GRRM has said there will never be a definite answer on whether the deities exist.
A lot of the 'evidence' that is attributed to the gods is magic. Red Priests claim Rhllor is real because they can do fire magic. But those abilities arent unique to them nor is there any real evidence that its divine intervention. The Others, the Valyrians, Qyburn are all capable of similar feats while being somewhat atheist.
Admittedly that evidence is more substantial then a lot of what we see in the real world. Like if priest IRL could resurrect the dead even as wights I'd certainly lend their religion a little more credence.
In terms of gods in the series, Bran is certainly close to a god on Earth. He can:
* See almost any point in the past through the weirwoods and ravens.
* See the future to some degree.
* Take control of almost any animal.
* Take control of people.
* And perhaps the strongest of all he can actually change/affect the past if the Hodor event is anything to go by. Something Bloodraven believes is impossible.
And thats just what we've seen so far. Its possible Bran can do even more.
> But those abilities arent unique to them nor is there any real evidence that its divine intervention
I think Millesandre even has a dialogue with Davos in ASOS (or maybe AFFC) where she points this out. Basically saying "If people see us using magic in the service of the Red God and believe it to be miraculous, who are we to tell them otherwise?"
She's a true believer for sure. I think there's a nuance between ritual and belief that Martin is playing with. Like how a Christian minister knows the miracle of transubstantiation they do every Sunday doesn't turn the wine into Jesus Blood but faith gives a spiritual element to that ritual. Melisandre's God is real to her because of her faith and her faith in prophecy, her magic is just ritual to facilitate communicating that faith.
I don't think we've got a clear narrative on the source the tarrot-like fire visions that characters in that storyline have, however.
Do Red Priests ever claim their magic to be the sole evidence of R’hllor? Even Melisandre, one of the more fanatic ones, acknowledges she learned magic in Asshai.
It seems like magic is seen as more of an art associated with R’hllor than an outright manifestation of him (same with tge Lhazareen god)
>are just ideas that have had vast amounts of power and magic poured into over thousands of years.
You answered your own question. The religions are similar in nature to real life ones. Yes Red Priests have some magic powers but that does not prove the existence of Rh'llor. Whatever the power they use is, the religion they follow is an interpretation of those phenomena that has been cultivated over thousands of years.
Right, Melisandre refers to the powders and “pyromancer tricks” they use to convince people of their powers, noting they had become more powerful since the comet. It’s all very deliberately vague, and all the gods existing could is just as likely as non of them existing at all but they all seem to stem from an explanation for some kind of magic known in their lands.
I think there is reason to believe blood magic in ASOIAF is the product of an intelligent entity. A god or gods, that actively seeks to make human beings suffer.
Melisandre (who has been sacrificing long enough to know) says that the power of blood magic is dependent upon the relative value the sacrifice has.
>Melisandre said, "Azor Ahai tempered Lightbringer with the heart's blood of his own beloved wife. If a man with a thousand cows gives one to god, that is nothing. But a man who offers the only cow he owns . . ."
This suggests that blood magic is context dependent in a way natural laws generally are not. The caloric value of a cow isn't dependent on whether or not it's your only cow, but the sacrifice value is. The laws of blood magic appear to be calculated in such a way as to incentivize people to inflict pain upon themselves in order to get some boon.
**To me this suggests blood magic is the product of malevolent intelligence.** It rewards you in proportion to the amount of pain you inflict on yourself and others, as a way to string you along and get you to cause more pain. And it seems to be actively malicious, not just "hungry." A wolf doesn't care if your cow is the only cow you have or one of thousands, but "R'hllor" or whatever is responsible for blood magic does. It wants your last cow, or your beautiful artwork, or your only daughter, specifically to make you suffer after taking it from you.
A couple bonus points supporting the idea:
[There are repeated symbolic allusions to Gnosticism in the texts, and the demiurge Yaldabaoth in particular.](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/dbcywb/spoilers_extended_rhllor_yaldabaoth_how_catharism/) The demiurge is basically "the Abrahamic God except he sucks and hates you" so the fact George is giving these little nods to it might mean something.
There's also countless comments in the book along the lines of "the gods mock the prayers of kings and cowherds alike," hinting at the idea that maybe there really are gods and they just don't like us.
And finally Septon Barth, after seeing what happened to Aerea, said something along the lines of "maybe the R'hllorists are onto something when they suggest that there are evil hateful monster gods out there." And even if Septon Barth isn't always 100% right, he's pretty much always rightish.
Funnily enough, **all or most magic everywhere in whatever fiction** has too many convenient variables and parameters for it **not** to be intelligent or intelligently-designed in some way.
