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Venus of the Woods (The Weirwood Goddess)


LmL

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4 minutes ago, Pain killer Jane said:

Aren't they also mermaids? Donella Manderly, a mermaid marrying Halys Horwood and becoming Lady of Hornwood. Thus a tree woman. And Asha being IB and closely associated with the sea can also technically be considered as Lady of Deepwood Motte which considering that Deepwood is near the coast its name literally means a grove of trees deep in the wood, is rather ironic. 

Yes, but I haven't explained RR's sea / seer pun in the official podcasts, so I am holding off on that line of symbolism until I do. But yeah, the falling and drowning moon becomes the mermaid / drowned goddess, that much I have asserted already. That's why there is so much lunar symbolism among the courtesans of Bravos, who float by on pleasure barges. 

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6 minutes ago, LmL said:

Yes, but I haven't explained RR's sea / seer pun in the official podcasts, so I am holding off on that line of symbolism until I do. But yeah, the falling and drowning moon becomes the mermaid / drowned goddess, that much I have asserted already. That's why there is so much lunar symbolism among the courtesans of Bravos, who float by on pleasure barges. 

Alright then. Speaking of the courtesans and by extension the Queens of Silver Sea, are you going to add Huzhor Amai to LB characters being born from the sea? 

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3 minutes ago, Pain killer Jane said:

Alright then. Speaking of the courtesans and by extension the Queens of Silver Sea, are you going to add Huzhor Amai to LB characters being born from the sea? 

Yes, I will have to deal with him and the Fisher Queens and Silver Sea and all that. I talked about that a bit a long time ago in a westeros post following up on the Great Empire of the Dawn. 

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4 minutes ago, LmL said:

Yes, I will have to deal with him and the Fisher Queens and Silver Sea and all that. I talked about that a bit a long time ago in a westeros post following up on the Great Empire of the Dawn. 

Alright then I will table that for future discussions. 

I do have one thing to say about Lady Stoneheart looking at Oathkeeper. Wouldn't you consider that the Heart Tree at Winterfell looking at itself in the black pool? In this case the black pool/dark mirror is frozen in the form of the blade of Oathkeeper. 

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37 minutes ago, Pain killer Jane said:

Alright then I will table that for future discussions. 

I do have one thing to say about Lady Stoneheart looking at Oathkeeper. Wouldn't you consider that the Heart Tree at Winterfell looking at itself in the black pool? In this case the black pool/dark mirror is frozen in the form of the blade of Oathkeeper. 

Oh yeah!! Most definitely, great call! Oathkeeper's "waves of night and moon blood" make it just like the black pool. 

You are the shit.

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20 minutes ago, LmL said:

Oh yeah!! Most definitely, great call! Oathkeeper's "waves of night and moon blood" make it just like the black pool. 

You are the shit.

Thank you. 

Btw we have another red dragon in the ASOIAF, Meleys, The Red Queen, ridden by Rhaeneys Targaryen. Rhaeneys was married to the Sea Snake Corlys Velaryon and she was nicknamed the Queen who never was. Meleys had scarlet scales and pink wings and copper claws. Meleys died in battle versus Vheagar and Sunfyre and Rhaeneys was just a burnt corpse at the end.

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1 hour ago, Pain killer Jane said:

Thank you. 

Btw we have another red dragon in the ASOIAF, Meleys, The Red Queen, ridden by Rhaeneys Targaryen. Rhaeneys was married to the Sea Snake Corlys Velaryon and she was nicknamed the Queen who never was. Meleys had scarlet scales and pink wings and copper claws. Meleys died in battle versus Vheagar and Sunfyre and Rhaeneys was just a burnt corpse at the end.

Your knowledge is encyclopedic! I suppose scarlet counts for red, especially since she is called the Red Queen. She's definitely a fire moon symbol - her duel with Sunfyre (the sun) and Vhagar, a hoary dragon (meaning white, meaning probably the ice moon) works well in that context. Rhaenys becomes a burnt corpse woman, which is Nissa Nissa post-LB forging. Also, the fire moon / ice moon pattern is strongly expressed (if it is valid) in Rhaenys and Visenya, and this is continued here. Rhaenys sister-wife of Aegon the C is the fire moon, just as the Dragonpit is on the hill of Rhaenys (a burnt out and collapsed dome which used to harbor dragons), while Visenya is the ice moon, riding her hoary white dragon and with the white marble Sept of Baelor on her hill. Vhagar is ridden by Aemond One Eye, who wears a star sapphire in his eye, making him an ice magic / ice dragon type person. The blue north star of the constellation ice dragon is either the eye of the dragon or the rider, and when Aemond rides Vhagar, it's pretty spot on for the ice dragon. Meanwhile we have another Rhaenys, riding a red dragon and becoming a burnt corpse. I believe the fight proceeds with Sunfyre and Meleys colliding, a la the sun and fire moon alignment. 

Oh - and look. Meleys. Meliai. There it is again!! It's so damn consistent, the fire moon symbolism. Mel the red woman and Meleys the red queen, both fire moon maidens / Nissa Nissa maidens. Mel is even called Stannis's red queen...

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 "R'hllor, send your light to lead us through this gloom," the faithful prayed that night as they gathered about a roaring blaze outside the king's pavilion. Southron knights and men-at-arms, the lot of them. Asha would have called them king's men, but the other stormlanders and crownlands men named them queen's men … though the queen they followed was the red one at Castle Black, not the wife that Stannis Baratheon had left behind at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. "Oh, Lord of Light, we beseech you, cast your fiery eye upon us and keep us safe and warm," they sang to the flames, "for the night is dark and full of terrors."

So there you go. Very nice! The Meleys name is just such a dead ringer for all the other Meliai references with the burning tree moon maidens. I'll have to find a way to include this and the but about oathkeeper being like the black pond in the next episode or two, I wish I had caught those in time for this episode. Oh well, you can't get everything. The black pond catch really would have been good in this one. 

Now to go back for Ravenous and Gloubie's posts... pray for me, that the Westeros server doesn't eat my long response... ye gods, old and new, I beseech thee...

