Magic Mushrooms and Dark Betrayals

[GyantSpyder]

If anyone else has ever talked about this at length, please let me know, especially if they're mycologists. 

So, I took a mushrooming foraging class today, and a lot of things came up about the biology of mushrooms, and how you go about searching for mushrooms, that set off lightbulbs in my brain, particularly concerning the strange biology of the weirwoods and the greenseers. And I think this might be tied into some of the big mysteries of how the mechanics of the conflicts in the books work.

The big idea -- The weirwoods in Westeros are connected with each other through a truly giant, continent-spanning fungal mycelium - an underground organism symbiotic with this species of tree. The fungus, rather than just the trees themselves, is the psychic agent connecting with the weirwood net and merging with the greenseers, and the fungus, rather than the trees, is what feeds on human blood and demands sacrifices. The fungus is an intelligence, it has psychic powers that can manipulate people, and it has an agenda: betrayal, enabled by darkness.

"That tree is dying. But a tree dying can take multiple human generations." - My mushroom tour guide

This might take several parts.

First, a quick rundown of the biological relationship between mushrooms and trees. Mushrooms are frequently found at the bases of trees, or on dead trees or tree stumps. But the mushrooms are not the "actual organism" as much as they are the fruit of that organism, and the "actual organism" is the thread-like mycelium, usually found within the flesh of the tree, under the bark, or under the ground in the soil around the tree root systems. 

Mushrooms / mycelia generally have parasitic / symbiotic relationship with trees, but the kind of relationships vary. Sometimes mushrooms only grow on dead or dying trees. Sometimes mushrooms grow on or near living tress and kill them. Sometimes they grow on or near living trees, and make the tree healthier and stronger in order to enable them to survive better.

Here is some info on mycorrhiza, the relationship between a symbiotic fungus and the root system of a tree. In this kind of relationship, the fungus exchanges nutrients with the tree, protects it from pathogens or even cold, and even sometimes exchanges DNA with it. Sometimes the fungus penetrates the cells of the host tree and changes them, sometimes it merely lives around it, within it, or next to it.

Meanwhile, while the mycorrhiza of a symbiotic fungus and the roots of a tree are like the dendrites of a nerve cell reaching across a synapse of soil, the mycelium is like the axons that stretch out and connect the networks, engaging with the roots of multiple trees, sometimes connecting entire forests. One mycelium of honey mushroom in Oregon is 2 miles across - just one fungus. It's easy to see how GRRM, who loves to blow things up to unreasonable scales, might have come across this an imagined a mycelium as big as a continent.

NPR recently published a TED Radio hour about how symbiotic mycelia create networks in forests that allow trees to collaborate and function as a collective. A lot in there should sound familiar - particularly the juxtaposition of the white mycelium and the red mineral horizon, the colors of weirwood.

Also fungus can grow inside trees, underneath the bark, but it needs to get through the bark to do this a lot of the time - and thus has a further symbiotic relationship with woodpeckers and other creatures that poke holes in tree bark. This can lead to mushrooms that protrude out of holes in the sides of trees. Fungi are very strong, if slow, and capable of tunneling through wood, but they don't generally tunnel on their own from the outside of unbroken bark through the bark into the heartwood.

If we conjecture that the weirwoods have a mycorrhiza relationship with an underground fungus that also lives in their flesh, it turns out to connect a bunch of weird qualities of the weirwoods and make sense of them.

Weirwood does not die of old age - This might be the natural quality of weirwood that makes it a desirable symbiotic partner, or it might be the product of a symbiotic relationship that prolongs its life. Greenseers like Bloodraven also appear to live unnaturally long lives, and the same fungal symbiote might cause it.

Weirwood does not rot - Fungus is the main agent in tree rot, both for living trees and dead or dying ones. For weirwood not to rot, it needs to have a different relationship with fungus than other trees. 

Weirwood turns to stone after a thousand years - For wood to petrify by conventional means, something has to protect it from consumption by insects so its wood can be replaced by minerals - but this usually only happens if the wood is buried. We have some instances in the story (mainly Nagga's bones on the isle of Old Wyck), where weirwood has turned to stone over time without being buried under mineral material. One possibility is that fungal cell walls are made of chitin, and over time maybe this strange fungus that lives in the trees, after the tree dies, solidifies into a hard chitin composite, like thick lobster shell.

Weirwood is "bone white" - Some fungi (notably honey mushrooms, the same fungus as the Oregon mycelium), change the color inside trees as they consume them to white, a phenomenon known as "white rot". And the kind of pale white the weirwoods are often described as is much more characteristic of a mushroom than of tree wood. Granted, this usually makes the wood softer, rather than harder. So to accept the idea that the whiteness of the weirwood is caused by the fungus living inside of it, the fungus would have to be doing something to change the wood without destroying it.

Weirwood "bleeds red" - This is mostly just a detail I want to put here, as it is also plausible just for trees (though not the kinds of trees the weirwoods are most similar to - beeches, which keep their golden leaves through the winter and are frequent and well-known hosts to desirable mushrooms) to have red sap, but there are a bunch of different kinds of mushrooms that are pale colored most of the time, but exude a "milk" or ichor of a dark color, red or purple, at some point in their life cycle, when the are cut or die or whatever. When we talked about milk cap mushrooms and the laytex they exude in various colors, it also made me think of the weirwoods. 

Weirwoods don't age and don't rot, but still become gnarled over time - My mushroom forager guide told me that a gnarled tree with a strange shape or something fat or weird happening with its trunk often means its base is a good place to look for mushrooms. Normal reasons for gnarling include parts of the tree aging and dying in layers at different times, and also fungal infection. 

Weirwoods all have their bark ritualistically cut by the worshipers of the Old Gods - It might make sense for the fungus to encourage this practice so that it can get through the bark and spread to more weirwoods. This would refer to a mechanism that both goes through the roots and the bark, and I don't have that sorted out yet. This would also explain why people plant heart trees inside their castles - to further allow and encourage the fungus to spread and thrive where it can continue to influence people's minds.

