Editing A Song of Ice and Fire (section)

===Magic and Gods===
<div class="mw-collapsible-content"> The world of ASOIAF has various religions and faiths abound, just like in real life.  Similarly, they range between fucking awesome to utterly useless. Dissimilarly, some of them have very tangible, undeniable magic powers, although it is said that the magic became stronger after the rebirth of Dragons into the world, and that in the Far East, where people worship [[Lovecraft|Lovecraft references]], that magic is still alive and well, but those are all just rumors. 

Blood magic seems to be the most consistent, with practitioners paying steep prices for magic, while the druidic magic of the Children of the Forest and the Old Gods still hold strong to this day, they just don't have any practitioners left.

Magic and the Afterlife is a theme in the setting as well, most expounded by the faithful of R'hllor: fire is associated with the warmth of life, as well as light; on the other hand, death is associated with cold and darkness; death carries a harsh finality in the series, ''except when it doesn't:'' as they've shown in special cases with those resurrected by R'hllor, rebirth comes with a price, and not everyone comes back ''fully there''. 

*[[Ecclesiarchy|The Faith of the Seven]]: The Catholic Church/Church of England stand-in mixed with elements of Hinduism, which gets both sympathetic and unsympathetic characters associated with it (though mostly only in the books for the former). Holds an anti-slavery stance.  The god/s are considered seven aspects of one deity with three male aspects (The Smith, the Father, the Warrior), three female aspects (The Maiden, the Mother, the Crone) and a sexless one representing Death, a bit akin to how the Hindu God Vishnu has multiple aspects. The places of worship are called Septs, and their system includes Septons, nun-equivalents called Septas and a Pope equivalent called a High Septon.  The High Septons all give up their names when they become one to confuse future historians (and readers).
** High Septon 1 Fatfuck: A fat, greedy man who used the position for personal gain. He ended up being [[Grimdark|torn apart in a riot]], because the people resented that he had enough food to stay fat while they were starving.
** High Septon 2 Lannister Puppet: Successor of High Septon Fatfuck. Chosen by Tyrion so the Faith would be loyal to the Lannisters. Only ''slightly'' corrupt, being a pro-Lannister yes-man. Murdered on Cersei's order in the book, while in the show he's retconned into a whoremonger who gets deposed by the Sparrows (see below). 
** High Septon 3/The High Sparrow: Successor of High Septon Lannister Puppet. After the second High Septon shown in the present day of the story died, the smallfolk burst into the meeting to pick a successor and ordered their chosen candidate to be put in charge when his original successor was caught whoremongering. He'd been a wandering preacher beforehand, and his feet were dark and gnarled from lots of walking. When he reaches the position he starts [[gets shit done|getting things done]]. Since he was appointed by a smallfolk religious movement called the Sparrows, he's given the moniker "The High Sparrow". The nobility underestimates him, either due to having other matters or disregard for religious people, but he turns out to be smart, well-meaning and somewhat ruthless. Under the High Sparrow, he and the other clergymen sell their fancy clothes and decorations [[Noblebright|replacing them with simple wool tunics, using the money to buy food and clothes for the poor in King's Landing]]. He also has their Knights-Templar-equivalent reformed to [[Inquisition|protect the faithful and help them root out]] [[heresy]] and sin. He also outwits Cersei and has her arrested and tried for all her evil deeds. While Cersei's scheming does lead to Margaery's arrest, Cersei confesses to some crimes while concealing others, leading to Cersei taking a nude walk of penance in front of the entire city. After this, he somewhat reined in the nobles' politicking to actually look after the commoners and the Faith, though this does make some enemies. In the show, while he still talks of helping the Smallfolk, he and the Sparrows are [[C.S Goto|flanderized]] from assorted smallfolk and clergymen tired of the nobles' lawlessness and power plays into one-dimensional stereotypes and thinly-veiled jabs at the Catholic Church [[Imperial Truth|in a shoe-horned anti-religion message]]. While they do arrest Cersei and Margaery like in the books, the High Sparrow's plans all come to nothing, as during the trial most of the Faith, including the High Sparrow himself, get blown to kingdom come when Cersei has her agents ignite a massive amount of magical napalm underneath the Great Sept. In the books they're much more like Martin Luther and the Lutherans, except that the Protestant Reformation wins outright.
* [[Old Ones|Old Gods]]: Native American/Japanese Kame/Druid/nature spirits that reside in places called Godswoods. The original practitioners of this faith were the Children of the Forest, non-elf looking Wood Elves, whose magics were responsible for smashing an entire Southern Warhost with tsunamis (leaving only a narrow isthmus between the North and everyone else), the Wall (it was a collaborative effort with humans), and allowing people to look into the past, and (confirmed in the show at least) influence it.
