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Are Weirwoods undead trees?


sgtpimenta

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If I may elaborate on the idea of werewolves as the dead trees were half dead trees or under trees were zombie trees… I think the key principle may be the weirwoods as the crossing over point. They represent the door of death, as all the weirwood doors do, such as the weirwood door at the house of black and white, or the moon door in the Eyrie which leads to death.  The black gate we are with door at the night fort also seems to symbolize crossing over between death and life.  And as we know, all of the people inside to weirwood are dead, save Bloodraven who is half dead at this point, a talking corpse. That's really the thing George is driving home - the weirwoodnet is the realm of the dead. 

Theres a thing @ravenous reader pointed out about the Crone being thought of as peering through the door of death and having let the first raven into the world. That door of death is the weirwood "gate," and the ravens represent dead things coming back into the real world. I would say this refers to resurrected Nights Watch brothers - my green zombie theory - but the general concept is sufficient to mention here. I fully expect that greenseers can raise the dead and will, and of course the weirwoods also allow the dead to communicate with the living. 

That is why the weirwoods are wight trees and demon trees and why they look like burning corpses. They straddle the boundary of death and life in some sense. But I also think Martin is playing with the idea of a wight tree in the sense that the weirwoods are having their bodies taken over, and the whole "eat brains" thing. 

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3 minutes ago, LmL said:

If I may elaborate on the idea of werewolves as the dead trees were half dead trees or under trees were zombie trees… I think the key principle may be the weirwoods as the crossing over point. They represent the door of death, as all the weirwood doors do, such as the weirwood door at the house of black and white, or the moon door in the Eyrie which leads to death.

Bingo.  They are liminal trees that are the gateway to the "Otherworld" ,be that the realm of the dead or the realm of the fae...which often end up being the same thing.

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1 hour ago, PrettyPig said:

Bingo.  They are liminal trees that are the gateway to the "Otherworld" ,be that the realm of the dead or the realm of the fae...which often end up being the same thing.

Yes, the world tree is a gateway or path. The roots grow in the underworld (and under the sea), the trunk in the regular world, and the high branches reach the heavens (the stars).

Which is why the dragon wants to ascend the tree. To go from the underworld/sea to the hravens. To defeat death and become a god. Sound like any ancient emperors we might name? The weirwoods are the key to all of that. 

But, as our main characters are finding out, you have to start climbing the tree at the bottom. You can't just jump on at the middle. Hence why Jon is dead and Bran is in the underworld. 

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On 16/07/2017 at 10:23 PM, Dorian Martell's son said:

Nope. They grow and die like every other living thing 

 

Yeah, sure, that's what others have told me. But then why are they so... creepy? And why are so hard to plant one? Sure, the Eyrie is just too damn rocky, but what about Kingslanding?

Maybe they are not literally undead, but they are definitely connected with death.

On 16/07/2017 at 0:34 PM, PrettyPig said:

Bingo.  They are liminal trees that are the gateway to the "Otherworld" ,be that the realm of the dead or the realm of the fae...which often end up being the same thing.

I like that a lot. Can't wait to read more of your work!

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On 16/07/2017 at 0:29 PM, LmL said:

If I may elaborate on the idea of werewolves as the dead trees were half dead trees or under trees were zombie trees… I think the key principle may be the weirwoods as the crossing over point. They represent the door of death, as all the weirwood doors do, such as the weirwood door at the house of black and white, or the moon door in the Eyrie which leads to death.  The black gate we are with door at the night fort also seems to symbolize crossing over between death and life.  And as we know, all of the people inside to weirwood are dead, save Bloodraven who is half dead at this point, a talking corpse. That's really the thing George is driving home - the weirwoodnet is the realm of the dead. 

Theres a thing @ravenous reader pointed out about the Crone being thought of as peering through the door of death and having let the first raven into the world. That door of death is the weirwood "gate," and the ravens represent dead things coming back into the real world. I would say this refers to resurrected Nights Watch brothers - my green zombie theory - but the general concept is sufficient to mention here. I fully expect that greenseers can raise the dead and will, and of course the weirwoods also allow the dead to communicate with the living. 