The Red Priests burn weirwoods rather than just cut them down - It does not make sense to dispose of a living tree by burning it - live wood does not burn well. Some tree-borne mushrooms, however, burn extremely well, and are even used to start fires, such as tinder polypores. Tinder polypore, by the way, is a white-rot fungus that can be bone white and also be red and black, and is also called "ice man fungus." And that sure pulls a lot of stuff together for the giant fungal psychic magical intelligence underground that appears to be messing with a lot of people to be named after ice and especially susceptible to fire. If the Others use a form of the magical fungus to raise wights, that would explain why they catch on fire so quickly, too. Fungus is certainly known to live on dead bodies.  Could this fungus be the "Great Other" - an intelligence so entirely inhuman that it is identified fundamentally by how alien it is?

Greenseers slip their skin into weirwoods through the roots, and they set up shop under the trees rather than right up against them - Why does Bloodraven tell Bran it's important for him to go into the roots of the weirwood? He never has to think about going into any part of Summer. Beric Dondarrion's hidden lair is also under a tree. Greenseers seem to be consumed around the roots of trees as well. Maybe this is a characteristic of the roots of the weirwood - or maybe all this stuff is happening around the roots and in the dark and deep because that's where the fungus lives.

Blood sacrifices to the Old Gods still seem to "work" even if the blood doesn't actually go on the tree and only goes into the ground relatively near the tree - This makes sense if the actual recipient of the sacrifice is underground near the tree rather than the tree itself. Yeah, you're feeding the root system, sure, but when Bran sees the ground "drink the blood" near a dead stump, this might be what he is seeing.

Greenseer power and other psychic powers get stronger in darkness and blindness, but trees thrive in light and drink light - This always bothered me. Why does Bloodraven tell Bran that the power is in the darkness, when the power comes from trees, and trees are photosynthetic? You know what can thrive in darkness, even when everything else dies? Mushrooms.

Weirwood stumps still "work" - Jaime has a strange vision when he lies his head down on a weirwood stump. This would indicate that the "magic" of the weirwoods doesn't depend on the weirwood being alive. We also see a grove of weirwood stumps at High Heart, but the Ghost of High Heart is still capable of prophesy. If the living psychic ingredient in these kinds of exchanges wasn't the weirwood, maybe it was the fungus. After all, fungus definitely grows on tree stumps (there is a whole iconography of "stumps" throughout the series that probably has something to do with this that I haven't sorted yet, mostly having to do with amputees - stumps grow betrayal, stumps bleed, etc.). There is also something to be said here about weirwood thrones, like the weirwood throne in the Eyrie, maybe also still being infected with the fungus and still having strange effects on the people who sit on them. Also a bunch of people and places with mysterious powers or intentions carry or contain weirwood relics, like the House of Black and White, the House of the Undying, the High Septon, and Morna the Wildling Witch. The Black Gate in the Nightfort is another weirwood object that seems to retain its life and power, despite the weirwood it is made from being dead. Probably not a coincidence that it is in a deep, dark place.

Weirwood is very unlike any other tree species -  Fungi are often species-specific. If you are looking for a specific kind of mushroom, it's important to know what kind of tree it grows on - that can be a huge help in locating or identifying it. Yeah, there are mushrooms you can find on a variety of a class of trees, but a lot of mushrooms only grow on one kind of tree - and this would make sense as to why weirwood has qualities no other tree has. Either that or maybe weirwood isn't a tree at all and is instead a sort of mushroom itself, a fruit of the underground fungus. But I think the symbiosis description is more elegant.

It makes the "hinges of the world" make sense - Why are there certain places in the world where magic is stronger than in other places? Maybe a lot of magic comes from the fungus, which eats blood and fears fire. Maybe the Wall is full of the stuff (and maybe it isn't all one organism, but there are several fungal colonies of different sorts), maybe Storm's End is full of it too. It's kind of a midi-chlorian answer, which sucks, but that also means even if this theory is true, maybe GRRM is never going to tell us this is how it works and just uses it as his own background to make the things that magic and the Old Gods do internally consistent and plausible.

What does this mean for the story?

It means there has been another player in the Game of Thrones the whole time that we have been largely unaware of, that might be all over the place exerting its mental influence on events to prevent anybody from getting powerful enough to realistically threaten it. Or maybe the fungus was part of Azor Ahai, the Bloodstone Emperor, and the Blood Betrayal - something that corrupted the weirwoods from a natural "green-leaf" state - the event that "set the trees on fire."

So, that's the basics of how the fungus at the base of the trees might function - assuming that GRRM shows a similar sort of interest in mushroom biology and foraging as he showed in comparative mythology and the lore of trees and gemstones, which seems like a pretty reasonable, as all these things kind of run in the same sorts of hobbyist circles.

Next I want to talk a little bit about the symbolism of mushrooms and the possible intentions of this strange creature.

[Targaryen Restoration]

The weirwoods are treated much like the greeshka.  The ww is naturaly occuring and the people with abilites like Bran learned to use it to their advantage and exploit its abilities.  The ones who can bond with it learned how to prolong their lives and live a second life that way but the price is blood.  The trees are cannibalistic and require blood sacrifice to thrive.  So the Children practice blood offerings.  The connected ones manipulate people to make them continue to supply blood to the roots.  Mankind is a tool that is being exploited. 

It is possible that the ancient Valyrians may have known.  Even Tyrion thinks it was a mystery why the Valyrians didn't go beyond Dragonstone to plunder the resources of Westeros.  It seems to me, there was an ancient pact that mankind was to stay out of the western landmass.

[GyantSpyder]

So, and I'm running out of gas for today, so this will be a faster summary than I had thought to do - but it occurred to me I could use A Search of Ice and Fire to find examples of when people ate mushrooms with their meals, to see if there is any symbolism to mushrooms in the story that has been sitting in plain sight the whole time, indicating that fungus might have had a bigger role in the story than we probably thought.

And I think it turns out that there is. Mushrooms are associated with people doing things that end up being self-destructive, especially mistakes made out of ignorance that spark massive bloodshed and get a lot of people killed, or political machination and entrenched enmity that leads to bloodshed in the future. Mushrooms are related to decay, and serving or eating mushrooms seems related to desires (misled intentions, really) leading to future rotting corpses.