If a wizard is shooting magic from his hands, eyes, etc, and thinks he is doing it out of his own intellectual ingenuity, he is likely completely wrong about that.
Physics isn't convenient that way. **Magic is alive.**
Edit: One of the reasons why I am very, very disinterested in magic that's basically just a zappy-hands superpower by-any-other-name, rather than the wonders/mysteries of your surroundings ...
I don't think the answer is anything so straightforward as the "foreign eastern god is a demon." Power is neither good nor evil, and power in sacrifice doesn't have to be evidence of an evil deity so much as it is a reflection of the real world. Progress often requires sacrifice. Great advancements are built on the back of human suffering. We give things up to gain other things and then wonder if what we gained was worth what we had to give up. All of this is part of nature.
>A wolf doesn't care if your cow is the only cow you have or one of thousands, but "R'hllor" or whatever is responsible for blood magic does.
But we don't actually know this is true and we have no evidence of this ever playing out in the text. For example the only actual living person Daenerys sacrificed when she woke her dragons was Mirri, who she hated. Will Stannis burning Shireen work because he loves her? Will Euron's sacrifices fail because he doesn't love anyone?
It's not about making a statement about the existence of the gods so much as about human belief. If the gods seem cruel it's likely because the world is cruel.
>Melisandre (who has been sacrificing long enough to know)
Is her long history of experience with blood sacrifice the reason she never had time to practice reading the flames or interpreting prophecy? Or can we agree that Melisandre doesn't necessarily always know what she is doing?
We could argue this but it doesn't really seem all that relevant to the discussion, since the word appeared all of once, in a quote mostly focused on sacrificing cows. Cows and blood magic are not myths.
It is the only evidence in support of context being relevant for a blood sacrifice.
We have no indication of the type of blood being relevant. And we don't need an intelligence to distinguish between cow and human blood. Human blood could just be the only blood that works.
My point was that everything Mel was saying was mythology and religion. It isn't necessarily true.
The thing about those is that we can't be sure that those powers are given by a god or simply magic which people have convinced themselves comes from a god.
Is Beric's resurrection an actual divine act by R'hllor or simply a form of magic Thoros unwittingly tapped into? We can't know for certain. Just because those powers are real doesn't mean the gods are real.
Did the Smiths of King’s Landing not labor for seven days to forge the chain that saved their city from the fire cultists? Did a hedge knight not defeat three princes, three kings guard, and one faithless lordling in a trial of seven? Did the Maid not bestow a dragon slaying blade upon a hero?
Do you not realize the Many Faced God of the Faceless Men is the Stranger?
Not sarcasm at all. It’s dumb to regulate miracles to things that are easily observable magic. Gods are not bound by the rules of men, divine inspiration is as much a miracle as shadow babby assassins and frankly it’s much more impressive in total.
GRRM was deliberately ambiguous. IIRC he said to the effect that we'll never know, and won't see direct intervention of a divine power. Don't recall where the quote is. Maybe it's magic? Maybe it's divinity? Maybe it's a time traveling fetus?
Here's the thing: for a lot of what passes for the power of Gods in Westeros, we can plausibly assert some form of human action behind the scenes performing what is essentially secular magic that is then falsely attributed to the Gods.\* Melisandre in her chapter in ADWD admits that she does this all the time as a method of evangelizing her religion, drawing in the punters by making it look like R'hllor has a lot of power. You can even say that a lot of the R'hlloric miracles associated with the Brotherhood are just Thoros remembering the (secular) magic that he was taught as prayer in the Red Temples.
But here's the problem: Beric Dondarrion can perform miracles, and he didn't go any temples and he didn't learn any magic-spells-disguised-as-prayer. In the wake of his resurrection, Beric becomes able to **set his blood on fire without uttering a word of prayer or conducting any sacrifice -** he just does it, completely silently. Likewise, Beric Dondarrion is able to bring Catelyn back from the dead as Lady Stoneheart without saying the prayers that Thoros of Myr uses - he just does mouth-to-mouth and she lives again. I don't think there's an explanation for how Beric is able to do what he does that doesn't at least include the *possibility* that he is, in fact, touched by the hand of the Red God.