That is why the weirwoods are wight trees and demon trees and why they look like burning corpses. They straddle the boundary of death and life in some sense. But I also think Martin is playing with the idea of a wight tree in the sense that the weirwoods are having their bodies taken over, and the whole "eat brains" thing. 

Good stuff!

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On 7/16/2017 at 11:29 AM, LmL said:

If I may elaborate on the idea of werewolves as the dead trees were half dead trees or under trees were zombie trees… I think the key principle may be the weirwoods as the crossing over point. They represent the door of death, as all the weirwood doors do, such as the weirwood door at the house of black and white, or the moon door in the Eyrie which leads to death.  The black gate we are with door at the night fort also seems to symbolize crossing over between death and life.  And as we know, all of the people inside to weirwood are dead, save Bloodraven who is half dead at this point, a talking corpse. That's really the thing George is driving home - the weirwoodnet is the realm of the dead. 

Theres a thing @ravenous reader pointed out about the Crone being thought of as peering through the door of death and having let the first raven into the world. That door of death is the weirwood "gate," and the ravens represent dead things coming back into the real world. I would say this refers to resurrected Nights Watch brothers - my green zombie theory - but the general concept is sufficient to mention here. I fully expect that greenseers can raise the dead and will, and of course the weirwoods also allow the dead to communicate with the living. 

That is why the weirwoods are wight trees and demon trees and why they look like burning corpses. They straddle the boundary of death and life in some sense. But I also think Martin is playing with the idea of a wight tree in the sense that the weirwoods are having their bodies taken over, and the whole "eat brains" thing. 

Actually, we DON'T know this, but I do suspect that is exactly what GRRM wants you to think. ;) 

We assume that everyone inside the weirnet is dead except Bloodraven. However, considering that all the greenseers we have actually seen are alive (including BR), I think it is far more likely that Bloodraven's tree-connected (living) state is more permanent than we were told, and additionally that it is standard practice.

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Bran ate with Summer and his pack, as a wolf. As a raven he flew with the murder, circling the hill at sunset, watching for foes, feeling the icy touch of the air. As Hodor he explored the caves. He found chambers full of bones, shafts that plunged deep into the earth, a place where the skeletons of gigantic bats hung upside down from the ceiling. He even crossed the slender stone bridge that arched over the abyss and discovered more passages and chambers on the far side. One was full of singers, enthroned like Brynden in nests of weirwood roots that wove under and through and around their bodies. Most of them looked dead to him, but as he crossed in front of them their eyes would open and follow the light of his torch, and one of them opened and closed a wrinkled mouth as if he were trying to speak. "Hodor," Bran said to him, and he felt the real Hodor stir down in his pit.

So while I think all your comments about the weirwoods "straddling the boundary of death" still apply, it is important to note that the greenseers themselves appear to be alive. And this will probably be a key aspect to the plot, mainly due to the obvious implication that there is a living and presumably super-important greenseer in the crypts at Winterfell. :D 

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On 7/16/2017 at 9:40 AM, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

I've been reading a few posts recently about the Weirwoods and the Shade of the evening trees.  Which both seem to possess similar properties. And be kind of opposites of each other. Anyone else been thinking about that aspect of the story? I'm very interested to read that people have been looking into the trees. I've tried a few times to mark down how many Weirwoods we know of in Westeros and their descriptions, ages etc. But I never seem to catch them all.

since you asked ;) 

Yes, the shade of the evening trees are even more similar to the weirwoods than they first appear. The most likely explanation is that the final scene in the HOTU (with all the Undying sitting around a stone table with a floating heart) was just another vision (and a bit of a ruse), the Undying are still alive and totally fine (because Drogon never actually burned them), and they are all tree-people just like Bloodraven (and every other greenseer in the weirnet), hooked into the root system of their trees, sharing a common blood supply with their hearts beating in sync. The ancient and windowless HOTU is basically an above-ground cave to keep them in perpetual darkness (for the sake of maximum greenseer power). And thus, shade of the evening and weirwood paste (which have identical effects on Dany and Bran) are both basically just greenseer blood. ;) 

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1 hour ago, sgtpimenta said:

Yeah, sure, that's what others have told me. But then why are they so... creepy? And why are so hard to plant one? Sure, the Eyrie is just too damn rocky, but what about Kingslanding?
Maybe they are not literally undead, but they are definitely connected with death.