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3 hours ago, Harlaw's Book the Sequel said:

@LmL very interesting essay!  A while ago I theorized about the weirwood symbolism surrounding Lyanna:

  • Ned dreams of her weeping blood
  • after she dies, she gets transformed into a stone statue 
  • In Theon's dream he sees her wearing white and spattered with gore
  • if you believe she was the Knight of the Laughing Tree, which I do, then she outright adopts a weirwood as her personal sigil (a laughing one no less)

I really appreciate your essay for broadening my perspective to see there are other ASOIAF women who similar connections with weirwoods.  Cat and Mel having such a connection is particularly intriguing for me as I've been thinking a lot lately about the comparisons and connections among Cat, Mel, and Lyanna.

Thanks for the read and the comment! I'll slip this answer in before tackling the longer ones. 

I agree - my list of weirwood women is by no means complete. This sucker ran super long as it is, and I have saved a bunch more of this stuff for the next episode. That one will focus on the cat-woman symbolism of these burning tree women, which is quite strong and probably has something to do with children of the forest (with their cat's eyes) of perhaps the Tiger Woman of the Bloodstone Emperor, or both. I want to save that for next essay but you get the point - there are more. Lyanna is one, certainly.

I primarily focused on the fire associated ones, because I have yet to introduce my ideas about the Others, the ice moon, ice symbolism in general. I mentioned that I see the moon maidens / weirwood maidens either aligning to ice or fire, with the exception of one or two who transition between the two. Lyanna would seem to be a good fit for an icy maiden, with her primary symbol being the blue winter rose. However, I do wonder about the idea of her (and Brandon) having "wolf blood," and how this is associated with having a hot temper. Not sure how that works exactly. However the blue rose would seem to make her the icy variety of maiden. I noticed the bloody tears from her statue and the Knight of the Laughing Tree symbols, though I missed the white dress spattered with gore. That's a great catch! I will jot that down on my list of hat tips to give at the appropriate time. :) 

The stone statue is also a good catch. It's possible that we should think of petrified weirwood as being ice - associated, since Nagga's ribs are called "pale stone," the same phrase used for the Dawn meteor ("a pale stone of magical powers," and the "Palestone Tower" at Starfall).

You read my last one, In a Grove of Ash, right? that's really a set up to this one. The part I am thinking of is the part where I show how many times weirwoods have been associated with the moon. If there was indeed two moons at one time, and if I am right to think about them as being associated with ice and fire, respectively, then what I think is going on is that the weirs can be used to represent either moon. For example, the living weirs primarily look like burning trees, but then we get the one in the Varamyr prologue..

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When Varamyr pushed at it, the snow crumbled and gave way, still soft and wet. Outside, the night was white as death; pale thin clouds danced attendance on a silver moon, while a thousand stars watched coldly. He could see the humped shapes of other huts buried beneath drifts of snow, and beyond them the pale shadow of a weirwood armored in ice. To the south and west the hills were a vast white wilderness where nothing moved except the blowing snow. "Thistle," Varamyr called feebly, wondering how far she could have gone. "Thistle. Woman. Where are you?"

Far away, a wolf gave howl.

 

The Others are called pale shadows and white shadows many times. Other things which are white or pale shadows are Ghost and the Kingsguard, and the KG are basically a symbolic proxy for the Others... while Ghost is something more complicated. But this weirwood tree, it's a pale shadow armored in ice, so that's clear enough - the others wear ice armor, and Dany dreams of melting troops armored in ice via dragonflame in her dream in ASOS. Jon is also armored in black ice in his Azor Ahai dream, but then Jon is many ways is like a black parallel to the Others, like a long lost brother. In any case, this tree is nor armored in black ice, but rather it is a pale shadow armored in ice, so that basically is the description of an Others. We get another description of the Others in this same paragraph - the night was "white as death," with "pale thin" clouds which dance - the Others dance with Waymar and are thin and slim and ghostly, like these thin clouds. Finally, a thousand stars watch coldly, like the cold star eyes of the Others, who are called watchers. 

So. It's like a portrait of the Others in the sky, and the weirwood is a portrait of the Others on the ground. Interestingly, Varamyr, after leaving Thistle's body and going through the dying process, experiences some interesting things. He first spends a moment inside this pale shadow armored in ice weirwood - that's interesting, right? - then he's borne on a cold wind... and then:

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That was his last thought as a man.

True death came suddenly; he felt a shock of cold, as if he had been plunged into the icy waters of a frozen lake. Then he found himself rushing over moonlit snows with his packmates close behind him. Half the world was dark. One Eye, he knew. He bayed, and Sly and Stalker gave echo.

 

And now a reminder of the appearance of the armor of the Others, from the AGOT prologue:

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A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce. Tall, it was, and gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took.

It's ice armor that looks the surface of a lake or pond, so, that's a frozen lake or pond. Anyway. Varamyr plunges through the icy pond after seeing through an Other-tree, then ends up in a one-eyed wolf, almost like a cold Odin / greenseer symbol. 

The point of all of this is that the entrance to the weirwoodnet seems to symbolize the fire moon. The red door. But the exit seems to be cold. @ravenous reader and I have developed this idea a bit; she also associates the Others with the 'back door' and in the arsehole. And by the way, RR, comets and meteors are sometimes called "star shit," so, the Others with their cold star eyes fit the bill as a cold star shit stream. Gross. Look what you've done to my beautiful symbolism. Ha! 

So, Harlaw's Book, the weirwoods and weirwood maidens have an ice and fire dichotomy going on, as do many things in ASOIAF. Lyanna would seem to be the cold type, so I will discuss her some time in the future after I have gotten into ice symbolism on the podcast. It's unbelievable how many things there are to write about - I have a list of drafts and essays and plans for essays that all need to get written and put out, and I have to finish my greenseer series so I can get to the Others... I'm doing this as fast as i can but I can only put out about one of these monsters a month. I am one of those who is fine with the delay for TWOW, sorry to say... gives me more time to get to the Others before that books comes out and shows us a ton of stuff about the Others.

Cheers!

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On 5/26/2017 at 5:02 PM, Wolfgirly said:

Oak trees represent the thunder god Thor. 

Gods all have trees associated with them. 

The subject of this thread is beautiful.

