#yna the lightning mother

[vvakarians]

d&d aes —> divine yna; divine remis ; divine aegis; —> the hand of justice; the protector; the redeemer “They were the first to be worthy, and they will be the last to fall. Take heed in the words of those bound by justice, they are wise beyond their years”

[agentrouka-blog]

It is interesting that Maqoro refered the Drowned God as the demon, which begs a question what kinda Eldrich abomonation is gonna come out of the sea when Euron does his bloodsacrfice?

If he's anything like Dany, he'll have a bunch of vicious baby krakens in a bucket still waiting to grow up. "Feed us, father! The blood of innocents, please!"

But Euron isn’t sacrificing to the Drowned God. He is practicing blood magic, which is universal in its appeal. 

Watch me derail my response to a different subject: the fake duality of the gods, and of ice and fire. (Long post.)

GRRM likes to remind us occasionally that the gods aren’t solid and separate.

In the sept they sing for the Mother's mercy but on the walls it's the Warrior they pray to, and all in silence. She remembered how Septa Mordane used to tell them that the Warrior and the Mother were only two faces of the same great god. But if there is only one, whose prayers will be heard? (ACOK, Sansa V)

Catelyn calls them “the seven faces of god”. God, singular.

“One god with seven aspects” Septon Meribald calls it.

"Seven? No. He has faces beyond count, little one, as many faces as there are stars in the sky. In Braavos, men worship as they will . . . but at the end of every road stands Him of Many Faces, waiting. (AFFC, Arya I)

One god: death. 

The struggle is not between the god of death and the god of life, but how humans deal with loss and grief, or with the desire for power, in a world where the door between life and death is more permeable than it should be.

The other whores said that the Sailor's Wife visited the Isle of the Gods on the days when her flower was in bloom, and knew all the gods who lived there, even the ones that Braavos had forgotten. They said she went to pray for her first husband, her true husband, who had been lost at sea when she was a girl no older than Lanna. "She thinks that if she finds the right god, maybe he will send the winds and blow her old love back to her," said one-eyed Yna, who had known her longest, "but I pray it never happens. Her love is dead, I could taste that in her blood. If he ever should come back to her, it will be a corpse." (AFFC, Cat of the Canals) 

Shades of Dany and Drogo “When will he be as he was?” Shades of blood magic. Only death can pay for life. 

That’s a door that should never be opened. But it is. Again and again it is.

But death never buys life. It only ever buys horror. Horror and power.

I have very few concrete ideas about what exactly Euron’s kind of magic is meant to summon. But true to the above, GRRM makes sure we know that the Drowned God and R’hllor are essentially mirrors. Or, if you will, the exact same thing.

Their god was Red R’hllor, and a jealous god he was. Her own god, the Drowned God of the Iron Isles, was a demon to their eyes, and if she did not embrace this Lord of Light, she would be damned and doomed. They would as gladly burn me as those logs and broken branches. (ADWD, The King’s Prize)

v.

“Your Drowned God is a demon,” the black priest Moqorro said afterward. “He is no more than a thrall of the Other, the dark god whose name must not be spoken.”  (ADWD, Victarion I)

Demons hungry for sacrifice, both. 

The Drowned God also mirrors the special duality of R’hllor.

In their theology, the Drowned God is opposed by the Storm God, a malignant deity who dwells in the sky and hates men and all their works. He sends cruel winds, lashing rains, and the thunder and lightning that bespeak his endless wroth. (The World of Ice and Fire - The Iron Islands)

v.

On one side is R'hllor, the Lord of Light, the Heart of Fire, the God of Flame and Shadow. Against him stands the Great Other whose name may not be spoken, the Lord of Darkness, the Soul of Ice, the God of Night and Terror. Ours is not a choice between Baratheon and Lannister, between Greyjoy and Stark. It is death we choose, or life. Darkness, or light." (ASOS, Davos III)

Both work the same way. They are two faces of the same hungry abyss.