It isn't what other people tell you. It is in the book. There are saplings mentioned beyond the wall, in the north and in the rainwood.  They are magical, and seem to be growing now that magic is returning to the world. And they are connected with death. The know the first men made blood sacrifices to the heart tree in what would become white harbor

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1 hour ago, sgtpimenta said:

Yeah, sure, that's what others have told me. But then why are they so... creepy? And why are so hard to plant one? Sure, the Eyrie is just too damn rocky, but what about Kingslanding?

Because weirwoods aren't really trees. They are tree-people, or more accurately based on the etymology of weirwood (aka were-wood), they are man-trees. They have blood, not sap. They survive on oxygen, not sunlight. And they feed on blood from sacrifices, not nutrients from the soil. The greenseer needs the tree part to stay alive, and the weirwood requires a person hooked up to its root system with a beating heart (pumping all that blood), so of course detaching a random weirwood from its native greenseer (by cutting its roots to remove it from the ground) and attempting to "replant" it at the Eyrie was never going to work.

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13 hours ago, Dorian Martell's son said:

It isn't what other people tell you. It is in the book. There are saplings mentioned beyond the wall, in the north and in the rainwood.  They are magical, and seem to be growing now that magic is returning to the world. And they are connected with death. The know the first men made blood sacrifices to the heart tree in what would become white harbor

They are magical, but not just any kind of magic: we are told that the worst (and more powerful) kind of magic is involved: Blood magic. This is not your typical Magic Tree.

But then again I ask myself: why they did not plant a weirwood at Kingslanding?

12 hours ago, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

Because weirwoods aren't really trees. They are tree-people, or more accurately based on the etymology of weirwood (aka were-wood), they are man-trees. They have blood, not sap. They survive on oxygen, not sunlight. And they feed on blood from sacrifices, not nutrients from the soil. The greenseer needs the tree part to stay alive, and the weirwood requires a person hooked up to its root system with a beating heart (pumping all that blood), so of course detaching a random weirwood from its native greenseer (by cutting its roots to remove it from the ground) and attempting to "replant" it at the Eyrie was never going to work.

I really like this "were-wood" concept - we know that there are at least the possibility of humans and singers connected to the roots of every weirwood out there.

But I don't know about the idea of man-tree eating and breathing. As far as we know, the blood sacrifice wakes the tree (or maybe is a requirement for planting them), but no one has sacrificed victims with any regularity for thousands of years... By your theory, they would starve to death. We are told that, quite on the contrary, they never die, if left undisturbed...

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6 minutes ago, sgtpimenta said:

They are magical, but not just any kind of magic: we are told that the worst (and more powerful) kind of magic is involved: Blood magic. This is not your typical Magic Tree.

Blood magic is no better or worse than any other type and it has been a very minor part of weirwood trees. 

7 minutes ago, sgtpimenta said:

But then again I ask myself: why they did not plant a weirwood at Kingslanding?

It could be that they couldn't get a cutting or the cutting wouldn't grow. The point is that new castles do not have weirwood trees in their godswood 

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13 hours ago, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

Because weirwoods aren't really trees. They are tree-people, or more accurately based on the etymology of weirwood (aka were-wood), they are man-trees. They have blood, not sap. They survive on oxygen, not sunlight. And they feed on blood from sacrifices, not nutrients from the soil. The greenseer needs the tree part to stay alive, and the weirwood requires a person hooked up to its root system with a beating heart (pumping all that blood), so of course detaching a random weirwood from its native greenseer (by cutting its roots to remove it from the ground) and attempting to "replant" it at the Eyrie was never going to work.

What are you thinking is the reason the raven tree at House Blackwood is dead? Could it be because there are actual dead people burried under there, as opposed to a living greenseer who is hooked up? Maybe that is what the Blackwood story means that the Brackens "poisoned" their weirwood. The Brackens, now following the Faith/7 killed someone important, old godsy, and in turn the weirwood died for whatever reason.

I don't know. I have not thought this all of the way out yet, just the broad strokes ;)

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2 hours ago, Dorian Martell's son said:

Blood magic is no better or worse than any other type and it has been a very minor part of weirwood trees.