Some of our own white trees: Silver birch, eucalyptus, white poplar, cypress, sycamore, ghost gum and aspen.

Weirwood trees are unique to Westeros but we don't have trees like this on our own planet. What we do have all places incredible links to gods, spirits, dryads, magic and healing.

Faces on the weirwoods trees were carved by the Children of the Forest.

Sorry I've read "A Game of Thrones" and halfway through "A Clash of Kings" so haven't come across all the amazing events.

 

Wow! Only a book and a half through and you're hanging out here huh? I assume you started as a show watcher? Well, nice to have you :) and thanks for the contribution. And yes, the Thor - Oak connection is probably something Martin would be thinking about since he seems to be using tree lore. Oak and ash are the two most prominent in Norse myth, so it figures. I know the birch tree has some good mythology, right? I haven't taken the time to look into all the various white trees, though that might not be a bad idea. 

You're right that we are told the children carved the faces - though Jon recalls both the children and the FM carving face son the trees, interestingly. I am actually suggesting a slightly heretical idea, that the children did not carve faces on the trees until man came, and specifically Azor Ahai and his crew, who may have started off as "green men," whatever those turn out to be. George says that the Isle of faces is coming to the fore near the end, so we should find out what's up with them. Anyway, you are right about the canon, but I am actually proposing an alternate theory, essentially. It could also be that the children carved the faces in response to Azor Ahai, or to facilitate him. The main thing I am proposing is that the face carving is tied to the Long Night meteors called down by Azor Ahai, and by Azor Ahai's desire to enter the weirwoodnet. 

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On 5/26/2017 at 9:38 PM, Unchained said:

A shy maid - Asshai maid - ash tree maid :thumbsup:  

 

Maekar does something like what Urron Greyiron does.  He kills his brother in a trial of 7, an event with 1 winner and 13 losers, and later becomes king.  He even makes a new crown with black iron spikes and red gold.  Its like a combination of Stannis' fiery (Night King?) crown and Robb's King of Winter one.   

Yeah that was a clever one by George huh... plus the "ashes in your eyes" bit, that was a LOL. 

That's a sly parallel with Maeker... but you might be right. The black crown with fiery red gold is perfect - that's the implication of the black crown, that it can catch on fire like a coal or like dragonglass or maybe v steel. Sweet. I am going to break down that trial by seven in about 2 episodes to get all the Dunk / greenseer clues (gallows knight, horse named thunder, that tree / star sigil, etc) so maybe I can slip this one in there. :)

So, who's the winner out of all this? Are you saying Maekar because Baelor's death led to him and his line taking the throne? Or would Dunk be the winner because he lived and won the fight?

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1 hour ago, LmL said:

Oh - and look. Meleys. Meliai. There it is again!! It's so damn consistent, the fire moon symbolism. Mel the red woman and Meleys the red queen, both fire moon maidens / Nissa Nissa maidens. Mel is even called Stannis's red queen...

There's Melara Hetherspoon as well... and surprise, surprise, she gets killed by Solar Lion chraracter - Cersei. 
She drowns (with some help) in a well. Hetherspoon, Hetherspoon it rhymes with fallen moon.

And their sigil... It seems to be telling a story... A 'spoon' enters the oak via white cartuche (that's the only time cartouche of Ancient Egypt is mentioned in ASOIAF, making the 'spoon' a king, Son of Ra, the Sun god). And that leads to those black diamonds being formed.

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She dreamt an old dream, of three girls in brown cloaks, a wattled crone, and a tent that smelled of death.

The crone's tent was dark, with a tall peaked roof. She did not want to go in, no more than she had wanted to at ten, but the other girls were watching her, so she could not turn away. They were three in the dream, as they had been in life. Fat Jeyne Farman hung back as she always did. It was a wonder she had come this far. Melara Hetherspoon was bolder, older, and prettier, in a freckly sort of way. Wrapped in roughspun cloaks with their hoods pulled up, the three of them had stolen from their beds and crossed the tourney grounds to seek the sorceress. Melara had heard the serving girls whispering how she could curse a man or make him fall in love, summon demons and foretell the future.

(A Feast for Crows, Cersei)

freckles are red... so we have another 'Red Queen'.

Edit: Oh, and that other girl, Jeyne Farman, who survives, has silver ships on blue as her sigil. So, once again we get two moons. One is 'fat and silver' and the other red. The red one is killed by Solar Lion. Jeyne survives, and marries a guy named Ser Gareth Clifton...

 

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45 minutes ago, LmL said:

I know the birch tree has some good mythology, right? I haven't taken the time to look into all the various white trees, though that might not be a bad idea. 

Birch bark has been used as 'paper' for thousands of years. So birches can store knowledge. Just like the weirwoods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_bark_manuscript?wprov=sfla1

 

And:

(http://treesforlife.org.uk/forest/mythology-folklore/birch/)

Spoiler

When the huge glaciers of the last ice age receded, birch trees would have been one of the first to re-colonise the rocky, ice-scoured landscape. Hence, in botanical terms the birch is referred to as a pioneer species. Similarly in early Celtic mythology, the birch came to symbolise renewal and purification. Beithe, the Celtic birch, is the first tree of the Ogham, the Celtic tree alphabet. It was celebrated during the festival of Samhain (what is now Halloween in Britain), the start of the Celtic year, when purification was also important. Bundles of birch twigs were used to drive out the spirits of the old year. Later this would evolve into the 'beating the bounds' ceremonies in local parishes. Gardeners still use the birch besom, or broom, to 'purify' their gardens. Besoms were also of course the archetypal witches' broomsticks, used in their shamanic flights, perhaps after the use of extracts of the fly agaric mushrooms commonly found in birchwoods.

Interestingly, the birch also has strong fertility connections with the celebrations of Beltane, the second, summer, half of the Celtic year (nowadays celebrated as May Day). Beltane fires in Scotland were ritually made of birch and oak, and a birch tree was often used as a, sometimes living, maypole. As birch is one of the first trees to come into leaf it would be an obvious choice as representation of the emergence of spring. Deities associated with birch are mostly love and fertility goddesses, such as the northern European Frigga and Freya. Eostre (from whom we derive the word Easter), the Anglo Saxon goddess of spring was celebrated around and through the birch tree between the spring equinox and Beltane. According to the medieval herbalist Culpepper, the birch is ruled over by Venus - both the planet and the goddess. According to Scottish Highland folklore, a barren cow herded with a birch stick would become fertile, or a pregnant cow bear a healthy calf.

