"Have you drawn any watches this past week, Will?"
"Yes, m'lord." There never was a week when he did not draw a dozen bloody watches. What was the man driving at? A Game of Thrones - Prologue
We know they mark a month as a cycle of the moon. I assume this is a four week month because the women's menstrual cycle 'moon blood' is also marked by the moon,
She was bleeding, but it was only woman's blood. The moon is still a crescent, though. How can that be? She tried to remember the last time she had bled. The last full moon? The one before? The one before that? No, it cannot have been so long as that. A Dance with Dragons - Daenerys X
and I assume these are seven day weeks because the people of Planetos are human.
Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy. A Game of Thrones - Jon VIII
The predominant religion in Westeros is the Faith of the Seven and the number seven is seen everywhere,the stars in the sky,
So many stars, he thought as he trudged up the slope through pines and firs and ash. Maester Luwin had taught him his stars as a boy in Winterfell; he had learned the names of the twelve houses of heaven and the rulers of each; he could find the seven wanderers sacred to the Faith... A Storm of Swords - Jon III
Trials conducted by the Faith,
A sacred court of seven judges shall sit upon this case. Three shall be of your female sex. A maiden, a mother, and a crone. Who could be more suited to judge the wickedness of women?" A Feast for Crows - Cersei X
Trial of Seven,
Dunk was lost. "Your Grace, my lords," he said to the dais. "I do not understand. What is this trial of seven?"
Prince Baelor shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "It is another form of trial by combat. Ancient, seldom invoked. It came across the narrow sea with the Andals and their seven gods. In any trial by combat, the accuser and accused are asking the gods to decide the issue between them. The Andals believed that if the seven champions fought on each side, the gods, being thus honored, would be more like to take a hand and see that a just result was achieved." The Hedge Knight
the seven pointed star,
Despite the chill of the autumnal wood, he was shirtless, and on his breast was carved a seven-pointed star. Andal warriors had carved such stars in their flesh when first they crossed the narrow sea to overwhelm the kingdoms of the First Men. A Feast for Crows - Brienne I
Septs,
Her steps took her to the sept, a seven-sided sandstone temple set amidst her mother's gardens and filled with rainbow light. A Clash of Kings - Catelyn VI
Worship was a septon with a censer, the smell of incense, a seven-sided crystal alive with light, voices raised in song. The Tullys kept a godswood, as all the great houses did, but it was only a place to walk or read or lie in the sun. Worship was for the sept. A Game of Thrones - Catelyn I
Looking at the Faith of the Seven, I noticed some similarities between the Seven gods and the gods/planetary objects we get the names for the days of the week from. I don't know if this has been noted before but it stood out to me when I was reading ACOK Catelyn IV. the chapter where she spends the night praying in the sept before Renly and Stannis are set to do battle.
I looked at how the days of the week got their names.
(I looked at lots of articles about this and they all seem to agree so I copy/pasted segments from different websites that had boiled down the info into short explanations. All the links to these sites are posted with each segment. Please check them out. They are a great read and a great resource tool)
Days of the week named after the Classical planets in Hellenistic astrology
Greek or Latin names
Sunday - Sol or Helios (sun)
Monday - Luna or Selene (Moon)
Tuesday - Mars or Ares (Mars)
Wednesday - Mercurius or Hermes (Mercury)
Thursday - Jove or Zeus (Jupiter)
Friday - Venus or Aphrodite (Venus)
Saturday - Saturnus or Kronos (Saturn)
The Ptolemaic system used in Greek astronomy placed the planets in order, closest to Earth to furthest, as the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. In addition the day was divided into 7 hour intervals, each ruled by one of the planets, although the order was staggered.
The first hour of each day was named after the ruling planet, giving rise to the names and order of the Roman seven-day week. Modern Latin-based cultures, in general, directly inherited the days of the week from the Romans and they were named after the classical planets; for example, in Spanish Miércoles is Mercury, and in French Mardi is Mars-day.
