearance of the bells probably denotes the disappearance of the stars.  I’ve been saving this quote for a while, to be honest.  It’s a real prize because it shows that George has had the oily black stone in mind from the very beginning, and not just in the form of the mysterious seastone chair.  The oily black river of darkness comes from the sun because the oily black stones came from the sun’s impregnation of the moon, which caused the Long Night.  It’s a nice parallel to Jon’s rivers of black ice that come from streaks of red fire as the last light of sun fades.

Two paragraphs before this, Dany notes that “Drogo towered over her as he towered over everyone,” placing Drogo and his river of darkness in the celestial realm, where it should be, just as we saw with Gerold Hightower.  The imagery if this scene is paralleled in another scene depicting Lightbringer’s forging, where Dany eat’s the stallion’s heart to give strength to unborn baby Rhaego:

Her stomach roiled and heaved, yet she kept on, her face smeared with the heartsblood that sometimes seemed to explode against her lips. Khal Drogo stood over her as she ate, his face as hard as a bronze shield. His long black braid was shiny with oil.

Bronze shields have been compared to suns on several occasions – with the Karstark sigil, with Oberyn’s shield, and with the molten eyes of Rhaegal, so it makes sense to use that symbol for Drogo’s solar face.  Before Drogo towered over Dany; here he stands over her.  And again, his braid is associated with black oil.  All this while heart blood explodes and covers the moon maiden’s face.  Dany will eventually wash this blood off by dipping herself into the “black as night” waters of the Womb of the World.  Blood and black water, once again, as moons drown.

The idea of Dany as a heart-eater makes sense when we think about the fact that meteorites are referred to as “the heart of a fallen star.”  A bloody heart would be a bleeding star, such as the red comet.  So when we see the moon maiden eating a bloody heart, we can think of the moon being force fed the Lightbringer comet.  It’s a celestial cataclysm version of that seen in the movie Seven, with the spaghetti.. okay nevermind, that was disgusting.

Anyway, the notion of moon maidens as heart-eaters draws further parallels with Joffrey’s sword named Hearteater, which is replaced by Widow’s Wail.  The name Widow’s Wail seems to refer to Nissa Nissa’s cry of anguish and ecstasy, while Lightbringer was a heart-eater, consuming Nissa Nissa’s heartblood.   Eating the stallion’s heart also makes Dany feel nauseous, just as the moon was sickened by the poisonous Lightbringer come.  Her stomach even “roils” and “heaves,” just like a turbulent ocean, and since her stomach is filed with blood, we are of course talking about an ocean of blood.  A couple of paragraphs before the quote we just cited, we read:

Despite the tender mother’s stomach that had afflicted her these past two moons, Dany had dined on bowls of half-clotted blood to accustom herself to the taste, and Irri made her chew strips of dried horseflesh until her jaws were aching.

Two moons, you don’t say.  One of those moons was a mother who ate hearts and grew sick, so I’ve heard.

To wrap up the solar king Khal Drogo’s symbolism, we see that not only does he unleash an oily black river of darkness, but he also finds himself with black blood at his time of death, as I mentioned last time.  Again we see the notorious black water and black blood motifs paired together, as well as the oil mixed in to create an association with the oily or greasy black stone.  When Drogo burns in the pyre, he lets loose greasy smoke, building on the connection between solar death and greasy or oily black stone.

---

Drinking the Light, Sun Stone

I believe the black and bloody tide motif has a twin sister, and that’s the sweet child known as “waves of night and blood.”  Those are the ones we saw in the steel of Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail, the two swords made from Ned’s Ice, Lightbringer symbol extraordinaire.  The description of the steel, which seems to have two distinct layers, is as “waves of night and blood upon some steely shore.”  Like the black and bloody tides motif, this creates the image of a dark, bloody flood that came in the Long Night.  The fact that Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail are Lightbringer symbols suggest that the waves of blood and night were triggered by a moon meteor and by the red comet.  That’s the same message we came away with from Melisandre’s vision – black and bloody tides triggered by bloody meteors.

That’s also the same idea we came away with from the streaks of red fire turning to rivers of black ice – red meteors triggering black tides during the Long Night which are associated with Lightbringer.  That’s why I introduced these three as parallel symbols, because they tell the same story, which is Lightbringer’s story.

The parallels go a bit further than that, though, when we consider the concept of black ice.  Black ice seems to, broadly speaking, refer to three general concepts – floods (when the black ice is in river form), comets (which are dirty balls of ice and rocky iron ore) and black swords (such as Ned’s Valyrian steel sword, Ice, which is nearly black, and which I’ve taken the liberty of nicknaming “Black Ice”).   I’ve interpreted this to imply that Lightbringer was a kind of prototype for Valyrian steel, a black sword made from a black meteor which burned with red fire or black and red fire.  These meteors also caused floods, which is why Jon’s red fire / black ice motif causes dark, icy rivers which drown.  Even his black ice armor implies drowning, because in A Storm of Swords,  Dany dreams of melting warriors armored ice with her dragons, which turns the Trident River into a torrent.

It’s just the same with Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail, whose waves of night and blood imply the dark tide.  But they also have the black ice element, like Jon’s symbols, because they are made from Ned’s “Black Ice” sword.  Black ice is a sword which creates waves of night and blood, I believe that’s the message of Ned’s sword and its children.

Basically, these are same symbols as Jon’s red fire and black ice in a slightly different configuration.  Jon’s red fire once takes the form of a burning red sword, and the other time it streaks down and turns into the black ice, which directly implies that fiery sword meteors turned into black ice, meaning black steel.  It also implies that fiery sword meteors turned into black ice, as in rivers of cold black water.  If Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail are black ice swords that look like dark floods, what we have here in the cracks in the Wall is icy water which looks like fiery red swords turning into black icy floods.  That’s what I mean by the same set of symbols – swords, black ice, dark floods – in slightly different configurations.

As we can see, George is using the “black ice” motif to draw a connection between Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail’s waves of night and blood and Jon’s red fire and black ice.

There can be no doubt this “waves of night and blood” language is important, because it’s given to us three times.  First Tyrion sees Widow’s Wail, and says “waves of night and blood,” and then later in the same scene, he picks up Oathkeeper, which he thinks of as a close cousin to the first and muses that the two swords “shared the same fine clean lines and the same distinctive color, the ripples of blood and night.”  Later, when Jamie gives the sword to Brienne, the wording is “Blood and black the ripples shone.”  I believe this precise choice of language exists because  it is supposed to correlate with the black and bloody tide motif, which means they both refer to the flood triggered by the meteor impacts.  The match between “blood and black the ripples shone” and “black and bloody tides” is pretty freakin close.

What’s really cool about Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail is that they combine several different bloodstone concepts in one package.  The first is the blood consecration idea – Ned’s Ice was covered in Ned’s blood.  We are even specifically shown during the siege of King’s Landing that Ser Ilyn does not clean the blood off the blade after using it, so it seems we are supposed to think of Ice as being soiled with sacrificial blood, like the bloodstone meteors and Lightbringer itself.  We also saw that Arya perceives the red comet – the bleeding star – as Ice, covered in Ned’s blood, so again, I think George is drawing our attention to Ice as a bloody sword, and this association passes along to Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail, whose red is the color of blood.

The second and third ways that the swords are acting like bloodstone are from the Pliny the Elder quote: darkening the sun’s reflection to the color of blood while submerged, and being a sun mirror.  Add to this the general concept of turning the sun or turning in the sun, the literal meaning of heliotrope.  Recall that the Maiden-Made-of-Light – the sun – “turned her back” and “hid her face from the world.”  In the scene where solar king Jon Snow sees the red fire and black ice in the cracks of the Wall, there’s a line that says “Jon Snow turned away. The last light of the sun had begun to fade.”  It’s like Jon is himself the sun here, and when he turns away, the last light of the sun fades… pretty cool.    

Now I’ve quoted this scene where Tyrion first sees Oathkeeper a couple of times, and this won’t be the last time either.  As you listen, watch out for watery language, and for people turning the blade. In fact, this scene is basically a couple of lions turning the sword in the sunlight over and over again.  Their solar, leonine gaze is matched by the sunlight streaming in through the windows.  If you like, you can imagine Tywin and Tyrion wearing big fuzzy yellow football mascot lion heads as we read this scene.

The light streaming through the diamond- shaped panes of glass made the blade shimmer black and red as Lord Tywin turned it to inspect the edge, while the pommel and crossguard flamed gold. “With this fool’s jabber of Stannis and his magic sword, it seemed to me that we had best give Joffrey something extraordinary as well. A king should bear a kingly weapon.” 

So that’s sunlight shimmering on the blade as solar figure Tywin turns the sword.   We see a suggestion of a flaming sword (the crossguard).  There’s also a direct reference to Stannis’s magic sword, Lightbringer.

“That’s much too much sword for Joff,” Tyrion said. 

“He will grow into it. Here, feel the weight of it.” The sword was much lighter than he had expected. As he turned it in his hand he saw why. Only one metal could be beaten so thin and still have strength enough to fight with, and there was no mistaking those ripples, the mark of steel that has been folded back on itself many thousands of times. “Valyrian steel?”

“Yes,” Lord Tywin said, in a tone of deep satisfaction.

That’s one more sword turning…

Tyrion wondered where the metal for this one had come from. A few master armorers could rework old Valyrian steel, but the secrets of its making had been lost when the Doom came to old Valyria.

I’ve mentioned that the Doom may be serving as a kind of parallel to the Long Night disaster.  The Doom was when the skies rained down dragonglass and the black blood of demons – and of course that makes a lot more sense when you think about a rain of black bloodstones instead of black blood.  The rain of dragonglass complements this idea by creating the image of falling black blades which are associated with dragons.  The Doom was also accompanied by “walls of water 300 feet high” which drowned whole islands, to use a phrase we know.  Since I am suggesting the “waves of night and blood crashing upon some steely shore” in these swords is referring to the floods triggered by the moon meteors, I like the fact that the Doom – a story about floods and a rain of black blood and dragonglass – is mentioned right in the middle of this scene.

This is of course another manifestation of the “storm of swords” motif, and again there’s a parallel to be found on the Iron Islands, where they sing “old reaving songs” like   “The Bloody Cup” and “Steel Rain” – you know, all the classics.  Time after time, we see these concepts paired together – the rain of swords or steel and the waves of blood, with the idea of a bloody cup giving us the blood-drinking connotation we saw earlier with Aquan the Red Bull and Bors the Breaker, a connotation which of course originates with Lightbringer drinking Nissa Nissa’s blood.  Like I said – meteors, floods, and darkness.

“The colors are strange,” he commented as he turned the blade in the sunlight. Most Valyrian steel was a grey so dark it looked almost black, as was true here as well. But blended into the folds was a red as deep as the grey. The two colors lapped over one another without ever touching, each ripple distinct, like waves of night and blood upon some steely shore. “How did you get this patterning? I’ve never seen anything like it.” 

There’s our payoff quote, and once again it’s the same structure – swords that bring blood and night.  All of the watery imagery in this scene and in the sword itself works to create the image a submerged bloodstone.  Just a minute ago, we saw a rain of blood that symbolizes sword-like meteors, and we saw something very similar when we looked at Melisandre’s vision of the black and bloody tide, where the skulls weeping blood symbolized the sword meteors.  Now we see the reverse: a sword that looks like waves of blood, instead of blood that represents swords.  Of course it goes without saying that all of these symbols are associated with Lightbringer.  

We also see another blade turning – that’s three now – and this time it’s turned in the sunlight specifically.  And now, the other payoff quote, which will introduce our next important concept:

“Nor I, my lord,” said the armorer. “I confess, these colors were not what I intended, and I do not know that I could duplicate them. Your lord father had asked for the crimson of your House, and it was that color I set out to infuse into the metal. But Valyrian steel is stubborn. These old swords remember, it is said, and they do not change easily. I worked half a hundred spells and brightened the red time and time again, but always the color would darken, as if the blade was drinking the sun from it. And some folds would not take the red at all, as you can see.

So, it was colored a bright red, but that stubborn old sword absolutely insists on darkening the color to that of blood – just like a submerged bloodstone is supposed to do.  That’s a pretty specific reference to heliotrope, and it’s the kind of thing that should clear up any doubt about whether or not George is mining the associations of bloodstone and heliotrope as a part of his Lightbringer mythos.

Drinking the sun’s light is important, because the the moon meteors drank the sun’s fire – I’ve mentioned this before, you’re not impressed.  Well, that was before we were thinking about bloodstone as something which darkens the sun’s light.  We are about to get into plants which are said to act “heliotropically” because their flowers and leaves very noticeably turn to face the sun throughout the day, the better to drink up its light.  Another related concept is the idea of bloodstone as a sun stone – a stone which soaks up the sun and is therefore imbued with solar energy.  These are all types of light-drinking.

The list of things which drink the light in A Song of Ice and Fire seems carefully chosen, when you take a look at them, and I believe that they all refer to moon meteors, or thing burnt by moon meteors.  The moon drinks the sun’s light and fire, and as a result, the moon meteor children are themselves sun-drinkers, so either Lightbringer itself or things stabbed by Lightbringer should be expected to drink the light.

• Oathkeeper and Widows Wail – we got that.  Lightbringer symbols.

• The oily black stone of Asshai – might be moon meteor stone, or stone burnt black by moon meteor impacts.  Perhaps there’s a nasty black moon meteor at the heart of the shadowlands whose poison is leeching into the very land and turning the stone black and greasy.  Any of these ideas would fit the pattern.

• The stone of the pit Viserion and Rhaegal are chained up in in A Dance with Dragons: “Walls and floor and ceiling drank the light. Scorched, he realized. Bricks burned black, crumbling into ash.”  Stone burnt by dragon fire fits in with the bloodstone meteors which drank the sun’s fire.

• The House of the Undying, from A Clash of Kings:  “Long and low, without towers or windows, it coiled like a stone serpent through a grove of black-barked trees whose inky blue leaves made the stuff of the sorcerous drink the Qartheen called shade of the evening. No other buildings stood near. Black tiles covered the palace roof, many fallen or broken; the mortar between the stones was dry and crumbling. She understood now why Xaro Xhoan Daxos called it the Palace of Dust. Even Drogon seemed disquieted by the sight of it. The black dragon hissed, smoke seeping out between his sharp teeth. “Blood of my blood,” Jhogo said in Dothraki, “this is an evil place, a haunt of ghosts and maegi. See how it drinks the morning sun? Let us go before it drinks us as well.”     A stone serpent is a great comet symbol, and this stone serpent is heavily associated with shadows.  To find it drinking the sun – the morning sun, no less – is not a surprise.  As a bonus, I’ll mention that the Nightswatch brother called Stone Snake comes from the shadow tower – and the House of the Undying literally is a shadow tower, a tower which doesn’t actually exist.  Dany seems to climb up and up, only to run straight out after Drogon lights the place up.  It’s a shadow tower that’s a stone snake, a pretty cool parallel.

•  Renly’s armor right before he’s assassinated: this scene is too heavy to even get into in any depth, but the long and short of it is that Renly’s armor drinks the light, right before he has his throat slashed by Azor Ahai’s “shadowsword,” the shadow of a sword which is not there – Stannis’s fake Lightbringer.  As a victim of Lightbringer, he is the right man to drink the light – sorry Renly, you don’t get a choice.  After Renly’s throat is cut, the blood washes over his armor like a “dark tide” and “an evil flow,” and “drowns out the green and gold,” which are the colors of summer and life, of plants and sunshine.  Renly’s last word is “cold…”  As this dark deed goes down, all the lamps in the tent go out.   The tent was a “magical castle, alive with light” right before, so the transformation is notable.  Light-drinking, Lightbringer the shadowsword, throat cutting, the dark blood tide, and then darkness and cold.

(Interestingly, there’s a link between the light drinking stone of the dragon’s pit under the pyramid and Renly’s armor. Renly’s light-drinking armor is described as “a deep green, the green of leaves in a summer wood,” while Rhaegal, the green and gold dragon, has “scales of dark green, the green of moss in the deep woods at dusk, just before the last light fades.”  We’ll revisit this idea when we turn the focus to Garth the Green and horned god archetype, a subject I am eager to get to.) 

As we can see, the “drinking the light” or “drinking the sun” phrases are consistently used in a way which refers to the Lightbringer meteors, and I believe this is in accordance with bloodstone as being a stone which darkens the sun, which drinks its light.  Since it is one of the first basic facts we are given about the meteors – they drank the fire of the sun – I think it’s quite important.  Essentially, I see this as a corroboration of the general premise of the last episode, that the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai represents the inverted solar king who brought the Long Night, and that Lightbringer is associated with shadow and darkness, with drinking the light instead of giving it off.  Contrast the “alive with light” language applied to the sword Dawn with the idea of “drinking the sun’s light” associated with Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail – should we really expect Azor Ahai’s sword to give off light?  Not any kind of natural light, that’s for sure.  It should be light or fire that has been turned, somehow…

I can’t help but think that the concept of black fire goes back to Lightbringer as well.  All the symbolism between the black dragons and Lightbringer match, so I don’t see why Azor Ahai’s sword wouldn’t light up with black and red flame.  I’ve got my fingers crossed that Brienne’s sun drinking, red and black sword might have a chance at doing the black fire thing.  Maybe Blackfyre itself, if it ever surfaces.  Fingers crossed.

To finish up on Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail, here are the ways in which these swords act like bloodstone.  They are consecrated in blood like bloodstone; they turn in the sunlight like bloodstone, they drink the sunlight like bloodstone, they darken the sun’s reflection to the color of the blood like bloodstone, and they imply a submersion in water as they darken the sun’s reflection to blood, like bloodstone.  I believe this is good evidence in support of the ideas laid out so far concerning bloodstone and Lightbringer, and that the waves of blood and night swords which drink the light are a part of the Lightbringer family of symbolism.

This also raises the possibility that Ned’s sun-drinking black sword is literally made from moon meteor stone.  Perhaps it’s the original Lightbringer of Azor Ahai, kept in the crypts of Winterfell for millennia until it could be passed off as Valyrian steel.  Or perhaps the Valyrians sold Ned’s ancestor Lightbringer by accident!  Whoops!  (I’m picturing some silver haired Valyrian intern getting fed to a dragon by his superiors for selling Ned’s great-grandaddy Lightbringer by mistake.)  Or perhaps all Valyrian steel has black meteor stone in it – that’s probably more likely to be the case.    It’s hard to know because we haven’t seen anyone try to color another Valyrian steel sword, so we don’t know if the weird way Ned’s sword acts is unique or not.  I’m going to do an episode focusing on Valyrian steel sword exclusively, and we’ll take a detailed look at what exactly happens when Ice is split and reforged.

---

The Black Dread Reborn

Compare the three bloody flood motifs we’ve examined so far – the black and bloody tides, the waves of night and blood, and the red fire and rivers of black ice – to one of our other prime Lightbringer symbols, Drogon, and notice the tight correlations in the wording.  The black dragon in Dany’s dream which represents Drogon has scales as “black as night, wet and slick with blood,”  matching the “waves of night and blood” language exactly.  Drogon’s egg meanwhile is called “black as a midnight sea,” like waves of night, in other words – “yet alive with scarlet ripples and swirls” – there’s our waves of blood, and the whole thing speaks of a black and bloody tide from the sea.  When Drogon’s egg finally hatches, there are many uses of watery language to describe the fire, which I highlighted when we dissected that scene in the first podcast.  Drogon’s blood, of course, is black and burning.

“Aegon’s dragons were named for the gods of Old Valyria,” she told her bloodriders one morning after a long night’s journey. “Visenya’s dragon was Vhagar, Rhaenys had Meraxes, and Aegon rode Balerion, the Black Dread. It was said that Vhagar’s breath was so hot that it could melt a knight’s armor and cook the man inside, that Meraxes swallowed horses whole, and Balerion … his fire was as black as his scales, his wings so vast that whole towns were swallowed up in their shadow when he passed overhead.”

The Dothraki looked at her hatchlings uneasily. The largest of her three was shiny black, his scales slashed with streaks of vivid scarlet to match his wings and horns. “Khaleesi,” Aggo murmured, “there sits Balerion, come again.”

“It may be as you say, blood of my blood,” Dany replied gravely, “but he shall have a new name for this new life.”

He is Balerion the Black Dread come again, and like Balerion, Drogon the Winged Shadow has that black fire shot through with red.  Although this fire can still be bright when in a very dark place, such as the House of the Undying where Drogon’s fire is described as “bright and hot,” the general notion of fire which is black speaks of inverting the luminescent qualities of fire – in other words, drinking the light, darkening the sun’s fire, etc.  The House of the Undying example is the only time his fire is called bright – every other time it’s “dark flame” or “black fire.”  As an aside, the idea that even the black fire of the black dragon can be bright in comparison to unnatural blue shadows like the Undying might suggest that Lightbringer the evil black sword might still be effective in fighting the Others – this could be the potential redemption arc for Lightbringer which I have mentioned a few times.  Perhaps the idea is that we have to drink all that blue starlight clean out of their bodies so they melt into a little puddle.

Drogon also matches other aspects of bloodstone, such as the idea of bloodstone being a sun-stone which is imbued with the power of the sun (due to all that sun-drinking it does, of course).  The Qarthine myth tells us that the dragon meteors drank the fire of the sun, and that that is why they  breathe flame – they’ve been imbued with solar power (dark solar power, but still).  Last time we examined a couple of quotes that show that Lightbringer is imbued with the power of the sun – it’s called “the sun made steel” when Stannis unsheathes it at the Wall, and Grenn tells Jon that “it glows like it had a piece of sun inside it.”  Drogon, who is himself “fire made flesh,” has some similar quotes:

She put her palm against the black egg, fingers spread gently across the curve of the shell. The stone was warm. Almost hot. “The sun,” Dany whispered. “The sun warmed them as they rode.”

There’s also this line about living Drogon from A Dance with Dragons:

Drogon was curled up beneath her arm, as hot as a stone that has soaked all day in the blazing sun. 

Look, he’s even curled into a cute little Drogon-ball.  The language here is pretty specific – Drogon soaks up the sun, like a stone.  He’s just like the bloodstone, a stone which drinks the sun and is therefore imbued with solar energy.

Let’s even slip in a little eclipse talk here too, because Drogon, the winged shadow, seems to have a habit of covering things in shadow.  We already saw that Balerion’s wings could swallow a whole town in shadow when he passed overhead – when he eclipses the sun, in other words, and Drogon exhibits the same behavior.  This is from the end of A Dance with Dragons, as Dany is stranded with Drogon in the Dothraki Sea:

The second time he passed before the sun, his black wings spread, and the world darkened.

Earlier in A Dance with Dragons, when Drogon lands in the fighting pits with Daenerys, like her knight in shining armor, we get this quote:

Drogon rose, his wings covering her in shadow.  Dany swung the lash at his scaled belly, back and forth until her arm began to ache.  His long serpentine neck bent like an archer’s bow.  With a hisssssss, he spat black fire down at her.  Dany darted underneath the flames, swinging the whip and shouting, “No, no, no. Get DOWN!”  His answering roar was full of fear and fury, full of pain.  His wings beat once, twice… and folded.  The dragon gave one last hiss and stretched out flat upon his belly.  Black blood was flowing from the wound where the spear had pierced him, smoking where it dripped onto the scorched sands.  He is fire made flesh, she thought, and so am I.  (ADWD, Daenerys)

Drogon is just kind of showing off the range of Lightbringer symbolism here: a serpent, an archer’s bow, a spear, a whip, wings of shadow, burning black blood, black fire, smoke… Drogon also “rose,” like a rising sun or moon or star.  The folded wings may reference the idea of folded steel – Valyrian steel – which is steel made in dragon fire, of course.

The mention of the whip, also called a lash in this scene, brings up a little detail I’d like to clean up from the first podcast.  During the Alchemical Wedding scene, I pointed to Drogo’s flaming lash which seems to crack open the first dragon’s egg as the specific symbol of Lightbringer the comet:

Now, she thought, now, and for an instant she glimpsed Khal Drogo before her, mounted on his smoky stallion, a flaming lash in his hand. He smiled, and the whip snaked down at the pyre, hissing.

I neglected to point out that at the beginning of the scene, Dany looks right at the comet and calls it the “Dragon’s Tail.”  The tails of the dragons are in turn often described as a whip and a lash – it happened twice in the fighting pit scene, a bit before the section I quoted.  The idea that a “dragon’s tail” can refer to the red comet or a lash reinforces the idea that Drogo’s hissing, flaming lash was in fact meant to represent the comet as it “snaked down” and cracked the stone egg, just like Lightbringer is supposed to.  Just for good measure, George also gives us several occurrences of a whip cracking like thunder, evoking the lightning / thunderbolt motif and bloodstone’s association with causing lightning and thunderstorms, while the dragon’s eggs cracked by Drogo’s fiery, hissing lash make a sound “as loud and sharp as thunder.”  Drogon himself also brings thunder, as we see in this earlier quote from the Daznak’s pit scene:

Above them all the dragon turned, dark against the sun. His scales were black, his eyes and horns and spinal plates blood red. Ever the largest of her three, in the wild Drogon had grown larger still. His wings stretched twenty feet from tip to tip, black as jet. He flapped them once as he swept back above the sands, and the sound was like a clap of thunder.

The flying dragon “turns, dark against the sun,” evoking the sun-turning definition of heliotrope and the ideas of darkening the sun and eclipsing the sun.  Dark against the sun implies an eclipse, with Drogon playing the role of dragon moon superimposed over the sun.  Drogon’s red is called blood red, to go along with the various times his scales have been called “black as night.”  Night and blood, once again.  Elsewhere in A Dance with Dragons, Drogon’s eyes are called “pits of fire” and “smoldering red pits,” which remind us of the black and bloody holes in the decapitated heads of the Nightswatch brothers.  Even better, Dany actually sees herself in the reflection of Drogon’s red eyes in the pit scene – since reborn Daenerys is now a solar king, Azor Ahai reborn, Drogon’s eyes are acting like sun-mirrors – but of course the reflected image is turned to the color of blood, like a true bloodstone.

There’s just one more bloodstone idea to be found with Drogon.  Bloodstone is sometimes called the “mother goddess stone,” and it’s associated with moon goddesses who resurrect the dead solar king, like Isis, Inanna, and Ishtar / Astarte.  Drogon is a symbol of Azor Ahai reborn and Lightbringer, which parallels the idea that Drogon is named after Drogon and hatches when Drogon is burned, or even that Drogon contains some element of Drogo’s spirit or life-force.  Dany hatched Drogon – so in other words, she resurrected the solar king.  There are actually a lot of Ishtar / Daenerys parallels – Ishtar’s statues usually have amethyst for eyes, for a start – but I will save that for a future essay focusing on moon goddesses and night goddesses.  The red comet, which also represents reborn Drogo, is of course a bleeding stone, so again we see the resurrection of the solar king concept intertwined with bloodstone.

I’ve mentioned that the concept of Azor Ahai reborn can appear as resurrected Azor Ahai, or as the child of Azor Ahai.  You might even be tired of me saying it.  But consider this – Drogon represents both the resurrected solar king AND Dany’s child.  And that’s exactly what I am talking about with consistency of symbols.  Martin devises ways to create symbols which represent two concepts at once, or even more than two.  And then there’s this bit from A Dance with Dragons, as Daenerys ponders the meaning of Mirri Maz Durr’s “prophecy:”

The meaning was plain enough; Khal Drogo was as like to return from the dead as she was to bear a living child.

Khal Drogo returning from the dead and Dany bearing a living child would both represent Azor Ahai reborn, just as Drogon represents both reborn Drogo and Dany’s living child.

All in all, we can see that Drogon is a Lightbringer symbol par excellence, and just like Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail, he’s showing off many of the attributes of bloodstone.

---

Dark Wings, Dark Stars

The ultimate sun drinking quote comes from a Bran chapter of A Dance with Dragons.  What, I ask you, is the absolute epitome of drinking sunlight?  In the whole entire universe, what’s the most well known mascot of drinking the light?  Why, a black hole of course.  A dark-star.  Since the chief sun-drinker in our story is the moon, it sure would be nice if Martin found some way to describe the moon as a black hole.

The moon was a black hole in the sky.  Wolves howled in the wood, sniffing through the snowdrifts after dead things.  A murder of ravens erupted from the hillside, screaming their sharp cries, black wings beating above a white world.  A red sun rose and set and rose again, painting the snows in shades of rose and pink.  Under the hill, Jojen brooded, Meera fretted, and Hodor wandered through dark tunnels with a sword in his right hand and a torch in his left.  Or was it Bran wandering?  No one must ever know. 

The great cavern that opened on the abyss was as black as pitch, black as tar, blacker than the feathers of a crow.  Light entered as a trespasser, unwanted and unwelcome, and soon was gone again; cookfires, candles, and rushes burned for a little while, then guttered out again, their brief lives at an end. 

Wooo-boy!  Now we’re getting somewhere.  The moon is a black hole, a dark star, a light-vortex.  It’s like a b-side to Soundgarden’s “black hole sun” – black hole moon.

First, wave hello to Mithras!  The sword in one hand and torch in the other of Bran-controlled Hodor is a clear allusion to rock-born Mithras.  Mithras-HodorBran “wanders” – the word is used twice – as the sun rose and set and rose again, giving us the idea of a dying and resurrected sun, or perhaps a dying and resurrected solar deity.  Which is exactly what Mithras is, of course, and it’s what Azor Ahai seems to be.

Ok, so let’s talk about ravens.  Ravens are obviously a very important symbol in the novels, woven through many scenes and chapters in every book. Similarly, they are a very important symbol in regards to mythical astronomy.  It may not surprise you that I am going to propose that ravens (and crows) represent black moon meteors.  There are several reasons of this, so here it goes.

Crows and ravens are flying black things, like the meteors.  Note the synergy of blackness in this quote between the abyss, the ravens, the crows, and the black hole moon.  The moon is a black hole, while the abyss gets an entire paragraph dedicated to describing how uber-black it is (that’s so metal, bro).  The ravens erupt like meteors, and just when the moon is a black hole – that’s exactly when we should see meteors.  The ravens have beating black wings – beating like a heart pumping black blood, I would say.  It reminds us of Orell’s eagle with it’s heart burnt to a blackened cinder by fire magic, as well as the other black hearts we’ve discussed.  Just the other day I noticed that Robert refers to having driven the spike of his war hammer right into Rhaegar’s “black heart,” which is perfect, since Rhaegar is a terrific incarnation of the Azor Ahai / dark solar king archetype, the black dragon.   Then we have the black feathers of a crow, to which the light-drinking abyss is compared. This certainly puts us in mind of the NightsWatch, who are called crows, and are said to have “black blood.”  Crows and ravens basically share the same symbolism – they’re like cousins, as we are told by Maester Aemon.  Darkness, black blood, erupting or “pouring forth,” drinking light and killing the light – stop me if this sounds familiar to you.

These two paragraphs seem like a terrific example of George presenting us with a cohesive set of symbols which all pertain to the same thing, a technique we have seen many times by now.  The raven – meteor parallels actually go a bit further, too.  The maester’s chain link for learning ravencraft is… (wait for it) …black iron.  Black iron meteorites are exactly what we are talking about.  Those are the ones you can make swords from.

