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In a Grove of Ash (Azor Ahai Goes into the Weirwoodnet)


LmL

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1 minute ago, LmL said:

Which is why Qarth kind of works well as "Dawn Age Planetos." The dragon incubate in the moon city, after following the comet there (so it's like the comet is striking the moon city). The magicians / wise men seek dragons and summon Dany and the dragons down to Qarth, where they meet the gamut of symbol representations, as we've said. 

What do you think?

A major symbol of Qarth that nobody has come up with a convincing explanation for are the three walls of the city. 

 

There is a tight succession of threes. Dany sends three blood riders out. They find two more dead cities, so there is a total of three dead cities. Then one comes back with the three seekers, and then, yes, the three walls. I got nothing, other than he really wants to hammer us with threes here, so we are ready for the Child of Three prophecy, when it comes.

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3 minutes ago, Durran Durrandon said:

There is a tight succession of threes. Dany sends three blood riders out. They find two more dead cities, so there is a total of three dead cities. Then one comes back with the three seekers, and then, yes, the three walls. I got nothing, other than he really wants to hammer us with threes here, so we are ready for the Child of Three prophecy, when it comes.

Again there are so many examples that is becomes daunting to decipher - so many threes. Fortunately, there is plenty of symbolism in ASOIAF, and for the most part I can simply focus on the things I understand well and avoid the things I don't until they become clear to me. There are always many examples of any given symbolic theme or archetype, so if you miss some scenes or symbols you can still put things together. There are a lot of ways at arriving at similar conclusions, as evidenced by the forum. 

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19 minutes ago, Durran Durrandon said:

I didn't take it as a Garden of Eden reference, but that is interesting. I rather saw her incubating her people in the moonshell egg. The Garden of Eden reference might work through. She has a very Luciferian moment, visualizing herself riding a dragon over the Seven Kingdoms  and reaching up to touch the comet, towards the middle of the chapter.

The 'peach' not the apple may be the forbidden fruit (e.g Renly vs. Stannis, Littlefinger vs. Sansa).  I discussed various peach allusions on the poetry thread

Three people have comet fantasies like that:  Dany, Arya, and Bran.

10 minutes ago, LmL said:

A major symbol of Qarth that nobody has come up with a convincing explanation for are the three walls of the city. 

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"Qarth is the greatest city that ever was or ever will be," Pyat Pree had told her, back amongst the bones of Vaes Tolorro. "It is the center of the world, the gate between north and south, the bridge between east and west, ancient beyond memory of man and so magnificent that Saathos the Wise put out his eyes after gazing upon Qarth for the first time, because he knew that all he saw thereafter should look squalid and ugly by comparison."

Dany took the warlock's words well salted, but the magnificence of the great city was not to be denied. Three thick walls encircled Qarth, elaborately carved. The outer was red sandstone, thirty feet high and decorated with animals: snakes slithering, kites flying, fish swimming, intermingled with wolves of the red waste and striped zorses and monstrous elephants. The middle wall, forty feet high, was grey granite alive with scenes of war: the clash of sword and shield and spear, arrows in flight, heroes at battle and babes being butchered, pyres of the dead. The innermost wall was fifty feet of black marble, with carvings that made Dany blush until she told herself that she was being a fool. She was no maid; if she could look on the grey wall's scenes of slaughter, why should she avert her eyes from the sight of men and women giving pleasure to one another?

The outer gates were banded with copper, the middle with iron; the innermost were studded with golden eyes. All opened at Dany's approach. As she rode her silver into the city, small children rushed out to scatter flowers in her path. They wore golden sandals and bright paint, no more.

 

I think @GloubieBoulga had a theory on the three walls, but I'm too tired to search for the reference now!  Maybe she will oblige...

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19 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

Three four people have comet fantasies like that:  Dany, Arya, and Bran AND LML

 

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9 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

I think @GloubieBoulga had a theory on the three walls, but I'm too tired to search for the reference now!  Maybe she will oblige...

In "Heresy about the Wall". I was making an inventory of other walls in the saga, that could help to make a bit light on the Wall. For Qarth, I noted : 

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I always wonder about these 3 walls and I suspect they are telling a particular story. I have no answer yet, but we can note some elements : the animals could be a transposition of "blazes" of Westeros (not exactly blazes but representativ animals, I mean) : snakes for Dorne, kites for Vale (and perhaps also the stag of Baratheon, because in french a kite is a bird of prey but also a "cerf-volant" - cerf = stag - and in french royal mythology, linked to the wild hunt, the stag wears very often wings), fishes for Riverlands, red wolves for the North (and also the Lannister, I suspect, Stark and Lannister both are linked to predators and the red is a Lannister's color), and elephants instead mammouths for beyond the Wall. 

The middle wall wear the colors of Winterfell, "grey granite", and is associated with very violents war's scenes ("clash of swords", it remains nothing ?^^). The slaughters scenes themselves recalls some westerosis wars : "arrows in flught" => I think to BR killing Daemon Blackfyre and his sons; "babes being butchered" => babies Aegon and Rhaenys with Gregor and Amory Lorch; "heroes at battle" => Rhaegar and Robert at the Trident (this isn't an exhaustive example ^^); pyres of the dead => pyre of Rhaegar. For me, the idea is that the first reason of Winterfell was a war, and same reason for the Wall. And a war between humans, not a war against CotF, or Giants, nor the legendary Long Night.

But curiously, the black color of the 3rd wall representing men and women making love could be a Long Night too : a bit disturbing, no ? Ok, let's speculate there is also a love story at the origins of the Wall and Winterfell. 

In one word, where the white walls of Vaes Tolorro could represent the Wall as a tomb, the 3 walls of Qarth could be a metaphor for the story of the Wall (and Winterfell, because the 2 are linked).