The word birch is thought to have derived from the Sanskrit word bhurga meaning a 'tree whose bark is used to write upon'. When the poet S.T. Coleridge called it the 'Lady of the Woods', he was possibly drawing on an existing folk term for the tree. Birch figures in many anglicised place names, such as Birkenhead, Birkhall and Berkhamstead, and appears most commonly in northern England and Scotland. Beithe (pronounced 'bey'), the Gaelic word for birch, is widespread in Highland place names such as Glen an Beithe in Argyll, Loch a Bhealaich Bheithe in Inverness-shire and Beith in Sutherland. The adjective 'silver' connected with birch seems to be a relatively recent invention, apparently making its first appearance in a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Birch is Venus' tree.

Yeah. Tree symbolism is important in ASOIAF.

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16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Nice job dragon. Thanks for the shout-outs and advertising 'Killing Word' (I didn't know you were that fond of that essay, lol...)!  Some thoughts which occurred to me while reading:

Yes, it's wonderful, I just like to bust your (metaphorical) balls when you refer to the prologue for like the fifth time in any given conversation, lol...

16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

(1) The catspaw who gets his paw/hand bloodied in the mouth of the weirwood Cat, resulting in the 'red-handed' symbol reminds me of two instances:

--  the Prologue, of course, where Will is described as the hunter 'caught redhanded' skinning the Mallister buck, symbolism which is later reinforced when he gets the 'sticky sap' on his hands and face climbing the tree (before he issues the Killing Word = 'whispered prayer to the nameless gods of the wood', summoning the Others).

Yeah, that's really solid - getting a red hand while skinning a buck is skinchanging a tree to become a horned lord, something like that. I think the skin of an antlered creature basically = the weirwood, so that's how you get red hands, is by going into a ww. Very nice. That corroborates the notion of him climbing the tree as a the greenseer climbing the heavenly ladder. 

16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

--  Then we're seeing the same thing in Jaqen (I can't remember if you mentioned him or not...) who puts his hand into the weirwood's mouth, symbolically facilitating the same 'redhandedness', when swearing his allegiance to Arya. As her sworn (s)word, he becomes Arya's 'right hand man.'  In that scenario, Arya is the Will-greenseer with Jaqen as her Hand/assassin.  Symbolically, as the dominant hand (in most people) used as a tool for most activities (including nefarious ones), the 'right hand' is the bloody red one.  That's why it's the one Jaime has amputated (the same he used to commit kinslaying, oathbreaking, incest and attempted child murder, as he himself points out in the Venus bathtub scene with Brienne, as he suggestively 'thrusts' the ragged stump into her face).  

Arya also threatens to kill Jaquen here as his hand is "bitten" by the weirwood. That's a good match to the catspaw being bitten by weirwood Cat, very nice. I will use that for sure. The hat-tip list grows one longer! We should chat about Arya more, the dark hearted blood child and ghost in harrenhall who commands Jaquen. I'd like to figure out exactly what is going on here. It kind reminds me how Stoneheart commands the brotherhood. Arya, as a ghost, is like the ghost of a cotf in a sense, which is kind of like dead Cat as a tree spirit. 

16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

(2) In conjunction with weirwood as library -- with reference to the convo we had the other day about Dany escaping the warlocks and the HOTU, that can be understood as Dany escaping the weirnet library; and accordingly I think we can draw a parallel with another dragon, Tyrion, who infiltrates, then 'escapes' the Winterfell library, moreover taking 'stolen knowledge of the gods' with him in the form of the books 'borrowed'.  As I recall, wonky seasons/climate change and dragons were the subjects that most interested him -- so, those are likely the books he removed, and also the topics likely to be at the heart of the 'secret knowledge' behind GRRM's core mysteries.

Defnintiely agree about that Tyrion library stuff - I think you mentioned some of that or we discussed some of that when we first caught on to the "send a dog to kill a dog" idea about infiltrating the wwnet in those first Winterfell scenes. He stole knowledge of dragons and the changing of the seasons, a clue in and of itself about meteor dragons changing the seasons, the comet = the sword that slays the season, etc. As for Dany, I think I see your point. I think the burning of that place is akin to lighting ice on fire, the ultimate destiny of the ice moon and the king of winter. That's why the Undying burn like old parchment or whatever, just like the wights. Blue shadows and all that. 

16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

(3) The spine of Cat/NN/the weirwood is analogous to the serpentine steps we find everywhere, e.g. the tortuous external (why is it exterior not interior...most unusual...) spiral staircase Tyrion climbs to access and escape the Winterfell library.  The injunction Dany receives to 'always take the door to your right' might also be interpreted to signify tracing a spiral pathway. It also occurs to me that books also have 'spines,' don't they!

Yes, that seems right, and there's a good chance George is thinking of the DNA helix, Jacob's Ladder, and that type of thing. I like the idea about always taking the right door turning Dany's trip into a spiral... it makes sense. I mentioned to you that the HOTU is effectively a "shadow tower," being a palace of shadows, and having a non-physical tower which Dany seems to climb but which is not visible form the outside (it's a low, flat building). This is why this place confuses me, symbolically - the Undying seem like such clear parallels to the Others, but the shadow tower and serpentine stairs symbols are dragons and darkness... and the description of it:

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Long and low, without towers or windows, it coiled like a stone serpent through a grove of black-barked trees whose inky blue leaves made the stuff of the sorcerous drink the Qartheen called shade of the evening. No other buildings stood near. Black tiles covered the palace roof, many fallen or broken; the mortar between the stones was dry and crumbling. She understood now why Xaro Xhoan Daxos called it the Palace of Dust. Even Drogon seemed disquieted by the sight of it. The black dragon hissed, smoke seeping out between his sharp teeth.

"Blood of my blood," Jhogo said in Dothraki, "this is an evil place, a haunt of ghosts and maegi. See how it drinks the morning sun? Let us go before it drinks us as well."