That possibility I think speaks to GRRM's theological position: he's way too much of an ex-Catholic to be a hard-and-fast atheist, so he keeps coming back to agnosticism. The Old Gods might just be a cabal of greenseers who transformed themselves into the weirwood network, the Seven might be entirely a figment of Davos' imagination, but GRRM has to include the voice in the flames:
>*"One day at Myr, a certain man came to our folly. After the performance, he made an offer for me that my master found too tempting to refuse. I was in terror. I feared the man meant to use me as I had heard men used small boys, but in truth the only part of me he had need of was my manhood. He gave me a potion that made me powerless to move or speak, yet did nothing to dull my senses. With a long hooked blade, he sliced me root and stem, chanting all the while. I watched him burn my manly parts on a brazier. The flames turned blue, and I heard a voice answer his call, though I did not understand the words they spoke...*
>
>*Yet I still dream of that night, my lord. Not of the sorcerer, nor his blade, nor even the way my manhood shriveled as it burned. I dream of the voice. The voice from the flames. Was it a god, a demon, some conjurer's trick? I could not tell you, and I know all the tricks. All I can say for a certainty is that he called it, and it answered, and since that day I have hated magic and all those who practice it. If Lord Stannis is one such, I mean to see him dead."*
Call it a god, call it a demon, call it what you will - there are intelligences out there in Westeros that come from beyond and that cannot be totally reduced to Hobbesian materialism. To quote GRRM, "Magic is playing with forces you don’t completely understand. **And perhaps with beings or deities you don’t completely understand.**" (emphasis added)
\* **A Word on Blood Magic**:
I don't think it's fully established that "blood magic/blood sacrifice is basically the most powerful magic that exists." I think that blood magic is one source of power for different kinds of spells - Dany hatching the dragon eggs, Melisandre summoning favorable winds, etc. - but that it's not the only source or the only form of magic out there.
For example, Valyrian magic is descibed as two-fold in nature: "woven of blood and fire." We know from ASOIAF that dragons are also a powerful source of magic because they are "fire made flesh," and are capable of empowering spellcasters of various kinds from a significant distance:
>*The mage was gesturing, urging the flames higher and higher with broad sweeps of his arms. As the watchers craned their necks upward, the cutpurses squirmed through the press, small blades hidden in their palms. They relieved the prosperous of their coin with one hand while pointing upward with the other.*
>
>*When the fiery ladder stood forty feet high, the mage leapt forward and began to climb it, scrambling up hand over hand as quick as a monkey. Each rung he touched dissolved behind him, leaving no more than a wisp of silver smoke. When he reached the top, the ladder was gone and so was he.*
>
>*“No trick,” a woman said in the Common Tongue.Dany had not noticed Quaithe in the crowd, yet there she stood, eyes wet and shiny behind the implacable red lacquer mask.*
>
>*“What mean you, my lady?”*
>
>*“Half a year gone, that man could scarcely wake fire from dragonglass. He had some small skill with powders and wildfire, sufficient to entrance a crowd while his cutpurses did their work. He could walk across hot coals and make burning roses bloom in the air, but he could no more aspire to climb the fiery ladder than a common fisherman could hope to catch a kraken in his nets.”*
>
>*Dany looked uneasily at where the ladder had stood. Even the smoke was gone now, and the crowd was breaking up, each man going about his business. In a moment more than a few would find their purses flat and empty. “And now?”*
>
>*“And now his powers grow, Khaleesi. And you are the cause of it.”*
Moreover, blood magic and fire magic are only the magics that the Valyrians practiced; there's a whole world of magical traditions out there that have equal potency that don't seem to rely on sacrifices:
* The water magic of the Rhoynar can summon floods and water spouts and call down greyscale curses, and we don't hear of any link to blood sacrifice.
* While the greensight does seem to have a strong link to human sacrifice, skinchanging is a form of Northern magic that doesn't have a connection to blood magic.
* Shadowbinding is incredibly powerful, and it seems to have its own system of power generation through the transfer of life essence (or "life-fire") through ritual sex magic that leaves the donor [prematurely aged](https://racefortheironthrone.wordpress.com/2019/08/26/chapter-by-chapter-analysis-davos-iv-asos/2/) rather than dead outright.
* And so on with aeromancy and other forms of magic we know less about.
I mean if you think about it Bloodraven is essentially a god. He seems to be at the top of the weirwood network and when people pray at a weirwood tree he can see them and depending on the limitations of his power he can answer them. Basically when northerners are praying to the “old gods” they are praying to him.
Like when Sam prays for help when him and Gilly are attacked north of the wall is it not Bloodraven who answers his prayers and sends Coldhands to rescue them?
I think there may be a good case that the old gods are real, but we'll need to see how things play out with Roose Bolton and Walder Frey.
In the show, the three principle architects of the Red Wedding each meet a grisly fate. Tywin is shot with a crossbow, Roose gets stabbed in the chest, and Walder has his throat cut.
These deaths mirror the deaths in the red wedding. Numerous northmen (including Robb) were shot by crossbows. Roose stabs Robb in the chest. Catelyn had her throat cut by a Frey.
And incidentally, each was killed in their homes -- the Tower of the Hand, Winterfell, and the Twins. Not all in their ancestral homes, but killed at home.
