Who is nissa nissa

There are so many possibilities, but this one — featuring Jon Snow, Daenerys, and a legendary figure Nissa Nissa — is definitely a favorite.

Azor Ahai was chosen by the Lord of Light to fight the darkness, and he was equipped with Lightbringer, a flaming sword, to aid him. As of now, Jon Snow is one of only two characters to be singled out by the Lord of Light the other being Beric Dondarrion via resurrection.

However, Jon Snow does not have a flaming sword. But how did the original Azor Ahai get their sword? We have to go back to A Clash of Kings for the answer:. I shall tell it to you. It was a time when darkness lay heavy on the world. And so for thirty days and thirty nights Azor Ahai labored sleepless in the temple, forging a blade in the sacred fires. Heat and hammer and fold, heat and hammer and fold, oh, yes, until the sword was done. Yet when he plunged it into water to temper the steel it burst asunder.

The second time it took him fifty days and fifty nights, and this sword seemed even finer than the first. Great was his woe and great was his sorrow then, for he knew what he must do. It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon, but her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel.

Qhorin decreed that they would rest here until the shadows began to grow again. Shadows are friends to men in black, because men in black are black shadows themselves. I neglected to mention last time that her name breaks dow into Ygg-rite, as in a ritual or rite of Ygg-drasil. Ygritte was even a shy maid down in the caves with Jon, and looking back, her suggestion that they stay down there forever sounds like Nissa Nissa trapping Azor Ahai in the weirwoodnet again.

That idea keeps popping up! So, Ygritte, the lover of an Azor Ahai figure who might be a shadowcat, is a red headed spearwife and a weirwood dryad. She even hunts with a weirwood bow, reminding us of the Meliai making spears from their own ash trees. The arrow that kills her during the wildling attack on castle Black strikes her in the chest, in true Nissa Nissa fashion.

Upon closer inspection, I have found that many of our Azor Ahai reborn and Nissa Nissa reborn characters play gender games. Take Jon Snow for example.

Consider for a moment the gender games being played with the Knight of the Laughing Tree, who is taken for a man, but is almost certainly Lyanna, a she-wolf with the wolf blood like Arya, and of course most people can see the clear parallels that are drawn between Arya and Lyanna.

We also saw parallels drawn between the Knight of the Laughing Tree, a woman in disguise, and Jaquen, who both appearing looking like trees immediately following someone else praying to the weirwoods for help. Voice aside, Brienne is yet another Nissa Nissa reborn figure. I could have been the heir he wanted, but I lacked the cock. This is getting close to the what I believe to be the source of inspiration for all this gender blending, something I have referred to before as part of the inspiration for the Azor Ahai archetype: the hemaphroditic baphomet, also known as the sabbatic goat.

One of the defining elements of baphomet is that it represents the sum total of the universe and expresses both sides of a lot of binary symbolism — day and night, good and evil, above and below, and of course, male and female.

You could call it a much more creative and overwrought expression of the idea behind yin and yang, what is called Daoist philosophy, but the point is that their common theme of integration, balance, and harmony of opposites seems to be one of the major themes of ASOIAF.

As it happens, the clearest expression of this idea comes in the Bran chapter with the story of the Knight of the Laughing Tree. That is the context in which I see the gender-bending coming in, as one further aspect of the harmonization of opposites.

And that brings us back to the shadowcat, a merged sun and moon archetype who can manifest as a boy or a girl. I have a feeling this shadowcat with moon eyes whose howl is echoed by a dozen other unseen cats essentially means that the last hero is a shadowcat figure. Also, the Wonder Woman movie was awesome, am I right? Therefore, we have to keep in mind that the actual gender of the last hero and his thirteen is undetermined.

Ok, we have one more cat-woman to go before we get to get into Arya and The House of Black and White, where we will actually develop the shadowcat archetype even further. Cersei, like all Lannisters, pairs her green eyes with golden hair, and this is also her most common choice in attire. Mounted on her white palfrey, Cersei towered high above him, a goddess in green.

A green cat goddess… that sounds like the right idea. A green goddess and a horned god… they made a better symbolic pairing than they did an actual couple. Cersei would appear to be named after a goddess — the Greek goddess Circe, the daughter of the sun god, Helios, which obviously works well for Cersei Lannister, daughter of Tywin. The Greek Circe is a goddess of magic, who appears alternately as a nymph, an enchantress, a sorceress, or a witch, or some combination of those.