Here are all the meals where mushrooms are mentioned in the books, plus other mushroom imagery where people see mushrooms in notable places. Most of them refer to exactly this kind of self-destructive situation, but a few might mean something else or be hinting at things to come:

- The meal at the Inn at the Crossroads right before Catelyn arrests Tyrion Lannister. (AGOT, Catelyn V)

- The feast where they ate the boar that killed king Robert. (ACOK, TYRION I)

- The rabbit Arya catches when on the road with Yoren that she serves to, among other people Jaqen H'gar ("He thanked her politely for the treat") (ACOK Arya III)

- The dinner Salador Saan says he will eat as he tells Davos Seaworth that Stannis and company are all going to attack King's Landing at the Blackwater (ACOK, Davos I)

- The meal Bran eats at the winter feast in Winterfell right before he fails to address the problem with Lady Hornwood and Ramsay Bolton and meets Lord Manderly. (ACOK, Bran III)

- The meal Catelyn eats when she meets Renly (there is also additional symbolism comparing the tents of Renly's soldiers to mushrooms) (ACOK, Catelyn II)

- Jon sees mushrooms covered in frozen dew (Flowers and mushrooms alike wore coats of glass) at Craster's right before Gilly asks him to be taken away from Craster's (ACOK, Jon III)

- Catelyn sees mushrooms on stumps at the place where Renly and Stannis meet to discuss terms. (ACOK, Catelyn III)

- Jon compares the tents to mushrooms when the Night's Watch pitch camp at the Fist of the First Men. (ACOK, Jon IV)

- "When a king dies, fancies sprout like mushrooms in the dark." - Tyrion says this while again describing the killing of Renly by Stannis to Cersei - Renley and Stannis are a big "mushroom moment" (ACOK, VIII)

- Hallyne the pyromancer turns "the complexion of a mushroom" when he talks to Tyrion, right between when Tyrion tells the High Septon to tell people that Stannis is going to "burn the Great Sept of Baelor" and when the pyromancer says their spells to make wildfire are working much better and they are making a ton of wildfire (ACOK, Tyrion IX)

- Cersei serves Tyrion mushrooms in a conversation that is all about Tyrion and Cersei hating each other, before Tyrion promises future retribution against Cersei (ACOK, Tyrion XII)

- "Be gentle on a night like this and you'll have treasons popping up all around you like mushrooms after a hard rain" - This is what Cersei uses to justify to Sansa why she and Joffrey are so cruel to everybody around them. Bold strategy, Cotton, let's see how this works out for her. (ACOK, Sansa VI)

- Tyrion again references mushrooms with regards to his hatred for Cersei while he's recuperating from the Blackwater ("My sister mistakes me for a mushroom. She keeps me in the dark and feeds me shit.") (ASOS, Tyrion I)

- Oleanna Tyrell serves Sansa mushrooms before she makes Sansa tell her about how bad Joffrey is, and follows it up with the decision that the wedding will go on (ASOS, Sansa I)

- Arya eats mushrooms before the Ghost of High Heart tells her cryptically about Stannis killing Renly, Balon being assassinated by Euron or an agent of Euron, and Lady Stoneheart awake and out for vengeance. (ASOS, Arya IV)

- The Rat Cook apparently served mushrooms with his famous cannibal meal. Makes sense. (ASOS, Bran IV)

- The first dish at Joffrey and Margaery's wedding is cream of mushroom soup with snails. Tyrion mentions mushrooms again as he drinks wine during the wedding feast. (ASOS, Tyrion VIII)

- At the feast at Darry, Jaime notably refuses to eat mushrooms, but everybody else eats them - right after Jaime spills (symbolic) red wine that he notices but everybody else pretends not to notice. Right after this meal, Lancel tells him that he poisoned King Robert's wine, slept with Cersei, and that the Faith Militant is rearmed and he is joining it. So everybody else is making things worse and Jaime is trying to stop. (AFFC, Jaime IV)

- Arya cuts mushrooms for the Faceless men, "but only when the moon was black." This is of course also about bloodshed but is notably also connecting mushrooms to darkness, and maybe the long night. (AFFC, Cat of the Canals)

- Arianne Martell eats mushrooms (and "fiery dragon peppers") right before Doran's "Vengeance. Justice. Fire and Blood." speech. (AFFC, The Princess in the Tower)

- Sansa as Alayne tells Sweetrobin he will get a feast that has mushrooms in it as soon as he gets to the Gates of the Moon, where Littlefinger is waiting to tell Sansa about her betrothal to Harry the Heir. Things are not looking good for Sweetrobin. (AFFC, Alayne II)

- Here the mushroom game escalates big time - with Tyrion finding actual deadly mushrooms before eating not-deadly mushrooms, while Illyrio eats not-deadly mushrooms. Boy, a whole lot of people are going to die because of these two. By the way, when Tyrion picks up the poisonous mushrooms, he notices there are seven of them, thinks the gods might be speaking to him, and briefly gets dizzy. The meal between Tyrion and Illyrio is the biggest mushroom scene since Stannis killed Renly. It probably deserves its own breakdown if this theory is going anywhere at all. (ADWD, Tyrion I)

- Daenerys compares the brothels in Mereen where the Unsullied are going to get cuddles, and murdered, to mushrooms, right before Hizdhar shows up to try to get her to open the fighting pits. (ADWD, Daenerys I)

- Bloodraven has mushrooms growing on him when Bran meets him. (ADWD, Bran II)

- The literal poison mushroom shows up when Tyrion thinks about murdering Young Griff, which he probably sort of eventually does indirectly (ADWD, Tyrion V)

- Tyrion brings the literal poison mushroom with him to Volantis. Not really symbolic, but in this chapter he meets Penny and talks to the Widow of the Waterfront about backing Dany's slave revolt - it will be interesting to see how both those things work out (ADWD, Tyrion VII)

- Bran finds a hundred kinds of mushrooms in the dark abyss under Bloodraven's cave, right before he and Jojen and Meera eat blood stew together a whole bunch. The description of Bran eating the meat is really creepy and ominous. (ADWD, Bran III)