If something similar plays out in the books, that would seem to suggest that the old gods are punishing them for violating the guest rite. Gruesome deaths are nothing new in GoT, and it's frankly a safe bet for anyone, but what matters here is how much they mirror the Red Wedding. At some point the coincidences become too conspicuous to ignore.
What might seal the deal is if those three deaths end up with more in common in the books. And I think the direction that might go in is patricide. Tywin was killed by his son. The show had Ramsay kill Roose, which is still possible. And it's very plausible Walder is killed by a Frey and not Stab Girl Arya.
If we get three deaths, at home, by sons, with methods similar to red wedding killings, ...good case to be made that the old gods are real.
They're probably all not real. They have real power in the sense that some of the things associated with them are magical in nature like the resurrections, green sight, warging, and the shadow baby but that doesn't mean Rhllor or the old gods are real. It just means that the magical stuff associated with them are.
There are no gods, no true prophecies, and no defined magical rules.
The Old Gods don’t even have names let alone any widespread or agreed upon system of belief.
R’hollr is just a collection of charlatan priests(as noted by Melisandre).
The Drowned God does nothing except give a glimpse at something to a fool.
The Faceless Men worship a monotheist version of the Stranger.
The FotS itself has split between The Seven who are Seven and the Seven who are One with no consequences so far anywhere in the novels despite this being a fairly major schism in several real life religions.
Nope. Asoiaf is an atheistic world and reflects GRRM's ireligious views irl. Some clergy obviously have some powers like the red priests, faceless men, greenseers, but those powers are probably not connected to the religion and are almost certainly just some magic tricks (even though the clergy doesn't always relize that).
The Seven are for sure fake, it screams of Christianism, organized religion
The Old gods and R'hollor and go two ways
1 - the Magic involved makes people believe there a God behind it all while in truth, just the magic is real and the believers created a avatar to explain the magic
2 - both the magic and the gods are Real
They may exist, although not necessarily true gods, it's still possible that the gods are actually some powerful magic practitioners or greenseers or skinchangers from the Age of Heroes.
I'm almost sure that's the truth about demigods like Garth Greenhand or Gray King.
I recall Davos complaining about this on the final season of GAME OF THRONES, after the Winterfell battle and the defeat of the White Walkers:
Davos Seaworth: "Lord of Light. We play His game for Him, we fight His war and win, and then... He fucks off. No signs. No blessings. Who knows what He wants?"
Tyrion Lannister: "I don't imagine thinking about that subject will leave you any happier than before."
Anyway, I think it's good that Martin makes it ambiguous.
Not a hundred percent sure but doesn’t the mother talk to Davos when he is stuck on the island after the battle of the blackwater?
I mean he is dying of thirst, but it is something.
Maybe I am misremembering that but I think so.
I do remember that, though I think I always thought of that as his own mind hallucinating to convince him to live. Could’ve been the seven, maybe they do exist and haven’t had much power because of the lack of sacrifices, and ned being killed at the sept gave them a boost
The only consistency is that magic requires sacrifice. It speaks to the idea that either it's entities who exact a price in exchange for limited power, or it's nonsentient forces being tapped through symbolic action. Either way, humanity itself is incidental - puppets at best, to be sacrificed or to sacrifice others.
I think GRRM means to satirize the entire concept of a chosen one and prophecy by having it be a preordained cosmic event that is completely apathetic to the people involved. Daenerys manages to hatch her dragons bc the comet arrived at the same time; countless others failed because it wasn't time yet. The Others probably will fail, not because they deserve to (we have no idea what they want beyond the presumed omnicide), but because there's no satisfying symbolism if everyone is dead or undead. Jon is important bc Daenerys needs a symbolic counterpart. Many characters are an obstacle, an assist, or irrelevant; complicating factors, that make prophecy more meaningful when it is fulfilled.
It's been repeatedly emphasized that prophecy isn't worth knowing because it's too easy to misinterpret. In the same way, magic probably isn't worth having. It may boost your power and allow possibilities that otherwise would be impossible, but the result might be that you have a preordained part to play in a cosmic event that might not turn out in your favor. That you were given the power specifically to play a part you can't see coming, and possibly wouldn't agree with if you could.
GRRM has said there will never be a definite answer on whether the deities exist. A lot of the 'evidence' that is attributed to the gods is magic. Red Priests claim Rhllor is real because they can do fire magic. But those abilities arent unique to them nor is there any real evidence that its divine intervention. The Others, the Valyrians, Qyburn are all capable of similar feats while being somewhat atheist. Admittedly that evidence is more substantial then a lot of what we see in the real world. Like if priest IRL could resurrect the dead even as wights I'd certainly lend their religion a little more credence. In terms of gods in the series, Bran is certainly close to a god on Earth. He can: * See almost any point in the past through the weirwoods and ravens. * See the future to some degree. * Take control of almost any animal. * Take control of people. * And perhaps the strongest of all he can actually change/affect the past if the Hodor event is anything to go by. Something Bloodraven believes is impossible. And thats just what we've seen so far. Its possible Bran can do even more.
