Heresy 52

[Black Crow]

Tricky keeping up with these threads isn’t it? :) @ Black Crow – Thanks for directing me to timelines essay in Heresy 50. Very interesting. But I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the basic assumption that since Rhoynar / Andal invasions could potentially be condensed, that the older timelines should be too. There is real world evidence but I’m still wary of it since this is fantasy.

Very true, but having finished re-reading ASoIF, I've turned again for a change to Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Morrell, a quite epic fantasy set in the early 1800s about magic and the world of Faerie. Its one I can heartily recommend to heretics because it is very solidly based on Faerie lore and includes a (fictional) account of a Sidhe invasion of Northern England in the 12th century, on behalf of a changeling - the Raven King - which will be found very interesting... Its also very readable.

But I digress. At one point a Sidhe remarks that it is 4,000 years since something or other happened, which draws a footnoted comment that this should not be taken literally since it simply means time out of mind, just as in English law, time immemorial is anything that happened before 1189. I have come across this before and not just in Faerie lore so would suggest that unless dates and events can be found specifically recorded in chronicles, the 8,000 years ago since the Wall was built should likewise be considered time out of mind rather than an actual date.

[Black Crow]

BTW the Raven King's banner was a black crow in flight on a snow white field.

[bbstark]

Considering that 1) the locations of the Nine Worlds relative to one-another has the "fire" worlds south of Midgard and the "ice" worlds north of Midgard, thus establishing a basis for the locations of the Nine Worlds in real world geography (fire worlds in the warmer south and ice worlds in the colder north) and 2) that, in an alternative view of the Worlds, the "fire" worlds are in the heavens above Midgard and the "ice" worlds are in the underworlds beneath Midgard, we have two situations which when combined give a very reasonable interpretation of the Bifrost as stemming from the borealis

ahh, those are beautiful myths, fire and ice worlds... thank you for the explanation :)

Perhaps inconsequential but the significance is also emphasised in the old way of rendering 99 as ninety and nine.

Either way, Craster wasn't making such an issue of his sons for nothing...

in german it's "nine and ninety"... could that be significant?

[King Tyrion VIII]

There's the heretical theory that that is the extent of the abilities for someone like Bloodraven, but that Bran is innately that much more powerful; as such, once he finally comes into his own as a greenseer, he will be able to use his superpowerful abilities to not just view but also manipulate. And there is evidence that he has already done so through the fact that he can cause the trees (even in the past) to rustle in the wind in a "voice"--The Ned hear's Bran when Bran sees him asking the Old Gods for assistance with the whole trueborn/bastard born son thing, and Theon on multiple occasions hears Bran's voice calling his name when he is at the Heart Tree.

And Bran communicates with Jon through the tree in ACOK. Which I believe was Bran reaching into the past from the cave in ADWD.

I need to scale back what I was theorizing yesterday, but Bran being the Last Greenseer gives him a ton of possibilities. The imagination can get carried away since we're going off text to attempt to predict what will happen in the story based on so far not a ton of text evidence. Maybe it's resolved by Bran not getting these powers until after ASOIAF?

Also it's not confirmed whether Bran is the 3EC or the Last Greenseer, so that complicates things. We're dealing with alot of unknowns and could get blindsided by it being someone we completely missed or haven't been introduced to yet.

Anyway I think there's a middle ground we can find between Bran doing a few things and what's been discussed in the past few pages.

[Little Wing]

Okay, Episode 4 on FB is up! Enjoy!

(Margaery Tyrell pretends to like this. :lol: )

[Black Crow]

And Bran communicates with Jon through the tree in ACOK. Which I believe was Bran reaching into the past from the cave in ADWD.

Ah, no on that one. Its in real time. Bran is hiding out in the Winterfell crypts and there his third eye finally opens, and he wakes up and tells Meera and the gang that he's reached out to his brother Jon.

The last time we were discussing this by the way we reckoned based on everything we'd seen that a period of sensory deprivation is necessary to open the third eye - just as the other senses grow sharper in compensation after one is lost, as demonstrated when arya is temporarily blinded

[Efilnikufesin]

Ah, no on that one. Its in real time. Bran is hiding out in the Winterfell crypts and there his third eye finally opens, and he wakes up and tells Meera and the gang that he's reached out to his brother Jon.

The last time we were discussing this by the way we reckoned based on everything we'd seen that a period of sensory deprivation is necessary to open the third eye - just as the other senses grow sharper in compensation after one is lost, as demonstrated when arya is temporarily blinded

He does speak of being in the dark like he has been in the dark for quite some time, more time than he was in the Winterfell crypts, where his third eye had just opened. He is already instructing on the matter? Plus a smell of death which Ghost shies away from, but yet none of the other direwolves shied away from the WF crypts when they entered them.