**Their powers are limited to the North, though, where the last remaining Godswoods remain, but they can grant gifted individuals awesome psychic powers like Warging (mind-controlling animals) and Greensight (Time Travel). For some reason, Martin claims they're based off the Norse Gods. Probably has to do with the way the Vikings made sacrifices to their gods, by hanging them in Ash trees, a symbol for the World Tree Yggdrasil. The Weirwood trees are sacred to the followers of the Old Gods in a similar way. Mostly worship of them is quiet and informal.
*R'hllor: The God of Fire and Light, and like the Old Gods, actually shows evidence for existing. [[/tg/ gets shit done|He gets shit done]], being one of the most common faiths East of Westeros, and his priests have powers such as fire magic and motherfucking Resurrection. Has a nasty habit for burning heretics, though. GRRM said this faith is roughly based (read: poorly modelled after) upon Zoroastrianism and Gnosticism. His nemesis is The Great Other: the god of cold and darkness, the leader of the Others, and prophesied to be defeated by the chosen one, or messianic figure: [[Star Child|Azor Ahai/The Prince That Was Promised]], a figure who is the prophesied warrior that will fight with the Great Other/Night's King during the Apocalypse. Interestingly enough, the prophecy may not refer to a single person, but three (Jon, Tyrion/Bran, and Daenerys). Supposedly, one of these three will also receive an [[Emperor's Sword|awesome flaming sword called "Lightbringer"]].
**R'hllor is very popular among the slaves and poor of the East, though Eastern nobles hate him because of that association. It's actually hard-to-tell how many "miracles" ascribed to him are actually real miracles. Stannis, absolute chad though he is, has a sword called "Lightbringer" meant to evoke the mythical one, but Aemon has [[Bullshit|noticed that it doesn't give off any heat]]. 
**For obvious reasons, they are ''very excited'' that there are dragons again.
* Him of Many Faces: The god of the Dead of the religion whose followers are the [[Officio Assassinorum|Faceless Men]]. According to his cult of assassins, whom Arya joins, all gods of death are just him: since every religion has a god of death of some sort, he ''must'' be the only one that's real. Of course, your mileage may vary as to whether he's real or not, though his most awesome followers are granted shapeshifting abilities and powers to be the ultimate assassins.
* Drowned God: Cthulhu combined with Odin. Runs an underwater Valhalla were all Ironborn go whey they either if they drowned at sea, the men die a manly death or the women die in childbirth. Probably doesn't exist or he would have done something about Euron Greyjoy... at least in the books. There, Euron is [[Imperial Truth|proudly scornful]] of him, and his brother Aeron fruitlessly and endlessly mutters "no godless man can sit the Seastone Chair". In the show, Euron is perfectly happy to go through the traditional Drownie coronation ritual and Aeron performs it.
* The Night's King: This is completely different depending on whether you prefer the [[oldfag|books]] or [[newfag|show]]. Book version: A long time ago, when the Night's Watch was just barely getting set up, its Lord Commander, the thirteenth in line, decided to climb over the Wall and explore some. While in the woods to the north of the Wall, he found a beautiful [[Monstergirls|Other female]]. He fell in love with her, had [[/d/|sex with her on top of the Wall]], which somehow changed him into an albino version of [[Star Wars|Darth Maul]], and set himself up as King of the Wall, making everyone in the Watch his slaves and sacrificial fodder. Naturally, this didn't sit too well with the Starks and the Wildlings, and so they banded together to free the Watch and kick his ass, which they managed to do successfully. Now everyone thinks him as dead or a myth. Show version: he was the very first White Walker ever created by the Children, and he decided to get back at them by wiping out all life. Also, whilst he was apparently beaten in the ancient past and sealed away behind the Wall, he's still "alive" and well, [[Daemonculaba|turning infant human boys into new White Walkers]]. Also, he can apparently raise up entire legions of undead, just by raising his arms and looking completely smug about it; unlike regular Others, who can just raise up maybe a village at most. Given that he's the resident [[BBEG|Dark Lord]] of the series, it makes sense that he can take down a dragon with seemingly little effort (a simple throw of his spear), and resurrect it to be his personal steed a la Arthas. (Whether that particular nonsense is going to show up in the books is up in the air, it's suitably grimdark and not particularly [[derp]] so it might.) Then he used the dragon to blow a hole in the Wall and begin [[The End Times]] for Westeros. But [[FAIL|dead]], thanks to Arya's magic ninja haxx which let her [[what|kill the BBEG and his entire race and army of zombies ''in one blow.'']]
** The Others/The White Walkers: A mysterious race from beyond the Wall, known to [[newfag|HBO fans]] as "the White Walkers". Can be described as ice demons/snow elves with necromancy. Eight thousand years ago, they invaded Westeros during a decades-long winter (even longer than the usual years-long winters) known as "the Long Night". With an army of undead warriors, they proceeded to fuck Westeros up every which way to [[Sunday]] before the locals finally drove them out, established the Night's Watch, and built the Wall to keep them out. Like all fantasy aspects of ASOIAF, they are very cliched. 
**In the TV series, it's revealed that they were created from human captives by "The Children", the pseudo-[[Elf]] fair folk race that lived in Westeros before humanity arrived, as an attempt to create a super-weapon. The idea was since humanity bred faster than the Children could keep up with, they would create icy [[lich]]-creatures that could create [[undead]] soldiers, and these would then wipe out all human life. Instead, it went disastrously wrong because it turned out that the Children actually couldn't control what they'd created, so the Others [[Ork|just want to exterminate '''all''' life.]] In both versions the Night's King is in control.
*'''Other Eastern Magic/Religions''' - The further and further east you go, the more GRRM scatters Lovecraft references to give the world flavour, like the Shadowlands and its cities of oily, black stone, Leng, and [[Deep Ones|fish people]]. They're just references, though, and will likely never be important. 
**The Unsullied have their own goddess, the Lady of Spears, [[Slaanesh|whose altar they burn their dicks on as offerings]].
**The slavers worship a harpy goddess and justify their slavery through her. 
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