 

 

I could add now that the "pyre of the dead" are also an obligation beyond the wall because of the Others, so this imagery could represent more than only Rhaegar's pyre. 
"Babes being butchered" is a theme we find throw all the saga, so I wouldn't surprised if we would find it also at the origins of Winterfell (I evokes the possibility discussing about the scene of the wolfhead-man having a leg of lamb as a scepter in Dany's vision of HoTU - oh wait, the HOTU is in Qarth, too)

About the "love story", I think now there isn't only one, but two at least + some other without reciprocity, and "Brandon the Builder" (= the greenseer at the origin of the Wall and Winterfell) was the observer of the loves stories, and the hopeless lover in the same time. The black is the color of the bastardry... and of the crows and ravens. Concerning the golden eyes of the 3rd wall, the wolf Summer has golden eyes, and If I recall well, Nymeria, Lady and Grey Wind too, but Summer is the most intelligent of the direwolves and his eyes are his remarkable physicall specificity. 

Described as the "center of the world", Qarth is a kind of Wall or Winterfell, as "frontier" between many world (for Winterfell and the Wall, this is the frontier between living and dead kingdoms). 

To finish, at Qarth, Drogon burns a blue heart and the Undying who have many common things with greenseers = the chapter with the Undying foreshadows (imo) the destruction of the Heart of Winter. 

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5 minutes ago, GloubieBoulga said:

To finish, at Qarth, Drogon burns a blue heart and the Undying who have many common things with greenseers = the chapter with the Undying foreshadows (imo) the destruction of the Heart of Winter. 

This last bit seems very solid, I don't know what else it could be talking about. Somehow I've never thought about that way, but you've got to be right. 

One thing about characterizing Qarth as a whole - it is the master of the Jade gates, and the entrance to the Jade Sea, which they dominate. That's all green see metaphor talk, so this is a city which is a gate to the weirwoodnet in some sense. Those pureborn command the navy, now that I recall, so we have the dreaming old men on ancestral wooden thrones who control the Jade (green) see.

The only match I can find for red --> grey --> black is this passage, one of my favorites, but I do not know if it's coincidence or not:

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Jon Snow turned away. The last light of the sun had begun to fade. He watched the cracks along the Wall go from red to grey to black, from streaks of fire to rivers of black ice. Down below, Lady Melisandre would be lighting her nightfire and chanting, Lord of Light, defend us, for the night is dark and full of terrors.

"Winter is coming," Jon said at last, breaking the awkward silence, "and with it the white walkers. The Wall is where we stop them. The Wall was made to stop them … but the Wall must be manned. This discussion is at an end. We have much to do before the gate is opened.

 

 

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13 minutes ago, LmL said:

One thing about characterizing Qarth as a whole - it is the master of the Jade gates, and the entrance to the Jade Sea, which they dominate. That's all green see metaphor talk, so this is a city which is a gate to the weirwoodnet in some sense. Those pureborn command the navy, now that I recall, so we have the dreaming old men on ancestral wooden thrones who control the Jade (green) see.

The only match I can find for red --> grey --> black is this passage, one of my favorites, but I do not know if it's coincidence or not:

 

I don't think it is. Those walls are pretty heavy on the ol' moon destruction thang. 

You have the red sandstone and cooler walls. I wasn't able to find any other reference to any structure built of red sandstone in the entirety of the extended publications. But we do have red sandstone Mountains of Dorne. And the Red Viper was fostered at Sandstone, seat of House Qorgyle whose vigil is 3 black scorpions on red. Similarly, Riverrun is a sandstone structure built on the Red Fork (and the Green?) of the Trident. Consider the animals on the walls too: snakes are slithering (and the HOTU is described as coiled like a snake, a pre-destruction moon image), then kites fly (like the moon meteors down to earth) before we finally see fish swimming (like the moon meteors landing in the sea). Not entirely sure what to make of the wolves, zorses and elephants: wolves as in the direwolf of House Stark makes the most sense. The elephants to me invoke images of Volantis and thus the Valyrian freehold and thus dragons. The zorses as black and white horses - if entering the wwnet is riding a horse potentially we have people who rode both the black tree and the white tree? Reaching I know, but I tried haha.

Moving on to the grey granite wall. The only consistent structure for this is Winterfell. This would makes sense given the images of war we see on this wall - it's the War for the Dawn. Moreover, it is banded with iron, invoking the metals of winter - dark and strong to fight against the cold. Also, George is very careful with his use of iron vs steel in the Prologue of AGOT; Royce's steel sword is no protection against the cold of the Others, instead splintering like a tree struck by lightning (ooh ice lightning again). By contrast, Will is comforted by the taste of cold iron in his mouth.

Finally we have black marble and a gate studded with gold eyes. References to back marble are, again, few and far between. There's a black marble Valyrian sphinx guarding the small council chamber and Ser Gregor's head is placed on a black marble plinth when presented to Dorne. Marble structure more generally tend to be associated with ice - the Eyrie is built almost entirely of blie-veined white marble, Whitewalls is built of gold-veined white marble and the Wall is as white and smooth as marble after it kills Jarl's climbing team in ASOS. The heroes of Qarth are made from white and Green marble - icy greenseers? There's a lot more marble but I'm on the bus to work right now so can't classify it all fully but a brief look suggests iciness.

I have actually been looking at eye colour recently and thought gold eyes and yellow eyes might be similar. Interestingly, it isn't. Gold eyes are associated with Tywin  (The solar king), the dragons (Rhaegal and Meraxes once, Viserion numerous times and, although I can't recall it being mentioned, I presume golden Dragon Sunfyre), CotF, the people of Naath (who have an island seemingly protected by god) and the Lengii (who are associated with demons). The dissolves also get a golden eye mention: Grey Wind and Lady both have gold eyes, Nymeria has yellow eyes like golden coins (i.e. dragons) and Summer... Well Summer has yellow eyes until Bran's fall and coma dream and then they turn gold... 

Is this wall the union of ice and fire transformation? Ice marble turned black by the Sun's fire? It certainly fits with Jon Snow's streaks of fire to rivers of black ice thing.

I would write more but I think work may object to me being late on the grounds of "too busy with ASOIAF".

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6 minutes ago, Archmaester_Aemma said:

There's a black marble Valyrian sphinx guarding (...)