- Bran sees Bloodraven again and remarks again on how he has mushrooms growing on his head. (ADWD, Bran III)

- Like the Rat Cook, Wyman Manderly serves mushrooms in his cannibalism pies at Ramsay's wedding (ADWD, The Ghost of Winterfell)

- Tyrion refers to his mushroom and thinks about killing himself and Penny, and then he compares the tents around Mereen to mushrooms - this makes three groups of tents all compared to mushrooms before a battle - Renly's tents before Stannis, the Night's Watch's tents before the First of the First Men, and the Yunkai before the Battle of Fire. So far team mushroom is 0 for 2. (ADWD, Tyrion X)

- Tryion kills Nurse with the poisoned mushroom right before he defects to Brown Ben Plumm. (ADWD, Tyrion XI)

- Kevan Lannister's last meal has mushrooms in it. (ADWD, Epilogue)

This is a lot, and I know there are a lot of explanations for these inclusions, and maybe I need to refine the thesis here, but there definitely seems to be a pattern of who is compared to mushrooms and who eats mushrooms and when. The examples that fit the pattern least are when the mushrooms are not food and are not symbolic and are just literally being poison mushrooms or Old Gods fungus fruit. It does seem that there are lot of mushrooms around at the big moments when people get involved in pointless wars or lost battles, or vendettas, blood feuds, assassinations, etc. 

So the point of this is that, in general, fungus and mushrooms have a bigger role in the symbolism of the story than might otherwise be determined, and if we think the fungus is an actual thing, and we are looking for an M.O. for the fungus in general, the way mushrooms are symbolically mentioned should be considered in relation to it, in the way in which symbolism throughout the story is so often a way of communicating information about past or future deeds or intentions for so many other characters and types, and there is so much consonance and repetition in the different levels of the story.

Oh, also, "fungus" appears in three places - curtains of fungus in the Neck and the Sorrows (both places that have been the targets of powerful magic in the distant past), and fungus between Sam Tarly's toes. Make of that what you will.

[GyantSpyder]

1 hour ago, Targaryen Restoration said:

The weirwoods are treated much like the greeshka.  The ww is naturaly occuring and the people with abilites like Bran learned to use it to their advantage and exploit its abilities.  The ones who can bond with it learned how to prolong their lives and live a second life that way but the price is blood.  The trees are cannibalistic and require blood sacrifice to thrive.  So the Children practice blood offerings.  The connected ones manipulate people to make them continue to supply blood to the roots.  Mankind is a tool that is being exploited. 

It is possible that the ancient Valyrians may have known.  Even Tyrion thinks it was a mystery why the Valyrians didn't go beyond Dragonstone to plunder the resources of Westeros.  It seems to me, there was an ancient pact that mankind was to stay out of the western landmass.

Sure - but what if there's one other big piece of the puzzle, some other player in all this, and a big change that happened to the weirwoods at some point because of it?

One clue, I think, is that the sigil of House Gardener is a five-fingered green hand, and the singers are called greenseers, and the dreams are called green dreams, Garth the Green was probably a greenseer, the trees are protected by the Green Men, and the weirwood leaves have five points and are said to look like hands. It makes perfect sense for the five-fingered hand of House Gardener to represent a green weirwood leaf.

Except the weirwood leaves are red, not green. Everything about the old weirwood regime is green, green, green, but nothing about the weirwoods is green.

If the weirwood leaves are red, and their sap is red, and they drink red blood, why are the people hooked into them called "greenseers?"

Maybe at some point something infected the weirwoods and changed their color. 

[GyantSpyder]

Oh, one more thing to add before I go to sleep --

The power of the weirwood.net is to give you visions, give you an out of body experience where you lose yourself, and to make you feel at one with all of time and space.

I think GRRM might find it a funny joke for this power to be provided by magic mushrooms.

[Seams]

This is excellent. Interesting idea, logically developed and well-documented.

Do you have a copy of the Westeros "history" book called The World of Ice and Fire? One of the "historians" regularly cited in that book is a dwarf (who was also a court fool) named Mushroom. GRRM plays a game with the idea of the unreliable narrator, and the World book extends that to give us competing historical points of view that may or may not be accurate. Based on what I know of fools and of GRRM's love for his character Tyrion, my guess is that Mushroom is one of the more reliable historians, although there is a twinkle of irony or foreshadowing in his words. But you have to take everything with a grain of salt. Maybe I should re-read the World book with your theory in mind.

The idea that the fungus is an airborne parasite that enters trees through their bark might fit with @voice's miasma theory about the White Walkers and wights. It also gets me thinking about a comparison between tree bark and human armor or mail. (I believe mail is central to the symbolic motif of fabric and sewing that GRRM has used throughout the series.) The piercing of mail or finding a hole under an armpit seems to be significant when it occurs.

I agree that the mushrooms Tyrion finds at Illyrio's home and the mushroom dinner they eat (or, in Tyrion's case, that he does not eat) are important to sorting out the details of your theory. Tyrion puts the mushrooms in the toe of his boot and carries them around in his adventures. He uses some to kill Nurse, the assistant to the slaveholder Yezzen. I wonder whether the mushrooms are supposed to be compared to greyscale: Tyrion falls in the river and fears being infected, regularly poking his fingertips with a knife to see whether symptoms have set in. But does he ever check his toes? That's where the mushrooms have been for weeks or months. The legend of the Shrouded Lord says that the title passes to a new Shrouded Lord from time to time, and I wonder whether Tyrion has become the new Shrouded Lord, carrying deadly mushrooms instead of infecting people with greyscale.

One of Illyrio's functions in the story seems to be like Father Christmas in the Narnia books: Father Christmas gives the Pevensie children their magic gifts of a sword and shield, a bow, arrows and horn, and a dagger and a potion that can cure any disease or even death. Illyrio gives Dany her dragon eggs. He gives Tyrion a chest filled with a child's old clothes, which Tyrion uses to sew himself a suit of motley-like clothes after he takes a swim in the river. I don't believe the clothes are magical per se, but might symbolize Tyrion's future role in uniting the seven kingdoms. And then there are the mushrooms Tyrion takes from Illyrio's home. (Others in the forum suspect that Illyrio has sent another gift to fAegon, probably a Targaryen sword.)