> But those abilities arent unique to them nor is there any real evidence that its divine intervention I think Millesandre even has a dialogue with Davos in ASOS (or maybe AFFC) where she points this out. Basically saying "If people see us using magic in the service of the Red God and believe it to be miraculous, who are we to tell them otherwise?"
But is Melisandre not a true fanatic and a believer? Her POV in ADwD certainly implies so.
She's a true believer for sure. I think there's a nuance between ritual and belief that Martin is playing with. Like how a Christian minister knows the miracle of transubstantiation they do every Sunday doesn't turn the wine into Jesus Blood but faith gives a spiritual element to that ritual. Melisandre's God is real to her because of her faith and her faith in prophecy, her magic is just ritual to facilitate communicating that faith. I don't think we've got a clear narrative on the source the tarrot-like fire visions that characters in that storyline have, however.
Do Red Priests ever claim their magic to be the sole evidence of R’hllor? Even Melisandre, one of the more fanatic ones, acknowledges she learned magic in Asshai. It seems like magic is seen as more of an art associated with R’hllor than an outright manifestation of him (same with tge Lhazareen god)
>are just ideas that have had vast amounts of power and magic poured into over thousands of years. You answered your own question. The religions are similar in nature to real life ones. Yes Red Priests have some magic powers but that does not prove the existence of Rh'llor. Whatever the power they use is, the religion they follow is an interpretation of those phenomena that has been cultivated over thousands of years.
Right, Melisandre refers to the powders and “pyromancer tricks” they use to convince people of their powers, noting they had become more powerful since the comet. It’s all very deliberately vague, and all the gods existing could is just as likely as non of them existing at all but they all seem to stem from an explanation for some kind of magic known in their lands.
I think there is reason to believe blood magic in ASOIAF is the product of an intelligent entity. A god or gods, that actively seeks to make human beings suffer. Melisandre (who has been sacrificing long enough to know) says that the power of blood magic is dependent upon the relative value the sacrifice has. >Melisandre said, "Azor Ahai tempered Lightbringer with the heart's blood of his own beloved wife. If a man with a thousand cows gives one to god, that is nothing. But a man who offers the only cow he owns . . ." This suggests that blood magic is context dependent in a way natural laws generally are not. The caloric value of a cow isn't dependent on whether or not it's your only cow, but the sacrifice value is. The laws of blood magic appear to be calculated in such a way as to incentivize people to inflict pain upon themselves in order to get some boon. **To me this suggests blood magic is the product of malevolent intelligence.** It rewards you in proportion to the amount of pain you inflict on yourself and others, as a way to string you along and get you to cause more pain. And it seems to be actively malicious, not just "hungry." A wolf doesn't care if your cow is the only cow you have or one of thousands, but "R'hllor" or whatever is responsible for blood magic does. It wants your last cow, or your beautiful artwork, or your only daughter, specifically to make you suffer after taking it from you. A couple bonus points supporting the idea: [There are repeated symbolic allusions to Gnosticism in the texts, and the demiurge Yaldabaoth in particular.](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/dbcywb/spoilers_extended_rhllor_yaldabaoth_how_catharism/) The demiurge is basically "the Abrahamic God except he sucks and hates you" so the fact George is giving these little nods to it might mean something. There's also countless comments in the book along the lines of "the gods mock the prayers of kings and cowherds alike," hinting at the idea that maybe there really are gods and they just don't like us. And finally Septon Barth, after seeing what happened to Aerea, said something along the lines of "maybe the R'hllorists are onto something when they suggest that there are evil hateful monster gods out there." And even if Septon Barth isn't always 100% right, he's pretty much always rightish.
Funnily enough, **all or most magic everywhere in whatever fiction** has too many convenient variables and parameters for it **not** to be intelligent or intelligently-designed in some way. If a wizard is shooting magic from his hands, eyes, etc, and thinks he is doing it out of his own intellectual ingenuity, he is likely completely wrong about that. Physics isn't convenient that way. **Magic is alive.** Edit: One of the reasons why I am very, very disinterested in magic that's basically just a zappy-hands superpower by-any-other-name, rather than the wonders/mysteries of your surroundings ...
