Why so many greenseers?

[Curled Finger]

8 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

I agree, especially since Bran drops the tidbit that his father wanted to tell him something, something to do with Jon. And I think we can add the "Ygritte in a pool" dream as a Ned Stark communication dream too for Jon. 

Maybe we should start a thread to classify type of book dreams

Let me get @Yaya!  If we learned nothing else from our 2016 nominations it is that LISTS ARE FUN!  

[Philokles]

Also this for Arya. Not a dream, but still relevant I'd say. Interesting that the wolf howls immediately prior to her hearing Ned.

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In the godswood she found her broomstick sword where she had left it, and carried it to the heart tree. There she knelt. Red leaves rustled. Red eyes peered inside her. The eyes of the gods. "Tell me what to do, you gods," she prayed.

For a long moment there was no sound but the wind and the water and the creak of leaf and limb. And then, far far off, beyond the godswood and the haunted towers and the immense stone walls of Harrenhal, from somewhere out in the world, came the long lonely howl of a wolf. Gooseprickles rose on Arya's skin, and for an instant she felt dizzy. Then, so faintly, it seemed as if she heard her father's voice. "When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives," he said.

"But there is no pack," she whispered to the weirwood. Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the Wall. "I'm not even me now, I'm Nan."

"You are Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the north. You told me you could be strong. You have the wolf blood in you."

"The wolf blood." Arya remembered now. "I'll be as strong as Robb. I said I would." She took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and brought it down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and she threw the pieces aside. I am a direwolf, and done with wooden teeth. (Arya X, ACOK)

 

[sweetsunray]

30 minutes ago, Horse of Kent said:

Also this for Arya. Not a dream, but still relevant I'd say. Interesting that the wolf howls immediately prior to her hearing Ned.

 

Yes. The first line spoken seems to suggest it was a memory, but the second line of Ned referring to the memory, "You told me you could be strong," is spoken like in a present conversation about a past moment. And I do think it's actually Ned's ghost speaking to Arya through the weirwood.

[Sea Dragon]

Wow. Thank you all for answering my emabarassing questions. My move is over and now I hope to keep learning more from here.

[Sea Dragon]

On 1/28/2017 at 6:24 PM, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

Welcome to the forums! To answer your OP, I think the main reason you see a lot of these threads lately is that the info in TWOIAF provides clues that some of the characters mentioned from the Dawn Age and Age of Heroes may have been greenseers, like Garth Greenhand for instance. Personally (and I might be the only person who believes this) my theory is that every single weirwood is connected to a living greenseer, in the same fashion that we find Bloodraven physically connected to a weirwood in ADWD, and this is what makes the leaves red and the sap look like blood (because it is blood). And yes, this would imply that greenseers are probably born more often than we are led to believe, but it's hard to say without more information on the exact population of the COTF over time.

 

Wow. Thank you. I will have a look soon. And thank you for the search of ice and fire site. That can be addictive

[Sea Dragon]

On 1/28/2017 at 6:49 PM, kissdbyfire said:

@Sea Dragon, welcome to the forums!

We have, as of the end of ADwD, two known and confirmed greenseers: Bloodraven and Bran. There might be more, or not. 

This is what BR tells Bran in Dance, Bran III:

"Only one man in a thousand is born a skinchanger," Lord Brynden said one day, after Bran had learned to fly, "and only one skinchanger in a thousand can be a greenseer."

"I thought the greenseers were the wizards of the children," Bran said. "The singers, I mean."

"In a sense. Those you call the children of the forest have eyes as golden as the sun, but once in a great while one is born amongst them with eyes as red as blood, or green as the moss on a tree in the heart of the forest. By these signs do the gods mark those they have chosen to receive the gift. The chosen ones are not robust, and their quick years upon the earth are few, for every song must have its balance. But once inside the wood they linger long indeed. A thousand eyes, a hundred skins, wisdom deep as the roots of ancient trees. Greenseers."

Bran did not understand, so he asked the Reeds. "Do you like to read books, Bran?" Jojen asked him.

"Some books. I like the fighting stories. My sister Sansa likes the kissing stories, but those are stupid."

