‘High Sparrow’ is the third episode of the fifth season of HBO’s fantasy television series Game of Thrones, and the 43rd overall.
In the novels, the left door at the entryway to the House of Black and White in Braavos is made of white weirwood, and the right side door is made of black ebony. The TV series reversed this for unknown reasons.
Once the interior of the House of Black and White is revealed in this episode, we see that what they did there is similar to what they did in the Home we saw in the 1973 film Soylent Green: to euthanize people who could no longer endure life. The difference is that the Home was an easy place to understand and without any mystery, while the House of Black and White, which is the size of a cathedral, is not only dark on the inside—it has no windows—but represents a dark religion, the cult of death.
There is not much to tell about what happens there, neither in this nor in subsequent episodes. I don’t know what Martin’s prose about the House of Black and White is like, but what we see on HBO doesn’t seem to have greater depth than the typical Hollywood movie, although those who haven’t seen the complete series are captivated by the mystery that surrounds that massive building.
Very far from Braavos we see the silhouette of Podrick on horseback, Brienne’s squire, after they spot Sansa down in the vast north.
Another thing that bothers about the series is the excessive cruelty of Ramsay, who with his father Roose Bolton rules the north. This morning I said something about Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange but Ramsay is a lot worse than Alex. I don’t even want to recount Ramsay’s extremely sadistic sins in this or future episodes. They are visual and narrative excesses, unworthy of a healthy audience.
On the other hand, the story of the High Sparrow begins in this episode, albeit in another part of Westeros. I have always been fascinated by the figure because it reminds me of the 14th century Fraticelli that I’ve talked about on this site. The resemblance of them to the Woke religion of our day is astonishing, with the exception that today the metaphysical aspect has been left behind and we are left only with the axiological aspect of religion (that’s why we call it ‘secular Christianity’ or ‘neochristianity’).
I think it’s impossible to understand the secular religion that currently covers the West without understanding the figure of St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) and his late followers of the next century, especially the Dulcinians. For the common normie, a good way to get into the subject would be to watch the scenes of the Sparrows whose fanaticism begins in this episode. The arc of their leader, the High Sparrow who will die in the following season, is illustrative to understand the point of view of this site: how the ethics of the gospel was transmuted into the suicidal search for equality.