The one thing I question in your list of all the meals featuring mushrooms is whether there is so much bloodshed and treachery in ASOIAF that it's impossible to connect it to a single symbol. I remember a post in this forum that theorized that sapphires always accompanied lying. But there is so much lying in the books - including in situations where sapphires have not been present. The connection between mushrooms and bloodshed may be stronger - I realize you indicated that the second post was not as polished as you intended. It might be that a systematic analysis of seeing mushrooms growing outside vs. eating mushrooms vs. having them on the table but not eating them will help to refine our understanding of the symbolism.

Nice work, though.

[White Ravens]

16 hours ago, GyantSpyder said:

If anyone else has ever talked about this at length, please let me know, especially if they're mycologists. 

So, I took a mushrooming foraging class today, and a lot of things came up about the biology of mushrooms, and how you go about searching for mushrooms, that set off lightbulbs in my brain, particularly concerning the strange biology of the weirwoods and the greenseers. And I think this might be tied into some of the big mysteries of how the mechanics of the conflicts in the books work.

The big idea -- The weirwoods in Westeros are connected with each other through a truly giant, continent-spanning fungal mycelium - an underground organism symbiotic with this species of tree. The fungus, rather than just the trees themselves, is the psychic agent connecting with the weirwood net and merging with the greenseers, and the fungus, rather than the trees, is what feeds on human blood and demands sacrifices. The fungus is an intelligence, it has psychic powers that can manipulate people, and it has an agenda: betrayal, enabled by darkness.

snip...

Excellent observations, @GyantSpyder!  There is plenty of good food for thought here.  The notion of weirwoods having a symbiotic relationship with the mycorrhiza of mushrooms really resonates with me.  I looked at your links and found this quite interesting:

"Nutrients can be shown to move between different plants through the fungal network. Carbon has been shown to move from paper birch trees into Douglas-fir trees thereby promoting succession in ecosystems.^[39] The ectomycorrhizal fungus Laccaria bicolor has been found to lure and kill springtails to obtain nitrogen, some of which may then be transferred to the mycorrhizal host plant. In a study by Klironomos and Hart, Eastern White Pine inoculated with L. bicolor was able to derive up to 25% of its nitrogen from springtails."

Springtails are tiny insect-like creatures that inhabit the forest floor in very large numbers and here we have a real-life example of a tree becoming somewhat carnivorous through its relationship with with a mushroom species and its mycorrhizal network. 

 

[sweetsunray]

Nice work @GyantSpyder Will check this thread for more.

[The Commentator]

I guess we could sprinkle Tinactin powder on the trees and see how they react. 

Mushrooms prefer dark and moist places.  Do we know if there are weirwoods in Dorne? 

[White Ravens]

6 minutes ago, Widowmaker 811 said:

I guess we could sprinkle Tinactin powder on the trees and see how they react. 

Mushrooms prefer dark and moist places.  Do we know if there are weirwoods in Dorne? 

There is at least one acient weirwood growing on the Isle of Ravens in Oldtown which is as far south as Dorne.

[The Commentator]

12 minutes ago, White Ravens said:

There is at least one acient weirwood growing on the Isle of Ravens in Oldtown which is as far south as Dorne.

Thank you.  I forgot Dorne is a large region with many different types of climate and terrain.  Oldtown is on the coast and presumably will have enough moisture to support such a large tree.  I wonder how well a weirwood would fare in the sandy deserts of Dorne. 

[GyantSpyder]

4 hours ago, White Ravens said:

In a study by Klironomos and Hart, Eastern White Pine inoculated with L. bicolor was able to derive up to 25% of its nitrogen from springtails.

 

Wait wait wait wait wait!

One of the people who studied the carnivorous fungus/tree symbiosis was named _Klironomos_???

Really???

[White Ravens]

6 hours ago, GyantSpyder said:

Wait wait wait wait wait!

One of the people who studied the carnivorous fungus/tree symbiosis was named _Klironomos_???

Really???

Apparently.  I would guess that it is a Greek name.

[Prof. Cecily]

15 hours ago, White Ravens said:

There is at least one acient weirwood growing on the Isle of Ravens in Oldtown which is as far south as Dorne.

But in a different eco-system, IIRC.

Oldtown sounds like a place I'd like to visit.

And, of course, kudos to @GyantSpyder for a great piece of work.I've bookmarked this thread for further reference.

A good idea, tying in the food to your OP.

 

[SFDanny]

Totally. Fantastic. Thread. Thank you

[ravenous reader]

@GyantSpyder Enjoyed your essay!    A while ago, I recall @LmL briefly outlining a similar theory, thinking it would appeal to me, explaining someone had come up with the grand unified fungus theory of the weirwoods -- was that you?  I love your analogy of the mycelium to the neural network, hinting at GRRM's pervasive collective (un)consciousness concept.  In the brain, the white matter ascending and descending fiber tract expansion of the corona radiata, suspended on the pedicle of the brainstem radiating to the cerebral cortex, can with a bit of imagination be conceived of as a mushroom(ing)!  Additionally, the indelible image seared on the brain of the mushroom cloud of an atom bomb may be something with which GRRM is playing, in terms of the perilous attraction of all manner of poisonous 'mushrooms,' both literal and symbolic, sprouting forth from the bottomless pit of human vanity.  Although it's not all 'gloom and doom'... 

Mushrooms, and fungi in general, are the perfect symbol of one of GRRM's main themes, namely the healing-harming duality inherent in all things.  Thus, they can cause many diseases, but also be strategically employed to prevent disease; they can spoil food, but also enhance food production, etc.

Talking of useful foods, have you thought about expanding your fungal research into 'cheese'?!  Cheese is basically corrupted milk, produced via a process often utilizing fungi.  Fittingly, as recently pointed out by @Pain killer Jane, Tyrion our mushroom aficionado is also a great connoisseur of cheeses, especially the stinky, often blue-veined variety, such as gorgonzola, blue cheese, roquefort, camembert and brie, all of which are produced using fungi, e.g the penicillium mold, also used to synthesize the classic antibiotic.  