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies," said Jojen. "The man who never reads lives only one. The singers of the forest had no books. No ink, no parchment, no written language. Instead they had the trees, and the weirwoods above all. When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered. All their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world. Maesters will tell you that the weirwoods are sacred to the old gods. The singers believe they are the old gods. When singers die they become part of that godhood."

Oh, and to quote more than one post, just click on the "+" to the left of the "quote" function at the bottom of the post! 

 

That line from the book I guess is what I was thinking about. The book said "one in a thousand" and I see lots of theories here that seem to include many other characters that I thought were just cool or weird, but the theories include them as greenseers. I guess I should stick to what we know of in the books. Thank you again for the replies.

[kissdbyfire]

46 minutes ago, Sea Dragon said:

That line from the book I guess is what I was thinking about. The book said "one in a thousand" and I see lots of theories here that seem to include many other characters that I thought were just cool or weird, but the theories include them as greenseers. I guess I should stick to what we know of in the books. Thank you again for the replies.

Yeah, there's lots of BR is skinchanging everyone and everything, every other person is a secret Targ, and no one is who we think they are, but they're someone else we've heard of before!

[Dorian Martell's son]

On 1/28/2017 at 11:56 AM, Sea Dragon said:

Hi guys. Long time lurker, first time poster. First I want to say that I love following along with some of these threads. You guys really opened my eyes to lots of story information I read right over. There is one thing that I see being said on here over and over and I just don't remember reading it in the books. There seems to be a lot of talk about so many more people being greenseers even though the three eyed crow tells Bran one is born hardly ever, or someting like that. Sorry, I don't have the books with me to quote from as I see other people do. I am getting ready to move.

I guess my question is why so many greenseers if they are supposed to be rare?

There aren't any human greenseers. Brynden is the last and Bran is in training. Jojen is a green dreamer and euron is a psychopath who drinks shade of the evening. 

[Sea Dragon]

20 minutes ago, Dorian Martell's son said:

There aren't any human greenseers. Brynden is the last and Bran is in training. Jojen is a green dreamer and euron is a psychopath who drinks shade of the evening. 

Thanks for answering. I think I agree with this the most now. I realized that it is best to stick with just what the books told the readers and to not invent too many new things that do not exist the way some people read them.

[Dorian Martell's son]

5 hours ago, Sea Dragon said:

Thanks for answering. I think I agree with this the most now. I realized that it is best to stick with just what the books told the readers and to not invent too many new things that do not exist the way some people read them.

Inventing is fine, but there is a rabbit hole where you end up with theories based on nothing but theories that are entirely dependent on other unproven theories 

[Coolbeard the Exile]

On 2017-01-28 at 9:19 PM, Arya_Stupid! said:

I know that some consider Euron to be a previous potential greenseer, who was 'tested' like Bran (by Bloodraven - hence Euron's personal Crow's Eye sigil) and failed or defected or something.

also i recall from TPATQ that Daemon One Eye's lover Alys (Alys Rivers i think) seemed to have some of the same types of 'seeing' abilities. Not really identical to Brans experience of his powers though. She could see things in the fires like Mel, and in Mists as well.

 

i don't really recall any other potentials aside from Jojen, but i could be forgetting some. As to the question you pose, why so many if they are so rare? I would say the same question applies to wargs and skinchangers as well, and yet we have an entire generation of Starks who have some level of the gift in the novels.

My thought is, as with the dragons growing weaker with every generation born, as the magic in the world weakened. So to, did the lines that carried those special abilities fade.  Enter GOT and something has caused the magic to begin building again, and then these magical skills (dragon taming/skinchanging/greenseeing) become more and more prevelant in the lines that would have always had the abilities in their blood.

just my thoughts, hope it helps Sea Dragon

There are a bunch of children of the forest greenseers on weirwood thrones in the cave.

[Lost Melnibonean]

1 hour ago, Coolbeard the Exile said:

There are a bunch of children of the forest greenseers on weirwood thrones in the cave.

 

Yes, and there are more... We meet the ghost of High Heart here. . .

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The next day they rode to a place called High Heart, a hill so lofty that from atop it Arya felt as though she could see half the world. Around its brow stood a ring of huge pale stumps, all that remained of a circle of once-mighty weirwoods. Arya and Gendry walked around the hill to count them. There were thirty-one, some so wide that she could have used them for a bed.

