![]() ![]() ‘Nissa Nissa,’ he said to her, for that was her name, ‘bare your breast, and know that I love you best of all that is in this world.’ She did this thing, why I cannot say, and Azor Ahai thrust the smoking sword through her living heart. This is Salladhor Saan talking to Davos in A Clash of Kings:Ī hundred days and a hundred nights he labored on the third blade, and as it glowed white-hot in the sacred fires, he summoned his wife. Most people are familiar with the Azor Ahai / Lightbringer story, but I’ll quote the final portion just to refresh our memory. Chief among these are the two myths which involve a cracking of the moon: the Qarthine “origin of dragons” story and the legend of the forging of Lightbringer. Yet they are not unrecognizable if we know how to look if we know how to translate the language of the “Bard’s truth.” I have found several ancient A Song of Ice and Fire myths which I believe are telling different parts of the same story, like multiple witnesses to a complex crime scene who all saw a different piece of the action. Scattered memories of this celestial moon cataclysm can be found lurking within the folds of the myths, legends, and folktales of the story, disguised in the mist of centuries gone by. The Long Night was a multiple-disaster compound cataclysm on magical steroids, and it left such a mark on the planet that its seasons have been all screwed up ever since. A disruption to one seems to be a disruption to the other, just as it was with the Doom. Nature and magic go hand in hand, inextricably intertwined, twin threads that form the weave of the very universe. ![]() Whether it’s the sacred volcanic fires of the “fourteen flames” of Valyria or the dragonglass, whether it’s the eternal weirwood trees or the terrifying Heart of Winter itself, we see that various parts of nature can be sources of magical energy. Indeed, it seems apparent that in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, the forces of nature are themselves magical. The unbalanced and irregular seasons are the result of this cataclysm disrupting the balance of magic and even nature itself. Much like the Doom of Valyria, the Long Night disaster was a magically-infused version of a natural catastrophe which has left behind lasting and significant magical fallout. In addition, there were likely magical elements at play – the comet seems to be magical in nature, and perhaps the moon as well. In Astronomy Explains the Legends of Ice and Fire, I proposed that the Long Night was the result of celestial catastrophe – a comet striking a formerly existent second moon, that moon exploding in the sky and raining down fiery meteors on the planet, and the resulting debris clouding the atmosphere and blocking out the sun. Let’s start by reviewing what we think we know so far.
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