Heresy 196 and a look at the Wall

[Brad Stark]

The problem I have with a 'wiernet' is how much the Children have been bothered by cutting down weirwoods,  enough to start a war with men.  If all the trees are connected and everyone is inside all the trees, removing a few trees shouldn't be a big deal.

I think we are onto something with the faces of the men 'carved' into the trees.  We've heard the weirwoods before the pact didn't have faces, and the faces seem more human than Children.  So what were the Children doing with the weirwoods and what did men do that is different?

[LynnS]

6 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Fast forward a century and our grandchildren might well ask the same of Bran. Here and now we know that he has been stolen away by the faeries. The same, presumably, was true of Bloodraven, offered his heart's desire if he would only go to meet the Crow.

That's the most reasonable explanation.  I dare say that Coldhands reinforces Bran's hopes and distracts him from his suspicions when he tells Bran that the greenseer is a 'friend and a wizard'.  Yes, that's very slippery and I doubt that's coming from Brynden Rivers.  

7 hours ago, LmL said:

Those are the sorts of things I am looking for.

For the most part, I do understand the symbolism that you employ.  Although I do look for a more literal explanation;  the gates of the moon are depicted on the doors of the House of Black and White representing both fire and ice, light and dark, life and death. The gates of the moon give access to experiences that have common qualities that could be ascribed to the wiernet; whether that's in a dream or another altered state, like drugs, coma or in the case of the R'hllorists, with self-hypnosis peering into the flames.   The fact that Bran and Bloodraven can break into one of Melisandre's fire-side visions tells me that all these experiences are sole sourced.   I suspect that Llke Melisandre's ruby crystal, the Wall is a giant crystal amplifier or conduit of the astral-physical plane.  The House of Undying and the weirnet both trap and possess souls.

I'm not sure where to go with the story of two moons in the sky.  Perhaps we are talking about a ghost moon:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/10/25/ghost-moon/#.WMqQoqLauUl

it reminds me that Tyrion also sees two blood moons; one in the sky and another reflected on the water.

Dany (the moon of Drogo's life) cracks open and gives birth to dragons; she is reborn amidst smoke and salt tears.   Jon may well go into the weirnet and come out transformed by ice.  Fire represents life and his firey heart has been extinguished giving entry to the otherworld.  Death is a wall to quote Aemon. To go beyond the wall requires a portal, a means for entering and leaving.  That appears to be the weirwood/moon gates with their mouths that open to consume whomever enters.  Fire consumes, ice preserves.

6 hours ago, Black Crow said:

As to the face on the weirwoods, that's exactly what I've been arguing for some time and yes those we see are mostly human. There's an interesting moment in ADwD when Asha Greyjoy and Aly Mormont come across a remote weirwood with a non-human [Singer?] face.

 

I think most of the non-human trees have been cut down long ago.  Then there is the weirwood at Whitetree.  What face is carved on it, I wonder.  Nothing human.

 

 

[LynnS]

2 hours ago, aDanceWithFlagons said:

"I am the watcher on the walls" 

That part of the Oath could be the explanation for wall building discrepancies. The Watch wasn't originally stationed at the Wall at least the Wall as we know it today. The OG Watchmen took over the Wall and built it up over time.

Could be that the Wall was manned on both sides at the Nightfort location: the North Wall and the South Wall with one passage between. 

While the physical Wall ends before the western sea, the demarcation of the Wall's magic runs around the globe like the Arctic Circle along a specific latitude, imo. The Wall is a physical marker of the boundary like any other fence, wall or hedgerow. 

 

Interesting thoughts between the salt tears of the Gate and the Drowned men. The salt water prevents the dead reanimation. Another thought as to why Coldhands can't pass the gate under the Wall is that He is not a true wight. Since Othor and Jafer were carried across the Wall's boundary so should Coldhands be able to cross unless he is more than a black-eyed wight. He could be an Other in a dead man's body; a recycled white walker, and that's why he cannot pass. 

Interesting that oath speaks of walls (plural).  That fits with the physical wall and the curtain of light acting a two ring walls or wards. And yes I agree that the warding is a circle like the dragon constellation, swallowing it's own tail. 