The ravens come from places which symbolize the celestial realm.  In the above quote, it was the hillside, which is something like a small mountain.  Just as with mountains and towers and people, the tops of trees can be used to symbolize the celestial realm, as it is in the real world with the Yggdrasil tree of Norse myth and many other mythological “world trees.”  Items placed in the upper branches of such a tree therefore represent heavenly bodies.  Of course the limbs of the weirwood trees are usually where we find the ravens.

We also find the red leaves of the tree, which are described as bits of flame or bloody hands, both of which are familiar to us as moon meteors symbols.  There’s a black abyss of symbolism around red and bloody hands we can fall into – another time perhaps – such as with Benerro and his fiery-fingered moon-destruction pantomime, or with Timmet, the “Red Hand” of the “Burned Men” in the “Mountains of the Moon.”  We’ve also got Jon Snow, who burns his hand fighting the wights, and then shortly after, gets both arms bloody to the elbow while flinging dead meat to the  ravens.  We’ll stop there for now, but the point is made: bloody hands of flaming hands represent the fiery hand of god which flings the bloody meteors, so to speak, and I believe that’s why Martin chose them as symbols for the weirwood leaves, because the branches of the tree represent the celestial realms.   That also includes things besides the ravens and the red leaves, such as fruit, when Martin wants to show a star being “plucked” from the sky.  This also ties in to the Garden of Eden story and the fruit of the tree which represents the knowledge of the gods that Adam ate.  Stealing the knowledge of the gods, plucking the apple from the tree, plucking the moon from heaven – this is the well-known mythological theme which George is making excellent use of.

Ravens are used as messengers – “dark wings, dark words,” as they say.  They are viewed as omens – dark ones – and the red comet is called the “red messenger” and is said to foretell blood and fire.  You might even say these meteors were messengers of starry wisdom, since the Bloodstone emperor worshipped his black stone and became the high priest of said starry wisdom church.

The red comet is also called the “sword that slays the seasons” just as the white ravens are sent out to herald the change of seasons.  I think the white ravens being the ones to herald the season change is interesting, because Lightbringer was white hot right before it stabbed Nissa Nissa, and we’ve talked about that correlating to the original Lightbringer comet being white and pale blue like a normal comet before it struck the moon, with the surviving half only turning red after passing through the fire.  The white raven / comet heralded the change of season – from fall to winter, but then we only got the black ravens / meteors during the night.  This would also square with the idea of Dawn representing some kind of technology from the lost Great Empire of the Dawn, whose gemstone emperors appear to Daenerys in her wake the dragon dream holding swords of pale fire.  It seems like Azor Ahai’s black sword might be a corrupt version of the original design, which shone with pale flame.

Not only do crows and ravens erupt from the heavens and drink the light – they’re good for eclipses, too.  Since we have the raven imagery fresh in our minds, let’s take a look at this quote, the scene in which Coldhands makes his dramatic entrance, stage left:

“Fair.” The raven landed on his shoulder. “Fair, far, fear.” It flapped its wings, and screamed along with Gilly. The wights were almost on her. He heard the dark red leaves of the weirwood rustling, whispering to one another in a tongue he did not know. The starlight itself seemed to stir, and all around them the trees groaned and creaked. Sam Tarly turned the color of curdled milk, and his eyes went wide as plates. Ravens! They were in the weirwood, hundreds of them, thousands, perched on the bone-white branches, peering between the leaves. He saw their beaks open as they screamed, saw them spread their black wings. Shrieking, flapping, they descended on the wights in angry clouds. They swarmed round Chett’s face and pecked at his blue eyes, they covered the Sisterman like flies, they plucked gobbets from inside Hake’s shattered head. There were so many that when Sam looked up, he could not see the moon. “Go,” said the bird on his shoulder. “Go, go, go.”

A fabulous clue that the limbs of the weirwood represent the celestial realm comes here as the the starlight stirs while the leaves whisper.  Whispering leaves is in fact the communication medium of the weirwoods, as we have seen with  several Bran scenes throughout the series.  Starlight, too, whispers, to Daenerys on three different occasions.  I believe this relates to the concept of starry wisdom – the wisdom of the heavens.  In one scene, Quaithe is literally manifesting herself as a mask of starlight in the sky while whispering advice to Dany.  Being a shadow binder from Asshai who dispenses wisdom through starlight, Quaithe is a prime candidate to be an actual devotee of the Church of Starry Wisdom – I certainly tend to think of her in this way.  In any case, we see the leaves whispering and the starlight stirring in the same sentence, and right at the crucial moment.  From the celestial realm of the weirwood, angry clouds of ravens with sharp beaks and cries pour forth – so many that they blot out the moon.  During the Long Night, everyone gets eclipsed.  All heavenly lights are blotted out.  You might say that “when the moon disappears from sight, we get angry clouds of black death messengers.”

There’s a cool line in A Clash of Kings from Salladhor Saan that’s quite similar:

When you speak to King Stannis, mention if you would that he will owe me another thirty thousand dragons come the black of the moon. He ought to have given those gods to me. They were too beautiful to burn, and might have brought a noble price in Pentos or Myr.

Just as we get clouds of black, sun-drinking ravens when the moon is a black hole or when the moon is blotted out, we also get thousand of dragons come the black of the moon.  George has written this paragraph so that Salla wants the dragons and the burning gods, and that’s because the dragons we are really talking about – the flaming moon meters – are to be thought of as pieces of a burning god, or goddess.  When the moon turns black, the dragons are coming.

Elsewhere in the same book, it says that King Stannis’s fiery heart banner arrived at King’s Landing “during the black of the moon.”  Aegon the Conqueror was the original king that landed here, he with his night black armor, black dragon, and Blackfyre sword.  Stannis is the king who’s landing now, and he’s an Azor Ahai symbol with a fiery heart and a flaming sword called Lightbringer.  The fiery heart calls out to Nissa Nissa’s burned heart, as well as the idea of a meteor being the heart of a fallen star – a burning one, to be sure.  In other words, the king that lands by the black water is a fiery heart and a black dragon – Azor Ahai reborn in the form of a black meteor, burning red.  This meteor lands when the moon turns black.  Note also the parallel this draws between Stannis’s Lightbringer and Aegon’s sword Blackfyre… potentially another clue that Azor Ahai’s Lightbringer lit up with black fire.

One more for good measure, this time mixing the red comet with the ravens and stars.  This is from A Clash of Kings:

Jon clapped him on the shoulder with his burned hand.  They walked back through the camp together. Cookfires were being lit all around them. Overhead, the stars were coming out. The long red tail of Mormont’s Torch burned as bright as the moon. Jon heard the ravens before he saw them.  Some were calling his name. The birds were not shy when it came to making noise.

The idea here is that the ravens and the stars that are “coming out” – as in coming out of the sky – both represent the moon meteors.  So looking at the sequence of symbols in this passage, we see that the stars “come out” as the red wanderer burns as bright as the moon – in other words, after the comet and moon both burn brightly.  Immediately after, the black ravens come.  It goes one level further, actually, because Sam is said to have a “moon-face” on four separate occasions, while Jon represents Azor Ahai.  So when he claps Sam on the shoulder with his burned hand, we can imagine the burning hand of the sun clapping the moon – thunderclapping, more like.  And right after, the stars and cook fires come out, the comet and moon burn, and the ravens come in the darkness.

We’ve one last note on ravens and crows as meteors.  Remember Jon’s dream of black ice armor and a burning red sword?  Of course you do, we’ve talked about it enough.  Well in that dream, the scarecrow brothers – the ones who represent fallen NW brothers – are said to “tumble down, black cloaks ablaze.”  Now you can see that those burning crows are representations of flaming meteors, black flying things burning red.  They come from the top of the Wall – the celestial realm – as Jon performs the deeds of Azor Ahai and the Bloodstone Emperor, just as the black meteors would come from the sky as the comet stabs the moon.

As to the ramifications of the Night’s Watch being one of the many black meteor symbols… let’s consider.  The meteors function as reborn Azor Ahai’s dragons or his Lightbringer.  The Night’s Watch is a sword in the darkness, and they fight the Others with flame, so that lines up.  Does this suggest that the original Night’s Watch were Azor Ahai’s troops, his warriors?  This could work with the idea that the Last Hero was the son of Azor Ahai, what you might call Azor Ahai reborn.  Jon was Lord Commander when he had his Azor Ahai dream, commanding his scarecrow Night’s Watch brothers to “feed them flame.”  He also seems to be playing the role of Last Hero in that dream, abandoned and alone as he fights the undead enemies scuttling up the ice.

Another possible meaning of the black brothers / black meteors equivalency I can think of would be the idea that perhaps the original Night’s Watch all wielded dragonsteel, or perhaps just dragonglass.  We know the latter is true, and dragonglass, as black frozen fire that can make blades, works as a fine meteor symbol in its own right, as I believe it did with the Doom and the idea of a rain of black blood and dragonglass.

So, we’ve seen ravens erupt as the moon was a black hole.  We’ve seen ravens descend in angry clouds that blot out the moon, a type of eclipse.  We’ve seen thousands of dragons promised by an Azor Ahai type come the black of the moon.  We’ve seen Drogon eclipse the sun on two occasions. To round out this group, I give you the Darkstar eclipse:

He kept his face clean-shaven, but his thick hair fell to his collar like a silver glacier, divided by a streak of midnight black.  He has a cruel mouth, though, and a crueler tongue. His eyes seemed black as he sat outlined against the dying sun, sharpening his steel, but she had looked at them from a closer vantage and she knew that they were purple. Dark purple. Dark and angry.

He must have felt her gaze upon him, for he looked up from his sword, met her eyes, and smiled. Arianne felt heat rushing to her face. I should never have brought him. If he gives me such a look when Arys is here, we will have blood on the sand.

Darkstar is outlined against the dying sun here, which means he’s standing in front of it – in other words, the dark star is in eclipse position… and sharpening steel swords, preparing to unleash the storm.  The moon is a black hole and a dark star, and when the sun died and the swords came out, the moon appeared black as it stood outlined against the dying sun.  It’s the same language as we saw with Drogon turning “dark against the sun” as he passed in front of it.  I think it’s cool how we see these symbols of the Azor Ahai reborn / dark solar king archetype like Drogon and Darkstar eclipsing the sun. I would think it’s cool, because it supports my theory about bloodstone and the moon and eclipses, but perhaps you think it’s cool as well.

---

We See Dead People

Recall back to the black hole moon quote, where we saw Mithras Hodor-Bran wandering with the sword and the torch, and right next to a sentence about the red sun rising and setting and rising again.  I mentioned that Mithras is resurrected solar king, just as Azor Ahai reborn is.  Dany is reborn in fire to become the Last Dragon.  And in the Darkstar eclipse scene above, the sun that he eclipses is a “dying sun.”  Beric is a literally resurrected Azor Ahai / Bloodstone Emperor figure, and of course Jon Snow seems headed for some kind of resurrection.  Bloodraven too is half a corpse. Heck, there’s even persistent talk of Rhaegar being resurrected, such as when the rumormonger in Vaes Dothrak says that Rhaegar has “returned from the dead and was marshaling a vast host of ancient heroes on Dragonstone to reclaim his father’s throne,” or when Cersei first beholds Aurane Waters and “almost thought Rhaegar Targaryen had returned from the ashes.”  Jaime even sees Rhaegar’s shade in his weirwood stump / flaming sword dream.

The whole point of following all this symbolism is to gain insight about the story and the characters, of course, and when an idea manifests as consistently as this, we have to ponder the meaning.  I can’t help but wonder if the message here is that Azor Ahai became an undead person at some point.  The Bloodstone Emperor was said to practice necromancy, and the city of Nefer – home of Azor Ahai look-alike “Neferion,” is known for their necromancy.  Meanwhile, Benerro, the high priest of the red temple in Volantis, says that Daenerys is Azor Ahai returned, and that “death itself will bend its knee, and all those who die fighting in her cause shall be reborn …”  …but I bet the people in the crowd weren’t thinking reborn as in zombies.  Hilariously, right after this line, Tyrion ask Haldon Halfmaester “do I have to be reborn in the same body?”  Yes Tyrion, I’m afraid that’s part of the deal.  The point is, the theme of necromancy and resurrection – zombies, in other words – is pretty thick.  Undead or half-dead Azor Ahai is a distinct possibility we have to consider.  I’d even say it’s more likely that not, given what we have seen with zombies so far in the story.

Taking this one step further, I’m actually seeing clues about undead black brothers who defend the Wall during the original Long Night as well.  Last time, I talked about how the scarecrow brothers on top of the Wall, the ones stuffed with straw, were named after fallen or absent Night’s Watch brothers.  Those are the ones who tumble down from the Wall, black cloaks ablaze, in Jon’s Azor Ahai dream.  Now consider the other black cloaked scarecrow in the story, Beric, who is called a scarecrow and has actual black blood.  Beric was resurrected by fire – he’s a fiery undead, a burning scarecrow.  Therefore, I think it’s possible that the burning scarecrow brothers in Jon’s dream represent undead black brothers, fighting with undead Azor Ahai at the Wall during the original Long Night.  We’ve already seen one undead black brother – Coldhands – and we are about have another in the form of Jon Snow.

Let’s consider Jon’s dream atop the Wall from the standpoint of Jon as the Last Hero.  We are told that the Last Hero has 12 companions, who died, and that the Last Hero ended up by himself against the Others before receiving some kind of unspecified aid from the children of the forest.  Similarly, Jon finds himself abounded and alone atop the Wall – but is he?  No, actually, he has the burning scarecrow brothers.  If those represent undead Nightswatch, then perhaps the twelve dead companions of the Last Hero were more like twelve undead companions.  We are also told that Azor Ahai did not win his battles alone, and there is a song about the Night’s Watch riding out to fight the War for the Dawn, both of which make it seem like the person fighting the Others should be by themselves.  Perhaps the Night’s Watch did ride out to fight the Others with the Last Hero – but they might have all been undead or resurrected people.

And that makes a lot of sense, practically speaking – think about the unique skill set of the conscious undead, and how perfectly is tailored to the needs of journeying into the frozen dead lands to face the Others.  Coldhands doesn’t have to worry about sleep or food – neither does Mel or Beric, for that matter – and Coldhands is impervious to cold, and Melisandre seems to be as well, although for different reasons.  Whether these twelve undead companions of the Last Hero were reanimated by ice or by fire, they have specific attributes which would be very, very useful for anyone trying to do what the Last Hero and his party were doing.  And again, this is most likely what Jon is headed for – some kind of undead, resurrected state.  And Jon may very well be playing the role of the Last Hero.  If the original Last Hero was resurrected too, then it all fits pretty well, with the future echoing the past.

The last thing I’ll say about this is that the three people I cited as examples – Coldhands, Beric, and Melisandre – all have access to magic.  Beric is the least magical, but he lights his sword on fire with his own black blood.  Melisandre is a given; birthing shadow babies and burning eagles out of the sky is proof of potent magic.  Coldhands, meanwhile, communicates with the ravens and the great elk.  The elk should be afraid of his corpse stink, but instead he obeys Coldhands, even after they split up – the elk takes the children to a predetermined location of Coldhands’ choosing.  The ravens flock to him at night as if he were a weirwood tree, and he’s communicating with them in a few scenes as well.  They attack the wights in concert with Coldhands’s rescue of Sam and Gilly.  Coldhands is acting like a powerful skinchanger or greenseer – except he’s undead.  And no, I absolutely do not buy even the possibility that he’s being skin changed by Bloodraven.  What we can conclude from all this is that resurrected or transformed states of being do not seem to decrease one’s magic.  If you think about it, this makes a lot sense – resurrected Jon is probably going to need more magic at his disposal, not less.

I’ve actually got a lot of notes and evidence gathered on this specific topic, and it’s one of the ones we’ll be turning to in the fairly near future as I pivot from all the Azor Ahai stuff over to greenseers and skinchangers and weirwoods.  That’s right, we will eventually be talking about things other than Lightbringer and moon meteors.

To finish up the sun-turning ideas, I’ll toss you some lighter fare, something fun to break up all the bloodshed.  There exists a modern device called a heliotrope that uses mirrors to reflect sunlight over great distances to mark the positions of participants in a land survey.  This device uses regular mirrors, not mirrors made from actual heliotrope – rather, it’s the “sun-mirror” connotations of heliotrope they were naming the instrument for.  This calls to mind the tale of Serwyn of the Mirror Shield, who slew the dragon Urrax with a spear throw to the eye after using his shield as a mirror, a trick which seems to be drawn from the slaying of the serpent-goddess Medusa of Greek mythology, where Perseus used a similar mirror-shield trick to turn the Medusa to stone with her own reflection.   Even without the bloodstone – sun-mirror idea in mind, it’s easy to see why George might use the Medusa story as inspiration, since it has a goddess turning into a stone snake with more than one head.  The story of Serwyn is actually a detailed celestial metaphor with direct relevance to the Azor Ahai legend, as we will show in a future essay.  There’s also a moment in the Oberyn vs. Mountain fight where Oberyn uses the sun-mirror trick – that’s absolutely not a coincidence, as we will see when I break down that scene.  We also saw this symbol in the eye of Dany’s dragons, which can be like polished shields or mirrors.   Naturally, those mirrors reflect only blood and fire.

---

Purple Flowers and Poison Kisses

The term “heliotropism” is used to describe certain species of flowering plants (genus heliotropium in particular) which turn their flowers to face the sun as it moves throughout the day.  The concept of the heliotropic plant is another application of the idea of “sun turning” (remember that “heliotrope” is made up of root words which mean “sun” and “to turn”).  In this case, the heliotrope flowers are turning towards the sun, the better to drink the sunlight, instead of bending, refracting, or darkening the sunlight.

There is actually a Greek myth behind this idea, that of the Okeanid Nymph Klytie, who along with her six Okeanid sisters, were goddesses of the clouds and fresh water.  Klytie was loved by the sun-god Helios, but after he left her for the “white goddess” Leucothea, a sea goddess, Klytie pined away for Helios for nine days, lying on the ground and turning her head to follow the sun in its course through the sky until her limbs took root and she was transformed into the sun-gazing flower, the heliotrope.  It’s important to note that this myth puts the heliotrope in the role of the female lover of the sun god, which in our celestial model, would be represented by the moon goddess, who was indeed a sun-drinker.  The idea of a moon turning to follow the sun which leads to transofHelios, the sun god, even loves and leaves her for another – that sounds like the part of the Qarthine legend that prophesies that one day the other moon will kiss the sun too.  The sun is supposed to have two wives, two moons, after all, so this is a convenient Greek myth for George to rope into his bloodstone lore. It’s likely he chose bloodstone for some of the reasons listed above – the martyr’s stone idea, most of all – but having done so, he likely would have noticed the Greek myth of Klytie the heliotrope, since it fits so conveniently into his “sun god with two wives” motif.

Now that we

There’s another reason I can confidently say that the heliotropium plants have been part of George’s thinking since the very beginning of the first book.  Why do I say this?  Well, one of the plants in genus heliotropium is called a “valerian” – you might have caught your spellcheck trying to change “Valyrian” to this word, in fact.  The valerian plant has flowers which are – and you’re going to like this – purple.  Well, white or pink or purple, but still – valerians have purple flowers, and they are heliotropes.  Daenerys is the character in the main story who most prominently symbolizes the second moon, and she is of course a Valyrian with purple eyes.  The Amethyst Empress, another symbol of the second moon, is obviously associated with purple via her name.  The idea of the purple valerian flower being a type of heliotropium might suggest that the Valyrians are descended from the Bloodstone Emperor, the Amethyst Empress, or both – and I actually have suggested that very idea in another essay, which will actually be the basis for an upcoming joint podcast between the mythical astronomy of ice and fire and the History of Westeros podcast – that will probably be the next episode you will see after this one, so look out for that.  Interestingly, the purple variety of valerian is also called the Jacob’s Ladder, tying in to the theme of men who challenge god and seek to gain access to the heavens.  I don’t mean to make too much of this, but it just kind of shows how naturally the heliotrope / bloodstone lore fits into the themes and ideas George was already working with.

In other words, “where did George get the idea for the name of the Valyrians?” The answer is, from the heliotrope flower.

The thing I’m trying to emphasize is that it would seem he had the bloodstone / heliotrope / valerian connections in mind before he began writing the story.  That fits with my general premise of these essays, that George has had a kind of master plan or pattern from the beginning which he has hidden in metaphor in every book, one based on the forging of Lightbringer / Long Night disaster.

Early on in A Game of Thrones, there’s another amusing clue  that George was thinking about heliotrope as both flower and bloodstone from the very start.  The party from Winterfell is making it’s way down the Kingsroad through the Neck, and Arya muddies herself collecting purple and green flowers for Ned.  She earns praise  from Ned and makes Sansa wroth.  But there’s a catch:

Then it turned out the purple flowers were called poison kisses, and Arya got a rash on her arms.

The forging of Lightbringer is also a procreative act, but one that poisons the moon rock – thus, “poison kisses” are a perfect description of what is going on here.  A snakebite is a poison kiss, in other words, and these black bloodstone meteors are like poisonous snakes.  But poison kisses can also be purple flowers as we see here, which makes perfect sense when you discover the heliotrope connections.  In fact, real heliotropium plants are actually toxic to people and animals.  Personally, I’m impressed with the creativity on display here by the author, weaving these ideas together in a way that makes terrific sense and creates compelling imagery.  To drive the point home, the paragraph above continues on to say that Arya had purple welts and bruises on her body, which of course she received from sword-fighting practice with Micah.  The purple bruises left by a sword parallel the purple flowers that leave a rash, and tie the poison purple flowers to swords striking maidens.  Swords and poisonous purple flowers alike leave a mark on moon maidens.

In A Dance with Dragons, we see a follow-up to this scene as Theon goes to Moat Cailin to deceive the remaining Ironborn there.  This is near where Arya found the poison kisses.  Theon is essentially receiving a scrolling tour of Lightbringer symbols as he rides down the causeway through the swamp:

The swampy ground beyond the causeway was impassable, an endless morass of suckholes, quicksands, and glistening green swards that looked solid to the unwary eye but turned to water the instant you trod upon them, the whole of it infested with venomous serpents and poisonous flowers and monstrous lizard lions with teeth like daggers. Just as dangerous were its people, seldom seen but always lurking, the swamp-dwellers, the frog-eaters, the mud-men.  . . . The ironborn called them all bog devils.

I believe this is yet another case of George using a favorite technique: listing several things which seem separate but are really all describing the same thing.  Everything in the bog represents a different aspect of the Lightbringer meteors, that’s my hypothesis.  There are five things in the swamp: poisonous serpents, poisonous flowers, lizard lions, bog devils, and the black stones of Moat Cailin.  Poisonous serpents and flowers are two meteor symbols we have just examined in the previous scene with Arya and the poisons kisses and the section about Lightbringer the poisonous snake, so it’s nice to see them hear side by side to emphasize the connection.   The lizard-lions fit right in, because the sun is chiefly depicted as a lion or a dragon, and here we get a bit of both, with the lizard suggesting the dragon.  The teeth described as daggers matches exactly the description of the teeth of dragons.  The dragon’s teeth are a natural fit for a moon meteor metaphor, and are described as being like black diamonds.  Diamond are usually equated with stars, so black diamonds give us the dark-star motif again.  Blackness and starlight, black falling stars that bite and poison – that’s how I am seeing these bloodstone meteors.  Next we have the bog devils – the are devils who blow poison darts… that’s simple enough.

Finally, for the fifth and final thing in the swamp, we have the black stones of Moat Cailin.  This quote is from just before the previous one:

Where once a mighty curtain wall had stood, only scattered stones remained, blocks of black basalt so large it must once have taken a hundred men to hoist them into place. Some had sunk so deep into the bog that only a corner showed; others lay strewn about like some god’s abandoned toys, cracked and crumbling, spotted with lichen. Last night’s rain had left the huge stones wet and glistening, and the morning sunlight made them look as if they were coated in some fine black oil.

Moat Cailin is made from black basalt, which like obsidian, is a lava-rock, for what it’s worth.  It’s a different sort of frozen fire, in that sense.  But the stones of Moat Cailin might also fall into the class of “oily stone” buildings with Asshai, Yeen, the Isle of Toads, and the Seastone Chair, based on this quote.  It’s inconclusive because the rain is helping to create the image of oily stone.  It’s interesting that Yeen and Moat Cailin have the same style of construction – enormous, square hewn blocks of black stone.  However, whether or not the black stones of Moat Cailin are actually oily black stone – and therefore, according to my theory, meteorite stone – they are being used to symbolize them here.  Some god’s abandoned toys – that’s a great description.  It may be that George calls them oily looking here just for the metaphorical purpose of using the black stones as symbols for moon meteors, but whatever the case, god’s abandoned toys are oily black stones.  Even better, it is the sunlight hitting the stone which makes them look oily.  The sun is the one who poisoned the moon and created the black bloodstones.

There’s actually a couple more Lightbringer symbols in the swamp, but it would take to long too explain here because I need to introduce other concepts for them to make sense, so we’ll save those for another time.  However, in the next paragraph after seeing all the things in the swamp, we get this:

Closer to the towers, corpses littered the ground on every side. Blood-blooms had sprouted from their gaping wounds, pale flowers with petals plump and moist as a woman’s lips.

According to the wiki of Ice and Fire, these blood-blooms are apparently actual flowers that grow from corpses.  That’s flowers, that grow from corpses, with leaves that are the color of blood and look like woman’s lips.  The lips evoke the poison kisses and the procreative theme of Lightbringer’s forging.  The blood flowers symbolize post-moon explosion flowers, the bloodstones, and so they are the color of blood.  The bloodstone meteors pour forth from the moon goddess’ corpse, just as the blood flowers grow from the corpses here.

And of course, I have to mention the mention of the Hammer of the Waters, which comes immediately after these paragraphs.  Theon remembers that the children supposedly called down the Hammer from the Children’s Tower, which now has a broken crown, appropriately.  It’s described thusly in A Game of Thrones when they pass through the first time:

It looked as if some great beast had taken a bite out of the crenellations along the tower top, and spit the rubble across the bog.

Are these black oily stones in the bog some god’s abandoned toys, or are they the spittle of a great beast?  Again, I think the answer is “all of the above.”  The idea of the black stones as being spit from the mouth of a great beast hearkens back to the general motif of things in the mouth or coming from the mount as representing meteors, such as dragon flame and dragon’s teeth, the darts of the bog-devils, fiery or bloody tongues, etc.

What I love about all the symbolism around Moat Cailin and the Children’s tower is how consistent and tight it is.  The language in books one and five match each other and work together.  You can more or less put together the whole thing with just Moat Cailin clues.  The Hammer of the Waters is when some great beast of a diety bit the top off a tower and spit the poisonous black stones across the planet.  The children’s tower is described as slender and spear-like, calling to mind the slender-as-a-spear maidens we see from time to time and associating the children’s tower with a maiden, as it should since it’s broken crown represents the broken moon.  And I can’t help but remember the idea of Nissa Nissa as a children of the forest, via the “helpful elf” translation of Nissa that we looked at last time… this idea is tantalizing but needs further investigation.

Returning to Ned’s dream recall of the Tower of Joy, consider again the storm of flower petals in the bloody sky.  This image takes on new meaning, in light of these connections – if we are symbolizing the moon goddess as a flower, then the pieces of the flower, blown about in a storm, are the pieces of the moon – the moon meteors.  Appropriately, they appear in a blood-streaked sky.  Of course, we have a parallel heliotrope symbol to this already at the Tower of Joy – the bloody stones used to make cairns.  That’s pretty awesome, the sun-drinking moon flowers and the bloody stones both represented at the Tower of Joy, the birthplace of the reborn black dragon.

As for Jon himself, he’s Nissa Nissa reborn (or in this case Lyanna reborn) just as much as he is Azor Ahai or Rhaegar reborn, so it’s cool to see the more feminine flower symbol together with the more masculine, dragon-like bloody stones symbol at the place of his birth.  Jon’s personal symbolism matches this as well.  When Dany sees the blue rose in the chink in the Wall which fills the air with sweetness in her House of the Undying vision, it’s pretty clear that it represents Jon Snow – specifically Jon’s Stark heritage through his moon mother Lyanna.  Jon also has the black ice / red fire and dragon symbolism from his solar king father, Rhaegar.

Now, think about the moon as a heliotrope flower, turning to follow the sun and experiencing some kind of transformation as Klytie the Greek goddess did.  The transformation cycles in A Song of Ice and Fire which we have looked at involve the life and death cycle, represented by darkness and light.  We’ve seen the heliotrope moon turn the sun dark, triggering the solar king death and resurrection cycle, and the moon itself transforms and turns black as it is burnt by the Lightbringer comet.  So, what is the phrase Martin has chosen to describe the passage of one month?  That’s right, a moon’s turn… you saw that one coming, didn’t you?  A moon’s turn is when the moon goes through one cycle, from full and bright to a black hole and back again.  And now you know why he calls it that!  Naturally, a woman’s moon blood comes once a month or so… once every moon’s turn.

Now, in the interest full disclosure, moon blood can be quite terrifying and you better give it some respect.  Here’s Jamie in A Storm of Swords:

“Oh, very good.” Jaime laughed. “Your wits are quicker than mine, I confess it. When they found me standing over my dead king, I never thought to say, ‘No, no, it wasn’t me, it was a shadow, a terrible cold shadow.’ ” He laughed again. “Tell me true, one kingslayer to another— did the Starks pay you to slit his throat, or was it Stannis? Had Renly spurned you, was that the way of it? Or perhaps your moon’s blood was on you. Never give a wench a sword when she’s bleeding.” 

For sure, don’t give moon maidens a sword when their moon blood is on them, that can lead to the near destruction of the entire world, and also to the Long Night.  Unfortunately, Jamie doesn’t take his own advice, and this is also from A Storm of Swords:

He undid his breeches and climbed up and pushed her bare white legs apart. One hand slid up her thigh and underneath her smallclothes. When he tore them away, he saw that her moon’s blood was on her, but it made no difference.

Jamie is a solar king, so he just can’t help himself from giving bloody moon maidens “the sword.”  On the grisly side of things, this is the notorious sex scene which takes place in the sept where Joffrey’s dead body lies in wake.  As with dead baby Rhaego, we see the son of the sun is a dead person when Lightbringer is forged.  Also, Jamie literally puts Cersei on the altar of the Mother while this goes down – as if Cersei were a bloody moon sacrifice, which is exactly what she is.   Sacrifice and procreation, together again like the best friends that we know them to be.

---

Sansa Stark Explains her Moon Blood

Once again, I’ve buried the lead.  This blood blooms we just saw aren’t the half of it, when it comes to bloody moon flowers.  Consider: when a Westerosi maiden gets her moon blood, she is said to have flowered.  When a maiden loses her virginity, when her “maidenhead” is broken and bleeds, she is said to be “deflowered.”  It’s kind of a bad joke, but it’s great symbolism, and directly tied to the heliotropium flower / bloodstone concept.

Check out the very memorable scene of Sansa receiving her first moon blood in A Clash of Kings.  She’s been dreaming of the riot at Kings Landing, and in the dream, the mob is tearing her apart, and that’s where I am picking up the quote:

Then she saw the bright glimmer of steel. The knife plunged into her belly and tore and tore and tore, until there was nothing left of her down there but shiny wet ribbons.