:o I strongly disagree. Any magic that uses human sacrifice is the worse kind possible. It is a staple for evil sorcerers in all kind of stories all over the world, and with good reason.

2 hours ago, Dorian Martell's son said:

It could be that they couldn't get a cutting or the cutting wouldn't grow. The point is that new castles do not have weirwood trees in their godswood 

That's my point, exactly. The fact that new castles don't have weirwoods implies that the secret of planting them was lost a long time ago.

Now, let me dwell on a minor pet peeve of mine, in regard with weirwood trees. The fact that all the castles seems to have one is bullshit. A major plot hole, imho. We are told that the Andals cut down the old gods' trees, but - for some reason - they left weirwoods in their own gods wood. Why? If they suspected that the tree worshippers could spy them with this trees, and they hated the old gods so much, shouldn't they start chopping down the trees which were conveniently planted inside their castles?

That plot hole simply goes to show that the weirwood trees must be very important to the plot. They don't get a pass just for nothing. They have a role in the story being told.

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On 7/16/2017 at 9:23 PM, Dorian Martell's son said:

Nope. They grow and die like every other living thing 

 

As usual, you're presuming that time only flows in one direction...:)

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

"Will I see my father again?"

"Once you have mastered your gifts, you may look where you will and see what the trees have seen, be it yesterday or last year or a thousand ages past. Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come. Certain moths live their whole lives in a day, yet to them that little span of time must seem as long as years and decades do to us. An oak may live three hundred years, a redwood tree three thousand. A weirwood will live forever if left undisturbed. To them seasons pass in the flutter of a moth's wing, and past, present, and future are one. Nor will your sight be limited to your godswood. The singers carved eyes into their heart trees to awaken them, and those are the first eyes a new greenseer learns to use … but in time you will see well beyond the trees themselves."

Although it's possible to destroy a weirwood, they do not die by themselves, which is rather strange.  Why do you think that is?

Living forever, i.e. immortality, is antithetical to death, throwing a clearly-demarcated birth point into question as well.  If past, present and future are all one, then time is not a one-way street and the door between the realm of the dead and that of the living is left open.  Killing one weirwood is also not sufficient to shut the door, given that multiple weirwoods are connected with each other within the 'weirnet'.  An analogy might be destroying one computer and expecting that to shut down the internet!  The weirwood -- or more accurately, whatever power is inhabiting it, transcending death and time -- is the principal abomination.  

Whatever has gone awry, throwing the seasons off balance, etc., the way to restoring the natural order, and with it sealing the violated boundary between death and life, will probably involve something akin to a 'weirwood exorcism' (no more squeaky forced-open hinges screaming -- close those 'doors'!)

17 hours ago, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

Actually, we DON'T know this, but I do suspect that is exactly what GRRM wants you to think. ;) 

We assume that everyone inside the weirnet is dead except Bloodraven. However, considering that all the greenseers we have actually seen are alive (including BR), I think it is far more likely that Bloodraven's tree-connected (living) state is more permanent than we were told, and additionally that it is standard practice.

Another way of putting this is that while Bloodraven is not dead, he ought to have died, were it not for the 'life-support' assistance of the weirwood sustaining him (the 'circulation' works both ways -- he's plugged into them, and they into him).   Therefore, he is a kind of 'undead' ('half corpse / half tree') from a certain perspective.  His lifespan is being unnaturally preserved by the relationship with the tree.  It's more complicated than that though, since I also believe he is being slowly consumed by the tree, and that if he does not soon transfer his consciousness into a young body, e.g. Bran's, he will be irretrievably taken up into the tree, liquified in that 'green fountain,' losing his individual identity and ego in the collective, akin to the fate of those fusing with the Greeshka in GRRM's story 'A Song for Lya'. 

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

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

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

Bran's eyes widened. "They're going to kill me?"

"No," Meera said. "Jojen, you're scaring him."

"He is not the one who needs to be afraid."