I think you have reached some very interesting connection here : the sphinx is the "riddle and the riddler", and so could be the greenseer ^^

 

1 hour ago, LmL said:

The only match I can find for red --> grey --> black is this passage, one of my favorites, but I do not know if it's coincidence or not:

Good catch ! As @Archmaester_Aemma wrote it, I don't think it is a coincidence to find these colors : red, grey and black. For me, here, the grey is also an alteration of the white, and red-white-black are the three canon colors for ancient alchemy (when people wanted to change metal in gold, and practiced alchemy like magic art). 

But the red -> grey -> black is directly linked to the arrival of the Long Night (just after, Jon remembers "Winter is coming"). After your post, I was wondering if there was also a possibility to read the reverse, I mean : black -> grey -> red = love's stories (like Cersei + Jaime, for example) -> war (the war of the 5 kings and of different legitimacy) -> the new world after the peace was made (a peace "à la Tywin" ?) is blood tainted (also a result of red/purple- wedding), and finally with poor value with the "copper" (as Renly described like "copper" by Donal Noye : bright but only illusion). From conception to birth, great violence, it seems ! 

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5 hours ago, GloubieBoulga said:

I think you have reached some very interesting connection here : the sphinx is the "riddle and the riddler", and so could be the greenseer ^^

I didn't even notice that haha that's really interesting...

 

5 hours ago, GloubieBoulga said:

But the red -> grey -> black is directly linked to the arrival of the Long Night (just after, Jon remembers "Winter is coming"). After your post, I was wondering if there was also a possibility to read the reverse, I mean : black -> grey -> red = love's stories (like Cersei + Jaime, for example) -> war (the war of the 5 kings and of different legitimacy) -> the new world after the peace was made (a peace "à la Tywin" ?) is blood tainted (also a result of red/purple- wedding), and finally with poor value with the "copper" (as Renly described like "copper" by Donal Noye : bright but only illusion). From conception to birth, great violence, it seems ! 

We could even take it further by adding in the Heart of Winter and I think it gets even... cooler.

Reading the walls from the outside in, you have the moon meteors,  a war, a fire transformed iciness  (I think associated with magic) and lastly the Heart of Winter.

Emanating outwards we have: Daenerys who destroys the Heart (of Winter) ==> fire-transformed icy marble ==> a war linked to WF implying the War for the Dawn ==> moon meteor metaphors (bear in mind that Dany leaves by ship, becoming a sea dragon, and one of the first scenes of her as a sea dragon has sun-and-moon coloured Viserion and summer-and-fall coloured Rhaegal trying to get on top of each other during playwrights). 

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7 hours ago, Archmaester_Aemma said:

Finally we have black marble and a gate studded with gold eyes. References to back marble are, again, few and far between. There's a black marble Valyrian sphinx guarding the small council chamber and Ser Gregor's head is placed on a black marble plinth when presented to Dorne. Marble structure more generally tend to be associated with ice - the Eyrie is built almost entirely of blie-veined white marble, Whitewalls is built of gold-veined white marble and the Wall is as white and smooth as marble after it kills Jarl's climbing team in ASOS. The heroes of Qarth are made from white and Green marble - icy greenseers? There's a lot more marble but I'm on the bus to work right now so can't classify it all fully but a brief look suggests iciness.".

Isn't the Starry Sept made of black marble?

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1 hour ago, Durran Durrandon said:

Isn't the Starry Sept made of black marble?

Indeed, that's the first thing that leapt to my mind. I like the idea that black mar me could be synonymous with black ice, since ice and marble are usually thought of as white and both are used extensively to convey icy / Others symbolism. That fits well with the iron, i like that @Archmaester_Aemma. The general sequence you've outlined fits well, and it gels with my notion of Qarth representing the pre-LN Planetos. 

White and green marble heroes - definitely more greenseer talk, and possibly greenseers turning to Others, yes. I wonder if the Others are merely part of the Qarth symbolism or the main part. 

One thing that's interesting - the Undying seem to represent Others, but they want Danys dragons, and not to kill them, but to use them. Could the others make use of the Dragons? Only if they wighted one right? Of course drogon seems to be the winner in their confrontation, so it's not an out-and-out foreshadowing of the others making a wight dragon... but just the fact that the creatures of blue shadow think they can control and harness the power of a dragon is interesting, when taken in light of the comparison between the undying and the others.

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Spoiler

If you can believe spoilers, that wight-ice-dragon is literally what's going to happen in the TV series

I accidentally found a pretty intricate hypothesis on reddit, some time ago, that posited that the roots of the oily black stone is that it is corrupted (magically corrupted, via  correspondence or entanglement) pearl. That is, the Pearl Emperor and his descendants actually drew power from his huge palanquin/throne -- this object is probably a metaphor of some sort -- which was made of 'pearl.'  Pearl in this case being white moon rocks. When the LN fucked everything up, all that pure white goodness turned evil and black. Dawn being an exception. 

This may be total malarky, but the core idea is that the GEOTD was an ice-associated civilisation, which the BSE then usurped and corrupted with fire and dragons (comets and moon shards). Which leads me to my point: that iciness wants to reclaim its power from those flame-wielding bastards. 

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8 hours ago, Durran Durrandon said:

Isn't the Starry Sept made of black marble?

 

6 hours ago, LmL said:

Indeed, that's the first thing that leapt to my mind. I like the idea that black mar me could be synonymous with black ice, since ice and marble are usually thought of as white and both are used extensively to convey icy / Others symbolism. That fits well with the iron, i like that @Archmaester_Aemma. The general sequence you've outlined fits well, and it gels with my notion of Qarth representing the pre-LN Planetos. 

I did mean to mention it but completely forgot because it turns out buses are not great places for typing up ASOIAF material on your mobile - who knew?

The Faith itself has quite a few icy ties too as crystals are pretty heavily ice associated: the Wall is consistently described as crystalline, the Others' swords look like a shard of blue crystal, and Dany drinks shade of the evening from a crystal glass presented on a silver platter by a dwarf dressed in blue and purple, to name a few. So having this ice represented as black marble in Oldtown, the site of Aegon I Targaryen being anointed in the Faith, home to the Hightowers and potential GEotD trading post, makes sense to me.