I don't think the dead can pass the wall on their own devices.  And I wonder if Coldhands is connected to the Black Gate as it's gate keeper; Charon ferrying souls down the river.  

[LmL]

I have always been a fan of the idea that Moat Cailin was the original "walls" that the NW walk. Before the breaking of the arm of Dorne, I suspect the climate would have been a lot different ( not a new idea there of course), and without warm water coming from the summer see up into the narrow sea, I suspect Westeros would have been colder. There are general signs of a planet that is heating up, and of sea level rise, and this would be consistent with Earth'stone own trajectory, coming out of a Ice Age just recently (or still continuing to come out of it). It's possible that everything north of the neck would have been the cold dead lands back then, and that moat Cailin could have been the northern boundary. Currently, it exists as a strategic bulwark against the southern Invasion into the north, but before the neck was drowned, the topography would have been completely different and thus this might not have been the original design. It would be exceedingly difficult to build such a large castle with cottage size blocks of granite in a swamp comma and to me it makes more sense that Moat Cailin was built before the neck was flooded. It's still probably more likely that the night for it was the original walls walked by the Nights Watch, but moat Cailin is kind of a sneaky long-shot contender. If Winterfell represents the site where bran the Builder received help from the children of the forest, that would really only makes sense if the cold dead lands were the entire North at that point. This is during the long night anyways, so the idea of the Snow Line being south of where it is now makes a good deal of sense.

Moat Cailin is so weird and so freaky, I just don't think it was made by first men, at least not the first men we know of. It might be my favorite mystery in Westeros after the Isle of Faces.

[Black Crow]

4 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

We've heard the weirwoods before the pact didn't have faces, and the faces seem more human than Children.  So what were the Children doing with the weirwoods and what did men do that is different?

Not so, here's Maester Luwin:

No doubt the children were as frightened by the horses as the First Men were by the faces in the trees. As the First Men carved out holdfasts and farms, they cut down the faces and gave them to the fire. Horror-struck, the children went to war. The old songs say that the greenseers used dark magics to make the seas rise and sweep away the land, shattering the Arm, but it was too late to close the door. The wars went on until the earth ran red with blood of men and children both, but more children than men, for men were bigger and stronger, and wood and stone and obsidian make a poor match for bronze. Finally the wise of both races prevailed, and the chiefs and heroes of the First Men met the greenseers and wood dancers amidst the weirwood groves of a small island in the great lake called Gods Eye.
 

"There they forged the Pact. The First Men were given the coastlands, the high plains and bright meadows, the mountains and bogs, but the deep woods were to remain forever the children's, and no more weirwoods were to be put to the axe anywhere in the realm. So the gods might bear witness to the signing, every tree on the island was given a face, and afterward, the sacred order of green men was formed to keep watch over the Isle of Faces.

 

So the faces were there from the start and it was cutting them down that started the war in the first place. What is interesting that at the signing [!] of the Pact "every tree on the island was given a face". At first reading that might simply be taken as having a face carved on it, but in the context we've been discussing here I'm much more inclined to read it exactly as its written, that men were sacrificed to the trees to give each one a face.

[Black Crow]

2 hours ago, LynnS said:

That's the most reasonable explanation.  I dare say that Coldhands reinforces Bran's hopes and distracts him from his suspicions when he tells Bran that the greenseer is a 'friend and a wizard'.  Yes, that's very slippery and I doubt that's coming from Brynden Rivers.  

But it is very much Harlequin the Russian 

[LmL]

2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Not so, here's Maester Luwin:

No doubt the children were as frightened by the horses as the First Men were by the faces in the trees. As the First Men carved out holdfasts and farms, they cut down the faces and gave them to the fire. Horror-struck, the children went to war. The old songs say that the greenseers used dark magics to make the seas rise and sweep away the land, shattering the Arm, but it was too late to close the door. The wars went on until the earth ran red with blood of men and children both, but more children than men, for men were bigger and stronger, and wood and stone and obsidian make a poor match for bronze. Finally the wise of both races prevailed, and the chiefs and heroes of the First Men met the greenseers and wood dancers amidst the weirwood groves of a small island in the great lake called Gods Eye.
 