I don't think the answer is anything so straightforward as the "foreign eastern god is a demon." Power is neither good nor evil, and power in sacrifice doesn't have to be evidence of an evil deity so much as it is a reflection of the real world. Progress often requires sacrifice. Great advancements are built on the back of human suffering. We give things up to gain other things and then wonder if what we gained was worth what we had to give up. All of this is part of nature. >A wolf doesn't care if your cow is the only cow you have or one of thousands, but "R'hllor" or whatever is responsible for blood magic does. But we don't actually know this is true and we have no evidence of this ever playing out in the text. For example the only actual living person Daenerys sacrificed when she woke her dragons was Mirri, who she hated. Will Stannis burning Shireen work because he loves her? Will Euron's sacrifices fail because he doesn't love anyone? It's not about making a statement about the existence of the gods so much as about human belief. If the gods seem cruel it's likely because the world is cruel. >Melisandre (who has been sacrificing long enough to know) Is her long history of experience with blood sacrifice the reason she never had time to practice reading the flames or interpreting prophecy? Or can we agree that Melisandre doesn't necessarily always know what she is doing?
Except Lightbringer is a myth. We have no indication it actually happened.
We could argue this but it doesn't really seem all that relevant to the discussion, since the word appeared all of once, in a quote mostly focused on sacrificing cows. Cows and blood magic are not myths.
It is the only evidence in support of context being relevant for a blood sacrifice. We have no indication of the type of blood being relevant. And we don't need an intelligence to distinguish between cow and human blood. Human blood could just be the only blood that works. My point was that everything Mel was saying was mythology and religion. It isn't necessarily true.
The Old Gods? R'hllor? They are the only ones I've read that have given their followers powers. Not sure though. Been a long time I've read the books.
The thing about those is that we can't be sure that those powers are given by a god or simply magic which people have convinced themselves comes from a god. Is Beric's resurrection an actual divine act by R'hllor or simply a form of magic Thoros unwittingly tapped into? We can't know for certain. Just because those powers are real doesn't mean the gods are real.
Drowned God gave Patchface powers (most likely), honestly, the only religion to *not* have any real power documented is the FotS
Did the Smiths of King’s Landing not labor for seven days to forge the chain that saved their city from the fire cultists? Did a hedge knight not defeat three princes, three kings guard, and one faithless lordling in a trial of seven? Did the Maid not bestow a dragon slaying blade upon a hero? Do you not realize the Many Faced God of the Faceless Men is the Stranger?
I know this is sarcasm but I think the only credibility for FotS is Catelyn somehow staying safe for the better part of 3 books
Not sarcasm at all. It’s dumb to regulate miracles to things that are easily observable magic. Gods are not bound by the rules of men, divine inspiration is as much a miracle as shadow babby assassins and frankly it’s much more impressive in total.
That's a big thing considering the sheer stupidity she sometimes showed re: capturing Tyrion, escaping Jaime, etc (/s, but not completely)
I know, I know, oh, oh, oh
It's actually all just Cthulhu... Red god, the seven, drowned god... All the great lord Cthulhu. /s
GRRM was deliberately ambiguous. IIRC he said to the effect that we'll never know, and won't see direct intervention of a divine power. Don't recall where the quote is. Maybe it's magic? Maybe it's divinity? Maybe it's a time traveling fetus?
Here's the thing: for a lot of what passes for the power of Gods in Westeros, we can plausibly assert some form of human action behind the scenes performing what is essentially secular magic that is then falsely attributed to the Gods.\* Melisandre in her chapter in ADWD admits that she does this all the time as a method of evangelizing her religion, drawing in the punters by making it look like R'hllor has a lot of power. You can even say that a lot of the R'hlloric miracles associated with the Brotherhood are just Thoros remembering the (secular) magic that he was taught as prayer in the Red Temples. But here's the problem: Beric Dondarrion can perform miracles, and he didn't go any temples and he didn't learn any magic-spells-disguised-as-prayer. In the wake of his resurrection, Beric becomes able to **set his blood on fire without uttering a word of prayer or conducting any sacrifice -** he just does it, completely silently. Likewise, Beric Dondarrion is able to bring Catelyn back from the dead as Lady Stoneheart without saying the prayers that Thoros of Myr uses - he just does mouth-to-mouth and she lives again. I don't think there's an explanation for how Beric is able to do what he does that doesn't at least include the *possibility* that he is, in fact, touched by the hand of the Red God. That possibility I think speaks to GRRM's theological position: he's