According to @Voice's 'miasma theory,' if I've understood it correctly following only a cursory reading (sorry Voice ), from a certain perspective human beings may be the planet's toxic/infective agent, the bacteria analogue as it were, against which the trees' immune system (the symbiotic fungus?) has mobilized a defense, constituted by the Others who are analogous to the antidote or antibiotic.  'Sharp cheese' as sharp weapon?!  'Others' as fungal spores / biological warfare?  Tyrion notes the cheese has a 'sharp bite,' while probing Janos Slynt's treachery, in line with your theme of magic mushrooms being associated with dark betrayal and the reciprocal pursuit of vengeance via equally underhanded means.  Also note that cheese is frequently consumed paired with wine, hinting at the bloodshed accompanying these tit-for-tat betrayals.  Apropos, Tyrion dubs Magister Illyrio 'Lord of Cheese', insinuating for the reader by remarking wryly on how lucrative this 'cheese' must be, that there are more layers than meet the eye to both Illyrio's business affairs and the symbolism of 'cheese' itself.  What does it mean to be a 'Cheesemonger'?  

Gorgonzola production is illuminating, especially with respect to the idea that the skin of an organism should optimally be compromised (e.g. by carving the weirwood) in order to facilitate entry and dissemination of the fungus throughout the network.  Likewise, dermal fungal infections rarely take root in intact skin.

Food for thought -- given that the smelly blue flower (in Dany's HOTU vision) grows in a chink in the Wall, does that make the Wall like the Eyrie ('milk-white marble veined with blue...like the veins in an old crone's legs...') a hunk of smelly, aged, overripe cheese, representing a fungal colony; which by extrapolation is analogous to the Others with their milkglass bones and blue blood? GRRM does make a big deal, doesn't he, of all the fermentation going on at the Wall (check out the types of foods in storage in the ice cells, practically located alongside the corpses, both topographically and symbolically).

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgonzola

Gorgonzola (/ɡɔːrɡənˈzoʊlə/; Italian pronunciation: [ɡorɡonˈdzɔːla]) is a veined Italian blue cheese, made from unskimmed cow's milk. It can be buttery or firm, crumbly and quite salty, with a "bite" from its blue veining.

 

Gorgonzola has been produced for centuries in Gorgonzola, Milan, acquiring its greenish-blue marbling in the eleventh century. However, the town's claim of geographical origin is disputed by other localities.[2]

Production[edit]

Today, it is mainly produced in the northern Italian regions of Piedmont and Lombardy. Whole cow's milk is used, to which starter bacteria are added, along with spores of the mold Penicillium glaucum. Penicillium roqueforti, used in Roquefort cheese, may also be used.[citation needed] The whey is then removed during curdling, and the result aged at low temperatures.

Pizza Trieste with Gorgonzola and apples.

During the aging process metal rods are quickly inserted and removed, creating air channels that allow the mold spores to grow into hyphae and cause the cheese's characteristic veining. Gorgonzola is typically aged for three to four months. The length of the aging process determines the consistency of the cheese, which gets firmer as it ripens. There are two varieties of Gorgonzola, which differ mainly in their age: Gorgonzola Dolce (also called Sweet Gorgonzola) and Gorgonzola Piccante (also called Gorgonzola Naturale, Gorgonzola Montagna, or Mountain Gorgonzola).

Under Italian law, Gorgonzola enjoys Protected Geographical Status. Termed DOP in Italy, this means that it can only be produced in the provinces of Novara, Bergamo, Brescia, Como, Cremona, Cuneo, Lecco, Lodi, Milan, Pavia, Varese, Verbano-Cusio-Ossola and Vercelli, as well as a number of comuni in the area of Casale Monferrato (province of Alessandria).

Consumption[edit]

Gorgonzola may be eaten in many ways. It may be melted into a risotto in the final stage of cooking, or served alongside polenta. Pasta with gorgonzola is a dish appreciated almost everywhere in Italy by gorgonzola lovers;[citation needed] usually gorgonzola goes on short pasta, such as penne, rigatoni, mezze maniche, or sedani, not with spaghetti or linguine. It is frequently[3] offered as pizza topping and is occasionally added to salads. Combined with other soft cheeses it is an ingredient of pizza ai quattro formaggi (four-cheeses pizza).

In popular culture[edit]

James Joyce, in his 1922 Ulysses, gives its hero Bloom a lunch of "a glass of Burgundy and a Gorgonzola sandwich". In his 1972 book Ulysses on the Liffey, critic and Joyce scholar Richard Ellmann suggests that "Besides serving as a parable that life breeds corruption, Gorgonzola is probably chosen also because of Dante's adventures with the Gorgon in the Inferno IX. Bloom masters the monster by digesting her."[4]

The other fungus you could consider -- and one I'm convinced GRRM the old hippy is referencing, along with all the other references to psychotropic drugs we've uncovered -- is the one (Claviceps purpurea) producing the ergot alkaloids, from which the hallucinogen LSD is derived.  See also the wikipedia entry on ergot, from which I've quoted an interesting excerpt below:

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History[edit]

Ergot on wheat stalks

Human poisoning due to the consumption of rye bread made from ergot-infected grain was common in Europe in the Middle Ages. The epidemic was known as Saint Anthony's fire,[11] or ignis sacer, and some historical events, such as the Great Fear in France during the Revolution have been linked to ergot poisoning.[19] Linnda R. Caporael posited in 1976 that the hysterical symptoms of young women that had spurred the Salem witch-trials had been the result of consuming ergot-tainted rye.[20] However, Nicholas P. Spanos and Jack Gottlieb, after a review of the historical and medical evidence, later disputed her conclusions.[21] Other authors have likewise cast doubt on ergotism as the cause of the Salem witch trials.[22]

Midwives and doctors have used extracts from ergots to hasten childbirth or to induce abortions for centuries.[23] Previous research has shown that the prophylactic use of uterotonic agents in the third stage of labour reduces both postpartum blood loss and postpartum haemorrhage.[24] In 1808 John Stearns of upper New York State learned from an immigrant German midwife of a new means to effect the mechanics of birth. This was ergot, a powerful natural drug that stimulates uterine muscles when given orally. It causes unremitting contractions. Stearns stressed its value in saving doctors time and relieving women of the agony of long labor. However, until anesthesia became available, there was no antidote or way of controlling the effects of ergot. So if the fetus did not move as expected, the drug could cause the uterus to mold itself around the child, rupturing the uterus and killing the child. Eventually, doctors determined that the use of ergot in childbirth without an antidote was too dangerous. They ultimately restricted its use to expelling the placenta or stopping hemorrhage.