There appear to be a lot of other LB-y symbolism around the Great Sept of Baelor i.e. the untransformed ice temple at the site of a dragon landing. There are multiple occasions that it kind of creates bloodstone: Arya gets blood on the statue of Baelor climbing to see Ned's head stump bleed all over its steps. Then Cersei bleeds her moon blood all over the Mother's Altar, and she gets bloody feet doing her walk of shame from the sept to the Red Keep: bloody feet from the ice temple to the dragon's landing castle that looks red as blood when it rains. And there's an awful lot of singing reaching for the stars, candles twinkling like stars and sunlight blazing off crystal towers around the Battle of the Blackwater.

Another black marble structure I forgot about is the labyrinthine Guildhall of the Alchemists, found on the Street of Sisters i.e. just below the Great Sept of Baelor. Does this kind of complete the set of "magicks", for want of a better word? Fire-transformed ice as the creation point of the fiery jade demon wildfire (which has to link to greenseeing magic in some capacity, surely)?

6 hours ago, LmL said:

One thing that's interesting - the Undying seem to represent Others, but they want Danys dragons, and not to kill them, but to use them. Could the others make use of the Dragons? Only if they wighted one right? Of course drogon seems to be the winner in their confrontation, so it's not an out-and-out foreshadowing of the others making a wight dragon... but just the fact that the creatures of blue shadow think they can control and harness the power of a dragon is interesting, when taken in light of the comparison between the undying and the others.

Ngl, now you've mentioned it I want this. Bring on the ice dragons! (TWOIAF compares ice dragons to whales and leviathans, just saying. Not entirely relevant, but cool.)

Having gone back and re-read the end of Dany IV, ACOK, the Undying's focus appears to be on Dany.

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Ten thousand slaves lifted bloodstained hands as she raced by on her silver, riding like the wind. "Mother!" they cried. "Mother, mother!" They were reaching for her, touching her, tugging at her cloak, the hem of her skirt, her foot, her leg, her breast. They wanted her, needed her, the fire, the life, and Dany gasped and opened her arms to give herself to them . . .

But then black wings buffeted her round the head, and a scream of fury cut the indigo air, and suddenly the visions were gone, ripped away, and Dany's gasp turned to horror. The Undying were all around her, blue and cold, whispering as they reached for her, pulling, stroking, tugging at her clothes, touching her with their dry cold hands, twining their fingers through her hair. All the strength had left her limbs. She could not move. Even her heart had ceased to beat. She felt a hand on her bare breast, twisting her nipple. Teeth found the soft skin of her throat. A mouth descended on one eye, licking, sucking, biting . . .

So beyond all the LB symbolism (dragon shrieking, Dany's ecstasy and horror, and the places the last three Undying are groping), I don't think it's 100% certain whether they're going for the dragons, Dany or using Dany to get the dragons.

What I do find really interesting is the weirwood symbolism. ETA 1: I wrote this sentence before i had actually fully gone through and selected my symbolism search terms..... Changing to freaking awesome! Anyway, within  the vision:

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Ten thousand slaves lifted bloodstained hands...

But mostly this. Look what happens to the Undying when they get burned:

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Perched above her, the dragon spread his wings and tore at the terrible dark heart, ripping the rotten flesh to ribbons (1), and when his head snapped forward, fire flew from his open jaws, bright and hot. She could hear the shrieks of the Undying as they burned, their high thin papery voices crying out in tongues long dead (2). Their flesh was crumbling parchment, their bones dry wood (3)  soaked in tallow. They danced as the flames consumed them; they staggered and writhed and spun (4) and raised blazing hands on high (5), their fingers bright as torches.

These are my highlight search terms/themes.

1) Ribbons of flesh and cutting things to ribbons:

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a) Arya climbed. Up in the kingdom of the leaves, she unsheathed and for a time forgot them all, Ser Amory and the Mummers and her father's men alike (reminiscent of Jon's black ice, burning sword dream), losing herself in the feel of rough wood beneath the soles of her feet and the swish of sword through air. A broken branch became Joffrey. She struck at it until it fell away. The queen and Ser Ilyn and Ser Meryn and the Hound were only leaves, but she killed them all as well, slashing them to wet green ribbons. (ACOK, Arya IX)

b )  (Sansa's first moon blood riot dream)  The knife plunged into her belly and tore and tore and tore, until there was nothing left of her down there but shiny wet ribbons. (ACOK, Sansa IV)

c) The smell of him made her wrinkle her nose. "Take the quarrel out of him," she commanded. "This is the King's Hand!" And my father. My lord father. Should I scream and tear my hair? They said Catelyn Stark had clawed her own face to bloody ribbons when the Freys slew her precious Robb. Would you like that, Father? she wanted to ask him. Or would you want me to be strong? (AFFC, Cersei I)

d) They had a restless night. Thrice Brienne woke. Once when the rain began, and once at a creak that made her think Nimble Dick was creeping in to kill her. The second time, she woke with knife in hand, but it was nothing. In the darkness of the cramped little cabin, it took her a moment to remember that Nimble Dick was dead. (Resurrection symbolism? A la Dolorous Edd's sarcasm about being dead being no excuse for not working?) When she finally drifted back to sleep, she dreamed about the men she'd killed. They danced around her, mocking her, pinching at her as she slashed at them with her sword. She cut them all to bloody ribbons, yet still they swarmed around her . . . Shagwell, Timeon, and Pyg, aye, but Randyll Tarly too, and Vargo Hoat, and Red Ronnet Connington. Ronnet had a rose between his fingers. When he held it out to her, she cut his hand off. / 

/ She woke sweating, and spent the rest of the night huddled under her cloak, listening to rain pound against the deck over her head. It was a wild night. From time to time she heard the sound of distant thunder, and thought of the Braavosi ship that had sailed upon the evening tide. (Brienne V, AFFC)

There does appear to be other cool ribbon symbolism around water and mist and stuff that I am going to have to look into now I am aware of it, but it's not really relevant here. What is clear is that all of these scenes are drenched with exactly the kind of "whoops, looks like I'm busy killing my friends/allies" dreaming/imagery associated with BSE/AA dreams (as in Jon's burning sword atop the Wall dream).
ETA 2 going into the symbolism a little more:
a) Arya has ascended into the kingdom of the leaves, which I think I'm right in saying embodies the celestial realm. Presumably, this is also the domain of the weirwood? And she busily starts hacking away and slashing things to ribbons. so b ) moon maiden Sansa getting shredded for her moon blood is associated with someone in the kingdom of leaves busy hacking away. So this is yet another suggestion of naughty greenseers ruining everything for everyone. c) I'm reminded of the scratches across the face of god here. d) A list of people who just won't die or stay dead, associated with the presentation of a romantic rose by kissed-by-fire Red Ronnet which is also the iron rose of war, for which the poor guy loses a hand. and this is when Brienne wakes up for the third and final time - after slicing off the end of someone's arm.

