Mythical Astronomy 1: Astronomy Explains the Legends of I&F

Thanks for reading my essay and giving it a chance, wolfmaid. Here is what I think is going on. Part of it is Martin recreating what we do in reality, and the other part is Martin taking things further for the purposes of writing fantasy.

The part which is recreated is using observation of the heavens and the cycles of nature as a backbone to create myths unique to a given culture. This backbone is then populated with the values and ideals of that culture, creating a multi-dimensional esoteric fable. The Long Night moon disaster would be this big celestial event, and one thing my essays do is to go about showing how the various fables of ASOIAF are all different mythical versions of this important event. That's all just as it is in real life.


Creating events on the ground which parallel the skies is what he has invented for fantasy. I'm glad you see the the parallels between Dany's waking of dragons and the two myths I start with: Lightbringer's forging, and the lunar origin of dragons Qarthine myth - that's where it all starts, and it's the clearest depiction of those ideas.  I think it's an open question as to "what is Martin saying by creating these parallels?" I have my ideas, but this is of course subjective. I am really hoping to start a conversation about this very question. What I do not really consider subjective is the parallels themselves - they seem abundantly clear to anyone who understands mythology and symbolism, in my opinion. Dragons coming from a cracked moon can only be meteors, unless the story is total gibberish - and the idea that Martin has populated his world with gibberish nonsensical fable is something I strongly object to. Dany's hatching of dragons while wandering to close the sun's fire is not really all that cryptic, since he labels Drogo as her sun and stars and Dany as the moon of his life. Again, what I really want to discuss is what Martin may be saying through these parallels between his fables and the events of the books.  

My essays go on to posit that Matin has actually created parallels to the comet / moon events in scenes throughout the book, in almost every chapter, and I spend a great deal of time analyzing them to show as clearly as I can that this is so.  It simply make the previous question more important - if Martin is spending so much time creating a million different versions of the comet moon collision, it must be important. Why is he doing this? One reason must be to give us the story of the Long Night on the sly, because it's just very clever and Matin likes being clever and cryptic. But we've ALL picked up on the idea that many events in the story, both past and present, echo and parallel each other. That's one reason why the fandom can spend so much time theorizing and analyzing these books! . As Martin says when discussing the ouroboros of House Toland, "all things come round again." What I am saying is that the origin of these parallels is the Long Night disaster and the important earthly events which came along with it - Azor Ahai, Lightbringer, the Long Night, the Others, the Last Hero, etc. I have to think that the endgame will in some way parallel or inverse parallel the original events, because anything else would break the pattern of all of his writing so far. But of course, symbolic parallels and inverted parallels can be accomplish din many ways, so I cannot claim that I know how the story will end. I know what symbolic patterns it may follow, and when it happens, I'll be able to say "look, this is like this, and this parallels that," etc. The parallels are like context for the main events, in a way.

I hope some of that makes sense to you, wolfmaid7. 

Hey Wolfmaid. Thanks for your response. I'm a bit unclear on what you mean in the first sentence but it sounds like you generally see a sky-ground connection, and I'm glad the alchemical wedding correlations make sense to you. That is the foundation of my theory - the parallels between Dany's waking of dragons and the two myths involving a cracking of the moon: the Lightbringer myth and the Qarhtine lunar origin of dragons myth.  

As of the big question of what Martin might be saying by creating these extensive yin and yang-like inverted parallels between ice and fire.... I'm glad you like that question, because it really does encompass everyone's various ideas about the magic in ASOIAF - voice's, your and mine, everyone else. Sometimes it is good to take a look at the very big picture and ask these questions. 

I myself am working on an essay about this topic, more or less, though it will be presented under the guise of the possibility of planetos having moons of ice and fire in the dawn age. It will compare the icy and fiery moon maidens I have found in the books, it will contrast others and dragons, all of that. I think this may be referring to there having used to have been one ice moon, and one fire moon, with the fire moon being the one that bit the dust and caused the Long Night. Jupiter has a "fire moon," Io, and also an "ice moon," Europa, and the greek myths of those two lunar goddesses are both referenced, I believe, in ASOIAF. Anyway, I guess what I am saying is that I will be starting that discussion at some point int he coming months, although anyone can of course feel free to start it anytime. It's a great topic and worthy of discussion, my two moons idea nonwithstanding.