Anyway I am just not totally sure what is happening here. I'm also not exactly sure what the shade trees and warlock wine represent in the context of the weirwoods and the ice / fire dichotomy. 

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16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

(4) Nice statement of the fool's spirit being absorbed by the tree with Cat taking on the lackwit's characteristics. 'Absorption of a fool's spirit' is also a reiteration of the pun on spirit as the distillation and subsequent imbibing of an intoxicating, mind-altering beverage which we discussed at length on the poetry thread, among others (Jethro Tull and John Barleycorn spring to mind!)  

Love that song, love that convo we had, and love what Martin did with the absorbing of the fool spirit in that scene. That goes hand in hand with the repeated pattern of the weirwood women drinking the king's blood... and that's another reason why we can definitely count Melisandre as a prime example of this archetype, with her awesome scene with Cressen, and her talk of Kingsblood. I didn't use the Sansa Dontos scene in this episode, but the skin of wine with legs idea pertains to AA the sacrificed fool, whose blood is poured out to be imbibed, like Christ and the communion. 

16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

(5)  It's very interesting how the merging of AA and tree is represented by this kind of mutual mirroring. I think that's what we're seeing with the 'Japanese tentacular' stuff, lol -- the way the weirwood roots penetrate the greenseers mirrors the greenseers having penetrated the weirwoods. Mutual penetration -- like in the Asha 'blurring of the cock and cunt' quote!   And we're seeing the same kind of mutual assimilation of characteristics between the wargs and their wolves (a bit of the wolf remains in the warg; and vice versa). The dialectic of hunter becoming hunted, etc.

Exactly. 

16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

(6) The 'whittlestick' carving reference is a brilliant catch! as well as...

Yeah, he gave Jon his red smile. It's pretty great. And into the wolf he goes, the white wolf with the red smile. 

16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

(7) LS hissing through her fingers like a weirwood whispering through its branches ...that's also another echo of Will 'lost among the needles' of the sentinel whispering his 'prayer', which if it's in the same language as the one LS now speaks is in Brienne's words 'the language of the damned'. As I keep saying, Will's prayer was not benign.

I follow. 

16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

(8) 'Jaime Lannister sends his regards' ties in to my 'mocking-and-countermocking' theme. The messenger / proxy assassin essentially delivers the killing word!  There's another reference related to this with LF sarcastically telling Ned that he 'bears a token of Brandon Stark's esteem' -- of course LF paid the debt owing to the Starks with interest! (are we sure LF's not a Lannister? He always pays his 'debts'). Sending ones esteem represented by sending a rose (I love the rose as comet) belies the thorns hiding beneath the token (like the thorns hidden in the wreath of blue roses Rhaegar delivered to Lyanna.  If the pattern of the parallel holds, this might imply that another shadowy figure was in effect manipulating Rhaegar to deliver the killing blow.

(9) How do you reconcile the dynamic of a woman sacrificing a maester/fool/stagman to the heart tree with the opposite of a maester sacrificing a woman? About the mirroring, the 'mutual death symbolism' etc. -- it's a difficult concept. Perhaps recap and rephrase next episode. Why do you think GRRM is doing that?

What maester sacrificing a woman? 

16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

(10) The 'unnatural' descriptor is interesting. Have you done a search for other examples? I remember Cersei referred to the direwolves as 'unnatural' and didn't want them coming south with her.

No, that's interesting. I didn't give that much thought, it just popped up as a link between Asha and Osha.

16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

(11) Good catch of GRRM's macabre steak/stake joke. I think you're right...There's this:

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A Storm of Swords - Samwell II

"Ended," cried his raven. "Ended." Sam was red-eyed and sick from the smoke. When he looked at the fire, he thought he saw Bannen sitting up, his hands coiling into fists as if to fight off the flames that were consuming him, but it was only for an instant, before the swirling smoke hid all. The worst thing was the smell, though. If it had been a foul unpleasant smell he might have stood it, but his burning brother smelled so much like roast pork that Sam's mouth began to water, and that was so horrible that as soon as the bird squawked "Ended" he ran behind the hall to throw up in the ditch.

 

That joke TV show Renly made about AA the salted ham is more right than he or D&D knew!  This might be a preview of Jon, waking in his own bonfire. or more symbolic, Jon waking inside a wolf that looks like a burning tree. 

16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

(12)  I loved the scene with Brienne the shy maid 'moon-/dream-' whispering to Jaime, willing him to live. Could there be a connection/parallel with the 3EC whispering in the coma dream to Bran, willing him, likewise the fallen solar figure like Jaime, to live, 'fly or die'...Is the 3EC a woman (the voice is never given a gender, just described as 'high and thin')? @GloubieBoulga once suggested the Crow might be a woman!

That's wild. I have always tended to stick with the 3EC being Bloodraven, but since I am seeing  hidden figures in the wwnet, i suppose I should be open minded. It's hard to discern gender, because it speaks with a crow's voice. I do not suspect Bran or I or anyone else knows the difference between male and female crow calls, heh. 

16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

(13)  The idea of the stars themselves possessing language and uttering 'killing words' can be found both in the 'stone voices' of the gargoyles that were once lions outlined against the moon in Bran's vision; the moon 'cackling Snow' ominously at Ghost as he attempts to flee towards the cave of night; as well as Sam's encounter with the wights in which he was rescued by ravens:

A Storm of Swords - Samwell III

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Sam made a whimpery sound. "It's not fair . . ." "Fair." The raven landed on his shoulder. "Fair, far, fear." It flapped its wings, and screamed along with Gilly. The wights were almost on her. He heard the dark red leaves of the weirwood rustling, whispering to one another in a tongue he did not know. The starlight itself seemed to stir, and all around them the trees groaned and creaked. Sam Tarly turned the color of curdled milk...

One of my favorite quotes and scenes, no doubt... The tree whispers and stars stir because the weirwoods are star trees full of starry wisdom. :) It matches with Dany's ADWD chapter, where the stars whisper in Quaithe's voice and share starry wisdom. Dany has soooooo many weird greenseer parallels like that. Heck, the green grass of the Dothraki green see speaks whispers to her in visionary form and the voices of the past... haha. 