2) Kinda reminded me of Mirri and her ululating wail on Drogo's pyre, and of Coldhands apparent death ritual on the elk.

3) Their bones are wood, people! This rings a bell....

5) Yes, it is out of order but that's on purpose. Because, hey, the blue ice people who have wooden bones are running around with their hands on fire. Kinda like a tree that's been set on fire, or a tree whose bloodstained hands look like bits of flame. Remind you of anything? I mean, whew, I'm really struggling...

4) So the weirwood Undying are dancing, writhing and spinning in the flames which reminded me of:

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The tree had been dead a long time, but it seemed to live again in the fire, as fiery dancers woke within each stick of wood to whirl and spin in their glowing gowns of yellow, red, and orange. (ACOK, Jon VII)

And whaddya know? Dany also hired these dancers for her alchemical wedding:

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The flames writhed before her like the women who had danced at her wedding, whirling and singing and spinning their yellow and orange and crimson veils, fearsome to behold, yet lovely, so lovely, alive with heat. Dany opened her arms to them, her skin flushed and glowing. 

Boy, these flames really know how to put on a show. I've italicised Dany opening her arms to them because she does this as well to the Undying: "They wanted her, needed her, the fire, the life, and Dany gasped and opened her arms to give herself to them . ."  so more parallels in word choice and imagery.

So, The ice people, who have been dead for a long time and are currently appearing to symbolise bone and fire i.e. weirwood trees, are dancing like a tree that has been dead a long time and is in the process of being resurrected, and this is associated with a wedding and the transformative union of the sun and the moon.

I feel like I may have stumbled across something here........

ETA 3: In light of this, I saw a couple of throwaway lines with reference to indigo, which with hindsight may not be so throwaway.

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Below her the world turned from black to indigo to green as dawn crept across fields and forests. (AGOT, Cat VII)

Dawn and Qhorin Halfhand arrived together. The black stones had turned to grey and the eastern sky had gone indigo when Stonesnake spied the rangers below, wending their way upward. (ACOK, Jon VII)

So, potentially, we have associating with dawn in the context of green(-seeing zombies). If the indigo Undying have symbolically turned into weirwoods by coming into contact with dragons, then we have indigo as a herald of the dawn, in a sense. I am reminded of this line from Arya IV, ACOK:

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Arya saw a tree consumed, the flames creeping across its branches until it stood against the night in robes of living orange.

Coming from a chapter that is so rich in LB symbolism, I think it's pretty noteworthy.

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21 hours ago, LmL said:

Three four people have comet fantasies like that:  Dany, Arya, and Bran AND LML

You mean five people...Dany, Arya, Bran, LmL --  and the devil's lovable secretary muse, a starry-eyed convert, RR!  :)

20 hours ago, GloubieBoulga said:

But curiously, the black color of the 3rd wall representing men and women making love could be a Long Night too : a bit disturbing, no ? Ok, let's speculate there is also a love story at the origins of the Wall and Winterfell. 

In one word, where the white walls of Vaes Tolorro could represent the Wall as a tomb, the 3 walls of Qarth could be a metaphor for the story of the Wall (and Winterfell, because the 2 are linked).

I think you are right about the tragic love story at the origins of the Wall and Winterfell.  Moreover, I suspect, as you've been suggesting all along, that it involves a 'bastard' in the Stark lineage!  Remember, the 'black wall' of the encroaching storm at sea, the 'black bastard creeping up behind' Tyrion and the rest on the ship which Tyrion refers to as a 'bar sinister'.  Could that 'black wall' be related to the 'black marble' imagery elsewhere?

@LmL  In that same scene, the sea is transformed into a 'dragonglass sea' -- is that similar to 'black marble'?

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A Dance with Dragons - Tyrion IX

In the end, they did not drown … though there were times when the prospect of a nice, peaceful drowning had a certain appeal. The storm raged for the rest of that day and well into the night. Wet winds howled around them and waves rose like the fists of drowned giants to smash down on their decks. Above, they learned later, a mate and two sailors were swept overboard, the ship's cook was blinded when a kettle of hot grease flew up into his face, and the captain was thrown from the sterncastle to the main deck so violently he broke both legs. Below, Crunch howled and barked and snapped at Penny, and Pretty Pig began to shit again, turning the cramped, damp cabin into a sty. Tyrion managed to avoid retching his way through all of this, chiefly thanks to the lack of wine. Penny was not so fortunate, but he held her anyway as the ship's hull creaked and groaned alarmingly around them, like a cask about to burst.

Nearby midnight the winds finally died away, and the sea grew calm enough for Tyrion to make his way back up onto deck. What he saw there did not reassure him. The cog was drifting on a sea of dragonglass beneath a bowl of stars, but all around the storm raged on. East, west, north, south, everywhere he looked, the clouds rose up like black mountains, their tumbled slopes and collossal cliffs alive with blue and purple lightning. No rain was falling, but the decks were slick and wet underfoot.

Tyrion could hear someone screaming from below, a thin, high voice hysterical with fear. He could hear Moqorro too. The red priest stood on the forecastle facing the storm, his staff raised above his head as he boomed a prayer. Amidships, a dozen sailors and two of the fiery fingers were struggling with tangled lines and sodden canvas, but whether they were trying to raise the sail again or pull it down he never knew. Whatever they were doing, it seemed to him a very bad idea. And so it was.