She is mostly famous for luring people to her island and turning men into animals, preferably pigs. This would seem to be more a clue about Nissa Nissa than Cersei Lannister, but I think we have consistently seen that the names and nicknames of the various Nissa Nissa figures have been chosen to help describe the Nissa Nissa archetype, such as Asha, Osha, Rowan, Melisandre, Catelyn, Arya, and Ygritte. One other interesting note on Circe the Greek goddess — she is thought to live in a house in the middle of a clearing in the woods… almost like a heart tree in the center of a godswood.

And as I said, this is on an island, so now were are thinking about a godswood on an Island, like the Isle of Faces. When you combine that with the human-animal transformation ideas and the idea of Circe as a temptress who will trap you on her island, we are starting to see a lot of parallels with our weirwood goddess figure who seems to have trapped Azor Ahai in the weirwoodnet and also to have aided his resurrection and reemergence from the weirwoodnet.

Circe does have some obvious parallels to Cersei Lannister though — besides the goddess Circe being the daughter of Helios, she is frequently depicted with tame or sleeping lions and wolves around her, and the legend is that she used her magic to make the wolves and lions sleepy. We can also see that even without the magic and sorcery, Queen Cersei is definitely a temptress figure who uses guile and seduction to control men and usually send them to their doom.

Moving on to the symbolism of House Lannister in general, there are some decent skinchanging clues lurking in the shadows, which may be indicative of a past link to such. All of this runs through my head when we read that as a child, Cersei was brave enough to put her hand through the bars of the lion cage and touch a lion, even letting it lick her hand while Jaime was not.

As I mentioned, there are some child of the forest clues in the Lannister family tree, and this next bit actually started with a catch by Reddit user LLCoolSand.

Jeyne Marbrand is therefore a burning ash tree woman… who became a cat woman by marrying into House Lannister. The current Lord Rowan at that time is even specifically mentioned in the story as being recent kin to Lady Rohanne, just to help us get the rowan tree reference in her name.

When she appears in armor, she wears. It fit her figure like a glove, and made her look as if she were garbed in summer leaves. I will quickly point out that a spiderweb functions much like a fishing weir: they are both trapping barriers stretched across a place that their intended prey use as a thoroughfare. Oh and by the way, the entire plot of the Sworn Sword revolves around the Red Widow damning up a stream.

The main part of the scene is a dream Dunk has of the Red Widow, and the scene starts off with Dunk describing the contents of his mind:. And she was there as well, the Red Widow, Rohanne of the Coldmoat.

He could see her freckled face, her slender arms, her long red braid. Those chequy lions of House Osgrey are green and gold by the way, and indeed, I think House Osgrey is playing the solar role in this drama. Since Dunk is his sworn sword, Dunk would be the comet, sent by the sun to penetrate the castle of the moon woman, whose red braid and freckles are highlighted. Drowsing at long last, Dunk dreamed. Each shaft she loosed flew true, and pierced him through the chest, yet the pain was strangely sweet.

He should have turned and fled, but he ran toward her instead, running slowly as you always did in dreams, as if the very air had turned to honey. Another arrow came, and yet another. Her quiver seemed to have no end of shafts. Her eyes were gray and green and full of mischief.

Your gown brings out the color of your eyes, he meant to say to her, but she was not wearing any gown, or any clothes at all.

Across her small breasts was a faint spray of freckles, and her nipples were red and hard as little berries. The arrows made him look like some great porcupine as he went stumbling to her feet, but somehow he still found the strength to grab her braid. With one hard yank he pulled her down on top of him and kissed her. The line about the air turning to honey is a reference to ash tree folklore — both Greek and Norse mythology associates honey-sap with the ash tree, most notably with Yggdrasil and the Meliai — the Meliai nourished baby Zeus with their honey sap, if you recall.

As Dunk runs to her, Rohanne is firing her moon meteor arrows, which is the spitting image of the Greek moon goddess Artemis, the Huntress, who is famous for her skill with the bow and arrow. He woke suddenly, at the sound of a shout. In the darkened cellar, all was confusion. Curses and complaints echoed back and forth, and men were stumbling over one another as they fumbled for their spears or breeches.

No one knew what was happening. Egg found the tallow candle and got it lit, to shed some light upon the scene. Dunk was the first one up the steps. He almost collided with Sam Stoops rushing down, puffing like a bellows and babbling incoherently.

Dunk had to hold him by both shoulders to keep him from falling. First off, this is a weirwood portal for Dunk — as he reaches and join with the weirwood moon maiden, pulling her down on top of him, he suddenly finds hgimself in a dark cellar, like a weirwood cave or an underworld, death realm.

