The Seven

The Seven is the faith of the Andals, the people who crossed the narrow sea and conquered the six southern kingdoms, bringing with them a religion of seven faces: the Father, the Mother, the Maiden, the Crone, the Warrior, the Smith, and the Stranger. Each aspect represents a divine principle—justice, mercy, love, wisdom, strength, craft, and death—and together they form a single god with seven aspects. Worship is conducted in septs, buildings of stone and crystal, by septons and septas who have taken holy vows. The head of the faith is the High Septon, a figure of immense spiritual and, at times, political authority.

Worship and Ritual

The rituals of the Seven are formal and public. Anointing with the seven oils is the sacrament that makes a knight, as when Sandor Clegane's brother Gregor was anointed and knighted by Rhaegar Targaryen. The Faith presides over marriages, funerals, and coronations. When King Robert Baratheon died, the great bells of the Great Sept of Baelor tolled for a day and a night, a solemn announcement of royal death. The sept is a place of prayer and sanctuary; Sansa Stark, after her father's arrest, visits the sept to pray for him, and later the High Septon presides over Eddard Stark's public confession on the steps of Baelor's Sept, a scene that blends religious ceremony with political theater. The Faith also administers justice through trial by combat, a practice in which the gods are called upon to decide the guilt or innocence of the accused, as when Tyrion Lannister demands a trial by combat in the Eyrie.

The Faith and the North

The Seven are a southern religion. In the North, the old gods of the forest—nameless, faceless, worshipped before weirwood trees—still hold sway. Catelyn Stark, born a Tully of Riverrun and raised in the Faith of the Seven, finds the northern godswood a dark, primal place, a stark contrast to the airy, sun-dappled sept of her childhood. For her sake, her husband Eddard Stark built a small sept at Winterfell where she could sing to the seven faces of god, but the blood of the First Men flows in the veins of the Starks, and their own gods are the old ones. This religious divide is a marker of cultural difference between the North and the South, a source of tension and misunderstanding. When Jon Snow takes his vows as a man of the Night's Watch, he chooses to say his words before a heart tree, the old gods, rather than in the sept, because the gods of the sept have nothing to do with him.

Political and Social Role

The Faith is not merely a spiritual institution; it is a pillar of the realm's political order. The High Septon crowns kings and legitimizes their rule. The Faith's hierarchy is part of the royal court; Grand Maester Pycelle, though a maester of the Citadel, is a figure of the established order that includes the Faith. The Faith also serves as a moral arbiter. When Eddard Stark confesses his treason on the steps of Baelor's Sept, the High Septon intones, "As we sin, so do we suffer," and calls upon the gods to witness the truth. The Faith's power is also economic; Littlefinger, the master of coin, notes that he has had to borrow from the Faith, and that the High Sexton haggles worse than a Dornish fishmonger. The Faith's wealth and influence make it a player in the game of thrones, a force that can be courted or coerced.

Contrast with the Old Gods and Other Beliefs

The Seven are a religion of civilization, of cities and castles, of written law and formal hierarchy. The old gods, by contrast, are the gods of the wild, of the forest, of the First Men and the children of the forest. They have no names, no priests, no temples, only the weirwood trees with their carved faces. The Dothraki, a nomadic people, have their own gods—the horse god, the Mother of Mountains—and their own prophecies, such as the stallion who mounts the world. The Faith of the Seven is one religion among many in the world of the book, but within the Seven Kingdoms, it is the established church, the faith of the throne, and its rituals and beliefs shape the lives of millions.