 

Quote

So while I think all your comments about the weirwoods "straddling the boundary of death" still apply, it is important to note that the greenseers themselves appear to be alive. And this will probably be a key aspect to the plot, mainly due to the obvious implication that there is a living and presumably super-important greenseer in the crypts at Winterfell. :D 

While I agree with your premise about 'living' greenseers, I believe these may be disembodied minds skinchanging or bodysnatching trees, rather than each weirwood having an actual body on which it is feeding indefinitely.  I think the mind of the greenseer 'locked up' like the Minotaur in the center of the 'labyrinth' at Winterfell is the same one we saw being sacrificed to the tree in Bran's vision, the man whose blood Bran could vividly taste, as if it were his own.  I also suspect his name is 'Brandon Stark' -- the very first in the line of which Bran is the last.

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1 hour ago, sgtpimenta said:

But I don't know about the idea of man-tree eating and breathing. As far as we know, the blood sacrifice wakes the tree (or maybe is a requirement for planting them), but no one has sacrificed victims with any regularity for thousands of years... By your theory, they would starve to death. We are told that, quite on the contrary, they never die, if left undisturbed...

Well, I don't know that they require the sort of regular feeding schedule that a normal plant requires, but it is a good question to ask: do weirwoods eventually die if they stop receiving blood sacrifices? It would make sense. Also keep in mind that it is possible the COTF have been continuing the practice of blood sacrifice underground to feed the weirnet, traveling through their cave network, and men would not know about it.

Now, the line about weirwoods living forever is interesting. First off, it is from BR, who is a member of the weirnet and certainly not an unbiased source for info about weirwoods. But assuming that he is telling the truth in that statement (which I actually think he is), "undisturbed" is a rather vague term. Mayhaps he means that weirwoods live forever if they keep receiving blood sacrifices and no one "disturbs" their feeding schedule. It is definitely too vague (and from an untrustworthy source to boot) to rule out my theory.

The bottom line is, there are multiple descriptions or weirwood sap looking like blood, and we have actually seen multiple greenseers alive and physically connected to the root systems of weirwoods. And of course, as I referenced in my theory, there is this thought from Asha:

Quote

The crofter's village stood between two lakes, the larger dotted with small wooded islands that punched up through the ice like the frozen fists of some drowned giant. From one such island rose a weirwood gnarled and ancient, its bole and branches white as the surrounding snows. Eight days ago Asha had walked out with Aly Mormont to have a closer look at its slitted red eyes and bloody mouth. It is only sap, she'd told herself, the red sap that flows inside these weirwoods. But her eyes were unconvinced; seeing was believing, and what they saw was frozen blood.

 

1 hour ago, The Fattest Leech said:

What are you thinking is the reason the raven tree at House Blackwood is dead? Could it be because there are actual dead people burried under there, as opposed to a living greenseer who is hooked up? Maybe that is what the Blackwood story means that the Brackens "poisoned" their weirwood. The Brackens, now following the Faith/7 killed someone important, old godsy, and in turn the weirwood died for whatever reason.

I don't know. I have not thought this all of the way out yet, just the broad strokes ;)

I actually basically believe the story that the Brackens poisoned the tree somehow. But rather than a traditional plant-death, the greenseer was killed by the poison, and so the "tree part" died with him/her. It is basically the simple alternative to chopping down the tree. Chopping down a weirwood in turn kills the greenseer because you are basically cutting off his oxygen supply and suffocating him.

But I do wonder if the Brackens back in the day somehow had this deeper knowledge about weirwoods and greenseers and actually purposefully/knowingly poisoned the greenseer, mayhaps by literally going underground to find him. And who knows, maybe they didn't use poison at all, but instead they just killed the greenseer directly with a sword and the story about poison was invented later by the Blackwoods to explain the death of the tree while lacking this knowledge about weirwoods. Going underground to kill the greenseer directly would certainly explain how the Brackens were able to "poison" the tree if the Blackwoods controlled the castle. Regardless of the details, I like your thought about religion playing a role in the Brackens' actions. :D 

Another odd thing that comes up in relation to Raventree is the comment from Lord Blackwood that dead weirwoods never rot, and instead turn to stone. This makes almost zero sense. Now, mayhaps GRRM doesn't understand how petrification works (or mayhaps don't :P), but I am 95% sure that in real life, a tree could not "turn to stone" above ground. Normally petrification of trees happens from a combination of 2 factors: 1) the tree dies in an oxygen-deprived environment, preventing normal rot from occurring and 2) the rot-free tree ends up buried underground and minerals from ground water permeate the tree and slowly replace organic material. I think "greenseer magic" somehow replaces this oxygen factor, i.e. the bodies of Coldhands and the other wights do not rot even though they are exposed to oxygen. But the tree is still above ground and not being permeated by ground water except for its roots. So I don't think it could turn to stone by standard petrification processes. Additionally, it should take millions of years, not merely a thousand. So anyways, either GRRM doesn't understand how petrification works or there is something "magical" about this dead-weirwoods-turning-to-stone business.