The modern English days of the week were inherited from gods of the old Germanic Norse culture — Wednesday is Woden’s-day (Woden or Wettin eqv. Mercury), Thursday is Thor’s-day (Thor eqv. Jupiter), Friday is Frige-day (Frig eqv. Venus). It can be correlated that the Norse gods were attributed to each Roman planet and its god, probably due to Roman influence rather than coincidentally by the naming of the planets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_planet
The Naming of the Days
The Greeks named the days week after the sun, the moon and the five known planets, which were in turn named after the gods Ares, Hermes, Zeus, Aphrodite, and Cronus. The Greeks called the days of the week theTheon hemerai "days of the Gods". The Romans substituted their equivalent gods for the Greek gods, Mars, Mercury, Jove (Jupiter), Venus, and Saturn. (The two pantheons are very similar.) The Germanic peoples generally substituted roughly similar gods for the Roman gods, Tiu (Twia), Woden, Thor, Freya (Fria), but did not substitute Saturn. https://www.crowl.org/Lawrence/time/days.html
Sunday- Sun day
Monday - Moon day
Tuesday - Tyr
Wednesday - Woden/Odin
Thursday - Thor
Friday - Frige/Freya
Saturday- Saturn
The Seven
Catelyn studied the faces. The Father was bearded, as ever. The Mother smiled, loving and protective. The Warrior had his sword sketched in beneath his face, the Smith his hammer. The Maid was beautiful, the Crone wizened and wise.
And the seventh face . . . the Stranger was neither male nor female, yet both, ever the outcast, the wanderer from far places, less and more than human, unknown and unknowable. A Clash of Kings - Catelyn IV
Sun day and Moon day - The Father and the Mother
The two Dothraki girls giggled and laughed. "You are foolish strawhead slave," Irri said. "Moon is no egg. Moon is god, woman wife of sun. It is known."
"It is known," Jhiqui agreed. A Game of Thrones - Daenerys III
Tuesday - Tyr/ Mars Ares- god of war - The Warrior
Týr equated with Mars in an 18th-century manuscript (ÍB 299 4to)
Tyr (pronounced like the English word “tier”; Old Norse Týr, Old English Tiw, Old High German Ziu, Gothic Tyz, Proto-Germanic *Tiwaz, “god”) is a Norse war god, but also the god who, more than any other, presides over matters of law and justice. His role in the surviving Viking Age myths is relatively slight, and his status in the later part of the Viking Age may have been correspondingly minor. But this wasn’t always the case. Other kinds of evidence show us that Tyr was once one of the most important gods to the Norse and other Germanic peoples. Tyr’s role as one of the principal war gods of the Norse, along with Odin and Thor. https://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/the-aesir-gods-and-goddesses/tyr/
Wednesday - Woden/Odin - The Stranger
And the seventh face . . . the Stranger was neither male nor female, yet both, ever the outcast, the wanderer from far places, less and more than human, unknown and unknowable. ACOK Cat IV
Odin was a wanderer.
His shamanic spirit-journeys are well-documented. The Ynglinga Saga records that he often “travels to distant lands on his own errands or those of others” while he appears to others to be asleep or dead.
“Odin the Wanderer” by Georg von Rosen (1886)
...the Stranger was neither male nor female, yet both...
He was also a practitioner of Seidr - Norse magic and shamanism concerned with the course of fate.
According to the societal norms of the Viking Age, seidr wasn’t a fitting activity for men, to say the least. According to traditional Germanic gender constructs, it was extremely shameful and dishonorable for a man to adopt a female social or sexual role. A man who practiced seidr could expect to be labeled argr (Old Norse for “unmanly;” the noun form is ergi, “unmanliness”) by his peers – one of the gravest insults that could be hurled at a Norseman.
Odin was even an outcast,
...ever the outcast,...
Odin is often the favorite god and helper of outlaws, those who had been banished from society for some especially heinous crime, as well. Like Odin, many such men were exceptionally strong-willed warrior-poets who were apathetic to established societal norms – Egill Skallagrímsson (Egil’s Saga) and Grettir Ásmundarson (The Saga of Grettir the Strong) are two examples. The late twelfth/early thirteenth-century Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus even relates a tale of Odin being outlawed from Asgard for ten years so that the other gods and goddesses wouldn’t be tarnished by the vile reputation he had acquired amongst many humans. https://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/the-aesir-gods-and-goddesses/odin/
Odin is often accompanied by the wolves Geri and Freki
The god Odin enthroned and flanked by the wolves Geri and Freki and the ravensHuginn and Muninn as illustrated (1882) byCarl Emil Doepler
and ravens Huginn and Munnin.