The wind returned as a whispered threat, cold and damp, brushing over his cheek, flapping the wet sail, swirling and tugging at Moqorro's scarlet robes. Some instinct made Tyrion grab hold of the nearest rail, just in time. In the space of three heartbeats the little breeze became a howling gale. Moqorro shouted something, and green flames leapt from the dragon's maw atop his staff to vanish in the night. Then the rains came, black and blinding, and forecastle and sterncastle both vanished behind a wall of water. Something huge flapped overhead, and Tyrion glanced up in time to see the sail taking wing, with two men still dangling from the lines. Then he heard a crack. Oh, bloody hell, he had time to think, that had to be the mast.

 

20 hours ago, GloubieBoulga said:

Described as the "center of the world", Qarth is a kind of Wall or Winterfell, as "frontier" between many world (for Winterfell and the Wall, this is the frontier between living and dead kingdoms). 

This is correct.  It's described as a 'gate' and a 'bridge':

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A Clash of Kings - Daenerys II

On the walls of Qarth, men beat gongs to herald her coming, while others blew curious horns that encircled their bodies like great bronze snakes. A column of camelry emerged from the city as her honor guards. The riders wore scaled copper armor and snouted helms with copper tusks and long black silk plumes, and sat high on saddles inlaid with rubies and garnets. Their camels were dressed in blankets of a hundred different hues.

"Qarth is the greatest city that ever was or ever will be," Pyat Pree had told her, back amongst the bones of Vaes Tolorro. "It is the center of the world, the gate between north and south, the bridge between east and west, ancient beyond memory of man and so magnificent that Saathos the Wise put out his eyes after gazing upon Qarth for the first time, because he knew that all he saw thereafter should look squalid and ugly by comparison."

@LmL:  You could read Vaes Tolorro as the fire moon, a place of plenty which is ultimately corrupted -- hence the sticky-sapped 'peach' she consumes there -- prohibiting Dany from staying there and leading to her expulsion from the 'garden'=the Fall (expulsion from the garden of Eden, together with moon meteor shower).  From there, her bloodrider Jhogo is the one instructed to follow the comet 'shierak qiya' (the bleeding star) south-east, the path which leads to Qarth (ice moon analog) -- in your celestial terms, the 'fire moon shrapnel' which subsequently got lodged in the ice moon.  In Qarth, she and her dragons become entrapped in the city where dragons are coveted by all she meets.  They attempt to lock her up in the innermost sanctum, but she escapes.  This sequence of events might represent the burning of the ice moon with release of the dragons/meteors.

20 hours ago, LmL said:

One thing about characterizing Qarth as a whole - it is the master of the Jade gates, and the entrance to the Jade Sea, which they dominate. That's all green see metaphor talk, so this is a city which is a gate to the weirwoodnet in some sense. Those pureborn command the navy, now that I recall, so we have the dreaming old men on ancestral wooden thrones who control the Jade (green) see.

Very nice.  I've had that thought before -- so if we both agree independently there must be something to it...Either that, or we're both delusional!  ;)

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The only match I can find for red --> grey --> black is this passage, one of my favorites, but I do not know if it's coincidence or not:

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Jon Snow turned away. The last light of the sun had begun to fade. He watched the cracks along the Wall go from red to grey to black, from streaks of fire to rivers of black ice. Down below, Lady Melisandre would be lighting her nightfire and chanting, Lord of Light, defend us, for the night is dark and full of terrors.

"Winter is coming," Jon said at last, breaking the awkward silence, "and with it the white walkers. The Wall is where we stop them. The Wall was made to stop them … but the Wall must be manned. This discussion is at an end. We have much to do before the gate is opened.

Great catch.  So that would link the black marble to black ice and therefore dragonglass/obsidian.  

9 hours ago, LmL said:

One thing that's interesting - the Undying seem to represent Others, but they want Danys dragons, and not to kill them, but to use them. Could the others make use of the Dragons? Only if they wighted one right? Of course drogon seems to be the winner in their confrontation, so it's not an out-and-out foreshadowing of the others making a wight dragon... but just the fact that the creatures of blue shadow think they can control and harness the power of a dragon is interesting, when taken in light of the comparison between the undying and the others.

There's a hint in the text that they were planning to bind Drogon with 'killing words'...They intimate that they know 'the secret speech of dragonkind' -- that's a dragonbinding horn -- from which Dany flees.  Notice that she is not fleeing them per se, but their voices!

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A Clash of Kings - Daenerys IV

"We have knowledge to share with you," said a warrior in shining emerald armor, "and magic weapons to arm you with. You have passed every trial. Now come and sit with us, and all your questions shall be answered."

She took a step forward. But then Drogon leapt from her shoulder. He flew to the top of the ebony-and-weirwood door, perched there, and began to bite at the carved wood.

"A willful beast," laughed a handsome young man. "Shall we teach you the secret speech of dragonkind? Come, come."

Doubt seized her. The great door was so heavy it took all of Dany's strength to budge it, but finally it began to move. Behind was another door, hidden. It was old grey wood, splintery and plain . . . but it stood to the right of the door through which she'd entered. The wizards were beckoning her with voices sweeter than song. She ran from them, Drogon flying back down to her. Through the narrow door she passed, into a chamber awash in gloom.

A long stone table filled this room. Above it floated a human heart, swollen and blue with corruption, yet still alive. It beat, a deep ponderous throb of sound, and each pulse sent out a wash of indigo light. The figures around the table were no more than blue shadows. As Dany walked to the empty chair at the foot of the table, they did not stir, nor speak, nor turn to face her. There was no sound but the slow, deep beat of the rotting heart.

 

11 hours ago, Durran Durrandon said:

Isn't the Starry Sept made of black marble?

There's also the 'blackened marble' columns in Norvos, a major gateway to the underworld dimension:

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A Game of Thrones - Daenerys III

As the riding became less an ordeal, Dany began to notice the beauties of the land around her. She rode at the head of the khalasar with Drogo and his bloodriders, so she came to each country fresh and unspoiled. Behind them the great horde might tear the earth and muddy the rivers and send up clouds of choking dust, but the fields ahead of them were always green and verdant.