16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

(14) Great connection of the ship mast plus moon being analogous to a tree, a disembodied head on a stick, and a candle (glass candle?)! It's also like a lighthouse tower.

Good one!

16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

It's reminiscent of that dream bran has of the windowless black tower with the moon at the top...so is the windowless black tower analogous to the weirwoods?

That's our shadow tower. So, the rising ash = a weirwood, as i laid out last time. But the rising ash can also appear with rising smoke - the dark, black smoke that coils like a serpent. We saw that at the barn with Arya:

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"You take her!" she yelled. "You get her out! You do it!" The fire beat at her back with hot red wings as she fled the burning barn. It felt blessedly cool outside, but men were dying all around her. She saw Koss throw down his blade to yield, and she saw them kill him where he stood. Smoke was everywhere. There was no sign of Yoren, but the axe was where Gendry had left it, by the woodpile outside the haven. As she wrenched it free, a mailed hand grabbed her arm. Spinning, Arya drove the head of the axe hard between his legs. She never saw his face, only the dark blood seeping between the links of his hauberk. Going back into that barn was the hardest thing she ever did. Smoke was pouring out the open door like a writhing black snake, and she could hear the screams of the poor animals inside, donkeys and horses and men. She chewed her lip, and darted through the doors, crouched low where the smoke wasn't quite so thick.

A donkey was caught in a ring of fire, shrieking in terror and pain. She could smell the stench of burning hair. The roof was gone up too, and things were falling down, pieces of flaming wood and bits of straw and hay. Arya put a hand over her mouth and nose. She couldn't see the wagon for the smoke, but she could still hear Biter screaming. She crawled toward the sound.

 

It might be that we are supposed to se the white tree with a black shadow, or as a white and black tree growing from the same event. Not sure. But the point is we get the white ash = ww symbol, and right next to it or in place of it, the black snake smoke symbol that matches the HOTU and the shadow tower and the Shadowbaby towering above Davos. 

16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

(15) Varamyr's prologue: I love the idea of the 'weirwood crutch'...there are many such examples of people leaning on branches for support...and it evokes the idea of someone crippled like Bran. Alternatively, perhaps the 'fallen bran(ch)' is representative of Bran the fallen who will be exploited by another (?BR/COTF) for some nefarious purpose?

I want to do a more detailed analysis of this whole scene, but it requires me to talk about the ice side of things, which I am not ready to do yet. But did you notice that the broken branch symbol often gets thrown into the important symbolic fires? 

16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

(16) A strong finish to your essay! I especially liked your highlighting of the world-shattering event of the greenseer entering the tree etc. supported by all the quotes you pulled. Same thing in the Prologue -- sh** really goes down once Will goes into the tree (and says the damning prayer which is whispered through the leaves/needles).

Thanks! We need to revisit the Hodor / Bran scene on the hill with the wights. 

16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

(17) Could 'frozen blood' be equivalent to 'frozen fire', considering blood and fire are symbolically synonymous? Valyrian steel as frozen blood?

Yes, absolutely. That's the idea of Oathkeeper being both black Ice and waves of night and blood. And since V steel probably requires blood magic... it's frozen fire and frozen blood. And don't forget this awesome scene... 

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The direwolf moved toward the meat, a gaunt grey shadow sliding from tree to tree, through pools of moonlight and over mounds of snow. The wind gusted around him, shifting. He lost the scent, found it, then lost it again. As he searched for it once more, a distant sound made his ears prick up.

Wolf, he knew at once. Summer stalked toward the sound, wary now. Soon enough the scent of blood was back, but now there were other smells: piss and dead skins, bird shit, feathers, and wolf, wolf, wolf. A pack. He would need to fight for his meat.

They smelled him too. As he moved out from amongst the darkness of the trees into the bloody glade, they were watching him. The female was chewing on a leather boot that still had half a leg in it, but she let it fall at his approach. The leader of the pack, an old male with a grizzled white muzzle and a blind eye, moved out to meet him, snarling, his teeth bared. Behind him, a younger male showed his fangs as well.

The direwolf's pale yellow eyes drank in the sights around them. A nest of entrails coiled through a bush, entangled with the branches. Steam rising from an open belly, rich with the smells of blood and meat. A head staring sightlessly up at a horned moon, cheeks ripped and torn down to bloody bone, pits for eyes, neck ending in a ragged stump. A pool of frozen blood, glistening red and black.

Men. The stink of them filled the world. Alive, they had been as many as the fingers on a man's paw, but now they were none. Dead. Done. Meat. Cloaked and hooded, once, but the wolves had torn their clothing into pieces in their frenzy to get at the flesh. Those who still had faces wore thick beards crusted with ice and frozen snot. The falling snow had begun to bury what remained of them, so pale against the black of ragged cloaks and breeches. Black.

 

 

I mentioned this one in the green zombies series. I think this whole scene is about Jon, the horned lord nightswatch brother who will die and go into the tree-colored wolf. These NW brothers are going into wolves as well by being consumed by wolves. The rest of the highlighted stuff should rings bells for you, the shadow wolves sliding through pools, all the rag symbolism and tree symbolism...

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16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

(18) Plunging into the cold lake is interesting. That's the cold black pool at the foot of the weirwood and your 'ice moon'.

I am not sure I would equate the black pond with the ice moon, unless we mean the black ice in the middle of the ice moon. This black pond is one in the same with the black ice symbols, and PKJ's find about Cat seeing herself in Oathkeeper as paralleling the ww looking at its reflection in the dark mirror black pond backs this up. This is the black see, the dragonglass see. I think the pale shadow of a weirwood armored in ice is a better ww / ice symbol, but I am not close-minded on this either. 

16 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

... with compliments,  your faithful muse (or one of the 3 Norns...)  B)

Thanks for all the great feedback and help with this essay! You helped be see where I need to slice out material for next time... this essay was once even longer, people, if you can believe that. I was trying to talk about cat woman in this essay too, and it was too much. 

Anyway, I'm for bed, @GloubieBoulga, I will reply to you tomorrow. 

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46 minutes ago, Blue Tiger said:

freckles are red... so we have another 'Red Queen'.