A warrior, likely Odin, flanked by two ravens on an Iron Age helmet from what is now Sweden
When the Stranger comes he is sometimes accompanied by these same animals.
He found himself outside the city, walking through a world without color. Ravens soared through a grey sky on wide black wings, while carrion crows rose from their feasts in furious clouds wherever he set his steps. White maggots burrowed through black corruption. The wolves were grey, and so were the silent sisters; together they stripped the flesh from the fallen. There were corpses strewn all over the tourney fields. A Clash of Kings - Tyrion XV
Odin rules over Valhalla( the Hall of the Slain) where warriors who died in battle are brought and served by the Valkyries. The Stranger has the Silent Sisters.
"A man would need to be a fool to rape a silent sister," Ser Creighton was saying. "Even to lay hands upon one . . . it's said they are the Stranger's wives, and their female parts are cold and wet as ice." A Feast for Crows - Brienne I
The Valkyries are sometimes known as the Handmaidens of Odin
Through the Mother's Doors marched white septas from their cloister, seven abreast and singing softly, while the silent sisters came single file down the Stranger's Steps. Death's handmaidens were garbed in soft grey, their faces hooded and shawled so only their eyes could be seen. A Feast for Crows - Jaime I
Thursday - Thor - The Smith
A host of brothers appeared as well, in robes of brown and butternut and dun and even undyed roughspun, belted with lengths of hempen rope. Some hung the iron hammer of the Smith about their necks, whilst others carried begging bowls. A Feast for Crows - Jaime I
Drawing of a Viking Age gilded silver Mjölnir pendant (length 4.6 cm) found at Bredsätra in Öland, Sweden, now kept in the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities
I dont equate Thor with the Smith just because of his hammer. Thor shares some other aspects with the Smith
In addition to his role as a model warrior and defender of the order of society and its ambitions, Thor also played a large role in the promotion of agriculture and fertility (something which has already been suggested by his blessing of the lands in which the first Icelanders settled). This was another extension of his role as a sky god, and one particularly associated with the rain that enables crops to grow. As the eleventh-century German historian Adam of Bremen notes, “Thor, they say, presides over the air, which governs the thunder and lightning, the winds and rains, fair weather and crops.” https://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/the-aesir-gods-and-goddesses/thor/
Septon Meribald describes the Seven,
Brienne cleared her throat. "At Evenfall my father's septon always said that there was but one god."
"One god with seven aspects. That's so, my lady, and you are right to point it out, but the mystery of the Seven Who Are One is not easy for simple folk to grasp, and I am nothing if not simple, so I speak of seven gods." Meribald turned back to Podrick. "I have never known a boy who did not love the Warrior. I am old, though, and being old, I love the Smith. Without his labor, what would the Warrior defend? Every town has a smith, and every castle. They make the plows we need to plant our crops, the nails we use to build our ships, iron shoes to save the hooves of our faithful horses, the bright swords of our lords. No one could doubt the value of a smith, and so we name one of the Seven in his honor, but we might as easily have called him the Farmer or the Fisherman, the Carpenter or the Cobbler. What he works at makes no matter. What matters is, he works. The Father rules, the Warrior fights, the Smith labors, and together they perform all that is rightful for a man. Just as the Smith is one aspect of the godhead, the Cobbler is one aspect of the Smith. It was he who heard my prayer and healed my feet." A Feast for Crows - Brienne V
Friday - Frigg/Frige/Freya - the Maiden
“Freyja and the Necklace” by James Doyle Penrose (1890)
“Frigga Spinning the Clouds” by John Charles Dollman (1909)
Freya and Frigg
Freya (Old Norse Freyja, “Lady”) is one of the preeminent goddesses in Norse mythology. She’s a member of the Vanir tribe of deities, but became an honorary member of the Aesir gods after the Aesir-Vanir War. Her father is Njord. Her mother is unknown, but could be Nerthus. Freyris her brother. Her husband, named Odr in late Old Norse literature, is certainly none other than Odin, and, accordingly, Freya is ultimately identical with Odin’s wife Frigg ...