Side note - I think the person originally "planted" at (the future site of) Raventree Hall was a member of House Blackwood. And so, killing the tree was also literally killing a Blackwood (and the most important Blackwood at that), in traditional Bracken fashion. Similarly, I think the person "planted" at Winterfell was a member of House Stark. But I am not going to elaborate on that because it is part of a super-awesome new topic I am working on (in addition to a couple others) during my current reread, and it is going to be much more interesting and mind-blowing than my grand theory. ;) 

"old godsy" :lmao: 

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8 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

Another way of putting this is that while Bloodraven is not dead, he ought to have died, were it not for the 'life-support' assistance of the weirwood sustaining him (the 'circulation' works both ways -- he's plugged into them, and they into him).   Therefore, he is a kind of 'undead' ('half corpse / half tree') from a certain perspective.  His lifespan is being unnaturally preserved by the relationship with the tree.  It's more complicated than that though, since I also believe he is being slowly consumed by the tree, and that if he does not soon transfer his consciousness into a young body, e.g. Bran's, he will be irretrievably taken up into the tree, liquified in that 'green fountain,' losing his individual identity and ego in the collective, akin to the fate of those fusing with the Greeshka in GRRM's story 'A Song for Lya'. 

Definitely possible, and I think the Greeshka is a key thing to keep in mind when trying to decipher the mysteries of the weirnet. :D 

11 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

While I agree with your premise about 'living' greenseers, I believe these may be disembodied minds skinchanging or bodysnatching trees, rather than each weirwood having an actual body on which it is feeding indefinitely.  I think the mind of the greenseer 'locked up' like the Minotaur in the center of the 'labyrinth' at Winterfell is the same one we saw being sacrificed to the tree in Bran's vision, the man whose blood Bran could vividly taste, as if it were his own.

This is a fundamental point that I struggled for a long time to come to a conclusion with when I was working on my grand theory. Are greenseers "tied" to one weirwood (the one they are physically connected to) or is it more of a tree-snatching free-for-all type situation? And does every single weirwood have a greenseer somehow connected to its root system? Could a single greenseer "supply" an entire weirwood circle, for instance?

Allow me to stick with your analogy of the internet for a moment because it is super handy. Just as taking down a single computer does not take down the entire internet, killing a single weirwood obviously does not destroy the weirnet. But then there is an obvious (in my mind) question to ask right off the bat: how many weirwoods/which weirwoods need to be kept alive to keep the weirnet alive? And what is the consequence of destroying a single tree or a single circle of trees? Would the weirnet remain "intact" and powerful so long as there is still at least one weirwood left alive? Well, I think we can safely say that for some reasonevery single weirwood is super important to the COTF and presumably the power of the weirnet. The key points are The Pact, in which the First Men promised to not cut down any more weirwoods (that was basically their entire side of the deal in fact), and the battle at High Heart, which must have been a super-intense battle. Basically, why would the COTF and their new FM allies bother putting up a fight for High Heart at all if the individual trees didn't matter? They wouldn't.

So what is going on? Well let's go back to our internet analogy (though I am going to greatly over-simplify how the internet works here). Each weirwood tree is basically like a server, in that it contains a bunch of data and also performs actions to process data and transmit data to end users. If you destroy a server, you lose both the data contained on the server and the computational power of the server. Forget the internet as a whole now and just take the example of Google. Let's say you do a google search for "ASOIAF". You will get about 7 million results in about 0.5 seconds. Now hypothetically, say you destroy one of Google's servers (and ignore many realities for a moment) and again run a search for "ASOIAF", you might only get 6.9 million results, and it might take 0.6 seconds. Now say you destroy half of Google's servers and run the search again, you might now get 3.5 million results and it might take 1.0 second, because you have destroyed both half the data and half the total computational power of Google. I think that is basically how the weirnet works: if you destroy a weirwood, you are destroying a single greenseer and the memories and powers that came with him.