Edit: Oh, and that other girl, Jeyne Farman, who survives, has silver ships on blue as her sigil. So, once again we get two moons. One is 'fat and silver' and the other red. The red one is killed by Solar Lion. Jeyne survives, and marries a guy named Ser Gareth Clifton...

Nice work BT! Yes, it's another fire moon / ice moon deal, with the fire moon being killed and drowned and the ice moon living on. But Cersei also hears Melara's voice haunting her, or sees her accusing eyes, one or the other, right? That's good too. So.. the ice moon queen marrying a garth... what's that about?

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I think we should be a bit cautious about reading TOO much into symbolism, especially where it relates to women.

We should consider the personality of GRRM and the story HE is telling.  Also whatever we come up with needs to be consistent otherwise we are saying GRRM is a lousy writer, which he is not.

Now the FIRST thing when discussing this topic is to consider what we each think the weirwoods are and what GRRM intends them to be. For those dedicated to the heresy ideas they are evil etc but others (like me) will see them much more as a reflection of ancient tree worship with TWO key themes - Ygrasill of the Germanic Asgard legends and the "tree of life" idea of the Celts. The two are of course related and such tree worship was characteristic of Indo-European peoples stretching from India to Scandinavia.

However drawing on these two key themes we have of course obvious Odin/Wodan references that are too numerous to discuss here.  Bloodraven is so obviously an Odin figure that we must assume that all the other associations with this tree also are relevant. If we look we can find them. Wolves - all the Starks, ravens Bran and the NW, sacrificial hanging - Lady Stoneheart come on down, Val - seeress or Valkyrie. We have the hounds from Hel - the dire wolves and Shaggydog seeming to be a Fenrir figure. We have both the others from the ice world and the dead souls from Hel all coming to attack Asgard along with fiery sworded dragons (Dany) and probably a few giant serpents too  (I think these are earthquakes which will destroy the world,

OK so that is weirwoods with their Yggrysll symbolism, but there is ALSO the more celtic sense of weir woods as a life giving force - but this involves both LIFE and DEATH, summer and winter etc. Whereas i see the Westerosi of Andal origin very much following the idea of the weirwoods as a world tree I see the CoF and most of the Starks somehow connected to this aspect of the trees. It cannot be separated from the deep seated concept of the "dying god" involving death and renewal.  This is a core duality essential to the seasons and sustainable life. Thus juxtaposed we have black and white, summer and winter, life and death and sky versus sea. The "greenman" is the essential symbol of this aspect . Garth gardener and the Greenseers are keys here.

The connection of Arya as both black AND white - life and death seems obvious. Bran is  SUMMER - he is renewal and he is also the reincarnation of the green man -taking over from BR. He represents the future.  Who then is Winter. Here GRRM gives us a clue. In the dying god myths and practices of Europe at the Samhein festival (Halloween) they ritually killed the corn god sometimes referred to as a corn wolf - a WHITE corn wolf. His name was JOHN Barleycorn. I think we have it - John is King of Winter, Bran is King of Summer (the green man).

Arya possibly is  the balancing act - both life and death, however there are other possible dualities with her - sun goddess versus Sansa a moon goddess. Arya's associations are all with sun and sky related entities - Gendry the sun of a thunder god, Dondarrion the lightning Lord, Edrik from sunny Dorn (morning) and of course Nymeria who brought life to her people. Sansa by contrast is increasingly associated with ice and the moon. However supporting the idea of Arya being a sort of balancing act is the fact that she has strong water associations and in the celtic concept water is associated with death

 

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1 hour ago, Luddagain said:

I think we should be a bit cautious about reading TOO much into symbolism, especially where it relates to women.

We should consider the personality of GRRM and the story HE is telling.  Also whatever we come up with needs to be consistent otherwise we are saying GRRM is a lousy writer, which he is not.

Now the FIRST thing when discussing this topic is to consider...

And you are the arbiter of the RATIONAL, of course; and uniquely privy to what makes GRRM's mind tick.  YOU will tell us where to locate the acceptable LINE between literal and metaphorical -- HELLALUJAH!  Who are you, GOLDILOCKS..?  

Feel free to offer your interpretations -- you obviously know a lot of interesting factoids about mythology -- but don't preface your contributions by telling anyone else off about either OVER- or UNDER-thinking.  There are bears about when you go wandering off in the woods, you know...and other ravenous creatures...

(But thanks for explaining the DUALITY of the seasons to us.)

 

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Goldilocks.  She  went for a walk in the forest.  Pretty soon, she came upon a house.  She knocked and, when no one answered, she walked right in.

At the table in the kitchen, there were three bowls of porridge.  Goldilocks was hungry.  She tasted the porridge from the first bowl.

"This porridge is too hot!" she exclaimed.

So, she tasted the porridge from the second bowl.

"This porridge is too cold," she said

So, she tasted the last bowl of porridge.

"Ahhh, this porridge is just right," she said happily and she ate it all up.

After she'd eaten the three bears' breakfasts she decided she was feeling a little tired.  So, she walked into the living room where she saw three chairs.  Goldilocks sat in the first chair to rest her feet.  

"This chair is too big!" she exclaimed.

So she sat in the second chair.

"This chair is too big, too!"  she whined.

So she tried the last and smallest chair.

"Ahhh, this chair is just right," she sighed.  But just as she settled down into the chair to rest, it broke into pieces!

Goldilocks was very tired by this time, so she went upstairs to the bedroom.  She lay down in the first bed, but it was too hard.  Then she lay in the second bed, but it was too soft.  Then she lay down in the third bed and it was just right.  Goldilocks fell asleep.

As she was sleeping, the three bears came home.

"Someone's been eating my porridge," growled the Papa bear.

"Someone's been eating my porridge," said the Mama bear.

"Someone's been eating my porridge and they ate it all up!" cried the Baby bear.

"Someone's been sitting in my chair," growled the Papa bear.

"Someone's been sitting in my chair," said the Mama bear.

"Someone's been sitting in my chair and they've broken it all to pieces," cried the Baby bear.