When she woke, the pale light of morning was slanting through her window, yet she felt as sick and achy as if she had not slept at all. There was something sticky on her thighs. When she threw back the blanket and saw the blood, all she could think was that her dream had somehow come true. She remembered the knives inside her, twisting and ripping. She squirmed away in horror, kicking at the sheets and falling to the floor, breathing raggedly, naked, bloodied, and afraid.

George has given us a nice connection between the flowering / moon blood motifs and the moon maiden stabbing of the Lightbringer story by depicting Sansa’s flowering as a knife stabbing.  The sexual violence implied here calls to mind the procreation / death dual nature of the Lightbringer metaphor.  The “bright” steel “glimmers” and the blood is “shiny,” evoking Lightbringer, while the knife “plunges” and Sansa falls to the floor to evoke the falling bits of moon.  The Lightbringer symbolism continues through the scene:

Madness took hold of her. Pulling herself up by the bedpost, she went to the basin and washed between her legs, scrubbing away all the stickiness. By the time she was done, the water was pink with blood. When her maidservants saw it they would know. Then she remembered the bedclothes. She rushed back to the bed and stared in horror at the dark red stain and the tale it told. All she could think was that she had to get rid of it, or else they’d see. She couldn’t let them see, or they’d marry her to Joffrey and make her lay with him.

Snatching up her knife, Sansa hacked at the sheet, cutting out the stain. If they ask me about the hole, what will I say? Tears ran down her face. She pulled the torn sheet from the bed, and the stained blanket as well. I’ll have to burn them. She balled up the evidence, stuffed it in the fireplace, drenched it in oil from her bedside lamp, and lit it afire. Then she realized that the blood had soaked through the sheet into the featherbed, so she bundled that up as well, but it was big and cumbersome, hard to move. Sansa could get only half of it into the fire. She was on her knees, struggling to shove the mattress into the flames as thick grey smoke eddied around her and filled the room, when the door burst open and she heard her maid gasp.

Starting from the beginning of this section, we see the bloody moon maiden immersing herself and creating bloody water, matching the bloodstone association with a bloody stone submersed in water and the idea of a moon maiden drowning.  A bit later in this scene, Sansa again washes herself in a tub of “scalding hot water,” evoking the moon drowning again, and it seems notable that the TWOIAF version of the Qarthine origin of dragons story says the moon was “scalded” by the sun’s heat.  I wouldn’t base an entire theory on one word connection like this, but since it fits with all the other symbolism, I’m inclined to think the word “scalding” is chosen intentionally, but who knows.

Next we see a dark red stain, which is cut out from the sheet, leaving a hole.  Sounds very like a bloody moon which was cut out of the sky, leaving a hole, as we just saw with the black hole moon.  The bloody sheets and blankets are then balled up, to make them more moon-like I suppose, before being shoved in the fire.  That’s blood and fire, our favorite recipe.  Next, the burning of the moon blood fills the room with thick grey smoke.  This seems like a pretty clear allusion to the smokey haze which caused the sun to be hidden during the Long Night, a smoke that came from a burning and bloody moon which was cut out of the sky.  Last but not least, we hear a maid gasp, which seems a likely shout-out to moon maiden Nissa’s Nissa’s scream of anguish and ecstasy which left a crack across the face of the moon.

Just in case you were wondering whether or not the astronomical symbolism ever manifests in the form of food symbolism… I’d have to say yes.  When Sansa gets cleaned up, she dines with Cersei, who serves her porridge and milk (ok, no big deal) as well as boiled eggs (oh my) and crisp fried fish (dun dun dun).  The boiled eggs suggest eggs which are both heated and submersed, like dragon’s eggs meteors which land in the sea – the sea dragon.  A dragon which swims in the sea is a kind of fish, as I mentioned last time while discussing the fishy nature of dragons in Chinese mythology, so fried fish again gives us a burning sea dragon.  Even better, or worse as it may happen, the sight of the food makes Sansa feel ill, a reference to the poisoning of the moon and snake venom.  Looking at sea dragons makes moon maiden Sansa feel sick, as well it should.  The sea dragon is really the same image created by moon maiden Sansa taking a bloody bath – drowning moon meteors.

To finish up here, George seems to be making a point about the dark nature of Lightbringer.  First, here’s a mention of the smoke having ruined Sansa’s clothing.  The moon’s clothing would be her crust, her outer shell, and it is from here that we would get the stony meteors.  These are the poisoned and poisonous black bloodstone meteors, which are all about defilement and corruption, and so Sansa’s clothing being ruined by the smoke seems a reference to this idea.  Then there’s this exchange with Cersei, after Sansa refuses the sea dragon food:

“I don’t blame you. Between Tyrion and Lord Stannis, everything I eat tastes of ash. And now you’re setting fires as well. What did you hope to accomplish?”

Sansa lowered her head. “The blood frightened me.”

“The blood is the seal of your womanhood. Lady Catelyn might have prepared you. You’ve had your first flowering, no more.” Sansa had never felt less flowery.

The moon blood frightens, and Sansa doesn’t feel flowery – more reference to the ominous nature of Lightbringer’s forging.  The moon is setting fires, and Azor Ahai stand-in King Stannis is also filling the air with ash as he lays siege to King’s Landing with his fiery heart.  Again and again, we are being told that moon burning brings smoke and ash, that Lightbringer-wielding dudes bring smoke and ash.  We are being shown that poison and sickness and corruption come with these moon meteors which represent Lightbringer.  The chapter closes with a fantastic ramming home of these points:

Robert wanted to be loved. My brother Tyrion has the same disease. Do you want to be loved, Sansa?”

“Everyone wants to be loved.”

“I see flowering hasn’t made you any brighter,” said Cersei. “Sansa, permit me to share a bit of womanly wisdom with you on this very special day. Love is poison. A sweet poison, yes, but it will kill you all the same.”

It’s a wonderful expression of the duality of the Lightbringer myth: love is poison.  Compare that to the poison kisses flowers which we saw a moment ago.  Birth and death, bloody beds and bloody battle, bloody swords and bloody cocks, sex and swordplay.  The sun loved the moon, and also poisoned the moon.  And the moon’s flowering hasn’t made her any brighter – no, quite the opposite.  I love that line.  The flowering of the second moon brought darkness, fire, and blood.  That’s one of the fun parts of following George’s mythical astronomy – he leaves these little inside jokes which you only get if you understand the astronomy side of things.  George wrote these jokes years ago, almost two decades in some cases, and here we are chuckling at them.

Recappping the chain of symbols in this scene, moon maiden Sansa “had the knives inside her,” which is very like having the “fire inside you.” Those bright glimmering knives tore at her insides and triggered the moon blood, which creates a bloody bed.  The bloody moon maiden then immerses herself in water, creating the sea dragon moon meteor motif.  Sansa cuts the dark red moon blood out of the bed, leaving a bloody hole, then balls up the moon blood, coats it with oil – there’s a tremendous oily black stone reference – and burns it, filling the air with thick grey smoke.

I must admit, it feels funny to say “look, George was giving us the answer to the Long Night all along in this scene about Sansa’s period,” but yeah, there it is.  I’m officially making that claim.  If you want to understand the moon blood and the Long Night, you have to ask Sansa.

There’s actually some really great set-up for this whole scene earlier in the chapter which simply adds to the richness of this metaphor.  I skipped over it before so that I could get right to the point with the flowering, but having done so, let’s go back the night before Sansa has her terrifying dream and burns all her sheets and caused a Long Night:

Turning back to the stair, Sansa climbed.  The smoke blotted out the stars and the thin crescent of moon, so the roof was dark and thick with shadows. Yet from here she could see everything: the Red Keep’s tall towers and great cornerforts, the maze of city streets beyond, to south and west the river running black, the bay to the east, the columns of smoke and cinders, and fires, fires everywhere.  Soldiers crawled over the city walls like ants with torches, and crowded the hoardings that had sprouted from the ramparts.

Sansa the heliotrope moon “turns,” and then Stannis’s smoke blots out the stars and the.. wait, was that a thin crescent moon?  Right before all the moon blood?  And what’s this about the black water?  I kid, but of course this is densely packed symbolism, yet it is familiar to us.  The moon sacrifice symbol appears with the smoke that blots out the stars and fires everywhere.  As a result, the top of the tower – where Sansa the moon maiden is, looking down on the world like a goddess – is now thick with shadow.

Next, Sansa sees three catapults – think of the three heads of the dragon motif applying to moon meteors, since catapults are for flinging rocks.  They don’t make Sansa feel “any less fearful,” however, just as the moon blood frightens Sansa. Then, we get this:

A stab went through her, so sharp that Sansa sobbed and clutched at her belly. She might have fallen, but a shadow moved suddenly, and strong fingers grabbed her arm and steadied her.

That’s all pretty clear moon maiden stuff – Sansa is atop the tower, she sees the crescent moon blotted out, gets stabbed and cries, and then we see the idea of falling implied, just as we saw with the rumor that Sansa turned into a winged wolf and flew out of the tower after the purple wedding.  When this happens, a shadow moves suddenly.  In this scene Sandor is saving Sansa from falling, but that seems more a part of the logistics of the scene than anything metaphorical.  The actual moon did fall – we know that – even though it’s only an almost-fall in this scene.  But a paragraph or two later, there’s more metaphor:

“You were glad enough to see my face when the mob had you, though. Remember?”

Sansa remembered all too well. She remembered the way they had howled, the feel of the blood running down her cheek from where the stone had struck her, and the garlic stink on the breath of the man who had tried to pull her from her horse. She could still feel the cruel pinch of fingers on her wrist as she lost her balance and began to fall.

She’d thought she was going to die then, but the fingers had twitched, all five at once, and the man had shrieked loud as a horse. When his hand fell away, another hand, stronger, shoved her back into her saddle. The man with the garlicky breath was on the ground, blood pumping out the stump of his arm, but there were others all around, some with clubs in hand. The Hound leapt at them, his sword a blur of steel that trailed a red mist as it swung. When they broke and ran before him he had laughed, his terrible burned face for a moment transformed.

This is some great stuff here, because the one who pulls down the moon maiden gets his hand chopped off – that’s our fiery hand of R’hllor, whose fingers are like fiery spears.  I listed some of the relevant burned hands earlier when we talked about the leaves of the weirwood being either bloody hands or bits of flame, and this is more of the same.  Right before the hand pulls her down, she is struck by a rock, and bleeds.  The blood runs down her cheek, evoking the bloody tears.  She’s even wearing a moonstone hairnet in this scene, which parallels the poison amethyst medusa hairnet she wears at the purple wedding, when Sansa kills the solar king she was supposed to marry.  It’s pretty much all there – the moon maiden stuff is really vivid in this chapter.

I think this scene makes the relationship between Sansa and the Hound clear – after Sansa almost falls, again, the Hound appears, again.  I think the Hound, who was a shadow earlier on top of the tower, represents Azor Ahai reborn, the child of son and moon death.  In this memory of the riot, the Hound has a transformed, burned face and a blurry sword that trails a red mist, a perfect match for Azor Ahai reborn and Lightbringer.  A sword trailing blood makes us think of the bleeding star, the red comet, whose tail is perceived as a trail of blood.  The red mist coming from a sword also ties in to the rain of blood motif, which we saw with the Doom’s rain of black blood and the Valyrian steel sword “Red Rain.”  This is another nice link between Lightbringer and Valyrian steel – many of the names of Valyrian steel swords seem to describe Lightbringer and it’s effects, such as Red Rain, Nightfall, Blackfyre, Heartsbane, Brightroar, Orphanmaker, and Longclaw, while others seem to describe the sacrificed moon, such as Dark Sister, Lady Forlorn, Widow’s Wail, and Lamentation.  The red mist trailing from the Hound’s sword also implies the boiling and steaming blood which is the hallmark of Lightbringer transformation, just as we saw in Dany’s dragon dream of fire transformation where her blood turns to steam or when Azor Ahai fought a monster and boiled its insides. Remember also that the bloody skulls in Mel’s visions dissolved into mist.  And here, the Hound’s fiery face is transformed, just to re-emphasize the fire transformation aspect of the Lightbringer process.

Thinking again about the hand which tries to pull  Sansa down, notice that when the bloody hand goes away, the Hound’s stronger hand replaces it – just as Azor Ahai reborn replaces Azor Ahai.   Sansa starts out riding a chestnut mare – a reddish horse, in other words – but the Hound puts Sansa on a black horse, symbolizing the transformation of the moon into those black moon meteors, and paralleling another moon maiden with a black mount, Dany with Drogon.  Even better, the horse is called Stranger, and the Stranger of the Faith of the Seven is called “the wanderer from far places,” which is of course a way of describing a comet, a wandering star from far places.  One that is a messenger of death, like the Stranger and like the ravens.

I think all of these clues make it easy to identify Sandor in these scenes.  George is using Sansa as the moon maiden, and the Hound as the reborn solar warrior.  He’s a hellhound, basically, which like the poison snake, is one aspect of Lightbringer and Azor Ahai reborn.  It’s interesting to think about the hellhound as a guardian of the moon, or as an agent of vengeance – Sandor fills both of these rolls for Sansa.  We’ll talk more about the Stranger and about hellhounds in the future, but let’s stick with bloody moon flowers for now.

It may seem odd to suggest that Sansa is playing the role of Sandor’s mother… until you consider the song she chose to sing for him the night he fled from King’s Landing: “Gentle mother, font of mercy, save our sons from war we pray…”  Sandor’s appearance in that scene is consistent with Azor Ahai reborn: he is burned of course, he has an iron grip, and he reeks of “blood, blood, blood.”   George is also using the description of Sansa’s tower room and the scene outside to slip us Long Night clues.  When she enters the room, it is “as black as pitch,” and then as she rips back the drapes, she sees that the “sky was aswirl with glowing shifting colors, the reflections of the great fires below,” and also “aswirl with fire” as men died “in their hundreds and their thousands.”  The orange and green flames “warred against each other,” with each “birthing armies of short-lived shadows to die again an instant later.” Then we read that “the air itself smelt burnt,” like a soup kettle “left on the fire too long and all the soup boiled away.”  Soup kettles are black iron in medieval life, so that’s black iron having its contents boiled away to make the atmosphere smell burnt.  Just like Sansa’s scalding bath and the boiled eggs she was offered, this is talking about boiling and scalding the moon.

I’ll pick up the text again here, because it’s just too good to summarize:

Then something stirred behind her, and a hand reached out of the dark and grabbed her wrist.

Sansa opened her mouth to scream, but another hand clamped down over her face, smothering her. His fingers were rough and callused, and sticky with blood. “Little bird. I knew you’d come.” The voice was a drunken rasp.

Outside, a swirling lance of jade light spit at the stars, filling the room with green glare. She saw him for a moment, all black and green, the blood on his face dark as tar, his eyes glowing like a dog’s in the sudden glare. Then the light faded and he was only a hulking darkness in a stained white cloak.

“If you scream I’ll kill you. Believe that.” He took his hand from her mouth.

Well, it look alike George found a way to slip the black blood in there, as the Hound’s blood is as dark as tar.  His eyes glow like a dog’s eyes – like a fiery hellhound’s eyes, I would say.  “Then the light faded, and he was only a hulking darkness” – that’s pretty great right there – Lightbringer is a hulking darkness.  Sandor was a quick moving shadow atop the tower earlier, and in this scene his hand comes from the dark as well.  I mentioned that earlier Sandor’s has an iron grip, so let’s consider all the descriptions of his hands – they are covered in blood, they are like iron, and they reach out of the shadow.  Blood and night and steel, the familiar motif.  Sandor’s stained white cloak might refer to the idea of Lightbringer the sword being white hot and the comet being white and blue before the forging in the heart of the moon maiden, and the idea of Dawn representing an undefiled Lightbringer sword.  In any case, it effectively communicates the idea of Lightbringer being soiled and stained and defiled.

The threat to kill the moon maiden goes along with the idea of her screaming, just as Nissa Nissa’s cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon.

There are some greenseer ideas here I am not ready to dive into yet, but take note of the swirling lance of jade light that is spit at the stars – this could be a reference to the idea of greenseers calling down the Hammer of the Waters.  Renly’s stag on his golden crown is made of jade – the colors of Highgarden – and therefore evoke the idea of Garth the Green, who might have had antlers on his head like a stag, an image which is recreated when one of the Baratheons dons their antlered helm.

There’s just a bit more to quote from this scene:

The Hound laughed. “I only know who’s lost. Me.”

He is drunker than I’ve ever seen him. He was sleeping in my bed. What does he want here? “What have you lost?”

“All.” The burnt half of his face was a mask of dried blood. “Bloody dwarf. Should have killed him. Years ago.”

“He’s dead, they say.”

“Dead? No. Bugger that. I don’t want him dead.” He cast the empty flagon aside. “I want him burned. If the gods are good, they’ll burn him, but I won’t be here to see. I’m going.” 

Azor Ahai reborn is the wanderer from far places, or the red wanderer.  Sandor, accordingly, is lost, and has lost all.  I think this is consistent with the idea that being Azor Ahai reborn is not necessarily great deal of fun, as Jon discovered in his Azor Ahai dream, where he feels abandoned and alone.  The highlight of this part is that Sandor was sleeping the bed of the moon maiden.  This is a direct parallel to the idea of Jon Snow emerging from Lyanna’s bed of blood.  The bed was even specifically made into a burning moon blood symbol when Sansa bled upon the bed – making it a bloody bed – and then burned it.  And again, all this at the top of a tower.  The Hound’s face is a mask of dried black blood, which sounds a lot like Beric’s face, which was called a “death mask,” or like Quaithe’s red lacquer mask.

Tyrion, of the likely heads of the dragon, gets a shout out here as a bloody dwarf that Sandor wants to see burn.  Sansa thinks he’s dead, then Sandor says no, implying resurrection or an undead state.  Tyrion has a symbolically rich dream of being dead after he’s knocked unconscious in this battle, but we don’t have time for that here.  If Tyrion is in fact half Targaryen, and that’s a theory I tend to believe in, he’s part lion and part dragon, a perfect solar symbol.  His green and black eyes might be referring to the same motif that Sandor’s momentary green-and-black appearance we saw a moment ago refers to.  When Renly was killed in the tent by Stannis’s shadowsword, it was described as black on green.  The targaryen civil war was the blacks vs. the greens.  I think I know what all of this means, but I’ll have to save it for another time.

I’d like to thank my fellow blogger Sweetsunray of the Mythological Weave of Ice and Fire blog for the tip-off about this earlier part of Sansa’s moon blood chapter atop the tower.  She just caught this and brought it to my attention as I was recording and I just barely squeezed it in.  She’s got some really fabulous essays on the Cthonic underworld realms in ASOIAF, as well as a study of Lyanna as Persephone, an abducted moon goddess which I highly recommend.

There’s another appearance of the  the moon as a flower motif at the birthing of the shadow baby in A Clash of Kings.  Melisandre represents the destroyed second moon, the mother of Lightbringer, as we’ve seen before.  She’s been impregnated by Stannis – who’s playing the role of Azor Ahai of course – and she’s going to give birth to the shadow baby, which represents Lightbringer.  Notice that it’s actually the moon which gives light – temporarily, as it explodes – and Lightbringer which is made of darkness.

There was no answer but a soft rustling. And then a light bloomed amidst the darkness.

Davos raised a hand to shield his eyes, and his breath caught in his throat. Melisandre had thrown back her cowl and shrugged out of the smothering robe. Beneath, she was naked, and huge with child. Swollen breasts hung heavy against her chest, and her belly bulged as if near to bursting. “Gods preserve us,” he whispered, and heard her answering laugh, deep and throaty. Her eyes were hot coals, and the sweat that dappled her skin seemed to glow with a light of its own. Melisandre shone.

Panting, she squatted and spread her legs. Blood ran down her thighs, black as ink. Her cry might have been agony or ecstasy or both. And Davos saw the crown of the child’s head push its way out of her. Two arms wriggled free, grasping, black fingers coiling around Melisandre’s straining thighs, pushing, until the whole of the shadow slid out into the world and rose taller than Davos, tall as the tunnel, towering above the boat. He had only an instant to look at it before it was gone, twisting between the bars of the portcullis and racing across the surface of the water, but that instant was long enough. He knew that shadow. As he knew the man who’d cast it.

We looked at the Lightbringer symbolism here last time – the agony and ecstasy phrase which matches Nissa Nissa’s cry of anguish and ecstasy, the light in the darkness motif, the fire transformation with burning blood, etc.  The word I am focusing on here is “bloomed” – this is the moon’s light blooming like a flower.  Not Lightbringer, Lightbringer’s mother.  The moon maiden, in the moment that she gives birth to Lightbringer, shines.  Attention is drawn to it – they are in a dark cave, and her skin is literally shining.  She’s pregnant near to bursting – she couldn’t possibly eat another mint, even if it is wafer-thin.  That’s all quite vivid – a moon bursting open, creating momentary light, giving birth to black shadow children.  That moon was a bright flower before she died, before she drank too much of the sunlight.  As Salladhor Saan says to Davos in A Clash of Kings, “Too much light can hurt the eyes, my friend, and fire burns.”

Notice that Lightbringer the black shadow looks just like his father, “Azor Ahai as played by Stannis Baratheon.”  He even has a crown of shadow and towers above the boat – there’s our shadow tower motif again.  But while his father is a living person and a king, the son is a black shadow version of the father.  That’s the family portrait here – the sun dies, and is reborn as a black shadow sun, a night sun. That’s our Bloodstone Emperor, King of the Nightlands.

The Ghost of High Heart, who sees everything and everyone in terms of symbols and sigils, describes Stannis’s shadow baby assassin thusly in A Storm of Swords:

“I dreamt I saw a shadow with a burning heart butchering a golden stag, aye.”

As we can see, the burning heart and the black shadow are core elements of Azor Ahai reborn.  The fiery heart of the moon maiden becomes the the black shadow meteors, which are themselves fiery hearts that bring darkness and shadow.  We’ll get into Renly’s symbolism on a different occasion, but I will point out that the slaughtering of the “golden” stag describes the death of the golden sun.

---

 

The Black Iron Rose of Spreading Darkness

We’ll wrap up this podcast with one last truly epic flower of darkness quote.  This scene takes place in A Game of Thrones, at the Battle of the Red Fork, better known as the fight where Tyrion fought with the mountain clans in his father’s army.  Tywin, as usual, plays the role of the sun:

Tywin Lannister’s battle armor put his son Jaime’s gilded suit to shame. His greatcloak was sewn from countless layers of cloth-of-gold, so heavy that it barely stirred even when he charged, so large that its drape covered most of his stallion’s hindquarters when he took the saddle. No ordinary clasp would suffice for such a weight, so the greatcloak was held in place by a matched pair of miniature lionesses crouching on his shoulders, as if poised to spring. Their mate, a male with a magnificent mane, reclined atop Lord Tywin’s greathelm, one paw raking the air as he roared.

His rondels were golden sunbursts, all his fastenings were gilded, and the red steel was burnished to such a high sheen that it shone like fire in the light of the rising sun.

The solar lion imagery is kind of hitting you over the head here, I’m you noticed that, but check out the really cool clue about idea of there being two moons.  The solar lion on the great helm has two lionesses – his is called “their mate.”  One sun, two moon wives, just like Aegon and Rhaegar and a few others I haven’t mentioned yet.

As the battle is about to begin, it starts to sound a little bit like the War for the Dawn:

Pale crimson fingers fanned out to the east as the first rays of the sun broke over the horizon. The western sky was a deep purple, speckled with stars. Tyrion wondered whether this was the last sunrise he would ever see …

A warhorn sounded in the far distance, a deep mournful note that chilled the soul. 

In this corner, we have a deep purple night, speckled with stars, and in this corner, we have the pale crimson fingers of dawn.  Gentlmen, I want a good clean fight. At the sound of my horn… aoooooo   aaaooooo aaaoooooooooo  I kid, but of course the speckled with stars phrase calls out to Lord Beric’s cloak, described in the exact same terms, and to the Bloodstone Emperor’s Starry Wisdom.  That’s on the opposite side of dawn, opposing dawn if you will.

Right after this, the rising sun creates an illusion with the dew on the grasses which seems to mirror the sky, and we’ll pick up the text here:

The clansmen climbed onto their scrawny mountain horses, shouting curses and rude jokes. Several appeared to be drunk. The rising sun was burning off the drifting tendrils of fog as Tyrion led them off. What grass the horses had left was heavy with dew, as if some passing god had scattered a bag of diamonds over the earth. The mountain men fell in behind him, each clan arrayed behind its own leaders.

In the dawn light, the army of Lord Tywin Lannister unfolded like an iron rose, thorns gleaming.

We’ll start with the divinely scattered diamonds, which evoke the meteor shower that came from the moon goddess, and this image is mirrored by the deep purple sky speckled with stars.  It also brings to mind the black stones of Moat Cailin, scattered like some god’s abandoned toys.  God sure throws a lot of stuff out of heaven, doesn’t he?  This illusion of diamonds scattered by a god is created by sunlight on wet blades of grass, connecting the fallen stars with shining blades.

There’s even a very clever sun-drinking idea here, spread across the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next.  One sentence ends by talking about the mountain men from the Mountains of the Moon, several of whom “appeared to be drunk.” The next sentence begins with “The rising sun…”  In other words, the mountain men appeared to drink the rising sun.  I’ve seen George do this kind of thing before, and in this case I think it is intentional because a moon associated thing is the exact right thing to be described as sun-drinking, and because we are in the middle of an astronomy metaphor.  There’s another one of these in the same paragraph: after the “like diamonds over the earth” sentence, the next sentence begins with “The mountain men fell in behind…”  This leaves us with the mountain men as another depiction of the meteors – falling mountains which drink the rising sun.  It may seem like a stretch, but don’t forget the names of those clans – moon brothers.  Burned men, led by the red hand.  Stone crows – that’s a really good one, and another nod to the ‘crows and ravens as meteors’ idea.  This is a good example of how George likes to use things like house sigils or clan names in complement with the action to build a larger metaphor.

And then, the payoff quote, and I’ll repeat it:  “In the dawn light, the army of Lord Tywin Lannister unfolded like an iron rose, thorns gleaming.”  Solar King Tywin’s army is his weapon, and it unfolds like a black iron rose.  A black iron weapon wielded by the sun symbolizes the the black steel of Lightbringer and the black meteors from which it was made (according to my theory, of course).  It also is a home-run reference to two important bloodstone concepts tied to the moon – the flower which drinks the sun’s light, and the stone which darkens the image of the sun.  And this coming after the clever mountain men “drinking the sun” reference.

The idea that the sun’s black weapon is both a black flower and a thing made of black iron basically seems like purely poetic language without the bloodstone ideas in mind, but makes perfect sense with them.  The moon was a sun-drinking flower that gave us black iron sun-drinking meteors to make swords out of.  Inside that iron flower, we find burned men and burned hands, stone crows, and sun-drinking moon brothers.

Even without the heliotropium flower ideas, roses can make an excellent comet symbol in their own right, as they have a round head and a long tail… and don’t forget those sharp thorns.  Thematically speaking, the thorns that prick and the connotations of love found in the rose are a good fit for expressing the procreation / death double meaning of Lightbringer.  We saw roses used as the moon flower of choice at the Tower of Joy with Lyanna’s storm of blue roses.  Those roses later “spilled from her palm, dead and black,” symbolizing death in general and the darkening of the moon’s blood and stone to black.  The sun-turning heliotrope flower of the Greek Klytie myth was purple; but our moon was transformed and burned by Lightbringer the comet to produce those black, sun-drinking bloodstone meteors, so it should now be represented by a black, sun-drinking flower.  Here we get the black iron rose, unfolding like a spreading darkness, a twin to Lyanna’ s dead black roses.

Tywin is no ordinary solar lion in this scene – he has become the Lion of Night, the night sun, wielder of “dark lightbringer,” if you know what I’m saying, and I know you do.  Just as Drogo let loose an oily black river of darkness, and Jon his rivers of black ice, Tywin has his black iron rose of spreading darkness.  These are the “waves of night” in the “waves of night and blood” motif, and of course they come from Lightbringer.

By way of teasing the upcoming episode on Ironborn mythology, I will leave you with this:

“And when battle was joined upon the shores, mighty kings and famous warriors fell before the reavers like wheat before a scythe, in such numbers that the men of the green lands told each other that the Ironborn were demons risen from some watery hell, protected by fell sorceries and possessed of foul black weapons that drank the very souls of those they slew.”  (TWOIAF, The Ironborn) 

Lightbringer drank Nissa Nissa’s soul – what are these Iron demons from hell doing with black swords that drink souls?

What does it all mean???

---

Wow!  We did it!  All the mythical associations of bloodstone and heliotrope which I believe George R. R. Martin is making use of in his own mythology, and it only took five hours of podcasting to do it!  I wish you guys knew how hard it is to narrow down the choices of quotes to use.  The struggle is never to find enough examples of one of the archetypal patterns or motifs, but rather to choose the best ones to use as examples.  Quite honestly, these lightbringer metaphors are in almost every chapter.  You’ll start finding them on your own as you do re-reads, now that you have these symbols and motifs in your mind, I promise you.  There’s a lot of text to pour over, and I haven’t found them all by any stretch.  People frequently message me with astronomy metaphors they have discovered, and you’ll hear me mention them for hat-tips from time to time.  Like I said, it’s a kind of treasure-hunt, and that’s only to find them, and to say nothing of deciphering their specific meaning.  All I can do is to keep podcasting, take my best shot, and wait for the Winds of Winter to come out.

As for this podcast itself, I’m going to begin to branch out with both subject and format.  I’m going to continue to do the big Bloodstone Compendium episodes, continuing the series that I have been doing so far, but I’m also going to do some smaller, more contained episodes which focus on one specific scene or chapter, kind of like I did at the end of the first podcast with Dany’s alchemical wedding scene.  Some of the ones I have in mind for this are Dany’s various visionary sequences, like the Stallion Who Mounts the World prophecy chapter, the series of visions in her Wake the Dragon dream, and the House of the undying chapter.  Other great scenes and chapters I want to dissect are Arya’s chapters under the Red Keep with the dragon skulls, Asha Greyjoy’s Wayward Bride chapter where they fight the mountain clans in the woods, Davos smuggling Edric Storm off of Dragonstone, Jon Snow’s trip to the weirwood grove of nine when they found the starving wildlings, Jamie’s trip to Raventree Hall, and both Oldtown chapters in A Feast for Crows… and many more.  One of the first ones I’ll be doing will the Mountain vs Red Viper trial by combat which I referred to in this podcast.  It was originally a part of this one but had to be cut because of length.  It will be a bit of a follow of a lot of the bloodstone ideas, so look out for that soon.

I’m going to also start to do character based episodes, where we will break down all the symbolism of a specific character and try to figure out what it means of that person.  As I mentioned a little earlier, I’m also going to be getting into the very important topics of greenseers and the Others, and I believe that I going to be able to tear away the veil of secrecy around the Green Men and the Isle of Faces.  I’m really looking forward to that one in particular, because I believe we are going to see the Isle of Faces in the next book and get some answers, so I’ll be sure to get that one as soon as possible.