In the 1930s, abortifacients drugs were marketed to women by various companies under various names such as Molex Pills and Cote Pills. Since birth control devices and abortifacients were illegal to market and sell at the time, they were offered to women who were "delayed". The recommended dosage was seven grains of ergotin a day. According to the FTC[25] these pills contained ergotin, aloes, Black Hellebore, and other substances. The efficacy and safety of these pills are unknown. The FTC deemed them unsafe and ineffective and demanded that they cease and desist selling the product.

British author John Grigsby contends that the presence of ergot in the stomachs of some of the so-called 'bog-bodies' (Iron Age human remains from peat bogs N E Europe such as Tollund Man) is indicative of use of ergot in ritual drinks in a prehistoric fertility cult akin to the Eleusinian Mysteries cult of ancient Greece. In his book Beowulf and Grendel, he argues that the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf is based on a memory of the quelling of this fertility cult by followers of Odin. He writes that Beowulf, which he translates as barley-wolf, suggests a connection to ergot which in German was known as the 'tooth of the wolf'. Beowulf is alternatively theorized to be translated at 'bee-wolf', a kenning for 'bear', to reference his berserker (bear shirt) state.[26]

Kykeon, the beverage consumed by participants in the ancient Greek cult of Eleusinian Mysteries, might have been based on hallucinogens from ergot,[27] and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is a potent hallucinogen, which was first synthesized from ergot alkaloids by the Swiss chemist, Albert Hofmann, in 1938.

Claviceps purpurea[edit]

Main article: Claviceps purpurea

Mankind has known about Claviceps purpurea for a long time, and its appearance has been linked to extremely cold winters that were followed by rainy summers.[citation needed]

The sclerotial stage of C. purpurea conspicuous on the heads of ryes and other such grains is known as ergot. Favorable temperatures for growth are in the range of 18–30 °C. Temperatures above 37 °C cause rapid germination of conidia.[citation needed] Sunlight has a chromogenic effect on the mycelium, with intense coloration.[citation needed] Cereal mashes and sprouted rye are suitable substrates for growth of the fungus in the laboratory.[citation needed]

The fungus responsible has a predilection for growing on grain cereals, especially rye.  Applied to the weirwood-affiliated fungus you've been positing, it now as it so happens has been able to procure the ideal substrate into which to sink its hooks -- 'Bran'!

[GyantSpyder]

On Invalid Date at 8:08 AM, Seams said:

Tyrion falls in the river and fears being infected, regularly poking his fingertips with a knife to see whether symptoms have set in. But does he ever check his toes? That's where the mushrooms have been for weeks or months.

This is brilliant! Yeah, the mushrooms are likely affecting his mind in some way, contributing to his cruelty and how much he seeks to undermine other people on his trip. Also - I know Mushroom the historian appears a lot in The Rogue Prince, and I am planning on going through his rumors to see what their intention might be with regard to war and politics - particularly the notion of "enticing a group of humans into a team wipe," which is I guess a more precise and distinct way of describing what I mean.

12 hours ago, White Ravens said:

Apparently.  I would guess that it is a Greek name.

Joaquim Kleronomas is a recurring character in the lore of GRRM's Thousand Worlds universe - an explorer who traveled and obersed the universe and gathered a huge mass of human knowledge. A cyborg with his memories appears in The Glass Flower in 1986, which, among other things, is about how death and decay are inseparable from life. John Klironomos is a biology professor and principle investigator who studies ecosystems at the University of British Columbia, among them symbiotic relationships between mushrooms and trees. The timeline doesn't work out - John Kloronomos was still in high school or college when the first mention of "Kleronomas" shows up in GRRM's literature, but for a moment there it seemed like there might be a link connecting the fungal symbiote theory to the hrangan minds of the Thousand Worlds universe - which I still think is a reasonably likely idea - that GRRM had ideas saved up for other stories, like Avalon, that he used in this series instead. But alas, it's just a coincidence, so I'll have to let it go :-)

[GyantSpyder]

@ravenous reader Oh, that's not me. I only saw this stuff after my mushroom foraging trip this past weekend. So if somebody else already came up with a grand unified fungus theory, all credit to them of course. I'd love to read it.

The stuff about fungus growing on Bran is great. It makes a lot of sense. And the idea that blue flowering is related to blue fungus and an intersection between cheese and molds and fungi makes a lot of sense, too. And of course Illyrio is the Lord of Cheese.

Actually, this puts me in mind of a third and fourth related factor - snails.

When I was going through the mushroom citations, I noticed at Joffrey's wedding the first course is not just cream of mushroom soup, it also has snails in it.

Then, when Tyrion and Illyrio eat together in ADWD, they eat a lot of mushrooms, but they also eat a lot of snails. Snails and mushrooms show up together in both places.

I'd have to look more to see where else snails show up, but it presents the beginning of an interesting idea.

So, fungus and snails have a few big things in common. One of them is living in rotten tree stumps. But another one is:

They hate salt. Salt kill snails, and it kills fungus.

Salt water is a common treatment for nail fungus (I know that because my mom used to get nail fungus a lot in the 90s. TMI.). And we all know what salt does to snails and slugs.

And you know what's made of salt water? The Wall!

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Hodor ducked, but not low enough. The door's upper lip brushed softly against the top of Bran's head, and a drop of water fell on him and ran slowly down his nose. It was strangely warm, and salty as a tear.

Bran IV, ASOS

 

I googled and found this thread on reddit from a year ago - would also link to something here if I find it. It also points out that salt has a prominent place in the ritual of guest right, alongside bread. We know Melisandre doesn't have to eat, so offering someone bread and salt might be a test of whether they are truly human and free-willed - somebody reanimated might not want the bread, and somebody being controlled by the fungus might want to stay away from the salt.

