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comment by briandmyers
briandmyers  ·  3622 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski Cable, or "What'ch'ya'll watchin?"

    Figured out the other day that the Seven Gods are Manicheism and R'hllor is Islam.

I always thought the Seven were (roughly) Catholicism; and the sparrows movement represented the Protestants. I don't see the R'hllor / Islam connection, except perhaps in their dealings with the infidel?

I also feel that, on some levels anyway, the dragons represent Science in our world, and their awakening / rebirth is a representation of the Renaissance.

>> Me? I hate the tedium. GRRM will blow six pages on the fucking food.

Sooo much grease dripping down chins.





kleinbl00  ·  3622 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Manichaeism post-dates christianity but predates islam. Unlike christianity or judaism, manichaeism busts the universe up into five "sub gods" - Reason, Mind, Intelligence, Thought and Understanding. These get reflected down to Ether, Wind, Light, Water and Fire in the 1st kingdom. 2nd kingdom? that's where it gets complicated.

No parallels are perfect - if they were, R'hllor would be the persecutor and the Seven Gods would be the upstart. But the fact of the matter is, Manichaeism went crazy throughout south asia and the Buddhists, Christians, Muslims and Zoroastrians were all threatened by it... and drove it to extinction.

briandmyers  ·  3622 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Interesting. In most of the world (outside Westeros), the Seven are the upstart - and even within Westeros, they are "the new gods".

The Seven seem to me to be an amalgam of the Catholic Trinity with the old Roman and Greek pantheons.

kleinbl00  ·  3622 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I know one thing for sure - there's no correct answer to this. It's an interesting discussion, however.

havires  ·  3543 days ago  ·  link  ·  

As an unrelated note: I've heard The Black Company is awesome, but I've never read it. I might have to fix this.