#immolation
Okay, re: human sacrifice in A Song of Ice and Fire.
It’s pretty clear that human sacrifice is not something that the faith of R’hllor shies away from; it’s not simply a punishment inflicted on non-believers, but something that can be seen as efficacious for the party burning the unbeliever; we see this when Stannis’s men suggest burning a non-believer may appease R’hllor enough that he will grant them an easy journey to Winterfell (ADwD, 614).
The Drowned God also seems to like human sacrifices; when Theon takes over Winterfell, he allows the local representative of the Faith of the Seven to be drowned because “he had to give someone to the Drowned God, his men expected it” (ACoK, 722). It seems conquest and human sacrifice may be connected in the thoughts of the ironborn.
After the red priest Moqorro heals Victarion’s sepsis-ridden hand, the red priest shows him visions in the flames; afterwards, Victarion commands his crew to slice the throat of his maester and toss the body into the sea, so that “the winds will favor [them] all the way to Meereen” (ADwD, 824). This doesn’t seem to be the normative form of human sacrifice for either religion; which god does Victarion believe promised quick passage in exchange for the lifeblood of a maester? My first thought is the Drowned God because he commanded the body be thrown into the ocean, but he saw that it would help through the use of Moqorro’s fire divination.
Adherents of the old gods performed human sacrifice in the distant past; it’s mentioned that freedmen who were given their former masters to punish as they pleased had hung those master’s entrails in the branches of heart-trees as a form of sacrifice (ADwD, 423-424). This doesn’t seem to be common knowledge to those who don’t worship those gods - perhaps it is just a tradition that is limited to the people who lived around White Harbor.
But it seems that, so far, the only religion in Westeros that doesn’t appear to have a tradition of human sacrifice is the Faith of the Seven.
“Wasi-Sabi”
Inktober Day 28 - Crispy
Experimenting with white paint and things got a little messy.
The Coronation of Doctor Johann Faustus
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rex caeli et terrae