 

"There they forged the Pact. The First Men were given the coastlands, the high plains and bright meadows, the mountains and bogs, but the deep woods were to remain forever the children's, and no more weirwoods were to be put to the axe anywhere in the realm. So the gods might bear witness to the signing, every tree on the island was given a face, and afterward, the sacred order of green men was formed to keep watch over the Isle of Faces.

 

So the faces were there from the start and it was cutting them down that started the war in the first place. What is interesting that at the signing [!] of the Pact "every tree on the island was given a face". At first reading that might simply be taken as having a face carved on it, but in the context we've been discussing here I'm much more inclined to read it exactly as its written, that men were sacrificed to the trees to give each one a face.

I agree - there seems to have been some kind of massive blood sacrifice ritual on the Isle of Faces in order to give the trees faces. Without derailing the thread, I will just say that one of the conclusions I am most sure of in all of my research is that the Hammer of the waters was a meteor impact event which occurred at the time of the long night, not thousands of years before as we are told. We don't need to go into all the details, but the point is, if I am right about that, then The Pact was likely signed right after the long night, which I think makes a great deal more sense anyways because the idea of most of the first men dying during the long night, and then being saved in part by help from the children seems like a good reason for the first minute to switch religions, something that did not make that much sense otherwise. My point is here that if the trees were given faces around the time of The Pact - and we aren't told that this was the first time trees were ever given faces, just that many trees were given faces at this time, so this is obviously speculative - it may be that this was the first time any trees were given faces. I personally do not think the children were carving them before men got here, although again that's speculation. Basically, I just wanted to say that it is at least possible that whatever happened on the Isle of faces might have happened at the time of the long night and not thousands of years before, and that's it maybe that the face carving only started around the time of the long night.

[Bluetiger]

From Wikipedia: (1)

Quote

In the Ancient Egyptian and later Roman eras, it was re-discovered that adding volcanic ash to the mix allowed it to set underwater. Similarly, the Romans knew that adding horse hair made concrete less liable to crack while it hardened, and adding blood made it more frost-resistant. Crystallization of strätlingite and the introduction of pyroclastic clays creates further fracture resistance.

German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann found concrete floors, which were made of lime and pebbles, in the royal palace of Tiryns, Greece, which dates roughly to 1400–1200 BC. Lime mortars were used in Greece, Crete, and Cyprus in 800 BC. The Assyrian Jerwan Aqueduct (688 BC) made use of waterproof concrete. Concrete was used for construction in many ancient structures.

The Romans used concrete extensively from 300 BC to 476 AD, a span of more than seven hundred years. During the Roman Empire, Roman concrete (or opus caementicium) was made from quicklime, pozzolana and an aggregate of pumice. Its widespread use in many Roman structures, a key event in the history of architecture termed the Roman Architectural Revolution, freed Roman construction from the restrictions of stone and brick material and allowed for revolutionary new designs in terms of both structural complexity and dimension.

Maybe something similar happened at The Wall, either literally or speaking in terms of symbolism?

[Black Crow]

46 minutes ago, LmL said:

I personally do not think the children were carving them before men got here, although again that's speculation. Basically, I just wanted to say that it is at least possible that whatever happened on the Isle of faces might have happened at the time of the long night and not thousands of years before, and that's it maybe that the face carving only started around the time of the long night.

Nah, the history is pretty explicit about the faces being there from the beginning, but they will have been the faces of tree-huggers. What changes with the Pact is the appearance of human faces and in either case we're not talking about carving the faces

While I don't for a moment believe that the Nights King will reappear [if at all] in the form we see in the mummers' version its interesting that he's portrayed with a weirwood face

[LynnS]

4 hours ago, LmL said:

I have always been a fan of the idea that Moat Cailin was the original "walls" that the NW walk. Before the breaking of the arm of Dorne, I suspect the climate would have been a lot different ( not a new idea there of course), and without warm water coming from the summer see up into the narrow sea, I suspect Westeros would have been colder. There are general signs of a planet that is heating up, and of sea level rise, and this would be consistent with Earth'stone own trajectory, coming out of a Ice Age just recently (or still continuing to come out of it). It's possible that everything north of the neck would have been the cold dead lands back then, and that moat Cailin could have been the northern boundary. Currently, it exists as a strategic bulwark against the southern Invasion into the north, but before the neck was drowned, the topography would have been completely different and thus this might not have been the original design. It would be exceedingly difficult to build such a large castle with cottage size blocks of granite in a swamp comma and to me it makes more sense that Moat Cailin was built before the neck was flooded. It's still probably more likely that the night for it was the original walls walked by the Nights Watch, but moat Cailin is kind of a sneaky long-shot contender. If Winterfell represents the site where bran the Builder received help from the children of the forest, that would really only makes sense if the cold dead lands were the entire North at that point. This is during the long night anyways, so the idea of the Snow Line being south of where it is now makes a good deal of sense.