I’m also very excited to officially announce that I’ll be doing a joint episode with Aziz and Ashaya from the History of Westeros podcast.  That will appear as a podcast in your mythical astronomy feed just like normal, but you’ll also be able to see it in video form on the History of Westeros youtube channel.  The topic is an important one – the Great Empire of the Dawn and the Dawn Age dragonlords.  I’ve referred to my Fingerprints of the Dawn essay a few times, and this joint podcast will be the official podcast version of this information.  It compliments all the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai stuff we’ve been covering, because it traces out the hard evidence of contact between the far east and Westeros in the Dawn Age.  In addition to the Great Empire of the Dawn and Asshai material, we’re basically going to cover all the evidence of people other than First Men in Dawn Age Westeros – strange folktales, anachronistic buildings, evidence of dragons, etc, so it should be a lot of fun.  The History of Westeros folks will have some interesting things to say, to be sure, and we’ll have plenty of free-form discussion, which will be a nice change up from my regular format.

I also did a guest appearance on History of Westeros’s House Dayne Part 2 podcast which was a lot of fun – thanks for having me guys! – and you can find that by looking up History of Westeros on youtube.

Thanks to everyone who voted for my ideas about the Long Night and the Great Empire of the Dawn in the recent ASOIAF fandom poll conducted by Brynden BFish of Wars and Politics of Ice and Fire.  It’s really tremendous to see the moon-destruction theory getting around a bit.  One of the main reasons I’m doing this besides the pure enjoyment of it is to get the word out about what George is doing with his mythology so everyone can enjoy it as much as we are.  So thanks again, thanks to everyone who has listened and shared my page and podcast.  I really appreciate it.  So long for now everyone.

---

Please, feel welcome to leave a comment!  Don’t be shy!  You don’t need to be a wordpress member to comment, so have at it. I’d love to hear from you.

• LmL

We can square these two stories as really being the same story if we draw the following correlations:

Lightbringer, the bloody & flaming sword = a “fiery” red comet

Nissa Nissa, the blood sacrifice = the second moon

Azor Ahai, the warrior of fire = the sun

The sun and moon are husband and wife, just as Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa were, while comets can be perceived as dragons or flaming swords. Therefore, the celestial version of Azor Ahai stabbing his wife with a sword would be the sun striking his lunar wife with a fiery comet. Because I believe that the Qarthine legend describes a moon in eclipse formation – it is said to have “wandered too close to the sun” – the comet would have appeared to have been sticking out like a sword from the sun-moon conjunction, a fiery sword wielded by the solar king against his moon queen.

It would also look a bit like a sperm fertilizing an egg, and that is indeed another connotation of this combined myth: besides being perceived as the sun’s sword, the comet can also be seen as his fiery seed… dragon seed, to be specific.  The moon is an egg and the wife of the sun, after all, and she gives birth to dragons after being impregnated by the Lightbringer comet.

The Qarthine tale tells us what happened to the moon after it cracked open: dragons burst forth and drank the fire of the sun.  Of course in the language of myth-speak, describing falling meteors as dragons is only about a several-thousand year old idea, and its a good one.  Dragons fly and breathe flame, and falling meteorites fly through the air and breathe flame.  Any kind of moon-cracking or moon-exploding would certainly result in meteors falling into the planet’s atmosphere, so it’s a pretty short intuitive leap to understand that what poured forth from the dying moon was actually a storm of fiery meteors, or if you prefer, a storm of flaming swords.  And yes, I do think this is a second meaning of the title “A Storm of Swords.”  The moon is described as an egg from which the dragons were born, so consider the moon to be a mother who died in childbirth.  Compare this to the Lightbringer legend, which has a flaming sword as the product of the moon-maiden’s sacrifice, and we see that the stories match.  A moon maiden dies, and either fiery dragon meteors or flaming swords are born.

We supported the above conclusions by comparing this unified myth to the scene in which Daenerys walks in the funeral pyre of Khal Drogo and wakes her dragon children from stone eggs, a scene which I like to refer to as the “Alchemical Wedding of Daenerys Targaryen.”  Dany is the “moon of Khal Drogo’s life,” and he her “sun and stars,” so the relationship here is clear.  She receives her dragon’s eggs on the day of her wedding (and copulation) with Khal Drogo, recreating the sun’s insemination of the moon with dragon seed, and when moon-maiden Daenerys ‘wanders too close to the sun’s fire’ by walking into Drogo’s pyre, the eggs crack open just as the second moon did, thereby making Dany the mother of dragons, just as the moon was.  The Lightbringer comet which cracked the moon is symbolized by Khal Drogo’s flaming lash which appears to crack open the first egg and of course by the appearance of the red comet itself, while Dany’s dragon children represent the dragon meteors which poured forth from the moon.

I’d like to hone in on the family portrait being painted here.  The sun and moon both die in the process of creating a child, but that child is both of his parents “reborn,” just as every child is a version of their father and mother writ small, a mixture of the two.  The sun and moon are both reborn in their child, in other words.  If the scribes of ancient Asshai weren’t quite so patriarchal in mindset, they might have written that it will be Nissa Nissa reborn who will wake dragons from stone… but as long as we know that they are the same thing, that “Azor Ahai reborn” IS “Nissa Nissa reborn,” we’ll have to let it slide for now.

The next detail that needs recapping is the notion of the comet having split in half as it rounded the sun, before impacting with the second moon.  The best metaphorical example of this in the text was when Tywin split Ned’s sword Ice in half to make two red and black swords.  Tywin is the sun symbol here – he’s the head lion of Lannister.  The Lightbringer comet, meanwhile, is symbolized by Ned’s sword – it was forged in dragonfire and covered in Ned’s blood, just as Lightbringer was made with fire and blood, and of course Arya perceived the red comet as Ice, running red with her father’s blood.  This is an important detail, because if the comet does not split, it would have been destroyed in the moon explosion and there would be no comet to return to the story like a red banner of vengeance. Instead, it appears that only one half of the split comet impacted with the moon, while the second half streaked by along a slightly different trajectory.  The comet that missed would seem to emerge from the other side of the moon explosion intact, like a flaming sword emerging from the heart of a dying moon maiden.  The surviving comet seems to have been transformed to a red color by this explosion, and this would be the same red comet that we see in the main story, notably at the moment when Dany burns Khal Drogo and wakes the dragons.

What I am trying to say is that two kinds of flaming sword / dragon meteors emerged from the moon explosion: one big burning and bleeding red comet, and a thousand thousand meteors burning red as they fell to earth, like smaller versions of the red comet.  Both are the offspring of the sun and moon, and so both represent Lightbringer.  If we want to be more specific, we might say that the surviving comet half is Azor Ahai reborn, while the dragon meteors are the dragons which are woken from stone.   Just as the comet is seen as an extension of the sun which carries the sun’s fire, Azor Ahai’s dragons and his flaming sword are really just an extension of himself.   In essence, Azor Ahai reborn and Lightbringer are the same thing, two parts of a greater whole.

Consider the Dothraki beliefs about what is actually happening when Dany burns Khal Drogo.  The Dothraki see the stars as the spirits of the dead, and so when the Khal burns, his spirit supposedly “rises on his fiery steed to take his place among the stars,” being reborn as a Khal in the Nightlands who leads the starry khalasar.  Drogo’s star is the red comet, and Drogo is playing the role of solar king Azor Ahai in this little metaphorical drama.  In other words, what this scene is telling us that when solar king Azor Ahai dies, he is indeed reborn as the red comet.  Azor Ahai reborn is the one who wakes dragons from stone, just as the red comet was the thing which woke dragon meteors from the stone egg of the second moon.  It’s also interesting to think of Azor Ahai reborn as “King of the Nightlands.”

In the alchemical wedding scene, Daenerys actually plays two roles: that of moon mother, bride of fire and dragons; and that of Azor Ahai reborn, daughter of fire and dragons.  First she plays the moon mother role, becoming the bride of fire as she burns in the sun’s fire and symbolically dies.  She is then reborn in the fire, and wakes dragons from stone – clearly, she is now playing the role of Azor Ahai reborn, who is reborn to wake dragons from stone.  As I mentioned last time, this makes Dany the child of herself, after a fashion.  What’s going on here?  Why is she playing two roles?  Well, because the child of sun and moon can also be perceived as the rebirth of the sun and moon, this process can be depicted as either the birth of a new child entirely, carrying the essence of their parents, or as a literal resurrection of one of the parents.  Jon Snow is one manifestation of Azor Ahai reborn, and his parents die at the time of his birth.  Dany’s original parents die around the time of her birth too – these are depictions of Azor Ahai reborn as a new child carrying on the legacy of their dead parents.  But in this alchemical wedding scene, Dany shows us the resurrection side of things: she begins as the mother of dragons, dying in fiery childbirth, but then also plays the role of the new child, Azor Ahai reborn, who is reborn in fire to wake dragons from stone.

I believe Dany correlates to the surviving half of the comet, “Azor Ahai reborn,” while her dragons symbolize the dragon meteors.  I mentioned that reborn Azor Ahai’s flaming sword and his dragons woken from stone are essentially an extension of himself (or herself), and indeed, Dany’s dragons are very much an extension of herself.  As Dany thinks to herself about Drogon in A Dance with Dragons, “He is fire made flesh, and so am I.”  They can be seen as individual things, but in the end they are smaller parts of a greater whole, sharing the same nature.

In other words, to the extent that Dany is a manifestation of Azor Ahai reborn, the dragons are her Lightbringer, as many have suggested.  However, there are other manifestations of this entire pattern involving other characters, which means that Daenerys is not the only incarnation of reborn Azor Ahai, and her dragons are likely not the only manifestation of Lightbringer.  Jon Snow fans needn’t fear – we’re going to talk a bit about Jon in just a second.

And just to keep the gender equality flowing, I’ll mention that if the Nissa Nissa moon is the mother of dragons, then solar king Azor Ahai is the father of dragons.  The moon maiden is the bride of fire, and the solar king the warrior of fire.  Their child is Azor Ahai reborn, who is the “son of fire” according to Melisandre, completing the family portrait.  Notice that as Dany steps into the firestorm to be reborn, she names herself “daughter of dragons” as well as bride and mother of dragons.  Just as Azor Ahai reborn is the “son of fire,” Dany is reborn in the fire – a child of fire in her own right.  This moment is when she transitions from the bride of fire and dragons to the mother of fire and dragons and finally to the daughter of fire and dragons, a manifestation of Azor Ahai reborn.

Speaking of Azor Ahai as the father of dragons, the name Azor Ahai is actually not just a couple of made up words – it can be pretty well translated in the language of Vedic Sanskrit, the language and culture which gave us the legend of Mithras.  It seems logical to look for a translation of Azor Ahai in Sanskrit, because George based a lot of his Azor Ahai and Lightbringer ideas on Mithras.  So, what does his name mean?  Well, it’s “fire dragon.”  Azor Ahai, father of dragons, is a fire dragon – let it be known.  That’s no surprise – he’s supposed to wake dragons from stone, after all.  It may be that Azor Ahai was in fact a dragonlord… this is an idea we’ll come back to.  (Hat-tip to Westeros.org forum user J Stargaryen)

As for Mithras’s influence on the Lightbringer myth, the full rundown is to be found in Schmendrick’s essay which I mentioned last time, R + L = Lightbringer, but I’ll give you an important part of it here.  Mithras is often depicted as being “rock-born,” a young man emerging from a stone-like egg.  He holds a sword in one hand a torch in the other.  The sword represents death, and the torch rebirth – and Mithras himself aids the righteous in being reborn after death.  Mithras is known as the mediator – and in this instance, he has the power to mediate between death and life.  George calls out to this idea with an obscure God that Arya witnesses in Bravos while getting the tour of the city’s temples in A Dance with Dragons:

Three-headed Trios has that tower with three turrets. The first head devours the dying, and the reborn emerge from the third. I don’t know what the middle head’s supposed to do. 

The middle head represents the underworld, the Bardo realm, the in-between place – it’s the place where the dying go and the reborn emerge from.  And it’s a clear reference to Mithras and this famous depiction of him as rock-born Mithras, with his sword and his torch.

So if a sword represents death, and a torch life, what do we make of a sword which is also a torch?  Consider the Nightswatch vows, in which they declare themselves to be a  sword in the darkness and the light that brings the dawn.  Like the Lightbringer of legend, they are both sword and torch.  This gets to the very heart of what this essay is about – what is the nature of Lightbringer, and of Azor Ahai reborn?

That’s actually our last item to recap – what have we seen so far about the nature of Lightbringer and Azor Ahai?  We examined several things in the last essay which represent Lightbringer, the offspring of sun and moon, and all of them are associated with blood, flame, shadow, and death.  There was the black dragon egg, the black dragon in Dany’s dream, Drogon himself, burning dream Rhaego and actual dead lizard baby Rhaego, Ned’s black dragon-forged sword called Ice, Aegon the Conqueror’s black dragon sword called Blackfyre, and of course the burning dragon meteors of the ancient past and the red comet of the current story.   There are many more Lightbringer symbols to come, and I can promise you that they fit this pattern as well.  We’ll be seeing several of them in this essay.

Consider this one simple idea: in the Azor Ahai story, the moon cracks when Azor Ahai stabs his wife.  In other words, Azor Ahai destroyed the moon by forging Lightbringer.  It’s right there, without any other corroborations or comparisons to other myths  – Azor Ahai broke the moon.  Doesn’t breaking the moon kind of make you a villain?  Much like stabbing your wife, it seems like a messed up thing to do.

When we look to the astronomy represented by the Azor Ahai story, we arrive at the same conclusion: the celestial forging of Lightbringer in the heart of the moon was the cause of the Long Night, not the cure.  If the moon explosion caused the Long Night, that means that Azor Ahai caused the Long Night, because Azor Ahai cracked the moon.  The evidence is mounting: the story of Azor Ahai the noble hero who saved the world might have a few holes in it.  Many of you will have suspected this already – perhaps the first time you heard the part of the story where he stabs his wife in the heart with a freaking sword.  You might have also picked up on the fact that the most prominent advocate for the the concept of “Azor Ahai” reborn is fond of burning people alive, including children, and has a habit of birthing assassin-demons made of pure darkness, which the fandom has somewhat affectionately dubbed “shadow babies.”  Melisandre says the shadows are the servants of the light… but I’m giving that claim a rating of “highly dubious.”  Consider this: when you stand outside and cast a shadow on the ground, is the sun casting the shadow, or are you?  The sun creates light, but the shadow appears only when an object blocks the sun. It is the object blocking the sun that creates the shadow, not the sun.  Mel says we cannot have shadow without light, but that’s not so either.  Without light, all is shadow.  Shadow IS darkness, the opposite of light.  Not the servant of light.  Azor Ahai and Lightbringer brought the darkness.

Consider Dany’s inner musings in A Dance with Dragons on the nature of dragons:

Mother of dragons, Daenerys thought. Mother of monsters.  What have I unleashed upon the world?  A queen I am, but my throne is made of burned bones, and it rests on quicksand. Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros? I am the blood of the dragon, she thought. If they are monsters, so am I.   

Elsewhere in A Dance with Dragons, Xaro Xoan Daxos makes a similar observation to Daenerys, with bonus points for comparing the dragons to a flaming sword flying in the air like a comet:

“When your dragons were small, they were a wonder.  Grown, they are death and devastation, a flaming sword above the world.” 

What this comes down to is a fundamental question about how things work in A Song of Ice and Fire: can human sacrifice and blood magic somehow be used to create a tool which brings life and works to the common good of man?  We all understand Martin’s fondness for shoving grey characters with conflicted hearts into difficult moral dilemmas, but I do not believe that means there is no right and wrong in the story.  Is blood magic an abomination, as the Dothraki say, or is it a machiavellian tool in the hands of the anti-hero who sorta kinda saves the world in bittersweet fashion?

For the record, I lean towards #teamabomination – I’m not only a client, I’m also the founder – but I realize that that could be a projection of my own morality onto the story, and so I’m doing my best to keep an open mind.  Perhaps its like one of those Darth Vader things where a life-long instrument of evil finds redemption at the end… Whatever the case, I believe that we don’t have to simply guess or take sides – I think we have a fair amount of evidence to review which might help us discern the truth.

We’ll begin our  quest to discover who the Azor Ahai really is, and what it means to be Azor Ahai reborn, with a look at what we’ve been told about the warrior of fire and the red sword of heroes.  We’ll be taking a short break from the murk and mire of metaphorical myth to consider the more straightforward and logistical evidence concerning Azor Ahai, such as it is, and then we’ll dive back into the depths of that slimy swamp of symbolism which I like to call “the good stuff.”

---

 

FIVE HERO DEATH PUNCH 

One of the new pieces of information we received about Azor Ahai in the World of Ice and Fire is that the legend of a warrior with a flaming sword exists in several places, but with different names: Hyrkoon the Hero, Yin Tar, Neferion, Eldric Shadowchaser, and of course Azor Ahai.  These are all interesting for various reasons.  Let’s start with talking about where these different names might have originated from.

Azor Ahai: We have always been told that the Azor Ahai myth comes from Asshai and the red priests.  This is very important, so I will include several quotes:

Melisandre was robed all in scarlet satin and blood velvet, her eyes as red as the great ruby that glistened at her throat as if it too were afire.  “In ancient books of Asshai it is written that there will come a day after a long summer when the stars bleed and the cold breath of darkness falls heavy on the world.  In this dread hour a warrior shall draw from the fire a burning sword. And that sword shall be Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes, and he who clasps it shall be Azor Ahai come again, and the darkness shall flee before him.”  She lifted her voice, so it carried out over the gathered host.  “Azor Ahai, beloved of R’hllor! The Warrior of Light, the Son of Fire!  Come forth, your sword awaits you!  Come forth and take it into your hand!”  (ACOK, Davos)

According to Melisandre of Asshai, the legend of Azor Ahai and Lightbringer comes from old books in Asshai.  It’s interesting to note that the prophecy of his return is also from these same books in Asshai, and that prophecy is clearly a central part of R’hllorism.  This is a direct link between the R’hllorists and Asshai.  It’s probably not a coincidence Melsiandre is both a shadowbinder from Asshai and a red priest: they have some areas of mutual interest, to say the least.

“Lord Snow, I left a book for you in my chambers. The Jade Compendium, it was written by the Volantene adventurer Colloquo Votar, who travelled to the east and visited all the lands of the Jade Sea. There is a passage you may find of interest. I’ve told Clydas to mark it for you…. Knowledge is a weapon, Jon.  Arm yourself well before you ride forth to battle.”  (ADWD, Jon)

“The Jade Compendium. The pages that told of Azor Ahai.  Lightbringer was his sword.  Tempered with his wife’s blood if Votar can be believed.  Thereafter Lightbringer was never cold to the touch, but warm as Nissa Nissa had been warm. In battle the blade burned fiery hot.  Once Azor Ahai fought a monster.  When he thrust the sword through the belly of the beast, its blood began to boil.  Smoke and steam poured from its mouth, its eyes melted and dribbled down its cheeks, and its body burst into flame.”  (ADWD, Jon)

Colloquo Votar, who wrote the Jade Compendium, travelled to the lands of the Jade Sea – most likely to Asshai itself, where almost certainly obtained this knowledge of Azor Ahai and Lightbringer.  We can see that Aemon Targaryen considers it to be of critical importance, as his parting advice to Jon Snow was to read an understand it.  We can deduce that Rhaegar was also well familiar with the Jade Compendium, as we know he and Aemon discussed the Azor Ahai prophecy together.  This is also a clue that Aemon, at least, thinks that the Azor Ahai information is relevant to the Nights Watch, the people fighting the Others, strengthening the idea that there is a connection between Azor Ahai and the Last Hero.

It is also written that there are annals in Asshai of such a darkness, and of a hero who fought against it with a red sword.  His deeds are said to have been performed before the rise of Valyria, in the earliest ages when Old Ghis was first forming its empire.  This legend has spread west from Asshai, and the followers of R’hllor claim that this hero was named Azor Ahai, and prophesy his return.  (TWOIAF)

Again we see the connection between R’hllorism and Asshai, and that the legend of Azor Ahai and Lightbringer does in fact come from Asshai.  It seems likely Azor Ahai himself came from Asshai, I would suggest. I mean, if not from Asshai, then where?

Hyrkoon the Hero can only come from the formerly existent Patrimony of Hyrkoon, to the east of the Bones Mountains. Hyrkoon’s former empire is now the Great Sand Sea, with the only remnants being the three fortress cities of Bayasabhad, Samyriana, and Kayakayanaya in the Bones mountains, all of which are populated by fierce warrior women who don’t take BS from anyone.

Neferion similarly must come from the “secret city” of Nefer, the sole remaing city of the N’ghai, also east of the Bones mountains.  Nefer is the lone port on the coast of the Shivering Sea east of the Bones.

Yin Tar seems to be an obviously Yi Tish name.  Their “first and most glorious” capital city is “Yin.”  The Golden Empire of Yi Ti is east of the Bones mountains on the coast of the Jade Sea.

Eldric Shadowchaser is the hard one – “Eldric” sounds like a Westerosi name – House Stark has had two “Edrics Starks” (shoutout to Edric Snowbeard) and one “Elric Stark” that we know of.  There is no similar-sounding name or word to be found anywhere in Essos.  All of the other ‘red sword legends’ are from far eastern Essos, and the Worldbook mentions these five names while telling the story of the Great Empire of the Dawn, a lost civilization of the Dawn Age whose domain was basically all of the habitable land east of the Bones mountains.  Thus it would seem odd for Eldric Shadowchaser to be from Westeros.  If however, the Last Hero and his dragon steel sword do indeed have a connection to Azor Ahai and his Lightbringer sword as many have proposed, that would mean that Azor Ahai (or perhaps his son?) came to Westeros with his fiery red sword. Perhaps “Eldric Shadowchaser” has something to do with this – it could be the name he was known by in Westeros.

Now, keeping mind that the question is whether or not Azor Ahai was really a heroic savior figure, let’s take a brief look at these places which tell a story of a warrior with a flaming sword.  We don’t know where Eldric Shadowchaser is from, and Yi Ti seems to have its share of refined culture and depravity both over the course of its long existence – not especially better or worse than anywhere else.  But these other three… well…

Before the Dry Times and the coming of the Great Sand Sea, the Jogos Nhai fought many a bloody border war against the Patrimony of Hyrkoon as well, poisoning rivers and wells, burning towns and cities, and a carrying off thousands into slavery on the plains, whilst the Hyrkoon for their part were sacrificing tens of thousands of the zorse-riders to their dark and hungry gods.  (TWOIAF)

Okay, bloody border war, that’s nothing especially heinous… OH HEY THERE, sacrificing thousands of humans to your dark and hungry gods, that’s the kind of thing we are on the lookout for.  How many people did Hyrkoon the Hero sacrifice to the dark gods, I wonder?

Nefer, chief city of the kingdom of N’ghai, hemmed in by towering chalk cliffs and perpetually shrouded in fog.  When seen from the harbor, Nefer appears to be no more than a small town, but it is said that nine-tenths of the city is beneath the ground.  For that reason travelers call Nefer the Secret City.  By any name, the city enjoys a sinister reputation as a hunt of necromancers and torturers.  (TWOIAF)

I know necromancy and torture are just par for the course at this point, but let’s stop to consider: torturing people and reanimating corpses.  That’s what this city is known for, plus the fog.  Basically, it’s like a partially-undergound version of Seattle, with grunge bands and the space needle swapped out for necromancy and torture.  Kidding aside, the necromancy in particular seems relevant.

And now let’s see what The World of Ice and Fire has to say about Asshai:

Few places in the known world are as remote as Asshai, and fewer are as forbidding.  Travelers tell us that the city is built entirely of black stone: halls, hovels, temples, palaces, streets, walls, bazaars, all.  Some say as well that the stone of Asshai has a greasy, unpleasant feel to it, that it seems to drink the light, dimming tapers and torches and hearth fires alike.  The nights are very black in Asshai, all agree, and even the brightest days of summer are somehow gray and gloomy.

The dark city by the shadow is a city steeped in sorcery.  Warlocks, wizards, alchemists, moonsingers, red priests, black alchemists, necromancers, aeromancers, pyromancers, blood mages, torturers, inquisitors, poisoners, godswives, night-walkers, shapechangers, worshippers of the Black Goat and the Pale Child and the Lion of Night, all find welcome in Asshai-by-the-Shadow, where nothing is forbidden.  Here they are free to practice their spells without restraint or censure, conduct their obscene rights, and fornicate with demons (!) if that is their desire.

Most sinister of all the sorcerers of Asshai are the shadowbinders, whose lacquered masks hide their faces from the eyes of gods and men. They alone dare to go up river past the walls of Asshai, into the heart of darkness.  (TWOIAF)

It gets much worse from there, going up the river Ash, where demons and dragons making their lairs, a corpse city lies at the Shadow’s heart, etc.  Septon Barth also tells us that there are no children or animals in Asshai-by-the-Shadow, and that the malign influence of polluted waters of the River Ash may be to blame.  That river is said to be black during the day and to glimmer with phosphorescence at night, and the fish that swim it are blind and deformed.

Asshai is basically a magical version of a nuclear wasteland inhabited by the absolute worst and most depraved sorts of black magicians.  It’s called “Asshai-by-the-Shadow,” and this is where the legend of Azor Ahai comes from.  These are the folks naming him a “hero.”

As for the people who prophesy his return as a savior figure, the R’hllorists?  With their shadow babies and burning of the unbelievers and sacrificing children to wake magical stone fire-monsters they hope to control?  With their longing for a summer without end, which would be just as bad a winter without end?  Are anyone’s red flags going off yet?  Is it really so crazy to think that maybe the hero of places like Hyrkoon, Nefer, and Asshai-by-the-Shadow is actually, how shall we say, “The Prince of Darkness?”  (cue evil laughter)  We also may want to keep an open mind as we look at the other supposed “heroes” and “villains” of the ancient legends.  This may potentially be good news for the Nights King fanclub (quick shoutout – hey guys!)

---

 

Smithing and Stealing

We continue our exploration of the idea that Azor Ahai was not the darkness-slaying hero he is remembered as, but rather the ‘bad guy’ who murdered his wife and was associated with the cause of the Long Night by looking at another legend about a bad guy who murdered a woman and caused the Long Night.  This excerpt is from The World of Ice and Fire and concerns the Yi Tish legend of a lost civilization called the Great Empire of the Dawn and its downfall, a tale of usurpation and murder remembered as the Blood Betrayal.

In the beginning, the priestly scribes of Yin declare, all the land between the Bones and the freezing desert called the Grey Waste, from the Shivering Sea to the Jade Sea (including even the great and holy isle of Leng), formed a single realm ruled by the God-on-Earth, the only begotten son of the Lion of Night and Maiden-Made of Light, who traveled about his domains in a palanquin carved from a single pearl and carried by a hundred queens, his wives.   For ten thousand years the Great Empire of the Dawn flourished in peace and plenty under the God-on-Earth, until at last he ascended to the stars to join his forbearers.

Dominion over mankind then passed to his eldest son, who was known as the pearl Emperor and ruled for 1000 years. The Jade Emperor, the Tourmaline Emperor, the Onyx Emperor, the Topaz Emperor, and the Opal Emperor followed in turn, each reigning for centuries… Yet every reign was shorter and more troubled than the one preceding it, for wild men and baleful beasts pressed at the borders of the Great Empire, lesser kings grew prideful and rebellious, and the common people gave themselves over to avarice, envy, lust, murder, incest, gluttony, and sloth. 

When the daughter of the Opal Emperor succeeded him as the Amethyst Empress, her envious younger brother cast her down and slew her, proclaiming himself the Bloodstone Emperor and beginning a reign of terror.  He practiced dark arts, torture, and necromancy, enslaved his people, took a tiger woman for his bride, feasted on human flesh, and cast down the true Gods to worship a black stone that had fallen from the sky.  (Many scholars count the Bloodstone Emperor as the first High Priest of the sinister Church of Starry Wisdom, which persists to this day in many port cities throughout the known world). 

In the annals of the further east, it was the Blood Betrayal, as his usurpation is named, that ushered in the age of darkness called the Long Night.  Despairing of the evil that had been unleashed on earth, the Maiden-Made-of-Light turned her back upon the world, and the Lion of Night came forth in all his wroth to punish the wickedness of men.  

How long the darkness endured no man can say, but all agree it was only when a great warrior – known variously as Hyrkoon the Hero, Azor Ahai, Yin Tar, Neferion, and Eldric Shadowchaser – arose to give courage to the race of men and lead the virtuous into battle with his blazing sword Lightbringer that the darkness was put to rout, and light and love returned once more to the world.

Yet the Great Empire of the Dawn was not reborn, for the restored world was a broken place where every tribe of men went its own way, fearful of all the others, and war and lust and murder endured, even to our present day. Or so of the men and women of the further east believe.  (TWOIAF)

Here we have a story of a powerful sorcerer king who caused the sun to hide its face and the Long Night to fall by killing his wife and practicing dark magic.  Since we suspect that Azor Ahai caused the Long Night by cracking the moon when he stabbed his wife in a blood magic ritual, we must consider the possibility that these two myths might be speaking of the same events.  They seem to have the same skeleton, and both are from the far east.  Both stories are tied to the Long Night.  Both involve blood magic or dark magic.  Azor Ahai killed his wife, Nissa Nissa, and the Bloodstone Emperor killed his sister, the Amethyst Empress.

As a final comparison between the myths, notice that Azor Ahai cracked the moon, which poured forth dragon meteors, while the Bloodstone Emperor worshipped a black meteor.  Could this black stone that fell from the sky that the Bloodstone Emperor worshipped have been one of these “dragon meteors” which fell to earth after the second moon exploded?   If I’m right about the second moon-cracking being the cause of the Long Night, we should see myths about meteor strikes during the Long Night… and here we have that very thing.  If Azor Ahai, remembered as the hero, was really the villain who caused the Long Night, then somewhere, we should find a legend about some kind of dark sorcerer who caused the Long Night, the true story of Azor Ahai … and here we find that very thing.  Is it possible that these stories are mixed up somehow, and that this Bloodstone Emperor who corrupted and destroyed the great Dawn Age empire in the far east was actually Azor Ahai?

That’s exactly what I mean to suggest – all hail the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai, First of his Name, God-Emperor of the Great Empire of the Evening and High Priest of the Church of Starry Wisdom and King of the Nightlands, practitioner of dark arts, torture, and necromancy; enslaver of his own people and eater of human flesh; he who slew the Amethyst Empress Nissa Nissa, cast down the true gods, and worshipped the black stone which fell from the sky.  Now that’s the kind of fellow who you would expect to reign supreme during the Long Night.

Since we know that Nissa Nissa represents the moon, celestially, the Amethyst Empress should as well.  This makes sense, for in the legend, the death of the Amethyst Empress resulted in the fall of the Long Night, and of course our main hypothesis is that the death of the second moon was the physical mechanism which brought the fall of the Long Night.  And if Azor Ahai the “fire dragon” was indeed a dragonlord – and whats the point of waking dragons if you aren’t a dragonlord – it’s well possible that the Amethyst Empress Nissa Nissa was both Azor Ahai’s wife and sister, given what we’ve seen of dragonlords and incest.

I think that the Bloodstone Emperor’s “casting down the true gods” is symbolically the same thing as killing the Amethyst Empress, Nissa Nissa, since she represents the moon, and the moon is a god.  “Moon is god, woman wife of sun.  It is known,” as Irri and Jiqui tell Dany immediately after we hear of the second-moon-cracking-to-pour-forth-dragons story.  The excerpt above even uses the “cast down” phrase for both the Amethyst Empress and the “true gods,” which of course makes sense if they are both symbols of the fallen second moon.  In other words, if Azor Ahai wielding a fiery sword is equivalent to a fiery comet coming from the sun, then the killing of the Amethyst Empress Nissa Nissa is equivalent to the murder of a moon goddess, or “casting down the true gods.”  High crimes, indeed.