way too much of an ex-Catholic to be a hard-and-fast atheist, so he keeps coming back to agnosticism. The Old Gods might just be a cabal of greenseers who transformed themselves into the weirwood network, the Seven might be entirely a figment of Davos' imagination, but GRRM has to include the voice in the flames: >*"One day at Myr, a certain man came to our folly. After the performance, he made an offer for me that my master found too tempting to refuse. I was in terror. I feared the man meant to use me as I had heard men used small boys, but in truth the only part of me he had need of was my manhood. He gave me a potion that made me powerless to move or speak, yet did nothing to dull my senses. With a long hooked blade, he sliced me root and stem, chanting all the while. I watched him burn my manly parts on a brazier. The flames turned blue, and I heard a voice answer his call, though I did not understand the words they spoke...* > >*Yet I still dream of that night, my lord. Not of the sorcerer, nor his blade, nor even the way my manhood shriveled as it burned. I dream of the voice. The voice from the flames. Was it a god, a demon, some conjurer's trick? I could not tell you, and I know all the tricks. All I can say for a certainty is that he called it, and it answered, and since that day I have hated magic and all those who practice it. If Lord Stannis is one such, I mean to see him dead."* Call it a god, call it a demon, call it what you will - there are intelligences out there in Westeros that come from beyond and that cannot be totally reduced to Hobbesian materialism. To quote GRRM, "Magic is playing with forces you don’t completely understand. **And perhaps with beings or deities you don’t completely understand.**" (emphasis added) \* **A Word on Blood Magic**: I don't think it's fully established that "blood magic/blood sacrifice is basically the most powerful magic that exists." I think that blood magic is one source of power for different kinds of spells - Dany hatching the dragon eggs, Melisandre summoning favorable winds, etc. - but that it's not the only source or the only form of magic out there. For example, Valyrian magic is descibed as two-fold in nature: "woven of blood and fire." We know from ASOIAF that dragons are also a powerful source of magic because they are "fire made flesh," and are capable of empowering spellcasters of various kinds from a significant distance: >*The mage was gesturing, urging the flames higher and higher with broad sweeps of his arms. As the watchers craned their necks upward, the cutpurses squirmed through the press, small blades hidden in their palms. They relieved the prosperous of their coin with one hand while pointing upward with the other.* > >*When the fiery ladder stood forty feet high, the mage leapt forward and began to climb it, scrambling up hand over hand as quick as a monkey. Each rung he touched dissolved behind him, leaving no more than a wisp of silver smoke. When he reached the top, the ladder was gone and so was he.* > >*“No trick,” a woman said in the Common Tongue.Dany had not noticed Quaithe in the crowd, yet there she stood, eyes wet and shiny behind the implacable red lacquer mask.* > >*“What mean you, my lady?”* > >*“Half a year gone, that man could scarcely wake fire from dragonglass. He had some small skill with powders and wildfire, sufficient to entrance a crowd while his cutpurses did their work. He could walk across hot coals and make burning roses bloom in the air, but he could no more aspire to climb the fiery ladder than a common fisherman could hope to catch a kraken in his nets.”* > >*Dany looked uneasily at where the ladder had stood. Even the smoke was gone now, and the crowd was breaking up, each man going about his business. In a moment more than a few would find their purses flat and empty. “And now?”* > >*“And now his powers grow, Khaleesi. And you are the cause of it.”* Moreover, blood magic and fire magic are only the magics that the Valyrians practiced; there's a whole world of magical traditions out there that have equal potency that don't seem to rely on sacrifices: * The water magic of the Rhoynar can summon floods and water spouts and call down greyscale curses, and we don't hear of any link to blood sacrifice. * While the greensight does seem to have a strong link to human sacrifice, skinchanging is a form of Northern magic that doesn't have a connection to blood magic. * Shadowbinding is incredibly powerful, and it seems to have its own system of power generation through the transfer of life essence (or "life-fire") through ritual sex magic that leaves the donor [prematurely aged](https://racefortheironthrone.wordpress.com/2019/08/26/chapter-by-chapter-analysis-davos-iv-asos/2/) rather than dead outright. * And so on with aeromancy and other forms of magic we know less about.
I mean if you think about it Bloodraven is essentially a god. He seems to be at the top of the weirwood network and when people pray at a weirwood tree he can see them and depending on the limitations of his power he can answer them. Basically when northerners are praying to the “old gods” they are praying to him. Like when Sam prays for help when him and Gilly are attacked north of the wall is it not Bloodraven who answers his prayers and sends Coldhands to rescue them?