Moat Cailin is so weird and so freaky, I just don't think it was made by first men, at least not the first men we know of. It might be my favorite mystery in Westeros after the Isle of Faces.

I find this fascinating and a likely explanation.  I too think the snow line was much further south at one point although I think Winterfell marks the spot where the LH defeated Winter and the first Stark sacrifice was made to a weirwood with Winterfell growing up around it.  Not to forget that Moat Cailin once had 20 towers along their line of defence while the current Wall has 19.

The repeating theme of the Drunken Tower, the Children's Tower with a broken crenelation like a crown and the Gatehouse Tower with it's tree hung with ghost moss is interesting.  These seem to be the only remaining towers of the original twenty.  Then this is repeated again with the Drunken Ash, the Old Chestnut sporting Mormont's Raven and the Angry Oak tree.  Once again when Tyrion sees the three headed statue of Trios beside the fountain of the drunken god and Arya sees the temple to Trios in Braavo with it's three towers.  

What do you make of the Drunken God?  I always associate it with Garth Greenhands.

[LynnS]

20 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Nah, the history is pretty explicit about the faces being there from the beginning, but they will have been the faces of tree-huggers. What changes with the Pact is the appearance of human faces and in either case we're not talking about carving the faces

While I don't for a moment believe that the Nights King will reappear [if at all] in the form we see in the mummers' version its interesting that he's portrayed with a weirwood face

You are talking about the tree taking on the aspect of the one sacrificed to it rather than carving a likeness?  That doesn't bode well for Bran when Jon sees his face in the weirwood sapling.  Or perhaps, the 3rd eye allows you to see the one actively inhabiting the tree since greenseers can move from tree to tree? 

The mummer's version of the Night's King.... good grief!

[Black Crow]

8 minutes ago, LynnS said:

You are talking about the tree taking on the aspect of the one sacrificed to it rather than carving a likeness?  That doesn't bode well for Bran when Jon sees his face in the weirwood sapling. 

That's exactly what I'm suggesting and it may also be relevant to the face in the black gate

[GloubieBoulga]

On 13/03/2017 at 10:17 PM, ravenous reader said:

You know, don't you Gloubie, that 'weirwood' is derived from the word 'weir' which is a kind 'dam', designed to regulate the water level of a river:

Yes, and the french translator has tried to keep this sense with the word "barral" (in which, there is barrage = weir). Sadly, the wordplay with "weird" is lost, but it is very hard to keep all the puns and wordplays. 

Thanks for the links, I will read them ! 

Just for fun, I've found an unexpected association between crows and whores (we already know that they all follow the armies and come after the battle) : Crowfood and Whoresbane Umber, the Stark's bannermen the nearest of the Wall, who live at Last Hearth   (I don't know if it matches also in english, but in french the "last hearth" or "last house" is a metaphoric synonym for "death", because the "last house" of a man/woman is the cimetery)

[LynnS]

4 minutes ago, GloubieBoulga said:

Just for fun, I've found an unexpected association between crows and whores (we already know that they all follow the armies and come after the battle) : Crowfood and Whoresbane Umber, the Stark's bannermen the nearest of the Wall, who live at Last Hearth   (I don't know if it matches also in english, but in french the "last hearth" or "last house" is a metaphoric synonym for "death", because the "last house" of a man/woman is the cimetery)

Oh, that's fantastic!  Camp followers... they follow the crows.

[LmL]

31 minutes ago, LynnS said:

I find this fascinating and a likely explanation.  I too think the snow line was much further south at one point although I think Winterfell marks the spot where the LH defeated Winter and the first Stark sacrifice was made to a weirwood with Winterfell growing up around it.  Not to forget that Moat Cailin once had 20 towers along their line of defence while the current Wall has 19.