Casting down the gods, pulling down things from heaven, stealing fire or knowledge from heaven, gods descending from heaven with divine knowledge and dying, only to be resurrected – these are all variations of the same idea, and it’s one of the very oldest in mythology.  The serpent in the Garden of Eden story encouraged Adam to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, so that he might become like gods, while the biblical Lucifer challenged God and was cast down from heaven to become the lord of hell.  Prometheus stole the fire of heaven for mankind, Gilgamesh (and Moses) recorded the wisdom of God on stone tablets, and Jesus descended from heaven to give the gift of spiritual rebirth.  Queztalcoatl brought all the knowledge of the gods to the natives of the Americas, including astronomy, farming, metallurgy, and many other gifts of civilization, and he too died, descended to the underworld, and was resurrected.   Osiris was sacrificed and dismembered, only to be reassembled by Isis and resurrected as the Lord of the Underworld.  Most of these mythological characters and deities are associated with the Morningstar, Venus, and are sometimes called “Morningstar deities.”  In our case, the ‘stealer of heavenly fire’ is the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai, and the stolen fire of heaven that takes the form of a goddess is the Amethyst Empress, Nissa Nissa.  I’ll have an essay dedicated to the various Ironborn legends of the Grey King, but I’ve already mentioned that they involve slaying an island-drowning sea dragon, which I take for a falling meteor, and the very Prometheus-like story of the Grey King stealing the fire of the gods via the Storm God’s thunderbolt.  These stories seem to share a common theme, if not a common origin.

As my friend and nerd-celebrity Brynden BFish of the Wars and Politics of Ice and Fire blog recently wrote on Reddit, the Azor Ahai story is the “monomyth” of A Song of Ice and Fire.  The Bloodstone Emperor Blood Betrayal story seems to be a different version of the Azor Ahai Lightbringer legend, and I have found many other myths and legends which may also be referring to the same events, as I have alluded to.  Consider the concept of pulling down things from heaven which I just mentioned, and let’s see how many ancient folktales concern something falling from heaven, the death of a goddess, people trying to be like gods, etc.  Keep in mind that I believe one of these falling moon meteors landed in the ocean, provoking floods, and so sometimes the moon goddess is depicted as a mermaid or as an aquatic woman of some kind:

Azor Ahai – killed Nissa Nissa in blood magic ritual to obtain flaming sword, cracked the moon

Qarthine Origin of Dragons – the moon cracked, flaming dragons poured forth

Bloodstone Emperor – killed Amethyst Empress, cast down the true gods, worshipped a black stone that fell from the sky, possessed starry wisdom

Grey King – slew sea dragon which drowns islands, stole Storm God’s fire via thunderbolt, took a mermaid to wife, long life

Durran Godsgrief – stole daughter of the wind and sea gods, dooming her to eventual death & provoking floods, long life

Hugor Hill – the Father pulled down seven stars from heaven for his crown, married maiden with eyes like blue pools. He is probably the same as the Andal hero Hukko, who slew the seven swan maidens

Lann the Clever – stole the fire of the sun to color his hair, impregnated maidens without their knowledge, long life

Night’s King – married a woman with moon-pale skin, committed horrible magical atrocities & sacrilege

Hammer of the Waters – something “hammered” the land and broke it, sorcery (“Old Gods”) was part of the cause

Ser Galladon of Morne – the Maiden herself “lost her heart” to Galladon and gave him a magic sword, which I believe refers to the second moon and Lightbringer

Dawn – a magic sword made from a pale stone which is the heart of a fallen star

Pretty impressive, when you look at them all together, isn’t it?  Eleven different stories from the Dawn Age or Age of Heroes (I don’t think there’s really a difference), and all of them containing similar key elements.  We’ll be getting into all of these myths sooner or later, but I wanted to lay them out here so you can see the continuity of theme: challenging the gods, stealing from the gods, pulling gods down, gods descending from heaven, and things falling form the sky in general.  Most of these stories also involve cataclysms of some kind, being either tied to the Long Night directly or referring to floods and earthquakes, etc.  Many of these stories also involve legendary figures who had many, many children and founded nations.

There’s also a modern echo of this story in the Doom of Valyria.  One story about the Doom says that the priests of R’hllor “called down the fire of their god,” while another says that red clouds rained down dragonglass and the black blood of demons.  The Valyrians, meanwhile, believed themselves to be like gods and defied nature itself by harnessing the 14 flames and enslaving or even wiping out whole peoples and nations.  Obviously this story doesn’t describe the Long Night, but I believe George is using it as a parallel to give us clues about the Long Night disaster.

While we’re talking about stealing, we can’t pass up one of the occurrences in the series of actual astronomy – observation of the stars – as Jon demonstrates his starry wisdom in A Storm of Swords:

So many stars, he thought as he trudged up the slope through pines and firs and ash. 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 never meant to steal you,” he said. “I never knew you were a girl until my knife was at your throat.”

Now first of all, raise your hands if you can look up at the night sky and locate the twelve constellations of the zodiac and perhaps a few others.  If your hand is up, congratulations – you’re a real renaissance man, or woman.  Jon Snow is actually a halfway decent amateur astronomer, and what’s interesting is that he is one of the only characters to really observe the stars in any detail, and he does it again later on in A Storm of Swords as well.  There are a couple of times where a constellation is made note of in the narrative, Davos has a very cool scene at Dragonstone observing the stars, and a feverish Daenerys has a long conversation with Quaithe’s mask of starlight at the end of A Dance with Dragons, but Jon is one of the only people besides Davos and the maesters that we see really observing the stars.  Observing the stars doesn’t necessarily make you the Bloodstone Emperor reincarnate, but I’m just saying – Jon has a bit of starry wisdom.

The term “wanderer” refers to the concept of stars which do not move with the backdrop of all the other stars – these are the five planets visible from earth with the naked eye, plus the sun and moon to make seven.  In antiquity, these were commonly referred to as the seven celestial “wanderers” or just “wandering stars” in general.  Comets too are called wandering stars, for the same reason – they are “a star with a tail, lost in the heavens” as Maester Cressen puts it in the prologue of A Clash of Kings.

The red wanderer which is associated with both the Smith and the Thief is almost certainly Mars, the red planet.  We could go off on a tangent about mythology associated with Mars, but I just want to stick to the Westerosi mythology here.  The red wanderer in this story makes for a good stand-in for the red comet, a wandering red star.  And look – it’s trying to impregnate the Moonmaid!  That’s pretty on-the-nose.

In turn, the two mythic figures associated with the red wanderer, the “the Smith” and “the Thief,” both seem to be aspects of the Azor Ahai archetype.  Azor Ahai was known for being a smith in a literal sense, because he created the sword Lightbringer – heat, hammer, and fold, oh yes, until the sword was done.  He’s also “the Smith” in a more abstract sense, since he forged the burning sword meteors, and perhaps that nasty Hammer of the Waters, which may have been a moon meteor.  The Bloodstone Emperor is certainly the thief, as we have discussed, stealing the throne of the Amethyst Empress, the fire of the gods, and even the moon goddess herself.  If these are the same person as I suggest, then we can see that the Red Wanderer is actually symbolizing four different aspects of the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai – the bleeding, wandering star; the smithing of a sword, the stealing of the fire of the gods, and the impregnation of the moon maiden.  In other words, it makes sense for the red wander to to be associated with Azor Ahai symbols and Bloodstone Emperor symbols if they are in fact the same person.

Also emphasized is the killing / procreation dual metaphor of Lightbringer in the custom of  “stealing” a woman, which Jon accomplishes with actual violence and near murder.  Another time we’ll break down Jon’s entire trip up the Skirling Pass in to meet his lady love, but for now I’ll just mention that from the bottom of the mountain, Ygritte’s “glimmering” watchfire was described as a “fire in the night” which was ” like a “fallen star” which “burned redder than the other stars.”  That’s a nice tie-in to the discussion of the red wanderer and Jon’s stealing of Ygritte. The same event is referenced twice, in two different books, with a fire like a fallen red star in one scene and the red wanderer which is a thief and a smith in the other.

Jon is playing the role of Azor Ahai, climbing to the fiery star to steal a moon maiden, who is of course Ygritte, with her hair kissed by fire and eyes “as wide as hen’s eggs.”  The moon was an egg that was kissed by the solar fire of Azor Ahai – you get the idea.  Jon thinks about killing her with his dragon-forged sword, but falls in love with her instead.  Maybe there’s hope for young Jon Snow, even though his raven does call him a thief from time to time.

That’s not a joke, actually – Jon, as an important manifestation of Azor Ahai reborn, should be a thief and a smith.  The Thief symbolism is clear – between the raven and Ygritte, it’s unanimous – and the Smith symbolism is there too, though it is more subtle.  When Jon becomes commander, he takes up residence in the armory, the former quarters of one of his mentors, Donal Noye, Castle Black’s valiant but fallen smith.  The sword Jon’s trying to forge is probably the Nightswatch, the sword in the darkness, although right now that’s not going so well.  Regardless, the point is that Jon seems to be wearing both symbols, the smith and the thief, and that these are both part of the Azor Ahai archetype.

Let’s return to the comparison between the stories of the Bloodstone Emperor and Azor Ahai.  We see that the Bloodstone Emperor is defined by the killing of the rightful ruler of his kingdom, his sibling, and the usurpation of the throne.  Azor Ahai is defined by killing his wife, his love, and fighting the darkness with a sword of red fire.  Both of these ideas are combined in one of Jon Snow’s most important scenes of A Dance with Dragons, one which is brimming with Lightbringer symbolism (as well as a non-symbolic, literally-on-fire red sword).  As I mentioned before, Jon is the other high-profile incarnation of Azor Ahai reborn, and so I find it highly significant that he seems to again be manifesting the actions of both Azor Ahai and the Bloodstone Emperor at the same time, since I believe them to be the same person:

That night he dreamt of wildlings howling from the woods, advancing to the moan of warhorns and the roll of drums.  Boom DOOM boom DOOM boom DOOM came the sound, a thousand hearts with a single beat.  Some had spears and some had bows and some had axes. Others rode on chariots made of bones, drawn by teams of dogs as big as ponies. Giants lumbered amongst them, forty feet tall, with mauls the size of oak trees.

“Stand fast,” Jon Snow called. “Throw them back.” He stood atop the Wall, alone. “Flame,” he cried, “feed them flame,” but there was no one to pay heed.

They are all gone. They have abandoned me.

Burning shafts hissed upward, trailing tongues of fire.  Scarecrow brothers tumbled down, black cloaks ablaze.  “Snow,” an eagle cried, as foemen scuttled up the ice like spiders.  Jon was armored in black ice, but his blade burned red in his fist.  As the dead men reached the top of the Wall he sent them down to die again.  He slew a greybeard and a beardless boy, a giant, a gaunt man with filed teeth, a girl with thick red hair.  Too late he recognized Ygritte.  She was gone as quick as she’d appeared.

The world dissolved into a red mist. Jon stabbed and slashed and cut.  He hacked down Donal Noye and gutted Deaf Dick Follard. Qhorin Halfhand stumbled to his knees, trying in vain to staunch the flow of blood from his neck.  “I am the Lord of Winterfell,” Jon screamed. It was Robb before him now, his hair wet with melting snow.  Longclaw took his head off.  Then a gnarled hand seized Jon roughly by the shoulder.  He whirled… and woke with a raven pecking at his chest. “Snow,” the bird cried.  (ADWD, Jon)

Jon performs the entire range of deeds here: he slays his love with a sword of red fire, just as Azor Ahai did, and he kills his sibling and usurps their throne, just as the Bloodstone Emperor did.  At first he appears to be the Last Hero, abandoned and alone but heroically fighting the wildling invaders, who sound like Others (“howling” like the north winds, “scuttling up the ice like (ice) spiders”).  But we know that the wildlings aren’t really inhuman ice demons, and Jon’s dream of valor quickly warps into a nightmare as he realizes he’s killing innocent people, but cannot stop himself.  The killings of Ygritte and Robb symbolize the forging of Lightbringer and the Blood Betrayal both, the moment Jon becomes the Bloodstone Emperor, Azor Ahai reborn.

After that, the world dissolves into red mist – recall Dany’s blood boiling and turning to mist in her wake the dragon dream – and he commits betrayal after betrayal, murdering his closest friends, culminating in his murder and usurpation of Robb’s throne.  A nightmare indeed… Just what exactly does it mean for someone to show signs of being Azor Ahai reborn?  What kind of sword was this “Lightbringer?”  These are two of the important questions which we will attempt to shed light on, if you’ll pardon the pun, as we unravel the legend of Azor Ahai, Nissa Nissa, and Lightbringer.  At the very least, I believe this scene supports the notion that Azor Ahai and the Bloodstone Emperor are the same person, the same archetype, and that anyone who is “Azor Ahai reborn” will be dealing with the dark legacy of the Bloodstone Emperor in some way.

Consider Jon’s black ice armor and burning red sword.  Azor Ahai reborn is symbolized by the red comet, as we saw with Khal Drogo being reborn in the night lands as the red comet.  Since a comet is really just a dirty ball of ice and rock – and dirt is what makes ice “black” to begin with – Jon is actually a depiction of the red comet in this dream.  Black ice, burning red – that’s our red comet, symbol of Azor Ahai reborn and Lightbringer.  This corroborates what I was suggesting before, that Azor Ahai reborn and Lightbringer are the same thing.  It also would seem to corroborate the idea that Azor Ahai’s sword was a black sword which burned red.  Just as black ice and red fire Jon represents the comet, he also represents Lightbringer the sword – Jon is a sword in the darkness, after all.  A sword of black ice, burning red.

We’ve seen a sword of black ice before, and it’s a sword that symbolizes Lightbringer.  Ned’s Ice is a black sword – a grey so dark it looks black, to be technical – which was forged in dragon fire.  Black – Ice, get it?  Ha ha.  In Jon’s dream, it is Longclaw, another virtually-black Valyrian steel sword, which burns red.  I think all of this suggests that Lightbringer and the dragonsteel of the Last Hero may be related to Valyrian steel, or at least steel made with dragon fire.  Azor Ahai was a fire dragon, and he forged his sword in the “sacred fires” – perhaps those sacred fires were the fires of dragons.

If black ice / red fire Jon symbolizes the red comet, he should also symbolize the moon meteors, since the moon meteors and the red comet are both manifestations of Azor Ahai reborn and Lightbringer, two parts of a greater whole.  Literal black ice is a good match for the comet, a ball of dirty ice, and the idea of black ice as a symbol for Valyrian steel is a good match for the moon meteors, since meteors usually contain iron (as steel swords do) and are symbolized as flaming swords.

There’s a great corroboration of the idea that red fire and black ice are symbols which represent Jon Snow to be found elsewhere in A Dance with Dragons.  The night before Jon is preparing to let the wildlings through the Wall, Jon looks at the cracks of the Wall, which has been weeping, and sees and interesting optical illusion.  The last light of the sun reflects off the meltwater in the cracks and the cracks “go from red to grey to black, from streaks of fire to rivers of black ice.”  What is interesting is that in her House of the Undying visions, Daenerys saw the blue rose in the chink in the Wall, the same place that we see red fire and black ice.  Most people interpret the blue rose in the Wall as a reference to the legacy of Lyanna flowering at the Wall, Jon’s Stark heritage.  I would suggest that the red fire and black ice refers to his dragon heritage, passed down to him from the Valyrians and Azor Ahai himself.  Both are personal symbols for Jon, and so we find them in the same place – at least, that’s my interpretation.

After seeing the red fire and black ice, Jon thinks to himself that the Wall must be manned.  That’s exactly where he was in his dream of being armored in black ice and wielding a burning red sword, and thus we can see that the two scenes are connected.

As for the astronomy of that scene, it’s pretty easy – when the sun shone it’s last light, streaks of red fire (meteors) triggered rivers of black ice – the black tide.  These are the floods of the sea dragon which drowns whole islands and the floods of the sea and wind gods’ wrath sent against Durran Godsgrief after he stole a goddess.  These are the waves of blood and night associated with Ned’s “Black Ice,” and thus Lightbringer.  Jon also muses that by letting the wildlings through the Wall, they are “dancing on rotten ice,” and that one crack means that they will all drown.  Again, we see that the black ice leads to drowning.

Elsewhere in A Dance with Dragons, the wall walks of Winterfell are said to be “treacherous with black ice.”  That’s a link between black ice and Winterfell – and thus between Ned’s sword and the concept of “black ice.”  Black ice is rotten and treacherous, just like the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai and his black sword.

All in all, Jon’s Azor Ahai dream of being armored in black ice and wielding a burning red sword is quite the densely packed bundle of symbolism.  It shows Jon playing the combined role of Azor Ahai and Bloodstone Emperor, and Jon’s black ice and red fire symbols show us the nature of the comet, the meteors, and of Lightbringer the burning black sword.  And unfortunately, all of it seems very dark and bloody.

Like Jon, Daenerys also performs the actions of Azor Ahai, being reborn and waking dragons from stone, and the Bloodstone Emperor, by participating in the killing of her sibling – justified, yes, but she did participate – and in doing so she took his place as exiled monarch of Westeros.  I’m not judging, I’m just saying – that the symbolism matches.  Dany also killed Khal Drogo, her mate, and became what he was: a Khal(eesi).  Again, it was arguably the right thing to do – it was a mercy killing – but the pattern is still there.  Killing your love, and taking their place as ruler.  Killing your sibling, and taking their place as ruler.  The fact that Dany and Jon act out the deeds of both Azor Ahai and the Bloodstone Emperor seem to corroborate the idea that they were the same person.

As we’ve seen, the various symbolic manifestations of Lightbringer are always associated with darkness and shadow, black blood, fire transformation, and death.   Now let’s consider the symbolism around Jon Snow a bit further.   He’s the man with “an evil name” (Ygritte, A Clash of Kings) who always dresses in black (or black ice armor, as above) and is described as “a shadow among shadows”  (A Clash of Kings).  Jon’s hunger for Winterfell is described as being as sharp as a dragonglass knife inside of him – and dragonglass, being frozen fire, may be another aspect of the black ice symbol.  The black brothers of the Nightswatch are also said to have black blood.  This is a euphemism of course, just like a Dodger fan would claim to “bleed Dodger Blue,” but it’s also symbolism.  Symbolism, disguised as euphemism.  If Jon is in fact Rhaegar’s son, then he’s a dragon as well.  He has burnt hands, even – recall the fiery hand of R’hllor in the Benerro scene, the hand that flings the burnt and bloody meteors.  From top to bottom, Jon’s symbolism is consistent with Azor Ahai reborn / Lightbringer archetype.

Is Jon the son of sun and moon, symbolically speaking?  Well yes, absolutely.  Rhaegar the dragon prince plays the role of solar king, with his extensive Apollo symbolism.  He’s even got two wives, or at least one wife and one baby-momma, just as the sun would have have two moons before the Long Night disaster.  Lyanna, with her lunar halo-like crown of blue roses, is the moon maiden who dies giving birth to dragon seed.

He dreamt an old dream, of three knights in white cloaks, and a tower long fallen, and Lyanna in her bed of blood.
…
“No,” Ned said with sadness in his voice. “Now it ends.” As they came together in a rush of steel and shadow, he could hear Lyanna screaming. “Eddard!” she called. A storm of rose petals blew across a blood-streaked sky, as blue as the eyes of death.

Lyanna’s bed of blood recalls the blood of Lightbringer’s tempering and the dual metaphor of battle and birth, as well as the somewhat murky concept of ‘moon blood’ which I will clarify in due time.  The bed of moon blood was the death of the moon and the birthing of Lighrbringer, just Lyanna’s bed of blood signifies the birthing bed and the deathbed both.  Her apparent death in the Tower of Joy places her up in the celestial realm, and Eddard sees her deathly blue rose petals and what is probably meant to be her blood streaked across the sky in his dream recall of the scene.  Her rose petals are actually called a storm, in fact, and that’s exactly the idea.  The birth of Azor Ahai reborn and Lightbringer and the death of the moon are accompanied by a great bloody storm.  If you’re thinking of Daenerys Stormborn and the horrendous gale that raged on Dragonstone at her birth, you’ve got exactly the right idea and you’re a total smarty-pants.

As an aside, I should mention that the ‘maiden in the tower’ is a well known mythological archetype (in Arthurian myth especially, shout-out to Lady Gywnhyfvar of Radio Westeros), and George has adapted it here to his moon maiden archetype.  All throughout the books, we’ll see the top of the tower used to represent the celestial realm, and the tops of mountains and castles as well.  Here’s a great quote from A Dance with Dragons which makes this point nicely:

Dany broke her fast under the persimmon tree that grew in the terrace garden, watching her dragons chase each other about the apex of the Great Pyramid where the huge bronze harpy once stood.
. . .
Up here in her garden Dany sometimes felt like a god, living atop the highest mountain in the world.

The pinnacle of a mountain or pyramid is also viewed as a place to communicate with the heavenly realms in many real world cultures and belief systems.  The Egyptians, for example, viewed the pyramids as the place where the Pharaoh ascends to heaven and becomes like Osiris.  The top of the pyramid is called the ben-ben stone, and the original ben-ben was supposedly a stone that fell from heaven.  George is really just carrying forward this real-world mythological association into his own mythos.  This quote gets bonus points for placing dragons at the apex of the pyramid with moon goddess Daenerys; dragons came from the moon, way up in the sky, and that’s what the tops of these places symbolize – the celestial realm.

Consider Ashara Dayne, the lady of “Star-fall,” who falls into the sea from atop a tower called the Palestone Sword, and was said to have died of a broken heart.  I don’t know what’s up with Ashara Dayne – if she’s still alive, or if she had a surviving child – but I do know she is part of the moon maiden archetype, leaping from a tower into the sea to her death just as the second moon fell from the sky like a falling star and in some cases, landing into the sea.  Her broken heart calls to mind Nissa Nissa’s heart, pierced by Lightbringer, an idea which I believe is echoed in the Ser Galldon tale, where the Maiden loses her heart to Galladon and gives him a magic sword.

The Tower of Joy is a tower “long fallen,” symbolizing the fall of a heavenly body, and there are a few other towers that we will run across that are being used the same way, such as Queenscrown, the Children’s Tower at Moat Cailin, towers at Harrenhall, the Eyrie, and the Hammerhorn Keep, and Sea Tower of castle Pyke on the Iron Islands.  At Dany’s alchemical wedding scene, the role of the tower was played by the tall wooden platform which became Drogo’s pyre.  The platform shifts and collapses around Daenerys and unleashes a “firestorm” amidst the thunderous cracks of the dragon’s eggs.

Lyanna’s apparent death in her bed of blood  at the top of the tower fits with her playing the role of moon maiden to Rhaegar’s solar dragon.   I can’t help but notice that her blood streaking across the sky sounds a bit like a red banner unfurled in the heavens, which matches the Greatjon’s description of the red comet as a “red flag of vengeance for Ned,” unfurled  by the old gods.  The Greatjon’s claim is followed up immediately by the Blackfish’s declaration that the comet represents blood in the sky, another tie-in to the blood-streaked sky at the tower of Joy.  We also saw fiery banners unfurled at the alchemical wedding scene, where moon maiden Daenerys symbolically dies giving birth to dragons, just as Lyanna does in her bed of blood.  Each time, the red banner is unfurled.  Here’s another quote from A Game of Thrones about Lyanna:

He could hear her still at times. Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister’s eyes. Ned remembered the way she had smiled then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from her palm, dead and black.

Here we see the all-important color transformation – blue rose petals turning black. Instead of red blood turning black, we have blue roses turning black – but the point is, it’s a death transformation that brings darkness for the mother of Azor Ahai reborn.  This in turn brings us back to Jon Snow, the black-blooded shadow among shadows armored in black ice.  He’s a perfect fit with the other Lightbringer / Azor Ahai reborn symbols we have examined so far.  He’s the right guy to dream of a burning red sword, as he seems to have inherited some part of the legacy of the Bloodstone Emperor, Azor Ahai.  When he dreams of killing Ygritte and Robb with his burning red sword, Jon is even placed at the top of the Wall, and thus, in the celestial realm.  When Jon stole Ygritte, he did so at the top of the Skirling Pass, high in the Frostfangs – and thus, once again, Lightbringer is forged high in the celestial realm.

Jon’s Caesar-like assassination at the end of A Dance with Dragons may well be the legacy of the sacrificed Amethyst Empress, Nissa Nissa, coming home to roost, because as I said, Azor Ahai reborn is also Nissa Nissa reborn.    There’s actually some more stuff to analyze here at the Tower of Joy which we will come back for once we introduce some concepts later in the program that need to be understood first.

---

 

BREAKER OF (HELIO)TROPES

The Bloodstone Emperor worshipped a “black stone” that fell from the sky around the time of the onset of the Long Night.  If the destruction of the second moon was in fact responsible for the Long Night, then this black stone is almost certainly a piece of the exploded moon.  The Bloodstone Emperor comes from a line of God-Kings said to have descended from the stars, and he is also said to be the first High Priest of the “Church of Starry Wisdom.”  Clearly, there is a lot of astronomical ideas swirling about the Bloodstone Emperor, this man who would be like a god, who stole the fire of the heavens by plucking a star from the sky.  But what about the “bloodstone” itself?  Why did George choose this stone to represent the “prince of darkness?”  The answer to this question reveals much, I have found.

It turns out that although it kind of sounds like some made up fantasy name for a magic stone, “bloodstone” is a real gemstone, and it’s proper name is “heliotrope” (many of you will know this, but it must be said).  In A Song of Ice and Fire, Martin has personified the natural qualities of obsidian (cooled and hardened magma) into magical qualities (frozen fire, possessing the essence of fire magic), and he seems to have done the same with his fantasy-novel version of bloodstone (heliotrope).  To see just what kind of magical stone we might be dealing with here, let’s take a look at the (as it turns out) exceedingly rich folklore surrounding bloodstone / heliotrope.   I have to warn you – this is going to blow your mind a little.  In a nutshell, what I found is that all of the mythical associations of bloodstone seem to match some aspect of the proposed Lightbringer / moon-destruction scenario.  There are way too many specific correlations for me to believe George chose the name “Bloodstone Emperor” for the dude who caused the Long Night by happenstance.  I don’t know which idea came first for him, what idea led to what, but after looking into the bloodstone stuff I am left with the impression that Mr. Martin has had these ideas in mind more or less from the start. You’ll have to judge for yourself.  I’m going to first list the properties and associations in bullet point form, and then expound on each in their own section.  

Bloodstone is associated with the following ideas and symbols:

• increasing personal power, physical & spiritual – it’s called the “the warrior’s stone” & “stone of courage”
• magical warfare, divination, alchemy, and astrology
• “the martyr’s stone”  – associated with Christ’s blood dripping on stone
• healing, blood circulation, vitality
• curing blood poisoning, drawing out snake venom from a wound
• turning, reflecting, or bending the sun’s light; or turning to face the sun
• turning the sun’s reflection to blood when submersed in water
• “sun stone” – as a sun-mirror, heliotrope possess the power of the sun
• predicting eclipses
• predicting and even causing lighting and thunderstorms
• heliotropic plants which turn to face the sun
• “mother goddess stone,” Isis, Astarte, Innana, etc – lunar goddesses who resurrect the sun god

As we go through each of these ideas, we will examine how they correlate to two things: the cataclysmic events involved in the Long Night disaster, and the character and nature of Azor Ahai and Lightbringer. I know I’ve said it a bunch of times by now, but the nature of Lightbringer and Azor Ahai is darkness and shadow, burning blood and fire transformation, and of course, death.

(I must also pause to give a huge shout-out to Westeros.org user Durran Durrandon, who pointed me towards the associations of heliotrope early on in the process. Durran has been one of my most important collaborators from the very start, contributing several key ideas. Thanks buddy. Here’s a link to several of his essays: The Amethyst Empress Reborn | The Long Night and the Great Summer | Melisandre and the Night’s Queen | Jon and Beric: Fire Consumes. Cold Preserves)

Magical Properties, Warrior’s Stone

Bloodstone is considered to have many magical properties by ancient man.  The Babylonians and Egyptians used it for divination and to achieve victory in magical warfare.  It was thought to increase personal power, spiritual first and foremost, but also physical power, which is why it was sometimes known as the “warrior’s stone” and the “stone of courage.”  It was a must-have for ancient magicians, alchemists, and astrologers, as it was thought to aid in communication with the celestial realms.  All of that fits with our idea of the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai, a sorcerer-king with starry wisdom who was known as the warrior of fire.  The warrior associations are more general and could be coincidental, but the bit about communicating with heavenly realms is a very specific and central theme of the Bloodstone Emperor.   He worshipped a black stone, which seems likely to be a moon meteor, and I think the implication is that it aided him in his dark magic.  Are these black moon meteors to be thought of as “bloodstones?”  Well, yes, that’s the case I am making, as you will see.  This is a major premise of this essay, one which we will build on as we go.

The Martyr’s Stone

The most important connotation of bloodstone is the association with Christ’s blood, or more generally speaking, the notion of bloodstone as a stone consecrated with the blood of a dying god.  Actual heliotrope stone is a type of dark green chalcedony with bright red (and occasionally yellow) inclusions.  The red spots usually resemble smears of paint or blood – hence the name “bloodstone.”  At some point in history, the idea came about that Christ’s blood had dripped on to some green chalcedony at the foot of the cross, creating the bloodstone, and that bloodstone was therefore symbolically or spiritually connected to his blood and its power.  I believe this is exactly how we should think of George’s fantasy version of bloodstone – the corpse of the sacrificed moon goddess, soaked in her blackened blood.  These meteors represent Lightbringer, and Lightbringer was covered in the blood of Nissa Nissa, who represents the moon goddess.  I think it’s a nice parallel.

Real bloodstone is green and red, as I mentioned, but as we’ve seen, fire transformation produces black blood, and so his bloodstone is black.  It figures that these meteors would be black, since the moon’s blood was burned black when it was transformed by the fire of the Lightbringer comet.  This idea appears in the Qarthine tale as the moon dragons drinking the sun’s fire.  As I have hopefully made clear, Lightbringer is the offspring of sun and moon, of solar fire and moon blood.  The result is black bloodstone moon meteors, burning with red fire as they descend through the atmosphere.  They’ve been consecrated with the blackened blood of the moon goddess, making them bloodstones in this very important sense of the word.

We discussed the nature of fire transformation a bit last time, taking a look at the examples of when someone “has the fire inside them.”  We saw that Dany had the fire inside her after her wake the dragon dream, where she dreams of undergoing dragon transformation while Mirri Maz Durr delivers dead baby Rhaego in the tent of dancing shadows, and again during the Alchemical Wedding scene where she steps into the fire to wake dragons from stone.  Both scenes also involve burning blood and symbolic moon maiden death.  Dany’s earlier dragon dream, where the bloody black dragon engulfs her in fire, also matches these fire transformation scenes, complete with burning blood and Dany being “tempered” like a sword.