 

This would also make the whole "why don't the Others go around the Wall" question make sense, since the water is salt water and is thus a barrier in itself. And also it makes the Neck and the Arm of Dorne more effective barriers too - the thread I linked also mentions the saltwater baptism of the religion of the Drowned God - it makes a lot of sense if this was developed as a way to cleanse someone of the fungus - maybe at one point the Ironborn had a practice of washing themselves with salt water and drinking salt water before coming home from the green lands.

The Dothraki thinking of the ocean as the "poison water" would be a foreshadowing/hint/repetition to all this. Yeah, salt water is not good to drink, but for it to really be "poison" in the strongest sense you're more talking about something like a snail or a fungus than a horse.

[Pain killer Jane]

1 hour ago, GyantSpyder said:

So, fungus and snails have a few big things in common. One of them is living in rotten tree stumps. But another one is:

They hate salt. Salt kill snails, and it kills fungus.

What do you make of this? I was listening to this chapter the other day and I found this an odd expression. 

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She could have throttled him. Perhaps I need to command Ser Loras to allow Ser Osmund to unhorse him. That might chase the stars from Tommen's eyes. Salt a slug and shame a hero, and they shrink right up. "I am sending for a Dornishman to train you," she said. "The Dornish are the finest jousters in the realm."

-Cersei V, aFfC

Another animal that is of interest as well @GyantSpyder leeches are killed by salt. And we do have a very prominent lord who is known as the Leech Lord, Roose Bolton. 

[GyantSpyder]

1 hour ago, Pain killer Jane said:

What do you make of this? I was listening to this chapter the other day and I found this an odd expression. 

She could have throttled him. Perhaps I need to command Ser Loras to allow Ser Osmund to unhorse him. That might chase the stars from Tommen's eyes. Salt a slug and shame a hero, and they shrink right up. "I am sending for a Dornishman to train you," she said. "The Dornish are the finest jousters in the realm."

Oh, wow! In light of all we've been talking about, this is really exciting.

It might be reasonable to suggest at this point that Cersei is under persistent self-destructive influences, as she is driving the Lannister-Baratheon regime into the ground. If we went from the assumption that Cersei is falling deeper under some measure of supernatural influence (though not entirely of course, that would rob it all of purpose and drama), A Feast for Crows might read very differently - especially with a more fully fleshed out vocabulary of symbolism.

If we have refined the intentions of the blood fungus (I need a name for it, I guess, and "hrangan mind" is a step too far) - to "enticed into team wipe," that encapsulates what Cersei is up to throughout the book.

Anyway, in this paragraph, Cersei has a cluster of impulses to kill Tommen:

• She has the momentary impulse to strangle him herself.
• She wants to tell a knight to hit him with a lance and throw him off his horse. He is a child, and this may very well also kill him.
• She wants the light in his eyes to go out.
• She wants to invite a Dornish master at arms to train him. Half the Dornish want to kill Tommen, and the other half want to watch as somebody else kills Tommen.

In the same chapter, right after this, Jaime tells Cersei that Daemon Sand - knowing Cersei, the exact kind of guy she would want to hire to train Tommen - was imprisoned for plotting treason, and she doesn't care. This, I think, should be a tip-off. GRRM tends to use this as a clue in his stories where people are being mind-controlled or hallucinating, like And Seven Times Never Kill Man and This Tower of Ashes - when somebody mentions something is really important, and then they come across it, and they don't notice it or don't care. It's a way to hint without hinting.

The thing that Cersei is interested in this chapter is a treasonous puppet show - Cersei is at this point a living treasonous puppet show. Probably by both natural and supernatural means.

So yeah, the presence of the slug that fears salt in the middle of the paragraph might signal the influence of the "blood fungus" over Cersei's actions, either directly or indirectly, but probably directly, since she seems to have this weird momentary compulsion that she keeps rationalizing away to kill her son.

1 hour ago, Pain killer Jane said:

Another animal that is of interest as well @GyantSpyder leeches are killed by salt. And we do have a very prominent lord who is known as the Leech Lord, Roose Bolton. 

If we decide that these signs have started grouping - that there are friends of the blood fungus and enemies of the blood fungus, it's probably worth it to start making some lists and seeing if it reveals anything.

For example, let's go with the conjecture (without much evidence yet) that the blood fungus presented post-apocalyptic Westerosi society with a John Connor Terminator / Dying of the Light Kavalar "Mock Men" crisis - where some people were infected or reanimated by the blood fungus and thus wanted the extermination of free humanity or to spread further into human enclaves, and humans developed rituals like the eating of the salt at guest right to weed out the blood fungus from their small communities. How many rituals or traditions can we find that might have come from a safeguard against the blood fungus? Just a quick list off the top of my head:

- Salt at guest right

- The Old Way baptism of priests with salt water - and the declaration that "no Godless man may sit on the Seastone Chair" - meaning nobody can be in charge unless they have been flushed with salt water to get rid of the fungus

- Women from the mainland in the Old Way being referred to as "salt wives" - was there some other "salting" they had to go through?

- The tryptich of stony Dornish, salty Dornish and sandy Dornish - three places fungus can't grow - or the Salt and Stone Kings of the Iron Islands

- The ritual self-harm of the Burned Men of the Mountain Clans - where the person willing to burn the most of themselves gets to be in charge

- The Hightowers living in a tower that has a base of fused stone and a giant fire burning on it

- The Night's Watch only eating salted meat, maybe?

- The Night's watch layering the Wall with gravel? It might have been rock salt at some point.

Some of those are a stretch. Any other ideas?

And - and this is more connected with what you brought up about Roose, are there characters who have an experience that would seem to interact with the blood fungus in some way that happens right before a big change in their attitudes? Like when Jaime takes the steaming bath and then has his arm cauterized? Or when Tyrion keeps the mushroom in his boot for months? This might be a good place to go back to the earlier suggestion of when people's mail is punctured - which might signify contamination in the way carving faces on the Weirwoods might be a way to ensure they are contaminated with spores.