This is essentially my post from Reddit: Zodiac, Gems, Bloodstone Emperor. I might edit and polish it, but not significantly change it. Original date: July 27, 2017.
> … 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.
LoN and MMoL definitely sound like some celestial objects. But even “traveled about his domain” reminds me of a planet. That’s what planets do – they orbit their sun and not much else. The only thing we are told about supposedly the greatest ruler ever was: he “traveled about his domains”. Fighting wars, building cities, issuing laws – no, he is too busy travelling. Imagine when asked about Trump you answer: The only thing you need to know about Trump is he travels about his domain. While being criticized for traveling too often to Mar-a-Lago and too little to places that matter, travelling is not the defining trait of DT and certainly not the only.
> 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 forebears.
If his forebears are with the stars and he is their son, then he is of celestial nature. That sentence pretty much confirms it as was pointed out on the forums on several occasions.
Alright, LoN, MMoL and GoE (God-on-Earth = just Earth?) are celestial bodies. Great. Obvious. Also: impossible. Because how can it be? How do celestial bodies procreate? What does it mean for a planet (a star?) to be a son?How can a planet “ascend”? Go up into the sky? But it is supposedly a celestial object – it is *already* in the sky. Many questions, few answers. (I exaggerate here, of course: one simple explanation would be that planets are associated with gods (like our planets), and gods procreate (like Roman and Greek gods), so here we have it. And the very first name is God-on-Earth, literally putting together gods and planets.)
At this moment, I have to split the post in two (or three or four). One will focus on astronomy, and this one will deal with Zodiac and introduce gems.
> Dominion over mankind then passed to his eldest son, who was known as the Pearl Emperor and ruled for a thousand 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.
The sequence God-on-Earth, Pearl, Jade, Tourmaline, Onyx, Topaz, Opal, later followed by Amethyst and Bloodstone, is the focus of this post. We started with observing that LoN, MMoL (definitely), and GoE (strongly) represent celestial objects – astronomy or astrology connection. We read about them in Yi Ti section. Yi Ti GRRM obviously built on China – may be, too obviously. What is the first thing you see in many Chinese buffets? Chinese Zodiac. Astronomy, Zodiac – ta-da, the logic comes full circle, we have our connection: the Emperors as Zodiac.
Well, speaking of circles: Zodiac, Chinese or not, goes in circles and our Emperors do not. We have a dramatic break:
> 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.
Here is our problem: astronomy and Zodiac imply periodicity, cyclic nature, while our emperors are in annals of history (apparently). History is a one-way street, a progress, a linear process. Or is it? When we are almost ready to abandon our idea, we read something curious:
> 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.
Sure, it was not reborn. But why “yet”? Why would somebody expect it to be reborn? We deal with history: what is surprising in history not returning precisely to its starting point? Why it should have been reborn? One could say: things were really great, then the evil Bloodstone Emperor came, once he is removed the things are naturally expected to go back to normal. There are problems with this reading: things were not great – remember all things listed a couple of quotes back: “avarice, envy, lust, murder, incest, gluttony, and sloth”.
And speaking of those sins: Why is the list so long? Why list all of them? Whenever we have a long list, especially the list of cardinal sins, it might be a good idea to ask for its cardinal number. (Sorry, I am a math professor. I mean: how many are there?) Seven are listed.
Wait a second… Let’s look at the list of our gems/emperors. God-on-Earth, Pearl, Jade, Tourmaline, Onyx, Topaz, Opal, Amethyst quickly replaced by Bloodstone. So, it was supposed to be Amethyst, but Bloodstone substituted himself for her. Should be counted as one: not two. And God-on-Earth is not associated explicitly with a stone. Depending on how you count, you get six or seven or eight – but counting specifically gems and allowing only one count for either Amethyst or Bloodstone we get seven. Coincidence? The list of emperors is in the *same paragraph* as the list of sins. I’ll tell you more: re-read that quote and you’ll see it is *one long sentence*.
Also, the number itself: seven. Would GRRM – or his co-authors – put a number seven anywhere just by coincidence? I doubt it. But if not coincidence: what does it mean? I don’t think it means much – it is mostly trolling in my opinion. But trolling with numbers is significant. Whether GRRM or D&D do that. Once they did it to us with the number of ships (Daario in Season 5, I think?). They do it again in the trailer with twelve people in a circle, knowing full well that people will think about the Last Hero.
Recently I noticed that GRRM often switches seven with twelve and twelve with seven. The most renown, sacred number in our world and our religions is, arguably, twelve, and his most popular religion is built around the number seven. The traditional and Chinese Zodiacs have twelve signs: expecting the 7-12 switch we could predict seven part Zodiac in Ice and Fire.
Indeed, even refusing to count Emperors as associated with a Zodiac, we find the faith of Seven. Associations with astronomy/Zodiac? The symbol and the book of the faith is the Seven-Pointed *Star*. Then, most times we see the depiction of the star, for instance, in the church of Baelor, it is within a circle or two circles. Zodiac is traditionally inscribed in a circle to remind us, in particular, about its cyclic nature.
The main outcome of the association is: we can look at the Emperors as a cycle, or something that should have been a cycle, but not quite due to the unexpected arrival of the Bloodstone. Remember to read this post in conjunction with the astronomy one. Where else we hear about broken astronomical cycle? When we read about winters: there were regular winters in the Word, and then they weren’t. From here we could predict the connection with the Long Night and, indeed, we immediately read:
> 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.
In the astronomy-Euron post I discuss Euron-Bloodstone Emperor connection, or even identity. But whenever we deal with Zodiac, we should be expecting a return, things coming back. If Bloodstone Emperor (BE) is coming back (or perhaps he never left), we should be expecting the return of the hero associated with the Long Night. Well, the prophecy of Azor Ahai goes
> And that sword shall be Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes, and he who clasps it shall be Azor Ahai come again…
We might not be particularly sure who Azor Ahai is or was, I am not totally convinced he is on the “good guys” team, or that he is even a he, but one thing we are told for sure: come again. That’s a part of the definition: Azor Ahai *come again*. In many (most?) occasions when Melisandre uses AA, she says “Azor Ahai come again”. If “coming again” is as essential as who AA is, what can we say?
With a reasonable certainty we can state that BE is not Azor Ahai (both are mentioned in the same story). If Euron is/was/represents BE, what about AA? The question itself would lead us to a topic of a thousand posts: who is AA? I won’t discuss it, instead, I will go back to discussing gems, mention interesting associations, and arrive to connecting Jon with January. It is not particularly significant, but there were enough little things I noticed along the way to justify one more detour through the land of gems. This post is about Zodiac, cyclic nature, and gems: I am not saying anything about Jon being or not being AA.
The third and hopefully the final post in that series will be on gems later today, stay tuned. Before Reddit I might publish it on my web-site at [fractal_affinity.com]( https://fractal-affinity.com/got/current2017/).