We also looked at two Melisandre fire transformation scenes – the birthing of the shadow baby and her fire vision in A Dance with Dragons – and we saw burning black blood and copious Lightbringer symbolism in both.  In the latter scene, Mel has “the fire inside her, searing and transforming her,” giving us a clear indication that human beings can literally transform their bodies with fire and sorcery into something… less than human.  It’s not just a symbolic transformation – Melisandre doesn’t need to eat, and barely needs to sleep – and even hopes to get to the point where she no longer has to sleep at all.  We don’t know if she always has black blood, or just during these ecstatic experiences, but it’s clear black blood and fire transformation go together.

There are actually a couple of other instances of black blood worth taking a look at as well, beginning with the Lightning Lord, Beric Dondarrion, in A Storm of Swords.  There’s quite a lot of rich symbolism around “the Lord of Corpses,” most of which will come in one of upcoming sections concerning lighting and thunderstorms, but the main thing to understand for the moment is that he has undergone fire transformation, and therefore bleeds black blood:

“Finish him!” Greenbeard urged Lord Beric, and other voices took up the chant of “Guilty!” Arya shouted with the rest. “Guilty, guilty, kill him, guilty!”

Smooth as summer silk, Lord Beric slid close to make an end of the man before him. The Hound gave a rasping scream, raised his sword in both hands and brought it crashing down with all his strength. Lord Beric blocked the cut easily …

“Noooooo,” Arya shrieked.

… but the burning sword snapped in two, and the Hound’s cold steel plowed into Lord Beric’s flesh where his shoulder joined his neck and clove him clean down to the breastbone. The blood came rushing out in a hot black gush.

I couldn’t just quote the last line – it seemed disrespectful of Lord Beric to not give his death scene a tiny bit of lead-in.  Plus I’m a big fan of Mortal Kombat and so I had to get the “Finish him!” in there.  But yeah, once again, we that fire transformed beings have blackened blood.  As we know, Beric has been reanimated by Thoros’s fiery kiss, so the black blood is to be expected.  Lady Stoneheart was in turn resurrected by Beric’s fiery kiss, and she too has blood that is described as black.  Finally, notice that the Hound’s blow clove Beric clean down to the breastbone – this is a match for Nissa Nissa bearing her breast and being stabbed in the heart.  Quite often we’ll see mentions of a breast or a heart being burned or stabbed.

Another nice little hidden example of having the fire inside you comes from A Dance with Dragons, where Varamyr Six-skins recalls being burnt out of the sky while skinchanging Orell’s eagle:

His last death had been by fire.  I burned.  At first, in his confusion, he thought some archer on the Wall had pierced him with a flaming arrow … but the fire had been inside him, consuming him.  And the pain …
. . .

He died his first death when he was only six, as his father’s axe crashed through his skull.  Even that had not been so agonizing as the fire in his guts, crackling along his wings, devouring him. When he tried to fly from it, his terror fanned the flames and made them burn hotter.  One moment he had been soaring above the Wall, his eagle’s eyes marking the movements of the men below.  Then the flames had turned his heart into a blackened cinder and sent his spirit screaming back into his own skin, and for a little while he’d gone mad.  Even the memory was enough to make him shudder. (ADWD, Prologue)

The black blood symbol in the scene, Varamyr’s heart, which has been burnt to a blackened cinder.    The flaming arrow is a definite Lightbringer / meteor symbol, and “shuddering” is a phrase we’ve seen used often when the moon maiden dies.  Varamyr is no maiden – that’s for sure – but that’s okay, symbolism can be gender-flexible.  He’s burnt out of the sky by a fire sorcerer, and I believe that is a match for the idea of the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai, certainly a fire sorcerer, using dark magic to cause the fall of the Long Night by burning the moon goddess out of the sky.  We’re not sure how he did it, what method was used – but all of the myths which involve things descending from heaven which we examined earlier seem to place a human in the role of fire-stealer, goddess-stealer, etc.  I’ve got some ideas about this, but this is most definitely a huge subject which will need to wait for it’s own airtime.

So, fire transformation equals black blood and burning blood.  We got that.  Now let’s get back to the idea of bloodstone representing a stone which is consecrated with the blood of a deity by taking another look at Dany’s “dragon dream” from A Game of Thrones:

Yet when she slept that night, she dreamt the dragon dream again. Viserys was not in it this time. There was only her and the dragon. Its scales were black as night, wet and slick with blood. Her blood, Dany sensed. Its eyes were pools of molten magma, and when it opened its mouth, the flame came roaring out in a hot jet. She could hear it singing to her. She opened her arms to the fire, embraced it, let it swallow her whole, let it cleanse her and temper her and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam, and yet there was no pain. She felt strong and new and fierce.  […]

“Khaleesi,” Jhiqui said, “what is wrong? Are you sick?” 

“I was,” she answered, standing over the dragon’s eggs that Illyrio had given her when she wed. She touched one, the largest of the three, running her hand lightly over the shell. Black-and-scarlet, she thought, like the dragon in my dream. The stone felt strangely warm beneath her fingers … or was she still dreaming? She pulled her hand back nervously.  (AGOT, Daenerys)

Drogon and the other two dragons are referred to often as Dany’s children, and it seems likely that this black dragon in her dream is a representation of Drogon, as Dany directly compares it to Drogon’s egg after waking.  Indeed, the dream dragon is slick with Dany’s blood, just as if it were her child.  The whole idea here is that the moon dies and bleeds upon her stone meteor children, creating bloodstone, and here we see Dany’s dragon child covered in her blood as she undergoes symbolic death and fire transformation.  Her child is depicted as a black dragon, covered in her blood, which is also burning in this scene.  Lightbringer caught on fire after it was covered in blood.  The red comet is either described as burning or bleeding.  Fire and blood, people, that’s the recipe.  That’s exactly how I am seeing the meteors – black dragon stones, covered in burning moon blood.  Black bloodstones, on fire.

I mentioned before that we’d return to the Tower of Joy, and now it’s time, because we’ve got a moon maiden making some bloodstone.  Here is Ned, recalling the tower “long fallen” in A Game of Thrones:

Martyn Cassel had perished with the rest. Ned had pulled the tower down afterward, and used its bloody stones to build eight cairns upon the ridge. It was said that Rhaegar had named that place the tower of joy, but for Ned it was a bitter memory. They had been seven against three, yet only two had lived to ride away; Eddard Stark himself and the little crannogman, Howland Reed. He did not think it omened well that he should dream that dream again after so many years.

Bloody stones as cairns, do you say?  It’s not clear who’s blood is on the stones, or if this is even a literal sentence – I believe the thought Ned is having here is that the stones of the fallen tower are symbolic of the death of so many good people.  The entire site is “covered in their blood,” in the sense that they all died there.   Of course chief of all these deaths is that of Lyanna, although Ned does not bury her with the rest.  Assuming that her bed of blood was in that tower – it’s not specifically stated, only strongly implied, to be technically accurate – the stones are first and foremost covered in her blood.  This completes the symbolism of Lyanna as the Nissa Nissa moon maiden, mother of Lightbringer: as she lay dying, her blood covered the stones, and she gave birth to a dragon.  Lightbringer is born amidst the bloody stones of the dying moon maiden – you get the idea.

Considering again the symbol of the tower as reaching into the heavens, we can see that the pulling down of the tower adds to the falling celestial object imagery.  The stones that that fell from the heavens are the ones with moon maiden blood on them, that’s the message here.

There’s a great match to this to be found in Dany’s “wake the dragon” dream in A Game of Thrones, which we have discussed quite a bit already.  Early on the dream, we read:

“You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?”  She was walking down a long hall beneath high stone arches.  She could not look behind her, must not look behind her.  There was a door ahead of her, tiny with distance, but even from afar, she saw that it was painted red.  She walked faster, and her bare feet left bloody footprints on the stone.

Dany is creating bloodstone, just as Lyanna did.  This dream culminates in Dany’s symbolic fire transformation into the Last Dragon, where her blood burns and she sprouts wings of shadow.   This process represents the forging of Lightbringer – the death of the moon by fire and the pouring fourth of dragons.  There’s no real reason for her feet to be bleeding in this dream, except for the symbolic purpose of showing the moon goddess creating bloodstone with her own blood as she undergoes fire transformation.   Later in the dream, her feet progress to melting the stone, just as the comet stone would melt and fuse with the moon rocks, and just as those moon meteors would melt and fuse with the earth where they landed.  Recall also the Alchemical Wedding, where Dany visualized walking into the fire so that she and Drogo can melt together and fuse as one as they forge a Lightbringer together.  Bloody stone and melting or burning stone belong together, and that’s why they keep appearing together in the middle of Lightbringer forging metaphors.  Dany’s wake the dragon dream has most of the key elements of a Lightbringer forging – a moon maiden with burning blood transforming into a dragon, bloody stones and melting stones, and there’s even an appearance of flaming swords in there, although I didn’t quote it here.  Therefore, I don’t think it’s coincidence that we find moon maidens making bloody stones both in this dream and at the Tower of Joy.

And finally, it must be said, making swords involves melting metal as well, and of course these moon meteors can be seen as flaming swords, so we can see that all of these ideas have a certain unity.  Lightbringer is all about fire and blood, as we’ve seen.  The bloodstone meteors make a lot of sense as Lightbringer symbols, both having been made with goddess blood and solar fire.  Both are made with blood sacrifice, and both set on fire.  Both can symbolize dragons.  But are the moon meteors merely symbolic of Lightbringer?  If Azor Ahai was in fact the Bloodstone Emperor as I propose, then it seems to me that he may well have made his sword from the the black meteor which the Bloodstone Emperor was said to have worshipped.  I’m not sure if this is like an inverted, parallel version of the legend of Dawn and Starfall, or if the Dawn story originated in the east and was transplanted to Starfall – we’ll certainly ponder these questions in the future.  The point is that the Starfall legend gives us the general concept of a sword made from a meteor, a mythological precedent if you will, and from the Dawn Age as well.

In addition to these reasons, I like the idea of Azor Ahai’s Lightbringer being made from the Bloodstone Emperor’s black stone because falling stars seem like the place where the celestial and terrestrial stories are interacting.  Indeed, that’s the very significance of meteorites as fallen stars, the fire of the gods, etc – they represent the celestial realm descending to the realm of man.  Lightbringer is a word which is synonymous with “Morningstar,” as I said, and the defining characteristic of deities and mythological figures associated with the Morningstar is that they descend from heaven and bring celestial knowledge and power to mankind.  I believe that the A Song of Ice and Fire equivalent of the hermetic principle of “as above, so below” dictates that the events in the celestial realm should be manifested on the ground in parallel events.  Nissa Nissa represents the second moon, but I do think she was also a real person or perhaps even a whole tribe of people who were slaughtered to work blood magic and create Lightbringer the flaming sword.. something along those lines.  The falling stars are the thing which connects the celestial and terrestrial realms, and they are the heart of the Lightbringer story.   If Lightbringer was made from a moon meteor, then we have a perfect nexus point for all the various incarnations of the Lightbringer story.

When I think about a sword made from a black meteor, I can’t help but think of Valyrian steel, which is a grey so dark that it looks practically black.  Ned’s Ice is said to have a “dark glow” and Valyrian steel in general to have a “smokiness to its soul.”  These swords are forged in dragonfire, of course, and it’s rumored that blood sacrifice is involved as well.   Marwyn the Mage tells us that all Valyrian magic was in fact rooted in blood and fire. Blood magic and fire magic…  hmm.   Sounds a bit like that old Lightbringer recipe we’ve heard so much about.

The “heat, hammer, and fold” language of the Azor Ahai myth suggest a folded steel making process, which is how Valyrian steel is described.  It makes a lot of sense for Azor Ahai’s sword to be a kind of predecessor to Valyrian steel, if indeed Azor Ahai the fire dragon was a dragonlord.  And like Valyrian steel, Lightbringer must have been a black sword, if was in fact made from a black meteor.  Perhaps Salladhor Saan was right when he called Lightbringer a “burnt” sword – that’s a match for bloodstone meteors who have been burned black by drinking the sun’s fire and coated in burning black moon blood.  It’s also a match for black ice / red fire Jon Snow as a symbol of Lightbringer, a black sword burning red in the darkness.  Although Lightbringer was a burnt sword, it also burned, just as the falling black meteors would have burned red in the sky.  Jon’s actual burning red sword in the scene is Longclaw, also a black sword.

All the symbolism seems to agree: Azor Ahai had a black sword that burned red.  Or perhaps it burned with fire that matches the fire of the black dragons, Drogon and Balerion (and presumably the Cannibal): black fire, shot through with streaks of red, or sometimes red and gold.  The ancestral sword of House Targaryen is named Blackfyre, after all.  Perhaps that’s a foggy memory of Lightbringer.  I suppose that at night, you’d really only notice the red parts of the black fire anyway, so you could still describe it as burning red.

Speaking of House Targaryen, their sigil is a three headed red dragon on a field of black – that sounds a lot like three dragon meteors, burning red against the night sky.  Let’s review: their words are “fire and blood,” a recipe for Lightbringer;  their sword is called Blackfyre; their sigil is a blood red dragon on a field of night; and they are famous for making black swords, probably with blood sacrifice.  I think we can see the picture George is painting for us, and it’s remarkably consistent: black swords, burning red, which were made with fire and blood, and in more than one sense.  The swords were forged with dragon fire and human blood sacrifice, and they were smithed out of “bloodstone” moon meteors, which were themselves made with solar fire and moon blood.

House Blackfyre takes their name from the sword Blackfyre, and they invert the Targaryen colors, showing a black dragon on a field of red.  If the Targaryen sigil shows burning red comets or meteors against a field of night, then perhaps the Blackfyre sigil is just a zoomed in view of the same – now we see the core of the comet or meteor, a black dragon, which is surrounded by red fire.  Like the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai, Daemon Blackfyre was a famous usurper who tried to take his sibling’s throne.  It’s probably not a coincidence to find that legacy of the Blackfyres, the Golden Company, was lead for a long time by a man called “the Blackheart” – Miles Toyne, who is himself descended from famous usurpers.  Recall also Varamyr’s heart, burned to a blackened cinder by the power of R’hllor, and the black blood which is the hallmark of fire transformation.  What pumps black blood?  Black hearts, of course.  Lightbringer boils and burns the blood, and it stabbed Nissa Nissa in the heart, so we should expect to see blackened and burned hearts connected to Lightbringer.  Lightbringer is like a fiery spider or vampire – it burns hearts and then drinks the blackened blood.

While we’re talking black fire, we should also mention shadow-fire.  The term shadow fire is from one of Dany’s visions in the House of the Undying in A Clash of Kings.  The exact line is “from a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire.”  Most have interpreted this as a reference to Young Griff, who claims to be Aegon VI Targaryen but who is probably a Blackfyre, and Jon Connington, the “Griffin reborn” who is turning to stone via his greyscale infection (the “Griffin Reborn” is one of the chapter titels for Jon Connington, in case you’re wondering where I got that).  The idea here is that JonCon is the stone beast, fAegon Blackfyre is the shadow fire, with the two of them combining to invade Westeros.  This interpretation may or may not be correct – it probably is –  but I think there’s also a layer of astronomical symbolism which his easy to decipher.  The top of the tower tells us we are talking about a celestial scene; the smoking tower indicates fire in the heavens and celestial catastrophe; the stone beast taking wing from the heavens is of course the meteors and the reborn red comet; and the shadow fire is a reference to black fire – fire which brings not light, but shadow.  That’s the sort of fire these black meteors are associated with, I think, and quite possibly the kind of fire that Lightbringer had.  We see the black dragons breathing black fire, and we see that the shadow baby that was created from Stannis’s life fires has a “shadowsword” version of Lightbringer.  Essentially, the idea of black or shadowy fire bursts the bubble of misinformation about Azor Ahai’s sword.  A sword of fire?  Yes.  One that brought light and love to the world?  Eh… perhaps not.

Finally, notice that parelles between the JonCon / fAegon interpretation and the astronomical one I just laid out.  The stone beast refers to either JonCon, “the Griffin reborn” who is kissed by fire, or to Azor Ahai reborn, the fiery red comet.  Both are red & fiery reborn things, and for what it’s worth, the griffin as a mythological beast is really an offshoot of dragon lore, as are basilisks.  The shadow fire either refers to “fAegon Blackfyre” (if that’s who he is), a black dragon and would-be usurper, or to the usurping black dragon Azor Ahai the Bloodstone Emperor and his black sword which may have lit up with black and red fire.  To add to the symbolic parallels, it seems possible or even probable that Illyrio possessed the sword Blackfyre and has passed it along to fAegon in one of those chests of goods he sent with Jon Connigton.  Many have proposed this, and I think that the astronomy angle here might be a corroboration of this idea.  Usurping black dragons should wield swords of black fire, according to everything we’ve examined so far.

One last thing about “fAegon Blackfyre” – many see a parallel between the black iron dragon pieces of the sign of the inn formerly known as the “Clanking Dragon” as metaphor for fAegon as a Blackfyre.  These are the ones which the Elder Brother refers to as having washed up on the Quiet Ilse in A Feast for Crows.  The notion is that the black iron dragon pieces turned up on the other side of a body of water coated in red rust, and that that is a metaphor for a black dragon (a Blackfyre) from across the Narrow Sea claiming to be a red dragon (a Targaryen).  This too builds on the idea that the Blackfyre sigil represents the black hearted moon meteors and black Lightbringer burning red.  Black iron dragons coated in red, a black dragon on a field of red, a black sword burning red – it’s the exact same image.  Just as Dawn was supposedly made from the “heart” of a fallen star, I am proposing that Azor Ahai’s Lightbringer was made from the black and burned heart of the moon, the black heart which became the bloodstone meteors.  The black bloodstone meteors are coated in burning black heartblood, and they are pieces of the black heart of a burned star.

Ned’s black Valyrian steel sword Ice, a Lightbringer symbol in its own right, deserves another mention here, because it acts just like a bloodstone.  Ned’s own sword drinks his blood, just as the moon meteor “swords” are coated in the moon’s own blood, and just as Lightbringer drank Nissa Nissa’s blood.  If the original Lightbringer was made from a moon meteor, then Lightbringer really did drink Nissa Nissa’s blood, in more than one sense.  The legend tell us that the blood and soul of Nissa Nissa went into the steel when she was sacrificed to light the sword, and if Lightbringer was a moon meteor sword, the bloody stones  of the dead moon goddess also went into the steel of Lightbringer.  Either way, Lightbringer contains the blood of the moon maiden.

Consider again black ice / red fire Jon Snow as a symbol of both the bleeding stars and Lightbringer the sword.  If Lightbringer was made from a moon meteor, it makes even more sense that black ice / red fire Jon would symbolize both the bleeding stars – black ice or black iron, burning red – and Lightbringer – black steel, burning red.

This means that Dawn probably cannot be Azor Ahai’s Lightbringer – it’s the wrong color.  It’s also called the Sword the Morning, and it seems like Azor Ahai’s black sword was more like a sword of the evening, a sword of nightfall.  This is probably an opportune time to mention that Dalton Greyjoy, the “Red Kracken,” had a Valyrian steel sword called “Nightfall,” which even has a moonstone in the pommel.  Real moonstones are blue and white, but of course the word “moon-stone” also puts in mind of the moon meteors.  A sword of Nightfall, made with moon meteors – that’s the picture we are already seeing for Lightbringer as it is.

Thinking about the implications of a milky blue-white stone in the pommel of a black steel sword reminds me of the fact that Jon’s black steel sword, Longclaw, has a pale stone for a pommel.  A pale stone makes us think of the sword Dawn, made from a apple stone, and milky blue-white stones remind us of milkglass.  Moonstones even have an optical shimmer called adularescence which means that they can be said to be “alive with light,” like the sword Dawn.  Perhaps we are seeing a duality here with these two swords that may be made from meteorites, the black sword and the white sword.  I certainly think about them as a pair, the swords of the morning and evening.

Did Dawn come from an unburnt moon meteor, or perhaps a piece of the unburnt comet which broke off before impact, left behind in the cometary field of debris?  Perhaps it’s a piece of the surviving moon which took a bit of shrapnel and chipped of some pale meteorites?  I’ve even speculated that the two moons Planetos used to have were “moons of Ice and Fire” – you have to admit, it makes a certain amount of sense – with the destroyed moon that gave birth to fiery dragons being the “fire moon,” and the surviving moon whose pale light the Others seem to like so much being the “ice moon.”  If Dawn comes from a piece of this hypothetical “ice moon,” it makes sense for Dawn to be pale and looking like milkglass, alive with light, just as the Others have “pale swords” which are “alive with moonlight” and bones which are “pale and shiny like milkglass.”

These two swords may perhaps be rooted in the same ancient technology, with Dawn representing a pure form of it and Azor Ahai’s black sword being the corrupted version.  This would match with the idea of Lightbringer being white hot and smoking before being covered in blood which we discussed last time as well as the idea that the comet itself had a normal white and blue tail before being transformed to red by the moon explosion.

Finally, I mentioned that Dany’s wake the dragon dream contains a vision of people with gemstone eyes and silver and gold hair who hold burning swords of pale flame and who seem to be her ancestors.  The gemstones in their eyes match the gemstones associated with the Great Empire of the Dawn, the rulers who came before the Bloodstone Emperor’s Blood Betrayal and usurpation of the Amethyst Empress, before Lightbringer was created, before the Long Night and before Valyria’s existence.  Purple-eyed, silver-haired people from the Dawn Age, and holding swords of pale fire.  Perhaps this is a clue that the sword Dawn represents Dawn Age, pre-Lightbringer flaming sword technology, and that Dawn has the ability to light up with pale flame to match the pale stone from which it was made.

The idea of the swords of the morning and evening coming from the same technology might have a parallel in the Morningstar, Venus, which is also the Evenstar.  Venus switches between these two positions – between rising just before sunrise and just after sunset – every two hundred-something days, which is why so many Morningstar-based mythical characters die and are resurrected as some kind of lord of night or lord of the afterlife or underworld.  Osiris and Quetzalcoatl and Mithras are reborn to rule the afterlife, while the Biblical Lucifer becomes the King of Hell and Biblical Jesus is resurrected as the Lord of Heaven.  Azor Ahai is resurrected as the King of the Nightlands – you see the parallel.

The point is, the morningstar and evenstar are kind of the same thing, but kind of not.  They are the same star – the planet Venus – but in one configuration, it rules the morning, and the other, the evening.  This could mean that the swords of the morning and evening come from the same place, or that they are opposite versions of one another, or anything along those lines.  I don’t think it’s likely, but it might even mean that Dawn IS in fact Azor Ahai’s black sword, somehow transformed white.  The Sword of the Evening transformed into the Sword of the Morning, just as Venus transforms from Evenstar to Morningstar and back again… something like that.  House Dayne produces an occassional Sword of the Evening (Vorian Dayne) or a Darkstar (Gerold Dayne) as well as the better known white knights with flawless reputations that we known as Swords of the Morning.  The Amethyst Empress and the Bloodstone Emperor sprang from the same loins… but they are not the same person, either.  Pinning down the specifics here is obviously a bit murky, but fun to ponder in any case.

I hope you didn’t mind the little side-track into magic sword talk – I figure that magic swords is the kind of thing everyone likes hearing about, and I figure I should occasionally talk about how all this symbolism might have actual relevance to the plot.  We’ll be returning to this question of the origin of Dawn in the future, and I’m also excited to say that I have collaborated with Aziz and Ashaya of History of Westeros for an episode of their podcast on House Dayne.  It’s a two part episode, with me appearing on the second episode and talking about the potential ancient origins of House Dayne and various origin theories for the sword Dawn.  If you’re listening to this within a couple of weeks of its release, look out for that one in January of 2016.  If January of 2016 is already history for you, then simply most on over to the History of Westeros youtube channel to see me sitting in front of a book case talking about 12,000 year old fake history. 🙂   I’m also on part one, reading the voices for Darkstar and a couple others.

Predicting and Causing Lightning and Thunderstorms

You’ve heard me say a few times now that I think the thunderbolt of the Storm God which the Grey King used to “steal the fire of the gods” was in fact a moon meteor.  I’ve mentioned that because the meteors of the moon explosion are seen as flaming swords, the phrase “A Storm of Swords” is a clever reference to the meteor shower.  We are going to take an in-depth look at Ironborn mythology and theology another time, where we will examine the thunderbolt and lightning motif at length, so I’m just going to introduce it here as being related to Bloodstone.  I’ve also got some really great “storm of swords” symbolism quote pulls for you in that one which I’m looking forward to sharing, such as this one from, appropriately, A Storm of Swords:

When they reached the top of the ridge and saw the river, Sandor Clegane reined up hard and cursed.  The rain was falling from a black iron sky, pricking the green and brown torrent with ten thousand swords.

For now, I just want to introduce the concept: the moon meteors are like a huge thunderbolt, a storm of moon meteors is the penultimate storm of swords, and bloodstone is associated with predicting and causing lightning and thunderstorms.  As we examine various scenes which symbolize the forging of Lightbringer, I’ll just point out the occurrences of lightning, and you can think to yourself “there’s the lightning again, right in the middle of the lightbringer forging.”  😉  We saw it pop up in the alchemical wedding scene as the second dragon’s egg cracked “as loud and sharp as thunder” while the “firestorm” erupted from the solar pyre.  Because the moon was theoretically in eclipse formation when it exploded, the firestorm can be perceived as coming from both the sun and the moon, just as it does in the alchemical wedding, where the moon maiden walks into the sun’s fire, unleashes the firestorm, and crack’s open the dragon’s eggs.  Consider again the idea of Daenerys “Stormborn,” born on “dragon-stone” amidst a gale which killed hundreds, and also Lyanna’s “storm” of rose petals flung across a bloody sky.  The storm and thunderbolt motifs pop up quite often when moon death is being symbolized, and I believe this is because the thunderbolt of the Storm God was indeed a moon meteor.

I think a good way to show how the lightning relates to the Azor Ahai archetype is to have a look at the “Lightning Lord,” Beric Dondarrion.  As a flaming sword wielder, who’s undergone fire transformation, Beric is a prime candidate to be manifesting signs of the Azor Ahai archetype.  As you are about to see, his symbolism is very specific and intentional, so I don’t think it’s happenstance that he is known as the Lightning Lord.  This is his speech about the unifying principle of the Brotherhood without Banners from a Storm of Swords, but don’t pay attention to his speech – pay attention to the descriptions of Beric.

“When we left King’s Landing we were men of Winterfell and men of Darry and men of Blackhaven, Mallery men and Wylde men. We were knights and squires and men-at-arms, lords and commoners, bound together only by our purpose.” The voice came from the man seated amongst the weirwood roots halfway up the wall. “Six score of us set out to bring the king’s justice to your brother.” The speaker was descending the tangle of steps toward the floor. “Six score brave men and true, led by a fool in a starry cloak.” A scarecrow of a man, he wore a ragged black cloak speckled with stars and an iron breastplate dinted by a hundred battles. A thicket of red-gold hair hid most of his face, save for a bald spot above his left ear where his head had been smashed in. “More than eighty of our company are dead now, but others have taken up the swords that fell from their hands.” When he reached the floor, the outlaws moved aside to let him pass. One of his eyes was gone, Arya saw, the flesh about the socket scarred and puckered, and he had a dark black ring all around his neck.  “With their help, we fight on as best we can, for Robert and the realm.”

And this is later in the same chapter, before the battle with the Hound:

Unsmiling, Lord Beric laid the edge of his longsword against the palm of his left hand, and drew it slowly down. Blood ran dark from the gash he made, and washed over the steel.

And then the sword took fire.  Arya heard Gendry whisper a prayer.

“Burn in seven hells,” the Hound cursed. “You, and Thoros too.” He threw a glance at the red priest. “When I’m done with him you’ll be next, Myr.”

This one’s pretty straightforward – Beric wields a flaming sword which he lights on fire with blood magic (he use his own blood, as a true gentlemen does), and he wears a starry cloak.  And he’s called the Lightning Lord.  His hair is red gold – kissed by fire.  His other nickname is the Lord of Corpses, for he is a corpse himself – and of course the Bloodstone Emperor practiced necromancy.  Again we see a combination of Azor Ahai traits and Bloodstone Emperor traits in the same person – the starry cloak and necromancy matches the Emperor, and the flaming sword created with blood magic and R’hllor worship speak of Azor Ahai.

A few other tidbits on Beric: he lives in a black castle, Blackhaven, perhaps a call out to the black city of Asshai which I believe our dark lord hails from.  I can’t help but notice that young Jon Snow is the Lord of Castle Black… and that Dragonstone, the original home of House Targayen and current home of Azor Ahai impersonator Stannis Baratheon , is a black castle… and that the Valyrians are basically known for their fused black stone castles in general… perhaps there’s a theme here.

Beric was engaged to a Dayne, and had a Dayne as a squire, bringing up the subject of Dawn, a magic sword made from a meteorite, and House Dayne itself, a family that continues to manifest purple eyes and silver hair here and there.  I have a whole theory about that, actually, which I simply cannot go into here in any detail, but please visit the link on my wordpress page and take a look at the evidence I’ve gathered, or you can hold off until I turn that one into a podcast.  Suffice it to say that I think the Daynes may have a common ancestor with Valyria, which would of course be the Great Empire of the Dawn of the Amethyst Empress and the Bloodstone Emperor, which I believe Asshai was the capital of.  If there is any connection between Azor Ahai, who is definitely from the east, and the Last Hero of Westeros, then at some point one or both of those two must have travelled from Asshai to Westeros before or during the Long Night.  I believe that this did occur, and that the Daynes are a genetic legacy of those ancient Asshai’i, and so Beric’s connection to House Dayne is intriguing to say the least.  Remember when I speculated that perhaps the Westerosi name of Azor Ahai was Eldric Shadowchaser, or that perhaps Eldric Shadowchaser was the Last Hero, who might have been the son of Azor Ahai?  Well, Beric’s squire is “Edric” Dayne.  Edric and Eldric…  Eldric and Edric… Finkle and Einhorn, Einhorn and FInkle…  Oh my god Eldric Shadowchaser is a homicidal ex-Miami Dolphins kicker!  “Would you like a cookie son?  Laces out…”

Alrighty then, that’s enough of that.  My point is that I think the various characters who manifest Azor Ahai imagery are all telling us something about Azor Ahai and who he was.  To see Beric, the Lightning Lord corpse with a flaming sword and a starry cloak, engaged to a Dayne and with a Dayne as a squire – which is very like a son – may suggest that Azor Ahai or perhaps his son married a Dawn Age Westerosi woman and founded House Dayne.  Similarly, King Stannis, the Lord of a black castle with a flaming sword and two queens, so to speak, has his nephew Edric Storm in his care.  Not a son, but much is made of his blood tie to Stannis.  Again, Edric and Eldric, one letter apart, and the storm reference certainly fits.  To be onset, I’ve actually done a break down of the chapter where Davos smuggles Edric off of Dragonstone, and it’s chock full of Lightbringer stuff, and seems to confirm that Edric Storm is acting like the son of Azor Ahai, Eldric Shadowchaser.  That’s actually where I first spotted the “Eldric as the son of Azor Ahai” pattern.  Stannis and Beric are both Azor Ahai figures, and both have a young Edric placed in their care.  Again, future essay coming.  I have a lot of things in notes and drafts which I am very much looking forward to putting out, but it’s a matter of finding time to do so.