It is indeed sword forging time, which is why a dragon named Egg is lighting a candle and people are terrified of whatever is happening in the sky. It was a long moment before Dunk realized what that meant. They were too far away to make out flames, but the red glow engulfed half the western horizon, and above the light the stars were vanishing. Fire and sword , she said. This is, yet again, the lunar revenge of Nissa Nissa, the moon meteor smoke which darkens and transforms the sun.

The fire burned until morning. No one in Standfast slept that night. Before long they could smell the smoke, and see flames dancing in the distance like girls in scarlet skirts. They all wondered if the fire would engulf them. Dunk stood behind the parapets, his eyes burning, watching for riders in the night. Once again, Dunk is playing the role of transformed greenseer here, engulfed in fire, with eyes burning.

The flames like dancing girls are the familiar fiery dancers, confirming that this is indeed a ground zero Lightbringer bonfire. The fire had largely burned itself out by the time they reached the wood, but here and there a few patches were still burning, fiery islands in a sea of ash and cinders. Elsewhere the trunks of burned trees thrust like blackened spears into the sky. Other trees had fallen and lay athwart the west way with limbs charred and broken, dull red fires smoldering inside their hollow hearts.

There were hot spots on the forest floor as well, and places where the smoke hung in the air like a hot gray haze. Red fires smoldering in the hearts of hollow trees is exactly what the idea of Azor Ahai as the ember in the ashes represents. And did you notice that some of trees in this sea of ash became spears? Pretty good stuff right? Chequy Lion himself, Ser Eustace Osgrey, in order to retain possession of her lands. But being old, he dies too like all her previous husbands , and eventually she marries Gerold the Golden Lannister.

I mean good lord. So that gives you an idea of all the symbolism leading up to the notorious Cersei Lannister. She is a Nissa Nissa, cat-woman figure descended of Garth the Green and a bunch of burning tree women… and she even passes it on to her daughter, Myrcella. We are about to break down an important Cersei scene to see what we can learn about Nissa Nissa from Cersei, but before we move on, let us briefly consider Myrcella.

But since Myrcella herself is not a big part of the story, while Cersei is an important character with lots of POV chapters, it works the same way. Of course, Myrcella is tragically wounded by the scoundrel knight Darkstar Gerold Dayne, being sliced across the face and losing an ear.

Also, the place Arianne wanted to crown Myrcella was the Hellholt, which is simply another way of implying her death coming with her crowning.

Myrcella is a moon maiden, so, you know the drill — this falling star like a hammer was a piece of moon. Another of the ships escorting Myrcella was named Lady Lyanna, a moon maiden in her own right, and the last ship was called Bold Wind, giving us the ashy wind of darkness that comes from the moon explosion and moon meteor impacts, the one which blotted out the sun.

So, the convey bringing Mycella to Dorne basically tells the whole story. From moon to falling star that drank the fire of the sun to hammer that struck the earth and threw up hell winds of smoke and ash.

Myrcella has a really cool link to the children of the forest symbolism, and that comes from her spots. As it happens, Myrcella was hanging out with another spotted cat on her way to be crowned at the Hellholt — spotted Sylva of House Santagar of Spottswood.

Now look. I know this episode is called cat-woman. So while we are talking about spotted cats, I have a spotted cat- man to tell you about:. See how he moves, my queen. A poem on two feet. The foe Hizdahr had found for the walking poem was as tall as Goghor and as broad as Belwas, but slow. As the man stumbled to his knees, the Cat put a foot on his back and a hand around his head and opened his throat from ear to ear.

The red sands drank his blood, the wind his final words. The crowd screamed its approval. A poem on two feet is very like the idea of Arya as a song, with both being deadly assassins. The idea of being spotted is basically the same as dappled; dappled means spotted. So what we have is a dappled cat person, who is fighter, and who kills his opponent in the manner of a ritual sacrifice, giving him a red smile.

And look, his victim is a giant, just as the weirwoods are called pale giants. Thus, we get both an implication of sacrifice and giving a giant tree a face, complete with red smile. The wind drinks his words, which speaks of our sacrifice being swallowed up by the black wind of the moon and the burning tree. Sorry for that little deviation from Cersei, but you know we are really talking about the Nissa Nissa archetype, and in that context, the spotted cats are all related.