. . .

Beside the embers of their campfire, she saw Tom, Lem, and Greenbeard talking to a tiny little woman, a foot shorter than Arya and older than Old Nan, all stooped and wrinkled and leaning on a gnarled black cane. Her white hair was so long it came almost to the ground. When the wind gusted it blew about her head in a fine cloud. Her flesh was whiter, the color of milk, and it seemed to Arya that her eyes were red, though it was hard to tell from the bushes. "The old gods stir and will not let me sleep," she heard the woman say. "I dreamt I saw a shadow with a burning heart butchering a golden stag, aye. I dreamt of a man without a face, waiting on a bridge that swayed and swung. On his shoulder perched a drowned crow with seaweed hanging from his wings. I dreamt of a roaring river and a woman that was a fish. Dead she drifted, with red tears on her cheeks, but when her eyes did open, oh, I woke from terror. All this I dreamt, and more. Do you have gifts for me, to pay me for my dreams?"

Arya IV, Storm 22

So, the ghost is short, old, and white with red eyes, perhaps an albino. And she has prophetic dreams like Jojen, who we recall has eyes the color of moss. (Bran III, Clash 21) And she lives on, near, or under a hill crowned with weirwood stumps. Later, through Jaime, we learn that weirwood never rots, (Jaime, Dance) and that their magical properties apparently survive even after they are cut down (See Jaime VI, Storm 44).

Then we meet Bloodraven, the last greenseer. . .

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Before them a pale lord in ebon finery sat dreaming in a tangled nest of roots, a woven weirwood throne that embraced his withered limbs as a mother does a child.

His body was so skeletal and his clothes so rotted that at first Bran took him for another corpse, a dead man propped up so long that the roots had grown over him, under him, and through him. What skin the corpse lord showed was white, save for a bloody blotch that crept up his neck onto his cheek. His white hair was fine and thin as root hair and long enough to brush against the earthen floor. Roots coiled around his legs like wooden serpents. One burrowed through his breeches into the desiccated flesh of his thigh, to emerge again from his shoulder. A spray of dark red leaves sprouted from his skull, and grey mushrooms spotted his brow. A little skin remained, stretched across his face, tight and hard as white leather, but even that was fraying, and here and there the brown and yellow bone beneath was poking through.

"Are you the three-eyed crow?" Bran heard himself say. A three-eyed crow should have three eyes. He has only one, and that one red. Bran could feel the eye staring at him, shining like a pool of blood in the torchlight. Where his other eye should have been, a thin white root grew from an empty socket, down his cheek, and into his neck.

Bran II, Dance 13

So, greenseers sit in tangled nests of weirwood roots from which they receive nourishments. And Bloodraven, like the ghost is a small albino with a red eye.

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"In a sense. Those you call the children of the forest have eyes as golden as the sun, but once in a great while one is born amongst them with eyes as red as blood, or green as the moss on a tree in the heart of the forest. By these signs do the gods mark those they have chosen to receive the gift. The chosen ones are not robust, and their quick years upon the earth are few, for every song must have its balance. But once inside the wood they linger long indeed. A thousand eyes, a hundred skins, wisdom deep as the roots of ancient trees. Greenseers. "

Bran III, Dance 34

And now we see that greenseers are marked by red or moss-colored eyes, although Jojen insisted he was not a greenseer, but merely possessed of the greensight (Bran I, Storm 9). But it seems likely that the difference between a greenseer and a person with the greensight is more a matter of degree, rather than a different category entirely. We are told greenseers are not robust, and we know that neither Bloodraven, the ghost, and Jojen are robust.

Now here’s what piqued my interest. . .  The ghost is old, and Bloodraven tells us that greenseers don’t live long until they join with the wood. So, the ghost of High Heart must have herself a little weirwood nest under the hill, eh?

Is Mother Mole just a woods witch? Or is she a greenseer?