They crossed the rolling hills of Norvos, past terraced farms and small villages where the townsfolk watched anxiously from atop white stucco walls. They forded three wide placid rivers and a fourth that was swift and narrow and treacherous, camped beside a high blue waterfall, skirted the tumbled ruins of a vast dead city where ghosts were said to moan among blackened marble columns. They raced down Valyrian roads a thousand years old and straight as a Dothraki arrow. For half a moon, they rode through the Forest of Qohor, where the leaves made a golden canopy high above them, and the trunks of the trees were as wide as city gates. There were great elk in that wood, and spotted tigers, and lemurs with silver fur and huge purple eyes, but all fled before the approach of the khalasar and Dany got no glimpse of them.

I wonder if there's a difference between 'black marble' which was always black, and 'blackened marble,' the implication being it's been transformed in some way.  This passage always reminded me of the weirwoods in the cave of skulls (analogous to the Norvosian 'vast dead city') forming the architecture of the cavern (the columns holding up the ceiling, etc.) and the 'ghosts who moan' would be the singers/greenseers (and the 'nennymoans' of course...)!

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A Dance with Dragons - Bran II

There were more side passages after that, more chambers, and Bran heard dripping water somewhere to his right. When he looked off that way, he saw eyes looking back at them, slitted eyes that glowed bright, reflecting back the torchlight. More children, he told himself, the girl is not the only one, but Old Nan's tale of Gendel's children came back to him as well.

The roots were everywhere, twisting through earth and stone, closing off some passages and holding up the roofs of others. All the color is gone, Bran realized suddenly. The world was black soil and white wood. The heart tree at Winterfell had roots as thick around as a giant's legs, but these were even thicker. And Bran had never seen so many of them. There must be a whole grove of weirwoods growing up above us.

 

7 hours ago, Jon Ice-Eyes said:

This may be total malarky, but the core idea is that the GEOTD was an ice-associated civilisation, which the BSE then usurped and corrupted with fire and dragons (comets and moon shards). Which leads me to my point: that iciness wants to reclaim its power from those flame-wielding bastards. 

That might explain the 'icy' coloring (purple, white, silver) of the fire-transformed Valyrians/GEOTDians 

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21 hours ago, Jon Ice-Eyes said:
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If you can believe spoilers, that wight-ice-dragon is literally what's going to happen in the TV series

I accidentally found a pretty intricate hypothesis on reddit, some time ago, that posited that the roots of the oily black stone is that it is corrupted (magically corrupted, via  correspondence or entanglement) pearl. That is, the Pearl Emperor and his descendants actually drew power from his huge palanquin/throne -- this object is probably a metaphor of some sort -- which was made of 'pearl.'  Pearl in this case being white moon rocks. When the LN fucked everything up, all that pure white goodness turned evil and black. Dawn being an exception. 

This may be total malarky, but the core idea is that the GEOTD was an ice-associated civilisation, which the BSE then usurped and corrupted with fire and dragons (comets and moon shards). Which leads me to my point: that iciness wants to reclaim its power from those flame-wielding bastards. 

Well, there is a compelling idea at the root of your speculation: a link between the Proto-Valyrian's and the Others. The pearl of the God Emperor does sound like a white meteor, and the god emperor is a signature Morningstar figure comma because he descended from heaven, and then ascended back to heaven. In many mythologies, the sun is regarded as God the father and the Morning Star as some sort of child of the Sun, and this is how Jesus and his heavenly father are configured. The emperor's from before the long night and before the Bloodstone emperor seem to have those swords of pale fire, such as we see in Dany's dream. I've always found it tempting to link pale fire or white fire with Dawn, though that is still only a hypothesis. The ghost grass which grows all around Asshai is basically like a field of dawn swords, and glow with the souls of the damned, suggesting that these ghost grass Dawn swords are memorializing people who are no longer with us. The fallen empire. 

Another angle to take is simply to consider at the symbolism of dawn, which for the most part seems to match to icy things of the North... except these links to the great Empire of the Dawn which I mention. The only way all of that symbolism works out is if Dawn is in fact the original ice, but is also some sort of remnants of Great Empire of the Dawn tech from before the long night.

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14 hours ago, Durran Durrandon said:

So, not to derail this beautiful tangent with questions about the um, well, the story, but what are the implication of the Azor Ahai as the ember in the weirwood net thing, @LmL? Is Jon going to be reborn with his consciousness merged with Azor Ahai?

Well the main implication is simply that Azor Ahai was able to go inside the weirwood net, bolstering my claim that he was a greenseer. For the repercussions could be as follows:

- yes, as I suggested, it's possible Jon could be reborn with a hitchhiker. This would be going awfully close to Robert Jordan territory, with the main hero hearing the silent advice of a long-dead hero in his head. But it's possible.

- it's possible that AA, or some part of him, remained trapped in the weirwood net and became what we think of as the Night's King. The two big clues about the others are that they come from the weirwood trees, and also that Night's King and nights queen were making them. I have a feeling both of these ideas are partly true, and this is one way that works out: NK was / is making the others from inside the weirwood net

- I've begun to wonder if perhaps it isn't the nights queen inside the weirwood net, giving rise to the others. I began to compare the idea of Nissa Nissa to a weirwood in this essay, and I'll be expanding on that greatly in the next essay, so perhaps the nights queen is actually some sort of Frozen weirwood with blue blood instead of red, and those blue eyes instead of red. Is there a blue-eyed weirwood somewhere in the heart of Winter? Probably tin foil, but it popped into my head yesterday.

- I think this also is telling part of the story of my green zombie Theory. AA and his horned companions going into the wwnet means they were sacrificed to the trees. That's how they went it. They came out perhaps by becoming undead greenseers and skinchangers.But there seems to be two groups - the original nights watch and the original others. AA seems tied to both, but "AA" may be more than one person, and may have come into conflict with the last Hero at some point. Perhaps AA and his crew went into the trees and came out as the others, and a second set of greenseers / skinchangers had to then be killed and resurrected as the Nights Watch to go fight them. 