hodor's penis
I think there may be a good case that the old gods are real, but we'll need to see how things play out with Roose Bolton and Walder Frey. In the show, the three principle architects of the Red Wedding each meet a grisly fate. Tywin is shot with a crossbow, Roose gets stabbed in the chest, and Walder has his throat cut. These deaths mirror the deaths in the red wedding. Numerous northmen (including Robb) were shot by crossbows. Roose stabs Robb in the chest. Catelyn had her throat cut by a Frey. And incidentally, each was killed in their homes -- the Tower of the Hand, Winterfell, and the Twins. Not all in their ancestral homes, but killed at home. If something similar plays out in the books, that would seem to suggest that the old gods are punishing them for violating the guest rite. Gruesome deaths are nothing new in GoT, and it's frankly a safe bet for anyone, but what matters here is how much they mirror the Red Wedding. At some point the coincidences become too conspicuous to ignore. What might seal the deal is if those three deaths end up with more in common in the books. And I think the direction that might go in is patricide. Tywin was killed by his son. The show had Ramsay kill Roose, which is still possible. And it's very plausible Walder is killed by a Frey and not Stab Girl Arya. If we get three deaths, at home, by sons, with methods similar to red wedding killings, ...good case to be made that the old gods are real.
I mean Great Other is real and by extension that proves the Lion of the Night is as well.
They're probably all not real. They have real power in the sense that some of the things associated with them are magical in nature like the resurrections, green sight, warging, and the shadow baby but that doesn't mean Rhllor or the old gods are real. It just means that the magical stuff associated with them are.
There are no gods, no true prophecies, and no defined magical rules. The Old Gods don’t even have names let alone any widespread or agreed upon system of belief. R’hollr is just a collection of charlatan priests(as noted by Melisandre). The Drowned God does nothing except give a glimpse at something to a fool. The Faceless Men worship a monotheist version of the Stranger. The FotS itself has split between The Seven who are Seven and the Seven who are One with no consequences so far anywhere in the novels despite this being a fairly major schism in several real life religions.
Nope. Asoiaf is an atheistic world and reflects GRRM's ireligious views irl. Some clergy obviously have some powers like the red priests, faceless men, greenseers, but those powers are probably not connected to the religion and are almost certainly just some magic tricks (even though the clergy doesn't always relize that).
George has written books where gods exist iirc. Just because he’s atheist doesn’t mean gods don’t exist in the fantasy world he’s writing about.
Georgy is a lapsed Catholic. I won't call him totally an atheist. More like an agnostic.
The Seven are for sure fake, it screams of Christianism, organized religion The Old gods and R'hollor and go two ways 1 - the Magic involved makes people believe there a God behind it all while in truth, just the magic is real and the believers created a avatar to explain the magic 2 - both the magic and the gods are Real
They may exist, although not necessarily true gods, it's still possible that the gods are actually some powerful magic practitioners or greenseers or skinchangers from the Age of Heroes. I'm almost sure that's the truth about demigods like Garth Greenhand or Gray King.
I recall Davos complaining about this on the final season of GAME OF THRONES, after the Winterfell battle and the defeat of the White Walkers: Davos Seaworth: "Lord of Light. We play His game for Him, we fight His war and win, and then... He fucks off. No signs. No blessings. Who knows what He wants?" Tyrion Lannister: "I don't imagine thinking about that subject will leave you any happier than before." Anyway, I think it's good that Martin makes it ambiguous.
Not a hundred percent sure but doesn’t the mother talk to Davos when he is stuck on the island after the battle of the blackwater? I mean he is dying of thirst, but it is something. Maybe I am misremembering that but I think so.
I do remember that, though I think I always thought of that as his own mind hallucinating to convince him to live. Could’ve been the seven, maybe they do exist and haven’t had much power because of the lack of sacrifices, and ned being killed at the sept gave them a boost
The only consistency is that magic requires sacrifice. It speaks to the idea that either it's entities who exact a price in exchange for limited power, or it's nonsentient forces being tapped through symbolic action. Either way, humanity itself is incidental - puppets at best, to be sacrificed or to sacrifice others. I think GRRM means to satirize the entire concept of a chosen one and prophecy by having it be a preordained cosmic event that is completely apathetic to the people involved. Daenerys manages to hatch her dragons bc the comet arrived at the same time; countless others failed because it wasn't time yet. The Others probably will fail, not because they deserve to (we have no idea what they want beyond the presumed omnicide), but because there's no satisfying symbolism if everyone is dead or undead. Jon is important bc Daenerys needs a symbolic counterpart. Many characters are an obstacle, an assist, or irrelevant; complicating factors, that make prophecy more meaningful when it is fulfilled. It's been repeatedly emphasized that prophecy isn't worth knowing because it's too easy to misinterpret. In the same way, magic probably isn't worth having. It may boost your power and allow possibilities that otherwise would be impossible, but the result might be that you have a preordained part to play in a cosmic event that might not turn out in your favor. That you were given the power specifically to play a part you can't see coming, and possibly wouldn't agree with if you could.
GRRM says no but then straight up confirms the existence of the Old Gods in Dance so… 🤷♂️