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One day, as they fled, a rider came galloping through the woods on a gaunt white horse, shouting that they all should make for the Milkwater, that the Weeper was gathering warriors to cross the Bridge of Skulls and take the Shadow Tower. Many followed him; more did not. Later, a dour warrior in fur and amber went from cookfire to cookfire, urging all the survivors to head north and take refuge in the valley of the Thenns. Why he thought they would be safe there when the Thenns themselves had fled the place Varamyr never learned, but hundreds followed him. Hundreds more went off with the woods witch who'd had a vision of a fleet of ships coming to carry the freefolk south. "We must seek the sea," cried Mother Mole, and her followers turned east.

Prologue, Dance

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Jon ignored him. "We have been questioning the wildlings we brought back from the grove. Several of them told an interesting tale, of a woods witch called Mother Mole."

"Mother Mole?" said Bowen Marsh. "An unlikely name."

"Supposedly she made her home in a burrow beneath a hollow tree. Whatever the truth of that, she had a vision of a fleet of ships arriving to carry the free folk to safety across the narrow sea. Thousands of those who fled the battle were desperate enough to believe her. Mother Mole has led them all to Hardhome, there to pray and await salvation from across the sea."

Othell Yarwyck scowled. "I'm no ranger, but … Hardhome is an un-holy place, it's said. Cursed. Even your uncle used to say as much, Lord Snow. Why would they go there?"

Jon had a map before him on the table. He turned it so they could see. “Hardhome sits on a sheltered bay and has a natural harbor deep enough for the biggest ships afloat. Wood and stone are plentiful near there. The waters teem with fish, and there are colonies of seals and sea cows close at hand."

"All that's true, I don't doubt," said Yarwyck, "but it's not a place I'd want to spend a night. You know the tale."

He did. Hardhome had been halfway toward becoming a town, the only true town north of the Wall, until the night six hundred years ago when hell had swallowed it. Its people had been carried off into slavery or slaughtered for meat, depending on which version of the tale you believed, their homes and halls consumed in a conflagration that burned so hot that watchers on the Wall far to the south had thought the sun was rising in the north. Afterward ashes rained down on haunted forest and Shivering Sea alike for almost half a year. Traders reported finding only nightmarish devastation where Hardhome had stood, a landscape of charred trees and burned bones, waters choked with swollen corpses, blood-chilling shrieks echoing from the cave mouths that pocked the great cliff that loomed above the settlement.

Six centuries had come and gone since that night, but Hardhome was still shunned. The wild had reclaimed the site, Jon had been told, but rangers claimed that the overgrown ruins were haunted by ghouls and demons and burning ghosts with an unhealthy taste for blood. "It is not the sort of refuge I'd chose either," Jon said, "but Mother Mole was heard to preach that the free folk would find salvation where once they found damnation."

Septon Cellador pursed his lips. "Salvation can be found only through the Seven. This witch has doomed them all."

"And saved the Wall, mayhaps," said Bowen Marsh. "These are enemies we speak of. Let them pray amongst the ruins, and if their gods send ships to carry them off to a better world, well and good. In this world I have no food to feed them."

Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand. "Cotter Pyke's galleys sail past Hardhome from time to time. He tells me there is no shelter there but the caves. The screaming caves, his men call them. Mother Mole and those who followed her will perish there, of cold and starvation. Hundreds of them. Thousands."

Jon VIII, Dance 39

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At Hardhome, with six ships. Wild seas. Blackbird lost with all hands, two Lyseni ships driven aground on Skane, Talon taking water. Very bad here. Wildlings eating their own dead. Dead things in the woods. Braavosi captains will only take women, children on their ships. Witch women call us slavers. Attempt to take Storm Crow defeated, six crew dead, many wildlings. Eight ravens left. Dead things in the water. Send help by land, seas wracked by storms. From Talon, by hand of Maester Harmune.

Jon XII, Dance 58

[Lost Melnibonean]

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On either side of them, in niches carved from the stone, skulls looked down on them. Bran saw a bear skull and a wolf skull, half a dozen human skulls and near as many giants. All the rest were small, queerly formed. Children of the forest. The roots had grown in and around and through them, every one. A few had ravens perched atop them, watching them pass with bright black eyes.

Bran II, Dance 13

So, greenseers have been men, and singers, and giants, and at least one bear and one wolf?