- another takeaway is that AA going into the weirwoodnet is kind of the place where the meteor version of the fire of the gods and the burning tree version of the same interact. The place where Lightbringer the magic sword from Essos and AA the hero from Essos meet up with weirwoods and Westeros. The mystery of AA's interaction with the weirwoods is the crux of how these two halves of the story relate to one another. 

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Love this. 

Seems appropriate to go into some biblical symbolism. Same stuff I was alluding to earlier, occult systems and the Tree of Life etc. The Tree of Life, in its mystical/occult incarnation started as a Neoplatonic map for creation. Neoplatonists believed that there was the hightst spiritual realm (= god, more or less) and everything comes to be through emanations, energy or light coming down step by step until you get the material world. There are 10 stages in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. 

The process of creation, where all the light/energy came down through these 10 stages, is called (in modern times) the Lightning Flash. The way the Tree of Life is drawn, each step of emanation zigzags from left to right. Looks like a lightning bolt. A quick image search will make it way clearer. The point is, the Lightning Flash is god zapping the material world into existence. It's also a metaphor for the creative process (in the usual sense: writing, art, building a castle, starting an esoteric order of horned men). Most importantly, the Lightning Flash is how god's light came down to earth. 

The same path traced back upwards is called by occult folks the Serpent. This is the path up the Tree of Life, which allows you to reunite with the divine. Of course, here the serpent isn't bad or tempting, like in the bible. 

The Flaming Sword is here the metaphor for the difficulty of ascending the Tree to reach and reunite with god. It's the ward or resistance to achieving divinity. Just like the story in the bible that it's all based on, this thing divides humans, who could be gods, from actual divinity. 

I've given the stuff a pretty quick overview because it's only so relevant here. But I think the Lightning Flash, the Serpent, and the Flaming Sword have some pretty cool parallels if you remove all the Judeo-Christian stuff and switch it out for the Old Gods and their trees of life. 

The Flaming Sword stuff I think will have legs. I'm spitballing here. Maybe Lightbringer is the defence against the BSE (or AA, I get a little confused on what name we use for thr bad guy here) achieving godhood. The blood betrayal in this case being (as Euron tells Aeron) the apotheosis of some super evil dick. LB defends the godhead, brings him low; think of Jon's dream of being on the wall. I had always thought of LB as an offensive weapon, taking out the Others before they slaughter mankind. But now I am thinking what if it's the ward that stops some (Other) tyrant from usurping the gods? 

The textual support to look for would be LB as evicting or defending from the hubristic. I have no books with me and am neglecting my job, so... later! 

PS. It occurs to me that this is quite a conservative (ie. close to the literal text as written) interpretation. I've just been thinking about it more in terms of weirwoods, Others as GEOTDians (or 'the Dawnish,' as Tana from Westeros Wheneverly calls them), and the Last Hero as a greenseer. Specifically the Others as a failed apotheosis.

PPS. Holy fuck you guys! The purple lightning is actually real and its name is Steve. I am not kidding! http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/calgary/alberta-aurora-chasers-scientists-steve-1.4084625

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Excellent my friend, really interesting read.

About sea dragon, it would fit if sea dragon designated fiery greenseer who came across the sea. He brought shipbuilding technology and merged with the weirwood circle, then Grey King defeated him, maybe even took his weirwood net, you know like skinchangers can take the beast from one another. Weirwood circle being ribs transformed to hall is pretty straightforward, he took his physical enviorment, both as body and dwelling, GK warming his halls with heart of sea dragon, could mean he used his power. 

GK looks like the man who got the curse of the Burrow King, First King, he turned gray, so maybe he took the circle in which First King was weirnetted (I am trademarking this word :D). And FK could be AA. Maybe he is still there in that petrified wood circle, covering like Hodor's self when Bran wargs him, that is the ember for ya.

Now onto the giants. Last of the Giants song, the one we know isn't talking about giants, could be talking about greenseers. Last verse For when I am gone the singing will fade,and the silence shall last long and long. points to the COTF connection as they are called singers. You should look more into the lyrics, all songs are knee deep in symbolism.

Tyrion's, giant of Lannister moniker is also probably important, as he is a known AA stand-in. After Shae divulged that nickname to court, courtiers laughed to the earthquake like volume The sudden gale of mirth made the rafters ring and shook the Iron Throne. Tyrion, the lion, himself grew darker, like he was of the night, say and uttered I wish I had enough poison for you all. You make me sorry that I am not the monster you would have me be, yet there it is. I am innocent, but I will get no justice here. You leave me no choice but to appeal to the gods. Yup, he was wronged, got omnicidal and decided to appeal to celestial (objects) beings for the justice. Seems like something AA would do, and maybe later forgot, just to mention the one piece of you essay were you link Tyrion's body count to AA's.

Next we have bloody grass which is pretty obvious symbolic stand in for bloody trees and greenseers, sacrifice and bloodmagic, so you should be on the look out for that as well. As blood is connected to fire, bloody tree (grass) is burning tree, and blood is conduit to connecting to weirwoodnet and as you put it filling the weirwood with fire of the greenseer. Also by Asshai, ghost grass glows with the souls of the damned, see grass can trap souls as well :D and it is also pale white like some trees we talk about.

One more note, I honestly can't remember if you previously mentioned this so I am going to go ahead, no harm done  The head fell off the Smith with a puff of ash and embers. Melisandre sang in the tongue of Asshai, her voice rising and falling like the tides of the sea. This is great, his head is a meteor stand-in, impact results in ash and LN and Mel's voice is rising like a tide, connecting fall and impact with tides.

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4 hours ago, LmL said:

 

- I've begun to wonder if perhaps it isn't the nights queen inside the weirwood net, giving rise to the others. I began to compare the idea of Nissa Nissa to a weirwood in this essay, and I'll be expanding on that greatly in the next essay, so perhaps the nights queen is actually some sort of Frozen weirwood with blue blood instead of red, and those blue eyes instead of red. Is there a blue-eyed weirwood somewhere in the heart of Winter? Probably tin foil, but it popped into my head yesterday.

But we have seen trees with blue leaves outside of the house of the undying. They didn't have faces, but they cold house the spirits the the Undying.

Black our white bark, I like the idea of a giant tree with blue leaves being at the heart of winter, crackpot or not.

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