The last thing I’ll say about Beric is this, and it’s more teasing of ideas I don’t have room for in this essay: he sits in a throne of weirwood roots, in a cave – not an official greenseer throne, but very evocative of one, and Bloodraven’s cave in particular.  Like Bloodraven, he has one eye missing.  Bloodraven has a mixed heritage, part dragon (magic rooted in fire and blood) and part First Men (magic rooted in greenseer abilities).  Beric worships R’hllor (magic rooted in fire and blood) in the cave of the Old Gods – a cave of weirwood roots.  He seeks the counsel of the Ghost of High Heart, which may or may not be the same “Hollow Hill” the Brotherhood’s cave is under –  and the Ghost of the High Heart uses the power of the Old Gods and may be part children of the forest herself.  Beric is also called the “wisp o’ the wood,” and wisp means ghost.  Bloodraven is a tree ghost after a different fashion, but that’s a pretty good description.  We’re seeing an intersection of greenseer magic and fire magic with both Beric and Bloodraven… very interesting.  And isn’t Jon Snow part First Men and part dragon?  And part corpse, for that matter?  I suppose he’s part “Ghost” too, if you will.  Jon even received an eye wound, like Beric and Bloodraven, and wears a black clock (though it’s sadly deficient in the way starry-ness).  Jon and Bloodraven were crows, and Beric is called the Scarecrow Knight.  Hmm… Hmmm indeed…   Clearly these connections between greenseer magic and fire magic are worthy of more investigation, especially in such proximity to Azor Ahai manifestations like Beric and Jon Snow.  This also raises the possibility that Bloodraven may be participating in the Azor Ahai archetype manifestation parade, kind of a frightening thought on many levels.

To sum up, I believe that Beric shows us that the “lightning lord” is one of the many facets of the Azor Ahai archetype.  I’ve got a lot more lightning-related evidence to come in the future, and we’ll see it again a couple of times in this essay, but for now let’s move on to the next mythical association of bloodstone which seems to playing a role in the Long Night disaster mythos.

Healing, Blood Circulation, Vitality, Anti-venom

“Healing properties” is definitely one of those generic associations which is made with many, many gemstones – any charlatan by the side of the road can sell you a rock and tell you it will make you feel better – but the idea that bloodstone can effect blood circulation and has the ability to draw out poison (particularly snake venom) is a bit more interesting.  We’ve seen that blood plays a highly important symbolic role in the fire transformation sequence, and that beings that have undergone fire transformation tend to have black blood, either literally or symbolically.  Lightbringer burns the blood, leaving it black.  The other primary cause of black blood in the novels is when someone is poisoned in some way, such as Ser Gregor Clegane after his fight with the Red Viper, or poor old Ralph Kenning at Moat Cailin, poisoned by the darts of bog devils; or when Khal Drogo’s arakh wound became infected and mortified.  Indeed, there is a connection here, because I believe we are supposed to see the moon’s blood as having been poisoned by Lightbringer the comet as well as burned.  Comets can of course be perceived as snakes as easily as dragons, since dragons are thought of as a type of snake or wyrm, and I believe we should think about the poisonous snake idea as one aspect of Lightbringer.

Here’s a little quote to demonstrate the idea of the moon being poisoned by the sun, as well as a hint about “two moons.”   This is from a Tyrion chapter of A Dance with Dragons:

Only the brightest stars were visible, all to the west.  A dull red glow lit the sky to the northeast, the color of a blood bruise. Tyrion had never seen a bigger moon. Monstrous, swollen, it looked as if it had swallowed the sun and woken with a fever. Its twin, floating on the sea beyond the ship, shimmered red with every wave.  

This language seems like a match for the twin swords that symbolize Lightbringer, Oathkeeper and Widows Wail, with its waves of blood and night that shimmer.  We have twin red swords and twin red moons, as well as the implications of a moon that swallowed the sun and become sick and a moon which drowns in the sea.  The “brightest star” phrase may be a reference to the Morningstar, Venus, which is the brightest star in the sky.  The monstrous moon conjures to mind a moon which gives birth to monsters.  “Mother of dragons? Mother of monsters,” as Dany muses to herself.  The idea of a moon having ingested the sun and become sick is also a parallel to Lyanna, who lies sick in her bed of blood.  She had the dragon seed inside her and gave birth to Lightbringer, so of course she is sick.  Dany too was in the depths of fever dream  that lasted for days when dead-dragon-baby Rhaego, a Lightbringer symbol, was born.

The magic associated with Lightbringer seems to be some kind of shadowy fire magic, such as they practice at Asshai – and indeed, the entire region of the Shadowlands by Asshai seems to be exhibiting symptoms of magical toxicity.  We saw earlier that Asshai is built entirely from greasy black stone which “drinks the light” – perhaps this is the same black stone which the Bloodstone Emperor worshipped, or perhaps it’s related to it in some fashion.  If the greasy black stone is moon meteor stone, it makes sense that it would be toxic, as anyone who’s read much H. P. Lovecraft, one of Martin’s major influences, will know.  I certainly think that the current state of Asshai is a result of the Long Night disaster, perhaps the epicenter of Azor Ahai’s dark magical experimentations.  It very well could have been hit by a meteor, or perhaps it had some kind of symbiotic relationship to the destroyed moon.   I’ve wondered if perhaps we might be talking about ice and fire moons, with the destroyed fire moon being tied to what is now the Shadowlands, and the ice moon tied to the heart of winter.  Maybe Asshai used to the “heart of summer,” but was turned to the shadowlands when the moon was destroyed via this magical link.

If the oily black stone at Ashhai and perhaps elsewhere is moon meteor stone, perhaps the “oil” or “grease” on the stone is the physical manifestation of the idea of moon blood.  Of course the moon doesn’t literally have blood – who knows what the oil actually is.  It’s like asking if the weirwood tears are really blood or sap – we aren’t sure, but we are supposed to see them and think of blood sacrifice, which is indeed a part of ancient Northern weirwood ritual and perhaps the magic needed to activate them.  Similarly, the bloodstones seem to be associated with blood magic and fire transformation, as well as toxicity or poison.  There are some symbolic links between blood and oil in the books which we’ll examine a bit later than lend credibility to this idea.

The megalithic city of Yeen on Sothoryos is also built from greasy black stone, and although there’s nothing about drinking the light mentioned as there is in Asshai, the World of Ice and Fire tells us that the jungle plants will not grow near the stone of the city, indicating some kind of toxicity.  There’s lots of other general creepiness there, including a Jamestown-like story of one of Nymeria’s colonies of Rhoynar disappearing there in a single night without a trace, but the interesting thing to note here is the that Asshai and Yeen, the two places where we see a large concentration of greasy black stone, both exhibit magical toxicity of various kinds and degrees.   There’s also a huge stone toad idol on the Isle of Toads in the Basilisks (not far from Yeen), and of course the Seastone Chair.  There is some evidence for magical toxicity or weirdness for those two, but it’s not conclusive.  In A Dance with Dragons, Theon sees the huge black basalt blocks of Moat Cailin slick with rainwater, and thinks that they appear to be coated in a “fine black oil.”  This seems to raise the possibility that Moat Cailin’s black stones might be greasy, but it’s hard to say for sure.  Moat Cailin, however, may be showing signs of toxicity as well – everything in the bogs there are poisonous, even the plants.  It seems much more of a nasty, deadly swamp than a coastal wetlands, and after all, nobody actually lives at Moat Cailin.  The construction style of Moat Cailin matches that of Yeen – huge, square, megalithic blocks.  We’ll come back to discuss these places a bit more in due course.

I’ll take a minute to draw a distinction between oily or greasy black stone, which I believe to be either moon meteor rock or rock burnt black by a moon meteor or it’s magic, and fused black stone, such as the Valyrians were known for.  We know that fused black stone is simply stone melted by dragon fire and shaped and hardened by sorcery, whereas we are given no explanation for the greasy or oily black stone.  We find the fused black stone at Dragonstone, Valyrian cities like Tyrosh and Volantis, in all Valyrian roads, and of course Valyria itself.  We also have two pre-Valyrian fused stone structures at Battle Isle in Oldtown and the Five Forts in Essos, which I believe speak of a pre-Valyrian race of dragonlords which can only be from Asshai, and I would say, the Great Empire of the Dawn.  The idea of pre-Valyrian stone fortresses in the far east AND in Westeros is actually one of the biggest revelations in The World of Ice and Fire, in my opinion, and it provides a backbone of hard evidence for both the existence of Dawn Age, pre-Valyrian dragonlords and the idea that dragonlords – presumably Azor Ahai – came from Asshai to Westeros some time before the Long Night.  This is a big subject which will get it’s podcast, as I mentioned, and of course we’ll be talking about it on the House Dayne episodes of History of Westeros.

In any case, the fused stone we have seen is not greasy, and none of the oily black stone locations seem to be fused stone – the Isle of Toads statue and Seastone chair are carved, and the block of Yeen and Moat Cailin are hewn (cut).  Asshai is a wildcard, as we don’t know what the construction type is there – perhaps it’s fused and greasy.  Until we see them together, however, we have to consider them different types of black stone, although they both pertain to dragons and dragonlords, if my ideas about the Bloodstone Emperor and the moon meteors are correct.

The Bloodstone Emperor is described as the great corruptor, and indeed these black stones from space, the pieces of the moon, seem to have been burnt, blackened, poisoned, and corrupted in their fire transformation, just like dead and corrupted baby Rhaego.  Accordingly, many of the obviously positive mythic “properties” of bloodstone have been inverted, and this is one of those.  Instead of promoting healing and blood circulation, instead of drawing out poison from blood, George’s magical bloodstone does the opposite.  These meteors don’t draw out snake venom, they are the snake venom, the poisonous sun-spears.  If you’re thinking of Oberyn’s poison-tipped spear that he used to fight the mountain, you’ve got exactly the right idea and I promise you, we are getting to that one very shortly, as it has most of the bloodstone ideas going on.  As I mentioned above, Ser Gregor’s blood turns black after he’s bitten by the Red Viper.

Let’s take a quick look at the three examples of blood turned black by poisoning or sickening that I mentioned above, plus a couple other victims of poisoning.  I’m not going to pull any quotes – we’ll just run through them real quick in summary form.

Oberyn the Red Viper is covered in sun symbols, from his armor to the sigil of his house, and the steel tip of his sun-spear is coated in poison – poison that looks like a “fine black oil,” which seems like a callout to the idea that the oily black stones are sun-spears, meteorites.  Oberyn’s poison spear turns Gregor’s blood black.

Ralph Kenning is poisoned and his blood blackened by the darts of “bog-devils” – darts spit from the mouths of devils definitely fit the imagery we have seen elsewhere.  Other lightbringer symbols which come out of the mouth are dragon fire, fiery or bloody tongues, teeth, and there’s that one time Butterbumps dresses all in yellow and spits seeds full in moon maiden’s Sansa’s face – how rude.  In essence, any sharp, flying object is fair game for meteor symbolism, and poisonous devil darts are a pretty good one.

As for Khal Drogo, a solar king, we could trace his blood poisoning to one or both of the arakh wound and the mud poultice that replaced the one made by Mirri Maz Duur.  I’m leaving the poultice alone – yes, we’ve finally found something which I cannot claim to symbolize moon meteors.  I dunno – I just don’t see it.  Arakh’s, however, have a habit of striking like lightning.  Arakhs are also sickle-shaped, which in turn evokes all the moon crescent – sacrificial sickle symbolism, such as in Bran’s last chapter of A Dance with Dragons when the moon is as slender and sharp as the blade of a knife and his weirwood visions end with a person sacrificed to the heart tree with a sickle-shaped blade.

Joffrey is another obvious solar king, and he’s poisoned as well, his bright solar face turned to dark purple, the same color as the poison, which is from Asshai and resembles crystals of black amethysts.  Lots of Lightbringer symbolism there – Asshai, amethyst gems to remind us of the Amethyst Empress and purple eyed dragonlords, and of course our running theme of poison which darkens the blood.  The Ghost of High Heart perceives Sansa and her poison amethyst hairnet as maiden with snakes in her hair.  That’s a nice way to tie together the the poison and black amethyst ideas to that of snakes and snake venom.  A moon full of snakes is exactly right – a moon pregnant with poison lightbringer meteors.  Sansa makes a great moon symbol, wielding her poisonous snakes, and the amethysts reinforce the connection between Sansa, the Amethyst Empress, and the moon maiden archetype.

Good ole King Robert – he too has black blood in his deathbed scene.  Was he murdered by a lightbringer symbol?  Well, a boar is a horned animal, so that’s a good start, and Robert calls him a devil, and follows with a “damn me to hell.”  That’s good enough for me – Azor Ahai was the devil, isn’t that what I’ve been saying?  Robert also makes a declaration that the gods must have sent the boar to punish him for wanting to kill Daenerys – who is of course a moon maiden.

What we see in all these instances are Lightbringer symbols poisoning things and turning blood black.  We also see quite a bit of mutual-annihilation, which is exactly what happened when the sun seemed to blow up the moon, only to have the moon debris darken and hide the sun’s face.  Like the moon, the sun is poisoned and blackened by Lightbringer.

Just as the healing properties of bloodstone have been inverted, the Bloodstone Emperor is basically an inverted solar king, a dark sun.  He’s associated with the Lion of Night, which is interesting because lions are usually solar symbols.  What is a lion of night?  Perhaps a darkened sun.  If nothing else, the story of the Long Night is about the darkening of the sun.   The tale of the Blood Betrayal describes the Long Night as the Maiden-made-of-Light turning her face in shame.  That makes it likely that the Maiden-made-of-Light is the sun, for the sun hiding its face is by definition what we need to create a “Long Night.”  Indeed, elsewhere in the Worldbook it refers to this same Yi Tish tale of the Long Night in summary form, and refers to the “sun hiding its face,” instead of the Maiden hiding her face.  The maesters interpret the maiden as the sun, and treat them as interchangeable, and I think they are correct.  What is the sun ashamed of?  Well, destroying the moon, of course (hat-tip to Free Northman Reborn of the Westeros.org forum).

Now originally, the story of the Great Empire of the Dawn begins with the Maiden-Made-of-Light and the Lion of Night in some kind of harmonious equilibrium.  The Long Night disrupts the balance, the Maiden turns her face, and the Lion of Night comes forth in all his wroth during the Bloodstone Emperor’s reign of terror.  What I am proposing is just as Azor Ahai, is the champion of R’hllor, the warrior of fire, the Bloodstone Emperor is the champion of the Lion of Night, the warrior of shadow and black fire.  Now of course I am proposing that these two are one in the same – what we see here is a binary expression of the bright sun and the dark sun.  Just as a person has a shadow, the sun’s shadow is the lion of night, the black dragon.  I mentioned last time that this is a principle of alchemy, and that alchemists perceived the bright sun as a lion and the shadow sun as a dragon.  The Maiden and Lion duality is the same thing, I believe – they are both solar deities, but one is the bright face of the sun and one is the dark face, the sun’s shadow.  You’ll notice that Dany’s animal familiar is called the winged shadow, while Jon’s animal familiar is called a pale shadow.  You’ll also notice the color inversions there – Dany is the “silver queen” with a black shadow, and Jon is all black with a white shadow.  Just as with the Lion of Night and the Maiden-Made-of-Light, we are seeing the light / dark duality.  It was Stannis’s shadow that helped create the shadow baby, just as the sun’s shadow seems to be associated with Lightbringer.  Live Stannis has a bright burning sword; Stannis’s shadow has a cold “shadowsword.”

So now let’s consider again the idea of Mithras and the sword and the torch.  If Lightbringer was a sword and a torch, we might conclude that it’s one of those terrible powers that can be used for good or evil, based on the intent of the wielder, which is a common idea in literature in mythology – it’s a good lesson to teach and learn, because it reflects the true nature of power.  But Azor Ahai’s Lightbringer was not that.  Azor Ahai’s Lightbringer is corrupted – it doesn’t bring light at all.  It’s an un-torch, a dark-bringer.  A sword of Nightfall and Blackfyre, and perhaps even “shadow-fire,” whatever that is.  Shadow fire and black fire both sound like fire whose function has been inverted, and that’s exactly what we’re talking about.  Inverted fire which is not bright for the inverted solar king who brought darkness, the king of the Nightlands.

We might say that Lightbringer technology in general – flaming sword technology, that is – would be the power which can go either way, for good or evil.  If the Great Empire of the Dawn’s pale fire swords represent uncorrupted, pre-Azor Ahai flaming sword tech,  then we can see that flaming sword power can indeed go either way.  Azor Ahai’s Lightbringer, however, is not a powerful weapon which can go either way – it represents power which already went a certain way – down the dark road.  And we aren’t talking about the idea of darkness as a balance to light, or death as a balance to life.  We are talking about cheating and defying death, breaking the cycles of life and of the seasons.  The Long Night is the epitome of this, a winter and a night which never gives way to day and spring.  Lightbringer was the sword that slays the seasons, which is one of the descriptions of the red comet.  Lightbringer literally broke the cycle of the seasons when it caused the Long Night.

Generally speaking, one of the most common ways that the knowledge of the gods or fire of the gods is perceived is as the cup or grail of immortality.  Those who seek it seek to become like gods, defying death.  We see this quest all over A Song of Ice and Fire – with the Bloodstone Emperor of course, as well as most of those other eleven stories I cited above.  We also see people defying death in other places – the Undying of Qarth, who are a great example of what I am talking about, or the seemingly eternal Others, whose every act is a defiance of natural life.  We’ve got the zombies that the R’hllorists make, the wights raised in the North, and even the greenseers might fall into this category, although I think that situation may be more complex.

But as for the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai, we can confidently say that there seems to be very little silver lining to breaking the moon.  It’s one thing to seek after the wisdom of the gods, and it’s another thing to pull the gods down from heaven.  I think that if there was anything positive derived from the disaster, from his sword, or from one of the meteors, it would constitute a reversal, an atonement, a reckoning.  Someone would have had to have figured out a way to undo some of the harm that Azor Ahai caused, perhaps turning his own magic against him or his creations,  or something along those lines.  Perhaps that’s what the Last Hero did – perhaps he was the son of Azor Ahai who went against the evil magic of his father, maybe even by sacrificing himself.  Many have speculated that the Last Hero didn’t simply ride in and slay the Others to end the Long Night – it seems likely to have been more complicated than that, perhaps involving a pact or sacrifice of some kind.  I like these ideas and think they fit well with the themes of the novel.  The Lightbringer myth combines the parallel but opposing themes of death and life, of vile murder and blasphemous hubris on one hand and procreation and self-sacrifice on the other, and so it seems likely sacrifice and procreation might be what’s needed to wash out the stain of someone willing to use blood magic to gain personal power, such as the Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai, the dark solar king.