As you might expect, when Cersei burns the tower of the hand, there is a lot of fantastic symbolism going on. The green light of the wildfire had bathed the face of the watchers , so they looked like nothing so much as rotting corpses, a pack of gleeful ghouls , but some of the corpses were prettier than others. Even in the baleful glow, Cersei had been beautiful to look upon. She is crying, Jaime had realized, but whether it was from grief or ecstasy he could not have said.

Green zombie alert! As for Cersei, we see the agony and ecstasy death cry symbolism of Nissa Nissa put in an appearance as Jaime sees Cersei crying from either grief or ecstasy. Appropriate to this moment of symbolic death, Cersei appears as a corpse here. Undead, green skinned cat-woman Cersei is very comparable to green and grey skinned and undead Lady Stoneheart, though obviously Cersei, being only a symbolic zombie, is a bit better looking meaning no offense to Lady Cat.

The sept was still and dark, until a woman emerged from the shadows and walked slowly to the bier. But it was not Cersei. She was all in grey, a silent sister.

A hood and veil concealed her features, but he could see the candles burning in the green pools of her eyes. Joanna, as a Lannister, can be seen as a cat woman, and she is a ghost emerging from the shadows, so I am tempted to see her as a shadowcat.

The line that really grabs my attention is the one about candles burning in the green pools of her eyes. This is from ASOS:. He kissed her again, kissed her silent, kissed her until she moaned. She pounded on his chest with feeble fists, murmuring about the risk, the danger, about their father, about the septons, about the wrath of gods. He never heard her.

He undid his breeches and climbed up and pushed her bare white legs apart. One hand slid up her thigh and underneath her smallclothes. This is such great Nissa Nissa sacrifice symbolism, with the sex and swordplay theme on full frontal display sorry.

The moon blood and altar imply moon maiden sacrifice, and the sex implies… sex. It is sex! The best part and the reason I pulled the quote here instead of summarizing is that bit about the wrath of the gods. Of course that is a perfect fit for the idea of killing Nissa Nissa as an abomination of blood magic which did indeed invoke the wrath of the gods.

The falling candles knocked off the alter by the solar king Jaime represent the fire of the gods falling from the heavens. Consider also that in The Mountain vs The Viper and the Hammer of the Waters , I posited that the Tower of the Hand represents the burned moon, and of course we have seen that things which symbolize the burning moon also symbolize the burning tree. Some of the secret crawlways had turned out to be so small that Jaime had needed pages and stableboys to explore them.

A passage to the black cells had been found, and a stone well that seemed to have no bottom. They had found a chamber full of skulls and yellowed bones, and four sacks of tarnished silver coins from the reign of the first King Viserys.

In other words, only children can get through some of these tunnels, helping us to think about the tower as a burning tree symbol inhabited by children of the forest. The bottomless well they find is a pretty likely reference to the bottomless wells at the root of Yggdrasil, just like the well at the Nightfort.

Because of the ambiguous wording, the sentence can also be read as if the Hands of the Kinds are making their home in the moon — when she says how many hands had made their home there, the there could be either the moon or the Tower of the Hand.

Earlier Jamie called it a hollowed out shell, a nice moon as an eggshell reference. This can be seen as either Azor Ahai reborn or Nissa Nissa reborn entering the weirwoodnet through death transformation.

On a basic level, the moon being clawed at is there to clue us into the idea that this scene is going to be about lunar sacrifice and the forging of Lightbringer. Melisandre is a burning tree woman, and thus parallels the burning wooden gods and the burning weirwood; Dany the burning moon woman parallels the bonfire and becomes one with the fire and gets the fire inside her and all that; and accordingly, Cersei actually parallels the the burning Tower of the Hand.

Cersei felt too alive for sleep. The wildfire was cleansing her, burning away all her rage and fear , filling her with resolve. I want to watch them for a while. The burning tower itself is alive with this fire, in parallel to Cersei who is too alive for sleep:.

The tower went up with a whoosh. In half a heartbeat its interior was alive with light, red, yellow, orange. The shy maiden makes an appearance here as well, I was pleased to discover. You will recall that the flames which look like shy maidens are always the first flames to spring from the fire, and with that in mind…. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Nissa Nissa. View source. History Talk 0. Do you like this video? Play Sound. The title of this article is conjecture based on information revealed in the A Song of Ice and Fire novels or related material and may be subject to change.

If the old tales are true, a terrible weapon forged with a loving wife's heart. Part of me thinks man was well rid of it, but great power requires great sacrifice. That much at least the Lord of Light is clear on.