Significantly, Dany didn’t sacrifice her blood magic victims to any particular god in order to gain the dragons. She did not chant, she did not call on any deity. The presence of the eggs alone, coupled with her intentions, seems to have been enough.  

It is blood magic, not fire magic. Or water magic. Or ice magic. Blood, always blood.

In that, Dany is very similar to Euron. Neither care for the gods in particular, but they understand the mechanics of trading life for death.

“All gods are lies, but yours is laughable.” (...)

"The Crow's Eye has fed your Drowned God well, and he has grown fat with sacrifice. Words are wind, but blood is power. We have given thousands to the sea, and he has given us victories!" (TWOW, The Forsaken)

Both call themselves the storm(born) and liken themselves to gods or godliness.

And how did Dany feel when she stood, godlike, atop the pyramid? Lonely. 

Are the gods lonely, though?

He saw his brother on the Iron Throne again, but Euron was no longer human. He seemed more squid than man, a monster fathered by a kraken of the deep, his face a mass of writhing tentacles. Beside him stood a shadow in woman's form, long and tall and terrible, her hands alive with pale white fire. Dwarves capered for their amusement, male and female, naked and misshapen, locked in carnal embrace, biting and tearing at each other as Euron and his mate laughed and laughed and laughed... (TWOW The Forsaken)

What is this, but a mockery of the entire concept of duelling gods? They aren’t at war, they are reigning together, watching the carnage commited in their name with inhuman hilarity.

They are in on it together. They are the same. 

Given the theme of a fake duality, perhaps, on a deeper level, ice and fire are also the same. Two faces of the same coin. Two masks of the same inhumane hungry energy.

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice.

Both are death. Eternal winter, eternal summer. All just means the end of the world. Different roads lead to the same castle. 

@fedonciadale gave me a bit of a brain tweak with this line in a chat:

“I just think that the Ice magic that the CotF woke enabled the Fire magic. So, first we have Ice magic that is warped Cotf magic and the scales are tipped and Fire magic is made possible.“ (...)  And I think "awakening the Fire magic" at Summerhall - which is different than just continuing to have dragons - was the action that awoke the Others

There is clearly a connection and a reciprocal relationship between the various kinds of magic in the ASOIAF world. It might just not be as fully dualistic as this, but again different faces on one coin. 

When the door is open, the door is open for all. Just in changeable forms.

The dragons don’t like the cold, the Others shatter from obsidian. But if they are both only products of blood magic, they are only tools at the disposition of those who summoned them, and their disparate interests. Like the gods, they only seem mutually opposed, while they spring from the same source. 

That might be the reason that both Others and dragons and Melisandre’s magic and glass candles and Euron can happen at the same time, all with disconnected motivations. They all amplify each other to an extent. 

It’s possible and even likely that something led to the current escalation of magical destruction, but I can’t properly guess what. 

Jaqen emphasizes a transactional aspect between life and death:

"The Red God has his due, sweet girl, and only death may pay for life. This girl took three that were his. This girl must give three in their places. Speak the names, and a man will do the rest." (ACOK, Arya VII)

He doesn’t say what will happen if that exchange is disturbed. Maybe nothing. Maybe the Curse of Garin. Maybe the Doom of Valyria. 

Whatever originally opened the doorway between life and death that enabled these exchanges of blood and life for power, is the true problem.

Whatever prompted it then and now, in the North, a full-on apocalypse is already slowly underway. The Others bring the cold, they enslave the dead, all life flees before them, or joins them in death. Clearly, something powerful went into creating them. This dark magic attracted more dark magic. Stannis and his blood sacrificing priestess cannot hope to defeat the Others, perhaps they are even helping make it worse. 

In the South, something similar may begin gather, bought with blood magic. Perhaps Euron is simply waiting for someone with powerful enough blood to come along and be of use to him. 

The different kinds of magic cannot defeat each other. 

In order to end all of it, the door needs to be closed.