The repeating theme of the Drunken Tower, the Children's Tower with a broken crenelation like a crown and the Gatehouse Tower with it's tree hung with ghost moss is interesting.  These seem to be the only remaining towers of the original twenty.  Then this is repeated again with the Drunken Ash, the Old Chestnut sporting Mormont's Raven and the Angry Oak tree.  Once again when Tyrion sees the three headed statue of Trios beside the fountain of the drunken god and Arya sees the temple to Trios in Braavo with it's three towers.  

What do you make of the Drunken God?  I always associate it with Garth Greenhands.

Perhaps a more Odin-like version of Garth, as Odin loves that mead of poetry and any sort of magical Icelandic well water. Odin is related to green man lore, particularly the shamanic ecstasy or madness aspect (of the meanings of Odin is "mad, possessed," and in the shamanic sense). The drunkard ash tree really seems like that, since Yggy is an ash tree. 

I had not compared the MC towers to the three trees, care to illuminate?

[LmL]

8 minutes ago, GloubieBoulga said:

Yes, and the french translator has tried to keep this sense with the word "barral" (in which, there is barrage = weir). Sadly, the wordplay with "weird" is lost, but it is very hard to keep all the puns and wordplays. 

Thanks for the links, I will read them ! 

Just for fun, I've found an unexpected association between crows and whores (we already know that they all follow the armies and come after the battle) : Crowfood and Whoresbane Umber, the Stark's bannermen the nearest of the Wall, who live at Last Hearth   (I don't know if it matches also in english, but in french the "last hearth" or "last house" is a metaphoric synonym for "death", because the "last house" of a man/woman is the cimetery)

The Umbers come "down from beyond the last river," which I definitely took to mean beyond death. Crowfood has the one eye thing, and they ride in drinking, there's other stuff in that scene as well. I definitely think they represent "back from the grave" type people.

[LmL]

54 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Nah, the history is pretty explicit about the faces being there from the beginning, but they will have been the faces of tree-huggers. What changes with the Pact is the appearance of human faces and in either case we're not talking about carving the faces

Are you suggesting that the 8,00 year old oral history is unquestionable in this regard, or just that you tend to think what we hear is true in this instance?

54 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

While I don't for a moment believe that the Nights King will reappear [if at all] in the form we see in the mummers' version its interesting that he's portrayed with a weirwood face

Exactly, I don't expect a flesh and blood NK either (though we could be wrong). I find the idea of him as a presence inside the net more likely and compelling. But that's nothing I would wager or even call a hypothesis at this point, more a v.ague idea that has been occurring to me lately.  I've been thinking about people being caught in the weir and who they might be.

[GloubieBoulga]

7 minutes ago, LmL said:

The Umbers come "down from beyond the last river," which I definitely took to mean beyond death. Crowfood has the one eye thing, and they ride in drinking, there's other stuff in that scene as well. I definitely think they represent "back from the grave" type people.

Oh yes, and the river/the death are also associated with the Wall. I had seen the one-eyed and the link with BR, obviously, but I couldn't see nothing else. Now, they are the giant (bear ?) breaking his chains and returning from the death : can we take it as a clue that a horned king is dead beyond the Wall (and probably before the Wall was built) ? A (H)Other-like ? 

[Black Crow]

7 minutes ago, LmL said:

Are you suggesting that the 8,00 year old oral history is unquestionable in this regard, or just that you tend to think what we hear is true in this instance?

 

I'm suggesting that its consistent and that there's no reason to doubt it 

[LmL]

4 minutes ago, GloubieBoulga said:

Oh yes, and the river/the death are also associated with the Wall. I had seen the one-eyed and the link with BR, obviously, but I couldn't see nothing else. Now, they are the giant (bear ?) breaking his chains and returning from the death : can we take it as a clue that a horned king is dead beyond the Wall (and probably before the Wall was built) ? A (H)Other-like ? 

You mean under the see?

I tend to think that's where he is...

We've been talking about the idea of "waking giants in the earth" as in part referring to waking weirwood trees ('pale giants frozen in time'), so the giant in shattered chains speaks of a rebirth for whomever is in the weirwoodnet, the dead horned lord.