Visions danced before her, gold and scarlet, flickering, forming and melting and dissolving into one another, shapes strange and terrifying and seductive. She saw the eyeless faces again, staring out at her from sockets weeping blood. Then the towers by the sea, crumbling as the dark tide came sweeping over them, rising from the depths.  {…} I saw towers by the sea, submerged beneath a black and bloody tide. (ADWD, Melisandre) Most Valyrian steel was a grey so dark it looked almost black, as was true here as well. But blended into the folds was a red as deep as the grey. The two colors lapped over one another without ever touching, each ripple distinct, like waves of night and blood upon some steely shore. (ASOS, Tyrion) The Bloodstone Compendium Part 1: Astronomy Explains the Legends of Ice and Fire Part 2: Lucifer Means Lightbringer Part 3: The Bloodstone Emperor Azor Ahai Part 4: The Language of Leviathan Part 5: Black and Bloody Tides Part 6: A Thousand Eyes and One Hammer Black and Bloody Tides It’s a new day and a new essay, but we are still translating the language of leviathan, and we are still exploring the mythical associations of bloodstone, all in an attempt to unravel as much as we can about the Long Night disaster.  Thanks for taking this trip with me, I’m grateful to have your attention and I hope to continue to hold your interest. 😉 The leviathan language we’ll speak of here in this essay is the black and bloody tide, which I’ve been mentioning around the margins up to this point.  We’ve firmly established the sea dragon’s slaying and Storm King’s thunderbolt as a moon meteor strike.  We’ve seen the language that this leviathan speaks – earthquakes and shattering of the land, tree death, a rain of fiery swords, and darkness.  Now, recall Pliny’s the Elder’s notion that submersing bloodstone in water turns the sun’s reflection bloody.  This makes even more sense when we think about the bloodstone as the moon meteors – pieces of the moon goddess soaked in her sun-blackened blood which crashed into the ocean and triggered the black and bloody tide.  That’s quite a mouthful; no wonder they just called it a “sea dragon.” Moon Drownings Seek the hill of Nagga and the bones of the Grey King’s Hall, for in that holy place when the moon has drowned and come again we shall make ourselves a worthy king, a godly king.” He raised his bony hands on high again. “ Listen! Listen to the waves! Listen to the god! He is speaking to us, and he says, We shall have no king but from the kings moot!  (AFFC, The Prophet) Let’s take a look at some instances of the moon drowning quotes throughout the story (of which there are many): She took him out onto the terrace that overlooked the city.  A full moon swam in the black sky above Meereen.  “Shall we walk?”  Dany slipped her arm through his.  The air was heavy with the scent of night-blooming flowers.  (ADWD, Daenerys)  The full moon, implying pregnancy and childbirth, floats in a black sea.  Night-blooming flowers evoke the sun-drinking heliotropium flower, appropriately here next to Daenerys, who is associated with both Nissa Nissa and the Amethyst Empress, all three of whom are of course moon maidens.  The night-blooming flowers make the air heavy; that’s surely a reference to the smoke and debris which made up the unfolding flower of darkness. Daenerys received the captain on her terrace, seated on a carved stone bench beneath a pear tree.  A half-moon floated in the sky above the city, attended by a thousand stars.  Daario Naharis entered swaggering.  He swaggers even when he is standing still.  The captain wore striped pantaloons tucked into high boots of purple leather, a white silk shirt, a vest of golden rings.  His trident beard was purple, his flamboyant mustachios gold, his long curls equal parts of both.  On one hip he wore a stiletto, on the other a Dothraki arakh.  “Bright queen,” he said, “you have grown more beautiful in my absence. How is this thing possible?” The queen was accustomed to such praise, yet somehow the compliment meant more coming from Daario than from the likes of Reznak, Xaro, or Hizdahr. “Captain. They tell us you did us good service in Lhazar.” I have missed you so much. “Your captain lives to serve his cruel queen.” “Cruel?” Moonlight glimmered in his eyes. (ADWD, Daenerys) It’s not just these moon drowning motifs by themselves that are significant – it’s the appearance of moon-drowning motifs in the presence of Lightbringer symbolism – a thousand stars attending the floating moon.  Recalling that Daenerys has transitioned into a solar “king” at this point –  I believe Daario is her fire moon “bride,” a compliment to Hizdahr’s icy and impotent frozen cock symbolism.  Golden rings, purple vest and beard (Targaryen purple of course), eyes flashing with moonlight, and his repeated acknowledgement of Dany’s authority as Queen (“bright queen” to reinforce her solar status).  Daario’s purple “trident” beard evokes the three heads of the dragon.  In the next essay, we’ll be talking a bit about the connection between moons and eyes, so just put that in your back pocket. “… sleep, Princess,” Ser Jorah said. “No,” Dany said. “Please. Please.” “Yes.”  He covered her with silk, though she was burning.  “Sleep and grow strong again, Khaleesi.  Come back to us.”  And then Mirri Maz Duur was there, the maegi, tipping a cup against her lips.  She tasted sour milk, and something else, something thick and bitter.  Warm liquid ran down her chin.  Somehow she swallowed.  The tent grew dimmer, and sleep took her again.  This time she did not dream.  She floated, serene and at peace, on a black sea that knew no shore.  After a time— a night, a day, a year, she could not say— she woke again.  The tent was dark, its silken walls flapping like wings when the wind gusted outside.  (AGOT, Daenerys) This last scene was immediately following Daenerys’s “wake the dragon” dream.  The motifs are well familiar to us – Daenerys, as an incarnation of the moon, floats on the black sea that knew no shore – this is highly suggestive of space, the cosmic ocean which has no shore.  This is where we saw the moon swimming in the previous quote – “in the black sky” – so this is a particularly strong and clear metaphor.  Dark flapping tent wings remind us of the dragon, whose birth is being foreshadowed in this scene (and in many other Dany scenes in A Game of Thrones).  There’s a parallel to this scene in the chapter where Danerys eats the stallion’s heart, receives the prophecy of the Stallion Who Mounts the World, and then bathes in the Womb of the World beneath the mother of mountains.  This passage is afire with Lightbringer symbols, but keep an eye out for watery language, which are references to the black and bloody tide: The heart was steaming in the cool evening air when Khal Drogo set it before her, raw and bloody.  His arms were red to the elbow.  Behind him, his bloodriders knelt on the sand beside the corpse of the wild stallion, stone knives in their hands. The stallion’s blood looked black in the flickering orange glare of the torches that ringed the high chalk walls of the pit.   Dany touched the soft swell of her belly.  Sweat beaded her skin and trickled down her brow.  She could feel the old women watching her, the ancient crones of Vaes Dothrak, with eyes that shone dark as polished flint in their wrinkled faces.  She must not flinch or look afraid.  I am the blood of the dragon, she told herself as she took the stallion’s heart in both hands, lifted it to her mouth, and plunged her teeth into the tough, stringy flesh.  {…} Despite the tender mother’s stomach that had afflicted her these past two moons, Dany had dined on bowls of half-clotted blood to accustom herself to the taste, and Irri made her chew strips of dried horseflesh until her jaws were aching.  {…} Her stomach roiled and heaved, yet she kept on, her face smeared with the heartsblood that sometimes seemed to explode against her lips.  Khal Drogo stood over her as she ate, his face as hard as a bronze shield.  His long black braid was shiny with oil.  {…}  The oldest of the crones, a bent and shriveled stick of a woman with a single black eye, raised her arms on high. “Khalakka dothrae!” she shrieked.  The prince is riding! “He is riding!” the other women answered.  “Rakh! Rakh! Rakh haj!” they proclaimed.  A boy, a boy, a strong boy. Bells rang, a sudden clangor of bronze birds.  A deep-throated warhorn sounded its long low note.  The old women began to chant.  Underneath their painted leather vests, their withered dugs swayed back and forth, shiny with oil and sweat.  The eunuchs who served them threw bundles of dried grasses into a great bronze brazier, and clouds of fragrant smoke rose up toward the moon and the stars.  The Dothraki believed the stars were horses made of fire, a great herd that galloped across the sky by night. As the smoke ascended, the chanting died away and the ancient crone closed her single eye, the better to peer into the future.  The silence that fell was complete.  Dany could hear the distant call of night birds, the hiss and crackle of the torches, the gentle lapping of water from the lake.  The Dothraki stared at her with eyes of night, waiting. The prophecy is given, then the party marches down the godsway to the black lake called the Womb of the World.  As they pass the stolen gods and heroes that line the godsway, “the flickering flames made the great monuments seem almost alive.”  Now we get a moon-drowning metaphor to match the previous instances of the moon floating and drowning on a black sea. They rode to the lake the Dothraki called the Womb of the World, surrounded by a fringe of reeds, its water still and calm.  A thousand thousand years ago, Jhiqui told her, the first man had emerged from its depths, riding upon the back of the first horse.  The procession waited on the grassy shore as Dany stripped and let her soiled clothing fall to the ground.  Naked, she stepped gingerly into the water.  Irri said the lake had no bottom, but Dany felt soft mud squishing between her toes as she pushed through the tall reeds. The moon floated on the still black waters, shattering and re-forming as her ripples washed over it. Goose pimples rose on her pale skin as the coldness crept up her thighs and kissed her lower lips. The stallion’s blood had dried on her hands and around her mouth.  Dany cupped her fingers and lifted the sacred waters over her head, cleansing herself and the child inside her while the khal and the others looked on.  (AGOT, Daenerys) Anytime we see “a thousand thousand” something, our ears should prick up, as this is the language of the thousand thousand dragon meteor shower which poured forth from the second moon.  The “shattering and reforming” language is a close match to Daenrys feeling as though “her body had been torn to pieces and remade from the scraps” after her miscarriage in the tent near the end of A Game of Thrones.  I believe this is a reference to the idea of the moon shattering and then being “reformed” in the forging of Lightbringer the sword out of moon meteors.  Lightbringer contains Nissa Nissa’s blood and soul and strength and courage, and it was made form the moon’s scraps, so I think it fits. Dany enters the black water covered in stallion’s blood – we’ve seen the bloody hands and mouths a few times now – and then comes out cold and pale, and seemingly cleansed.  But her child ultimately is not clean – Rhaego comes out of the womb cold and dead after having the fire inside him.  I tend to interpret this again to refer to the forging of Lightbringer the flaming meteor sword in the black water of the sea. We’ve seen that Valyrian steel, though forged in fire like the destroyed moon, has a cold bite – in the case of Longclaw, Ice, and the black steel axe Mormont gives to Craster.  The Dornishman’s blade was made of black steel too, and “it’s bite was as sharp and cold as a leech.”  I don’t want to give away my whole “Dornishman’s Wife” analysis, but recall that Lightbringer, made of black steal, drank Nissa’s blood and soul, a match for the cold, leech-like (blood drinking) bite of the Dornishman’s black steel blade.  The Ironborn, meanwhile, possess those foul black weapons which drink the souls of those they slay.  Finally, we have the concept of obsidian as “frozen fire,” which is capable of ‘sucking the cold’ out of an Other, melting it and leaving the obsidian freezing cold to the touch. If “possessing Nagga’s fire” does in fact equate to those black soul-drinking weapons as I have proposed, then we have the same pattern of events.  When I compare the idea of fiery black steel plunging into black water and coming out with a cold bite to the fiery and bloody moon maiden immersing herself in the black waters and emerging kissed by the cold, I am seeing a similar story.  After praying to the waves to speak to him in the language of leviathan, Aeron Damphair emerges from the waves “gaunt and pale and shivering,” but he has “a fire burning in his heart.”  Dany too, though pale and shivering, retains the fire inside her – the one which will ultimately burn Rhaego to ash.  Valyrian steel has fire locked inside of it, in a manner of speaking, as it was forged in dragon flame.  It may be that only a Valyrian steel sword can become a “Lightbringer,” playing on the idea of a fire locked inside the cold steel. At this point, I have to point out that the cold black pond in the Winterfell godswood, the one in front of the heart tree, bears a striking resemblance to the womb of the world.  Both are cold black bodies of water, and both supposedly have no bottom.  Both are associated with the origin stories of their respective peoples.  The womb of the world gave birth to the first man, riding on the back of the first horse, and the Winterfell heart tree and black pond seem to be among the oldest things at Winterfell, as we are told the keep was built around the godswood.  Bran tastes the blood of the sacrifice victim offered by some very ancient Stark through the black pond, which is somewhat similar to Daenerys eating the horse heart and washing the blood off in the black lake. And here’s the crux of this comparison: Ned Stark washes the blood off of his black steel sword in the black pond. We’ve seen that Ned’s sword symbolizes Lightbringer, the sword made from the black bloodstone moon rock, so again, we have multiple stories that are really telling the same story – bloody black moon stone being immersed in the black water, and coming out cold, but with an inner fire.  And like Damphair and Daenerys, who emerged from the black water chilled and cold, the sword Ice is, at its heart, steel made in dragon fire, and therefore has the inner fire as well. Ned’s Ice is now Widow’s Wail and Oathkeeper, with their “waves of night and blood upon some steely shore.”  Even before this, Ned was symbolically creating the black and bloody tide every time he dipped that black and bloody sword into the black pond.  Both of these ideas serve to tie the black and bloody tide to Lightbringer and the moon meteors. This is a very specific, ritualistic activity that Ned practices – he always cleans the blood off of Ice in that black pond.  This “ritual” was introduced to us in one of the very first chapters in A Game of Thrones, emphasizing its importance: But she knew she would find her husband here tonight. Whenever he took a man’s life, afterward he would seek the quiet of the godswood.  {…} At the center of the grove an ancient weirwood brooded over a small pool where the waters were black and cold. “The heart tree,” Ned called it. The weirwood’s bark was white as bone, its leaves dark red, like a thousand bloodstained hands. A face had been carved in the trunk of the great tree, its features long and melancholy, the deep-cut eyes red with dried sap and strangely watchful. They were old, those eyes; older than Winterfell itself. They had seen Brandon the Builder set the first stone, if the tales were true; they had watched the castle’s granite walls rise around them. It was said that the children of the forest had carved the faces in the trees during the dawn centuries before the coming of the First Men across the narrow sea.  {…} Catelyn found her husband beneath the weirwood, seated on a moss-covered stone. The greatsword Ice was across his lap, and he was cleaning the blade in those waters black as night. A thousand years of humus lay thick upon the godswood floor, swallowing the sound of her feet, but the red eyes of the weirwood seemed to follow her as she came.  {…} He had a swatch of oiled leather in one hand. He ran it lightly up the greatsword as he spoke, polishing the metal to a dark glow.  {…} Ned lifted Ice, looked down the cool steel length of it.  {…} “There was grievous news today, my lord. I did not wish to trouble you until you had cleansed yourself.” First of all, I’d like to note the astronomy metaphor here in the very beginning – a thousand bloodstained hands.  The oily black bloodstone sword idea is present as well – the black sword with a dark glow goes from being covered in blood to being covered in black water to being covered in oil.  We’ve seen that these three things – blood, water, and oil – are all symbolically interchangeable, so its cool to see George introducing this idea to us here, so early on.  Again, this is a “gardener” with a plan.  😉 The important parts of Ned’s ritual are highlighted – it’s the same ritual that Daenerys does, in many ways.  Notice the phrase “waters black as night” applied to the black pond in which Ned washes the blood off of his sword – I hate to beat a dead horse, but “waves of blood and night,” once again.  Daenerys herself represents the moon meteors, the sea dragon, and she cleanses the blood off of her and her child in the cold black waters, just as Ned cleanses the black and bloody sword which represents the moon meteors in the black pond, and in doing so, cleanses himself as well. Just to reinforce this idea, recall the burning of the Seven on Dragonstone, when Stannis thrust his “Lightbringer” into the damp earth, followed by Melisandre singing “in the tongue of Asshai, her voice rising and falling like the tides of the sea.”  The water surrounding Dragonstone is of course the Blackwater Bay, so it’s a very similar scene to the previous two… with the exception that instead of sanctifying or cleansing anything, they were committing deeply sacrilegious acts on Dragonstone.  Small difference.  😉  We’ll have to keep an eye on this theme of purification by fire or by cold black water and see if we can’t sort it out in the future.  But in any case, what we can see in all of these moon drowning quotes is that Lightbringer’s landing on the earth brought forth the black and bloody tides. The Wayward Bride Asha Greyjoy wraps up all these ideas together in a nice little package in a chapter called “The Wayward Bride,” whose title itself is a moon drowning clue.  As will be soon apparent, Asha plays the role of wayward, drowning moon maiden.  She actually goes through the moon-impregnation-by-comet sequence several times in this chapter. “My lady.” The maester’s voice was anxious, as it always was when he spoke to her. “A bird from Barrowton.” He thrust the parchment at her as if he could not wait to be rid of it.  {…} This is poison that I hold, she thought. I ought to burn it. Instead she cracked the seal. A scrap of leather fluttered down into her lap. When she read the dry brown words, her black mood grew blacker still. Dark wings, dark words. The ravens never brought glad tidings. The last message sent to Deepwood had been from Stannis Baratheon, demanding homage.  {…}  It spoke of the fall of Moat Cailin, of the triumphant return of the Warden of the North to his domains, of a marriage soon to be made. The first words were, “I write this letter in the blood of ironmen,” the last, “I send you each a piece of prince. Linger in my lands, and share his fate.”  {…} Ravens are symbols for comets and meteors, and this meteor is a piece of dismembered Ironborn royalty, written in the blood of Ironborn.  This is tight fit with the idea of the Ironborn being people made of iron who possess the sea dragon’s fire. The story of the slain sea dragon, the drowned goddess, is the story of the Ironborn, in a symbolic way. Other ideas attached to the ravens and their fluttering, bloody Ironborn messages: they are “thrust,” they should be burnt, they are “poison” (think of the poisoned black blood and heliotrope’s association with poison), they are very dark, they are cracked open, and the last one was from Stannis (an Azor Ahai symbol).  The association with the fall of Moat Cailin is significant, if only because Moat Cailin is a location associated with the Hammer of the Waters. This is the first moon impregnation sequence – two of them, actually.  Theon himself was dismembered and then sent out in flying pieces of bloody ironborn.  Asha is the second, as  the flying bloody iron is “thrust” at her, bearing news of a marriage.  Her mood then becomes black, she is threatened with dismemberment and skinning (sharing Theon’s fate), and shortly after this, there is a quote about the sun going down behind the trees. The room was cold. Asha rose from Galbart Glover’s bed and took off her torn clothes. The jerkin would need fresh laces, but her tunic was ruined. I never liked it anyway . She tossed it on the flames. The rest she left in a puddle by the bed. Her breasts were sore, and Qarl’s seed was trickling down her thigh. She would need to brew some moon tea or risk bringing another kraken into the world.  {…} In this scene, she’s just made rather violent (but tender) love with Qarl and been impregnated, and her breasts are sore to call to mind Nissa Nissa being stabbed through the breast.  Her clothing represents the crust of the moon – some of it burns, and some of it melts (“in a puddle”). There’s a disturbing connotation of liquid coming from the moon – the black and bloody tide, disguised as tea – which aborts pregnancies.  Of course one immediately thinks of the deformed or even dead lizard-babies that Targayens occasionally birth, chief among them being Dany’s Rhaego, who was born dead as we saw above.  Again we are reminded of the tales of necromancy and other abominations practiced the Bloodstone Emperor, as well as the magically toxic effects of the greasy black bloodstone (at Yeen and Asshai especially – Asshai supposedly has no children at all).  The black bloodstones definitely have an association with warped, twisted magic, and even un-death, un-life, zombification, etc. Returning the narrative, we see two more occurrences of the sea dragons being symbolic of ships, with the word “drowning” thrown in for good measure/: “You are clinging to Sea Dragon Point the way a drowning man clings to a bit of wreckage. What does Sea Dragon have that anyone could ever want? There are no mines, no gold, no silver, not even tin or iron. The land is too wet for wheat or corn.” I do not plan on planting wheat or corn. “What’s there? I’ll tell you. Two long coastlines, a hundred hidden coves, otters in the lakes, salmon in the rivers, clams along the shore, colonies of seals offshore, tall pines for building ships.”  {…} Men and mounts alike were trotting by the time they reached the trees on the far side of the sodden field, where dead shoots of winter wheat rotted beneath the moon. Asha held her horsemen back as a rear guard, to keep the stragglers moving and see that no one was left behind. Tall soldier pines and gnarled old oaks closed in around them. Deepwood was aptly named. The trees were huge and dark, somehow threatening. Their limbs wove through one another and creaked with every breath of wind, and their higher branches scratched at the face of the moon. The sooner we are shut of here, the better I will like it, Asha thought. The trees hate us all, deep in their wooden hearts. Personified trees which scratch at the moon’s face certainly make us think of the story that greenseers were the ones to call down the Hammer of the Waters.  Consider that a preview of a future next essay.  😉 I’ve included these quotes here because of the excellent lunar goddess – harvest connotations.  We mentioned the wheat as a symbol of the harvest in regards to the Tauroctony, but it’s a nearly ubiquitous symbol of the cycle of the seasons and fertility in general, which in turn is frequently associated with lunar goddesses, Astarte (Ishtar) chief among them.  That’s why the rotting wheat harvest appears in the same sentence with the moon.  I believe George is telling us what kind of harvest the sacrifice of the moon brought – a rotten harvest, flooded and dead.  Asha ain’t plantin’ no stinkin’ wheat!  And we are about to see that she is in fact a drowning moon.  This next line made me laugh when I read it. Asha took Tris Botley by the ears and kissed him full upon the lips. He was red and breathless by the time she let him go. “What was that?” he said. “A kiss, it’s called. Drown me for a fool, Tris, I should have remembered— ” She broke off suddenly. When Tris tried to speak, she shushed him, listening. “That’s a warhorn. Hagen.” Her first thought was of her husband. Could Erik Ironmaker have come all this way to claim his wayward wife? “The Drowned God loves me after all.  {…} Asha never beached more than half her ships.  The other half stood safely off to sea, with orders to raise sail and make for Sea Dragon Point if the northmen took the strand.  “Hagen, blow your horn and make the forest shake. Tris, don some mail, it’s time you tried out that sweet sword of yours.”  When she saw how pale he was, she pinched his cheek.  “Splash some blood upon the moon with me, and I promise you a kiss for every kill.”  (ADWD, The Wayward Bride) Our moon maiden is sending half her “fleet” (meteor shower) to Sea Dragon point.  She wants to blow a earth-shaking horn, splash blood on the moon, and see a sweet sword (and right next to the “Sea Dragon Point” pun, for good measure :)).  Kissing and killing recall the dual nature of the Lightbringer myth, which we’ve seen several times through this chapter.  This is a total Lightbringer forging party right here!  Later on in this chapter: She spun and found another wolf behind her, and slashed him across the brow beneath his helm.  His own cut caught her below the breast, but her mail turned it, so she drove the point of her dirk into his throat and left him to drown in his own blood.  A hand seized her hair, but short as it was he could not get a good enough grip to wrench her head back.  Asha slammed her boot heel down onto his instep and wrenched loose when he cried out in pain.  By the time she turned the man was down and dying, still clutching a handful of her hair.  Qarl stood over him, with his longsword dripping and moonlight shining in his eyes.  (ADWD, The Wayward Bride) Our moon maid is spinning and turning, like a moon, and was stabbed in the breast like Nissa Nissa.  We see a blood drowning, and well as a bloody sword and the idea of moonlight being like eyes.  We will return to this chapter to mine all the tree-personification clues lurking in the deep woods when we shift our focus to the weirwood trees… The Wayward Bride is really one of my very favorite chapters in the entire series, and one of the examples of why I think A Dance with Dragons is a terrific book, despite the fact that it doesn’t have its ending battles.  A moonlight battle in the dark woods where your foes are like the trees themselves… yeah.  That’s the stuff. Black Tides According to the Damphair, the red comet which is a burning brand proclaims a rising tide for the Ironborn.  As the Greyjoys plan their attack on the North, Aeron can’t resist prophesying a bit about the sea dragon’s wrath: Aeron Damphair raised his arms. “And the waters of wrath will rise high, and the Drowned God will spread his dominion across the green lands!” (ACOK, Theon) The rising tide of the Ironborn is the black tide, have no doubt: when Jojen green-dreams of the Ironborn invading Winterfell, he perceives it as a black tide.  There’s even a House Blacktyde on the Iron Islands, and “Blind” Beron Blacktyde is one of Aeron Damphair’s drowned men.  Here is Jojen’s dream: “I dreamed that the sea was lapping all around Winterfell.  I saw black waves crashing against the gates and towers, and then the salt water came flowing over the walls and filled the castle.  Drowned men were floating in the yard.  (ACOK, Bran) He had expected that Hodor would come for him, or maybe one of the serving girls, but when the door next opened it was Maester Luwin, carrying a candle.  “Bran,” he said, “you … know what has happened?  You have been told?”  The skin was broken above his left eye, and blood ran down that side of his face. “Theon came. He said Winterfell was his now.” The maester set down the candle and wiped the blood off his cheek. “They swam the moat.  Climbed the walls with hook and rope.  Came over wet and dripping, steel in hand.”  He sat on the chair by the door, as fresh blood flowed.  “Alebelly was on the gate, they surprised him in the turret and killed him. Hayhead’s wounded as well. I had time to send off two ravens before they burst in. The bird to White Harbor got away, but they brought down the other with an arrow.”  (ACOK, Bran) The black waves symbolize the Ironborn invasion, the “drowned men” who came over the walls wet and dripping.  Notice the next sentence contains “as fresh blood flowed,” suggesting a connection between a blood tide and a black tide.  Jojen’s vision also prophesies the drowning of Mikken, Winterfell’s smith, but it turns out that he drown on blood: The bald man drove the point of his spear into the back of Mikken’s neck.  Steel slid through flesh and came out his throat in a welter of blood.  A woman screamed, and Meera wrapped her arms around Rickon.  It’s blood he drowned on, Bran thought numbly. His own blood.  (ACOK, Bran) This is an important passage, because it’s one of the few times that George clearly states a symbolic equivalency, serving up confirmation on a silver platter.  Bran tells us that drowning in water can mean drowning on blood, so we don’t really even have to guess about that. Thus, we see a symbolic connection between the black tide, the blood tide, and the Ironborn themselves.  The Ironborn themselves were like black waves in the night whose tide was equivalent to blood.  We saw in Melisandre’s vision that the black and bloody tide rises from the depths, and the Ironborn say that they came from the sea – that all lines up. The Ironborn seem to have brought the fire of the sea dragon with them, which we’ve taken as an allusion to the black bloodstone meteorites and the black soul drinking weapons hypothetically made from their ore.  This brings us back to Ned’s sword, which brings together the symbolism of Lightbringer AND the black and bloody tides.  This is Tyrion, getting his first look at Widow’s Wail and Oathkeeper, the swords which drink the sunlight.  I’ve underlined all the watery terminology: The light streaming through the diamond- shaped panes of glass made the blade shimmer black and red as Lord Tywin turned it to inspect the edge, while the pommel and crossguard flamed gold. “With this fool’s jabber of Stannis and his magic sword, it seemed to me that we had best give Joffrey something extraordinary as well. A king should bear a kingly weapon.”  “That’s much too much sword for Joff,” Tyrion said.  “He will grow into it. Here, feel the weight of it.” The sword was much lighter than he had expected. As he turned it in his hand he saw why. Only one metal could be beaten so thin and still have strength enough to fight with, and there was no mistaking those ripples, the mark of steel that has been folded back on itself many thousands of times. “Valyrian steel?” “Yes,” Lord Tywin said, in a tone of deep satisfaction.  {…} Tyrion wondered where the metal for this one had come from. A few master armorers could rework old Valyrian steel, but the secrets of its making had been lost when the Doom came to old Valyria. “The colors are strange,” he commented as he turned the blade in the sunlight. Most Valyrian steel was a grey so dark it looked almost black, as was true here as well. But blended into the folds was a red as deep as the grey. The two colors lapped over one another without ever touching, each ripple distinct, like waves of night and blood upon some steely shore…  {…} Tyrion put down Joffrey’s sword and took up the other. If not twins, the two were at least close cousins. This one was thicker and heavier, a half- inch wider and three inches longer, but they shared the same fine clean lines and the same distinctive color, the ripples of blood and night.  (ASOS, Tyrion) When I first began ruminating on this passage, which certainly stands out in the text, I wondered why there was so much watery language used to describe this sword.  Of course with everything we think we’ve learned at this point, it makes perfect sense.  Lightbringer the flaming meteor sword was the falling sea dragon, and it speaks in a language of the black and bloody tide – waves of night and blood, crashing upon a steely shore. Actual, Non-symbolic Floods and Durran Godsgrief Let’s take a break from all the metaphor for just a second and address the actual, physical component of the flood. I think there are two records of tsunamis brought on my moon meteors: the Ironborn mythology, of course, and the story of Durran Godsgrief. The first reference to the flood in Ironborn lore is in our introduction to Pyke as a broken sword of land, shattered by hammering waves, as we quoted above, and similar references to the Iron Islands.  The second is their reverence for drowned things – gods, prophets, men, etc.  The third would be this, the sad end of the Grey King story, recalled for us by the Damphair: “Gone, all the glory gone . Men were smaller now. Their lives had grown short. The Storm God drowned Nagga’s fire after the Grey King’s death, the chairs and tapestries had been stolen, the roof and walls had rotted away. Even the Grey King’s great throne of fangs had been swallowed by the sea. Only Nagga’s bones endured to remind the ironborn of all the wonder that had been.  (AFFC, The Drowned Man) Admittedly, there’s a chronology issue here: the flood should come with the Grey King’s rise to power, when he slew the sea dragon and summoned the Storm God’s thunderbolt, and instead it comes at his death in this quote.  I do think they may be an explanation for this, having to do with my notion that the story of the “Grey King” is actually a composite of more than one person’s story.  As we uncover more detail, perhaps we’ll begin to be able to sort out some of the chronology here.  What I am focusing on for now are the references to a flood in their ancient myth. As for Durran Godsgrief, we don’t have to do an in-depth analysis of the legend to see how it fits in.  Instead, we’ll do a medium-depth analysis.  😉  It’s the story of a king who pulls down a goddess from heaven – fair Elenei, the daughter of the sea god and wind goddess, and causes a storm so devastating it is remembered 8,000 years later.  This is the same story we have been seeing from the beginning – it’s the Azor Ahai story.  Azor Ahai simultaneously loved and killed a moon goddess, pulling her down from heaven and causing a great storm.  The Grey King did the exact same thing, calling down the lightning / slaying the sea dragon, then possessing her fire and taking a mermaid to wife. We’ve discussed the mermaid wife only briefly, but given that we know the sea dragon is a “drowned goddess,” taking a mermaid to wife completes the symbolic picture – the Grey King both loved and slew his moon goddess wife.  There are a couple more instances of this story in A Song of Ice and Fire mythology – see if you can find them before I put them in an essay! Here is the story of Durran Godsgrief, from the inner monologue of Catleyn in A Clash of Kings: The songs said that Storm’s End had been raised in ancient days by Durran, the first Storm King, who had won the love of the fair Elenei, daughter of the sea god and the goddess of the wind. On the night of their wedding, Elenei had yielded her maidenhood to a mortal’s love and thus doomed herself to a mortal’s death, and her grieving parents had unleashed their wrath and sent the winds and waters to batter down Durran’s hold. His friends and brothers and wedding guests were crushed beneath collapsing walls or blown out to sea, but Elenei sheltered Durran within her arms so he took no harm, and when the dawn came at last he declared war upon the gods and vowed to rebuild. Five more castles he built, each larger and stronger than the last, only to see them smashed asunder when the gale winds came howling up Shipbreaker Bay, driving great walls of water before them. His lords pleaded with him to build inland; his priests told him he must placate the gods by giving Elenei back to the sea; even his smallfolk begged him to relent. Durran would have none of it. A seventh castle he raised, most massive of all. Some said the children of the forest helped him build it, shaping the stones with magic; others claimed that a small boy told him what he must do, a boy who would grow to be Bran the Builder. No matter how the tale was told, the end was the same. Though the angry gods threw storm after storm against it, the seventh castle stood defiant, and Durran Godsgrief and fair Elenei dwelt there together until the end of their days. Gods do not forget, and still the gales came raging up the narrow sea. (ACOK, Catelyn) This story has many storms, not one, but the first one does stand out – it killed everyone and destroyed everything, save for Durran himself who was sheltered by Elenei.  This storm immediately follows Durran’s taking Elenei from the gods, coming at the very wedding, so that’s even the right time for the big storm. The other big takeaway here is that the storms began when Durran stole the daughter of the gods and continue to this day.  This part of the story I think is accurate in a very literal sense.  As I have said, I believe there is evidence to suggest that the Hammer of the Waters was in fact a moon meteor.  This means that prior to the moon’s destruction, the Arm of Dorne was not broken, the Narrow Sea and Summer Sea would not have been connected, and the ocean currents and weather patterns would have been completely different.  Storm’s End would have been at the very southern portion of the Shivering Sea. Translating the myth-speak here, this is the picture I am seeing.  When the moon meteor hit and the earthquakes shattered the land bridge, a horrendous tsunami would surely have raged up the Narrow Sea – this would be the great storm at Durran and Elenei’s wedding which killed everyone.  Ever since, storms have raged in the Narrow Sea, and the builders of castles at Storm’s End had to erect a uniquely fearsome stronghold to withstand them, probably using magic in some fashion to do so. You’ll notice the similarity between Elenei sheltering Durran from the Storm and the Grey King making a long hall (a form of shelter) from the bones of the sea dragon, Nagga. The World of Ice and Fire provides us with a couple of more details about Durran Godsgrief which draw further comparisons to the Grey King – turns out Durran Godsgrief lived for a thousand years too!  This is actually not as common as you might think – although there are a few stories of long life spans, this particular claim of a thousand years is made about Durran, the Grey King, and the God Emperor of the Great Empire of the Dawn… and that’s it. Finally, we are told that Durran Godsgrief took the Rainwood from the children of the forest, which means he warred upon them (it should be noted, however, that his son supposedly gave the Rainwood back to the children).  As we will see in the upcoming essay concerning the burning trees and “bones” of the sea dragon on Nagga’s Hill, the Grey King also seems to have warred on the children in the form of cutting down, killing, and burning weirwood trees. We’ll come back to Storm’s End in future essays, but for now, we can see that the story of Durran Godsgrief and Elenei seems to be talking about the same series of events – the pulling down of a moon goddess which resulted in a quite literal flood. And now, we return to the dark tide of symbol and metaphor, or the metaphorical symbol of the dark tide… whichever you prefer. Where Did the Tide Come From? If the black tide can symbolize Ironborn themselves, what does that mean for the the “waves of blood and night” flood which occurred at the fall of the Long Night?  Was that also referring to an ironborn invasion of some kind?  Well, given that we are examining the possibility that Azor Ahai / the Bloodstone Emperor did invade the west coast of Westeros, this would be another piece of evidence in favor of that hypothesis.  It’s very possible that one aspect of the black and bloody tide which came during the Long Night is a literal invasion of sea-faring people.  In fact, these may have been the original pirates with black weapons. It’s worth noting that the Isle of Ravens, the oldest part of the Citadel in Oldtown, contains a castle which was supposedly once the stronghold of a pirate lord.  Combined with the other clues about a Dawn Age dragon presence at Oldtown, this is tantalizing indeed. Returning to the Wayward Bride chapter for a bit I didn’t include above, we find a couple more clues about drowned goddesses becoming pirates: “What’s here that you should hold so tight to it but pine and mud and foes? We have our ships. Sail away with me, and we’ll make new lives upon the sea.” “As pirates?” It was almost tempting. Let the wolves have back their gloomy woods and retake the open sea. “As traders,” he insisted. “We’ll voyage east as the Crow’s Eye did, but we’ll come back with silks and spices instead of a dragon’s horn. One voyage to the Jade Sea and we’ll be as rich as gods. We can have a manse in Oldtown or one of the Free Cities.”  (ADWD, The Wayward Bride) The idea of becoming pirates is combined with the notion of and sailing back from the former territory of the Great Empire of the Dawn, having become like gods – this really puts us in mind of the Bloodstone Emperor at this point.  A dragon horn is mentioned, as well as Oldtown again, suggesting the pirate lord from the Isle of Ravens in Oldtown.  In addition, one of the rumors about the ancient mariners who came to Whispering Sound before Oldtown was built, the ones who would have built the fused stone fortress there, is that they were traders, come to trade with the children of the forest.  I mention that here because we see the idea of becoming traders juxtaposed with that of becoming pirates. “I have hostages, on Harlaw,” she reminded him. “And there is still Sea Dragon Point … if I cannot have my father’s kingdom, why not make one of my own?” Sea Dragon Point had not always been as thinly peopled as it was now. Old ruins could still be found amongst its hills and bogs, the remains of ancient strongholds of the First Men. In the high places, there were weirwood circles left by the children of the forest. I do not plan on planting wheat or corn. “What’s there? I’ll tell you. Two long coastlines, a hundred hidden coves, otters in the lakes, salmon in the rivers, clams along the shore, colonies of seals offshore, tall pines for building ships.”  (AFFC, The Wayward Bride) Note the trees = ships = sea dragon symbolism raising its ugly head again: the tall pines of sea dragon point can be used to make ships.  We’ve seen that with the skeletons of the burned ships at Lordsport being like dead leviathans, and in the passage with Dany watching her dragons plunge into the sea on the deck of her dragon-named ships.  The relevant idea here for our ‘sea raiders from Asshai’ scenario is that Asha represents these ancient pirates, and she thinks of making a kingdom of her own on a point of land associated with sea dragons and weirwood circles.  Is this perhaps what the first pirate lord from Asshai did at the Iron Islands? If you think about it, it’s likely that the original inhabitants of the Iron Islands were weirwood-tree-worshipping First Men, just as with was the case with the rest of population of Westeros.  This is even more likely if the Iron Islands archipelago used to be connected to the mainland.  We haven’t gotten into the subject of “Nagga’s ribs” just yet (it’s coming), but I definitely agree with most people that those ribs are actually petrified weirwood tree trunks.  The fact that they are planted in a huge circle on top of a hill certainly indicates the presence of children of the forest at some point in the past, if not weirwood-worshipping First Men. If there was an invasion of sea-faring peoples that came to the Iron Islands with black swords in hand, then the current Ironborn culture would be an amalgam of pre- invader and post-invader culture, with the sea-raider culture being predominate and only the traces of a weirwood-worshipping First Man culture remaining… and this is exactly what I will be suggesting in the a future essay. Seek the hill of Nagga and the bones of the Grey King’s Hall, for in that holy place when the moon has drowned and come again we shall make ourselves a worthy king, a godly king.” He raised his bony hands on high again. “ Listen! Listen to the waves! Listen to the god! He is speaking to us, and he says, We shall have no king but from the kings moot!  (AFFC, The Drowned Man) When the moon drowns and comes again, then and only then will a worthy king will be made.  The Grey King, of course, came to power with the drowning of the sea dragon / moon goddess.  This would also fit the scenario of a pirate king invading the Iron Islands at the time of the moon’s drowning – the fall of the Long Night. This is a particularly nice quote because the moon’s drowning and resurrection is essentially the story of the sea dragon and the Ironborn – the sea dragon is drowned, but the Ironborn, led by the Grey King, emerge from the sea with its fire in hand.  If that fire is referring to the soul-drinking black iron weapons made from the moon meteorites, then this really sounds a lot like an invasion of sea-faring peoples with black weapons at the time of the Long Night.  It would be a human personification of the waves of blood and night, just as we saw with the Ironborn’s attack at Winterfell. In other words, I am hypothesizing that if there was a literal invasion of sea raiders to accompany the black tide, it came from Asshai with the Bloodstone Emperor’s invasion. I’m sorely tempted to crack open my glass jar of pickled Deep Ones, but it’s just wrapped in too much tinfoil.  There are enough fishy people with webbed hands and such lurking around the margins of Planetos to suspect that the Deep Ones are real and did make hybrids with humans somehow… but that’s just beyond the scope of this essay.  It’s possible they came with the black tide as well – feel free to cobble up lurid fantasies of Azor Ahai’s army of Deep Ones if you wish, but that’s just a little too far out on the limb for me at this point.  I’m hoping Cotter Pyke’s reference to “dead things in the water” means that we’ll get some glimpse of whatever the merlings / selkies / Deep Ones are in The Winds of Winter, and at that point maybe we can put together the various merling and selkie legends to figure out what’s going on with them.  But for now… yeah.  Ten foot pole. (You need a ten foot pole because those squishers have long, tentacle-like arms…) As for the metaphorical black tide (that’s the one we like 😉 ), where did it come from?  I’ll close with the full text of Melisandre’s “black and bloody tide” visions which I pulled from earlier.  All of these quotes are from the same chapter: Visions danced before her, gold and scarlet, flickering, forming and melting and dissolving into one another, shapes strange and terrifying and seductive. She saw the eyeless faces again, staring out at her from sockets weeping blood. Then the towers by the sea, crumbling as the dark tide came sweeping over them, rising from the depths.  Shadows in the shape of skulls, skulls that turned to mist, bodies locked together in lust, writhing and rolling and clawing.  Through curtains of fire great winged shadows wheeled against a hard blue sky.  {…} A wooden face, corpse white. Was this the enemy? A thousand red eyes floated in the rising flames.  He sees me. Beside him, a boy with a wolf’s face threw back his head and howled.  The red priestess shuddered.  Blood trickled down her thigh, black and smoking.  The fire was inside her, an agony, an ecstasy, filling her, searing her, transforming her. Shimmers of heat traced patterns on her skin, insistent as a lover’s hand.  {…} The spears were eight feet long and made of ash. The one on the left had a slight crook, but the other two were smooth and straight. At the top of each was impaled a severed head. Their beards were full of ice, and the falling snow had given them white hoods. Where their eyes had been, only empty sockets remained, black and bloody holes that stared down in silent accusation.  {…} “We’ve had a raven from Ser Denys Mallister at the Shadow Tower,” Jon Snow told her. “His men have seen fires in the mountains on the far side of the Gorge. Wildlings massing, Ser Denys believes. He thinks they are going to try to force the Bridge of Skulls again.” “Some may.”  Could the skulls in her vision have signified this bridge?  Somehow Melisandre did not think so.  “If it comes, that attack will be no more than a diversion.  I saw towers by the sea, submerged beneath a black and bloody tide.  That is where the heaviest blow will fall.” “Eastwatch?”  Was it?  Melisandre had seen Eastwatch- by- the- Sea with King Stannis. That was where His Grace left Queen Selyse and their daughter Shireen when he assembled his knights for the march to Castle Black.  The towers in her fire had been different, but that was oft the way with visions.  “Yes.  Eastwatch, my lord.” “When?” She spread her hands.  “On the morrow.  In a moon’s turn.  (ADWD, Melisandre) First off, let’s just mention the obvious Lightbringer / comet references here: a thousand red eyes (meteor shower) fire in the mountains (the red fallen star fire Jon saw in the mountain pass) spears with skulls atop them (comet or meteor) great winged shadows (Drogon, the “winged shadow,” moon eclipses), fire searing and transforming and bringing forth black blood (transformation of red to black blood when “the fire is inside” someone, or some moon) in a moon’s turn (the moon triggers the black and bloody tide, heliotrope means “sun, to turn”) an agony, an ecstasy, “shuddering” (Nissa Nissa’s cry of anguish and ecstasy which cracked the moon) The black and bloody tide rises from the depths, but it also comes from the moon, and from empty eye sockets.   How can all these ideas coexist?  We’ve already seen how the first two ideas coexist – the bloody and fiery moon meteors plunged into the bowels of the ocean and triggered the angry, hammering waves of the black and bloody tide.  But can the moon be an empty eye socket?  And if so, who’s eye is that? There’s really only one possibility: God’s Eye. continue to Part 6: A Thousand Eyes and One Hammer