Now, of course, it may be that memories are forever preserved once they are inside the weirnet, even if killing a greenseer does subtract his "power" from the weirnet. Similarly Google does not leave any data on any one single server. There are backups. If you destroyed half of Google's (~900,000) servers, they probably wouldn't lose any data at all, but you would be destroying half their total computational power.

If there were more weirwoods than greenseers, and every weirwood didn't have a greenseer attached to it, then I would find the details of The Pact and High Heart very confusing. Hypothetically, if the COTF could just plant more trees to replace the ones destroyed, why is there emphasis on protecting every single weirwood? I think the most likely answer is that every single weirwood contributes to the power of the weirnet, because every single weirwood has a greenseer attached to it. And this explanation also explains why weirwood sap looks like blood, as well as this super-important quote from Jojen which you referenced but I am going to focus on a different sentence:

Quote

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

So according to Jojen, the COTF believe that the weirwoods are the old gods. But one thing about this line strikes me as super-odd in the context of traditional views on weirwoods: the COTF, based on the description of their eyes, have lived underground for a long time. And of course, the vast expanse of caves and tunnels in Westeros supports this, and Leaf even claims that they have lived in that cave for a million years, which is long before the coming of the First Men. So... why would people who primarily live underground worship trees as gods??? Aren't the trees mostly above ground??! The simple answer is that the "god" part of the trees, the greenseers themselves, live below ground with the COTF.

58 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

I also suspect his name is 'Brandon Stark' -- the very first in the line of which Bran is the last.

Well, I did just tell @The Fattest Leech that I wasn't going to give away more info yet about my future post on the greenseer at WF, but I will now immediately proceed to give away another bit of my thoughts. :P 

While it is ultra-possible that the WF greenseer is Brandon Stark 1.0, I think it is more likely that the greenseer in WF's crypts is not Brandon, but his wife: the Corpse Queen. Just to give you a taste, here is one relevant quote:

Quote

His father tossed the antler to the side and cleansed his hands in the snow. "I'm surprised she lived long enough to whelp," he said. His voice broke the spell.

"Maybe she didn't," Jory said. "I've heard tales … maybe the bitch was already dead when the pups came."

"Born with the dead," another man put in. "Worse luck."

 

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2 minutes ago, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

Well, I did just tell @The Fattest Leech that I wasn't going to give away more info yet about my future post on the greenseer at WF, but I will now immediately proceed to give away another bit of my thoughts. :P 

While it is ultra-possible that the WF greenseer is Brandon Stark 1.0, I think it is more likely that the greenseer in WF's crypts is not Brandon, but his wife: the Corpse Queen. Just to give you a taste, here is one relevant quote:

 

Interesting. The weirwood at Winterfell is moon blood powered;) 

I once supposed to Voice in another thread that Lyanna is in the Winterfell tree because it was "laughing" at the wedding between Ramsay and fArya. I was jesting a bit of course, but maybe one day we will find out there is something more? 

 Can't wait to get the rest. 

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On 16.07.2017 at 5:29 PM, LmL said:

If I may elaborate on the idea of werewolves as the dead trees were half dead trees or under trees were zombie trees… I think the key principle may be the weirwoods as the crossing over point. They represent the door of death, as all the weirwood doors do, such as the weirwood door at the house of black and white, or the moon door in the Eyrie which leads to death.  The black gate we are with door at the night fort also seems to symbolize crossing over between death and life.  And as we know, all of the people inside to weirwood are dead, save Bloodraven who is half dead at this point, a talking corpse. That's really the thing George is driving home - the weirwoodnet is the realm of the dead. 

Theres a thing @ravenous reader pointed out about the Crone being thought of as peering through the door of death and having let the first raven into the world. That door of death is the weirwood "gate," and the ravens represent dead things coming back into the real world. I would say this refers to resurrected Nights Watch brothers - my green zombie theory - but the general concept is sufficient to mention here. I fully expect that greenseers can raise the dead and will, and of course the weirwoods also allow the dead to communicate with the living. 