While the late Old Norse literary sources that form the basis of our current knowledge of pre-Christian Germanic religion present Freya and Frigg as being at least nominally distinct goddesses, the similarities between them run deep. Their differences, however, are superficial and can be satisfactorily explained by consulting the history and evolution of the common Germanic goddess whom the Norse were in the process of splitting into Freya and Frigg sometime shortly before the conversion of Scandinavia and Iceland to Christianity (around the year 1000 CE).......
The word for “Friday” in Germanic languages (including English) is named after Frija, the Proto-Germanic goddess who is the foremother of Freya and Frigg. None of the other Germanic peoples seem to have spoken of Frija as if she were two goddesses; this approach is unique to the Norse sources. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that in the Norse sources we find a confusion as to which goddess this day should have as its namesake. Both Freyjudagr (from Freyja) and Frjádagr (from Frigg) are used. https://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/the-vanir-gods-and-goddesses/freya/
The argument as to whether Freya and Frigg are the two different goddesses is apt when you compare them to their planetary equivalent Venus,
Though some ancient civilizations referred to Venus both as the "morning star" and as the "evening star", names that reflect the assumption that these were two separate objects, the earliest recorded observations of Venus by the ancient Sumerians show that they recognized Venus as a single object,[140] and associated it with the goddess Inanna
I know Freya or Frigg were not maidens as we know them in ASOIAF. They were not virgins.
Almah derives from a root meaning "to be full of vigour, to have reached puberty".[1] In the ancient Near East girls received value as potential wives and bearers of children: "A wife, who came into her husband's household as an outsider, contributed her labor and her fertility ... [h]er task was to build up the bet 'ab by bearing children, particularly sons" (Leeb, 2002).[4] Scholars thus agree that almah refers to a woman of childbearing age without implying virginity.[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almah
The word 'almah' in the bible is disputed to mean 'young woman' and not virgin. That is an argument i don't want to get into. I only use it to connect the old norse meaning of Freya as 'lady'..............
I see the Maiden as an unmarried female of childbearing age rather than a virgin
Saturday - Saturn/Kronos - the Crone
Saturday is named for Saturn whose equivalent is Kronos. Im not equating Kronos with the Crone because they sound the same(although come on!!!).
Chronos and his child by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli, National Museum in Warsaw, a 17th-century depiction of Titan Cronus as "Father Time," wielding a harvesting scytheKronos/Cronus/Cronos is associated Chronos the personification of time and is where we get 'chrono' meaning 'time'. Kronos is depicted with a sythe.
The Crone of the Seven is old and wise
The Crone is very wise and old,
and sees our fates as they unfold.
She lifts her lamp of shining gold,
to lead the little children.
—The Song of the Seven
She is often depicted with a lamp,
Lastly she turned to the Crone, whose statues often showed her with a lamp in one hand. "Guide me, wise lady," she prayed. "Show me the path I must walk, and do not let me stumble in the dark places that lie ahead." A Clash of Kings - Catelyn IV
Part of the story of Kronos is he devoured his children.
Painting by Peter Paul Rubens of Cronus devouring one of his children
The old woman smiled at him toothlessly. "My stories? No, my little lord, not mine. The stories are, before me and after me, before you too."
She was a very ugly old woman, Bran thought spitefully; shrunken and wrinkled, almost blind, too weak to climb stairs, with only a few wisps of white hair left to cover a mottled pink scalp. No one really knew how old she was but his father said she'd been called Old Nan even when he was a boy. She was the oldest person in Winterfell for certain, maybe the oldest person in the Seven Kingdoms. Nan had come to the castle as a wet nurse for a Brandon Stark whose mother had died birthing him. He had been an older brother of Lord Rickard, Bran's grandfather, or perhaps a younger brother, or a brother to Lord Rickard's father. Sometimes Old Nan told it one way and sometimes another. In all the stories the little boy died at three of a summer chill, but Old Nan stayed on at Winterfell with her own children. She had lost both her sons to the war when King Robert won the throne, and her grandson was killed on the walls of Pyke during Balon Greyjoy's rebellion. Her daughters had long ago married and moved away and died. All that was left of her own blood was Hodor, the simpleminded giant who worked in the stables, but Old Nan just lived on and on, doing her needlework and telling her stories. A Game of Thrones - Bran IV
The old women in the story, the ones we would call crones, are often wise and often childless having lived to see them die from war and sickness or even 'devoured by time'.