They decided to look around some more and when they got upstairs to the bedroom, Papa bear growled, "Someone's been sleeping in my bed,"

"Someone's been sleeping in my bed, too" said the Mama bear

"Someone's been sleeping in my bed and she's still there!" exclaimed Baby bear.

Just then, Goldilocks woke up and saw the three bears.  She screamed, "Help!"  And she jumped up and ran out of the room.  Goldilocks ran down the stairs, opened the door, and ran away into the forest.  And she never returned to the home of the three bears.

THE END

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9 hours ago, LmL said:

Your knowledge is encyclopedic! I suppose scarlet counts for red, especially since she is called the Red Queen.

Thank you. I like her name because it reminds me of the biological hypothesis, Red Queen. And Rhaenys is an example that contradicts Aegon V's constant thing about that to keep his lords in order all he needed were dragons. Which is not so much, given Rhaenys's rejection by Great Council and her son's rejection as well. 

9 hours ago, LmL said:

Visenya is the ice moon, riding her hoary white dragon and with the white marble Sept of Baelor on her hill.

And that pairing is a manifestation of the pun between 'hoary' and 'whore'. Before the existence of the sept, during the Dance there was a brothel named the House of Kisses which became prominent during the liminal period of The Moon of the Three Kings.  

 

9 hours ago, LmL said:

Oh - and look. Meleys. Meliai. There it is again!! It's so damn consistent, the fire moon symbolism. Mel the red woman and Meleys the red queen, both fire moon maidens / Nissa Nissa maidens. Mel is even called Stannis's red queen...

You know I tend to think that the Mel prefix is related to the name Melissa. The name is Greek for Honey Bee and there is the curious story of Ellyn Ever-sweet and the other instances of honey, honey combs, bees, the Mountain using a bee keeper and his wife as traps to kill Berric. 

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8 hours ago, LmL said:

And by the way, RR, comets and meteors are sometimes called "star shit," so, the Others with their cold star eyes fit the bill as a cold star shit stream. Gross. Look what you've done to my beautiful symbolism. Ha! 

I think its Martin's way of pointing out a gross oversight in worship i.e. if the blood and flesh are holy then why isn't the piss and shit as well which he points out by equating blood and flesh with piss and shit. 

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7 hours ago, LmL said:
Quote

(3) The spine of Cat/NN/the weirwood is analogous to the serpentine steps we find everywhere, e.g. the tortuous external (why is it exterior not interior...most unusual...) spiral staircase Tyrion climbs to access and escape the Winterfell library.  The injunction Dany receives to 'always take the door to your right' might also be interpreted to signify tracing a spiral pathway. It also occurs to me that books also have 'spines,' don't they!

Yes, that seems right, and there's a good chance George is thinking of the DNA helix, Jacob's Ladder, and that type of thing. I like the idea about always taking the right door turning Dany's trip into a spiral... it makes sense. I mentioned to you that the HOTU is effectively a "shadow tower," being a palace of shadows, and having a non-physical tower which Dany seems to climb but which is not visible form the outside (it's a low, flat building). This is why this place confuses me, symbolically - the Undying seem like such clear parallels to the Others, but the shadow tower and serpentine stairs symbols are dragons and darkness... and the description of it:

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Long and low, without towers or windows, it coiled like a stone serpent through a grove of black-barked trees whose inky blue leaves made the stuff of the sorcerous drink the Qartheen called shade of the evening. No other buildings stood near. Black tiles covered the palace roof, many fallen or broken; the mortar between the stones was dry and crumbling. She understood now why Xaro Xhoan Daxos called it the Palace of Dust. Even Drogon seemed disquieted by the sight of it. The black dragon hissed, smoke seeping out between his sharp teeth.

"Blood of my blood," Jhogo said in Dothraki, "this is an evil place, a haunt of ghosts and maegi. See how it drinks the morning sun? Let us go before it drinks us as well."

Anyway I am just not totally sure what is happening here. I'm also not exactly sure what the shade trees and warlock wine represent in the context of the weirwoods and the ice / fire dichotomy. 

Its a twisted tree that has fallen on its side. 

And George is absolutely thinking of DNA helix, Jacob's Ladder, serpentine stairs and libraries as LEGACY. It is the embodiment of his phrase "we dance on the strings of those you came before us". The preservation of legacy (the strings that unites families, regions, and Westeros together) can become twisted and corrupted and setting fire to them unties them. 

Btw, George makes a contestant note that some men have a hard time climbing the serpentine stairs. in the red keep unless they are accompanied physically by a woman. To me this points to mitochondrial DNA which is inherited via the female line (which the creation of mitochondria is hypothesized to be created via cannibalism). 

Tyrion has this problem, Ser Loras and Maester Cressen has the problem of climbing the stairs in the Sea Dragon Tower (Nagga reference and the inherited legacy of that story) to go into the dragon's mouth to meet with Stannis in The Hall of the Painted Table (The painted table being a reference to writing and the Talking Trees of the Summer Islands that go into your craving of trees- and leaving them with bloody tears and bloody faces-you mentioned in this essay and the last one). 

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It's an interesting discussion, and it comes perilously close to something I've been wondering about in the story.  Clearly GRRM loves to reference/invert/subvert mythologies.  GRRM has created his own abduction myth with the Rhaegar and Lyanna story.  Whether or not the events unfolded like many of the readers are assuming, there are clearly two different mythologies involving this story.  The northern story of Rhaegar abducting and raping Lyanna without her consent.  And the Southern love story of Lyanna being a willing participant of the abduction.

With this myth, GRRM is clearly referencing the Rape of Persephone.  With Lyanna playing the part of Persephone and Rhaegar playing the part of Hades.  But in my mind, Rhaegar has always made a crappy Hades.  There really aren't any parallels other than the abduction story.

But Rhaegar as a stand in for Apollo seems to fit much better.  And the most famous abduction myth involving Apollo, was the abduction of Daphne, where she is turned into a tree to escape his grasp.  Which makes me wonder a bit if we'll find out if Lyanna's consciousness upon her death went into the weirnet.  After all it is Howland, who takes Lyanna's hand from Eddard after her death, and one of Howland's abilities was to "talk to trees".  

This would also be a clear parallel to GRRM's other Lya, who upon her death joins the collective Hive mind.

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