That is why the weirwoods are wight trees and demon trees and why they look like burning corpses. They straddle the boundary of death and life in some sense. But I also think Martin is playing with the idea of a wight tree in the sense that the weirwoods are having their bodies taken over, and the whole "eat brains" thing. 

I don't know if you already know it, but in Scandinavian folklore there are trees called 'Warden Trees'. I've got a book where it's explained how such tree in the middle of homestead's symbolises The World Tree Yggdrasil and possibly the Milky Way. If you want, I can fetch you that fragment. It's really interesting, as in Westeros the weirwoods basically fulfill the role of the warden trees. And do you know what hides under tose real-world weirwoods? Wights...

From Wikipedia:

Quote

In Norse mythology, a vǫrðr (pl. varðir or verðir — "warden," "watcher" or "caretaker") is a warden spirit, believed to follow from birth to death the soul (hugr) of every person. In Old Swedish, the corresponding word is varþer; in modern Swedish vård, and the belief in them remained strong in Scandinavian folklore up until the last centuries. The English word '"wraith" is derived from vǫrðr, while "ward" and "warden" are cognates.

At times, the warden could reveal itself as a small light or as the shape (hamr) of the person. The perception of another person's warden could cause a physical sensation such as an itching hand or nose, as a foreboding or an apparition. The warden could arrive before the actual person, which someone endowed with fine senses might perceive. The warden of a dead person could also become a revenant, haunting particular spots or individuals. In this case, the revenant warden was always distinct from more conscious undeads, such as the draugar.

Under the influence of Christianity, the belief in wardens changed, and became more akin to the Christian concept of a good and a bad conscience.

Warden trees

A very old tree (often a linden, ash or elm) growing on the farm lot could be dubbed a "warden tree" (Swedish vårdträd), and was believed to defend it from bad luck. Breaking a leaf or twig from the warden tree was considered a serious offence. The respect for the tree was so great that the family housing it could adopt a surname related to it, such as Linnæus, Lindelius and Almén. It was often believed that the wights (Swedish vättar) of the yard lived under the roots of the warden tree, and to them, one sacrificed treats to be freed from disease or bad luck.

 

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18 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

As usual, you're presuming that time only flows in one direction...:)

It does, but you can see on many directions at once :)

18 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Although it's possible to destroy a weirwood, they do not die by themselves, which is rather strange.  Why do you think that is?

There needs to be a level of immortality in a godhead.  That is part of  what makes the old gods "The Old Gods."  Immortality combined with Omniscience and Omnipresence and ferment in a cave in a cold place for a million years and Bam!, the nameless gods of stone, earth, tree and stream.  

18 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Living forever, i.e. immortality, is antithetical to death, throwing a clearly-demarcated birth point into question as well.  If past, present and future are all one, then time is not a one-way street and the door between the realm of the dead and that of the living is left open.  Killing one weirwood is also not sufficient to shut the door, given that multiple weirwoods are connected with each other within the 'weirnet'.  An analogy might be destroying one computer and expecting that to shut down the internet!  The weirwood -- or more accurately, whatever power is inhabiting it, transcending death and time -- is the principal abomination.  

Interesting. I don't quite agree about l lack of birth point, given their physical mortality and the fact that we see saplings , but I have an Idea so hear me out. 
 Sequoia redwoods  in california are the tallest tree species on the planet. They have a thousand year life cycle. It does produce seeds but it's preferred form of reproduction is to send a shoot up from a root in an area without a tree near it.  There used to be huge swaths of california covered in redwood trees that were connected by a large root network. 
The weirwoods are all connected. We see the living root network in the cave the brotherhood are hiding in. So would it be possible that the weirwoods are a single tree?  Also, why would a greenseer inhabiting a tree be and abomination? 

19 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Whatever has gone awry, throwing the seasons off balance, etc., the way to restoring the natural order, and with it sealing the violated boundary between death and life, will probably involve something akin to a 'weirwood exorcism' (no more squeaky forced-open hinges screaming -- close those 'doors'!)

You think the children  are the cause of the weird seasons?  

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