Edit: Plus he comes in the form of a weirwood, he had not yet been connected with them before he ate the paste.

[The Others Take Ya]

Hi Heresy group! I don't post or read much here consistently because you're such a zippy thread, and it explodes my brain a little trying to follow it all, but I thought heresy was the best place to put this wall-specific theory in. Sorry if its already been discussed, the external searches available to me at this time didn't find it.

I wanted to post about the library at castle black, and its contents. I know there has been discussion around whether information regarding the Others has been purged because the written records don't have anything in them, but I'm thinking there was no purge because the records on the Others have been deliberately not made visible to a reader of books.

AFFC Sam I

The First Men only left us runes on rocks, so everything we think we know about the Age of Heroes and the Dawn Age and the Long Night comes from accounts set down by septons thousands of years later.

Sam mentions the runes on rocks, and I think its not the runes that are the information, but the rocks themselves are the records. The runes may just be the label. Jojen tells Bran in ADWD Bran III that the singers of the forest didn't have books, they had trees to store their knowledge, and above from Sam we hear that the First Men left runes on rocks. Note that in the crypts of Winterfell, every Stark is buried with a stone likeness of themselves, and Ned and others feel them watching. So its possible the Starks keep their presence in stone the same way the CotF keep their presence in ravens and weirwood.

I know the above seems like a big leap, because I'm trying to keep my explanation brief, but if you want to see why I started thinking this way about stone you can check this (very long) post I did. To summarize, I tried to figure out what the black ebony was on the HoB&W doors because it seems to be a counterpart to the weirwood. I started to look at characteristics of stone acting like weirwood because raventree is petrifying to stone. The earliest possible link I see is in Bran I AGOT. The ranger that deserted is beheaded on a black "ironwood" stump.

Not long after in Sam's passage in AFFC, we also get the following from Cercei about the search in the hidden passages at the Red Keep that remind me so much of the CotF caves, and a certain crippled boy...:

“And for all you know there may be half a hundred more.” Some of the secret crawlways had turned out to be so small that Jaime had needed pages and stableboys to explore them. A passage to the black cells had been found, and a stone well that seemed to have no bottom. They had found a chamber full of skulls and yellowed bones, and four sacks of tarnished silver coins from the reign of the first King Viserys. They had found a thousand rats as well... but neither Tyrion nor Varys had been amongst them, and Jaime had finally insisted on putting an end to the search.

One boy had gotten stuck in a narrow passage and had to be pulled out by his feet, shrieking. Another fell down a shaft and broke his legs. And two guardsmen vanished exploring a side tunnel. Some of the other guards swore they could hear them calling faintly through the stone, but when Jaime’s men tore down the wall they found only earth and rubble on the far side

Could the guards be in the stone? Is putting people in stone that quick? Any people?

So, if I haven't explained myself clearly enough yet, my crackpot theory is that the library at the wall is more complete then Sam sees. The runes carved on the stones may just be the index. I think the stones themselves contain the information. And not just pure information... but the storytellers to tell it because the first men had an oral tradition. The stones may be the living library of the wall. The lord commanders of ages past and key people from the age of heroes may be living their second life in those stones.

Maybe only keeping the history of the Others in the stones was necessary to keep it secret, so writing information down in books was discouraged and warned against from the beginning, so it never needed to be purged. The stones were the way to keep that information safe from the wrong people and accessible to those that needed it. If the information was in plain sight of anyone who could read, any ol' sorceress visiting the wall could get it.

If Starks, with the blood of the first men in them, had the ability to access or communicate with stone like this, then perhaps this explains why even young Starks were always favored to be Lord Commanders. Because they had the ability to access the history and information where others did not. I think Jon, or maybe any Stark, is the key to “reading” the stones. Benjen, as a ranger and not a steward, probably never needed to visit the old library, and Maester Aemon was a Targaryen and a Maester for decades and would not have had the first men gifts. The last person who was likely to have known about any information in the stones would have been Bloodraven.

Thx for reading! If its already been discussed, I am curious on what the "heretic" stance is on what the stones with the runes could be. :)

[Capon Breath]

If Brans super powerful and can influence the past & the future, any chance he had something to do with the re-birth of Danys dragons?just before they hatch he finds out about Neds death. I don't know maybe he brings magic back to the world as a way to bring back his dad but it kinda goes not to plan?

[Black Crow]

He does speak of being in the dark like he has been in the dark for quite some time, more time than he was in the Winterfell crypts, where his third eye had just opened. He is already instructing on the matter? Plus a smell of death which Ghost shies away from, but yet none of the other direwolves shied away from the WF crypts when they entered them.

Edit: Plus he comes in the form of a weirwood, he had not yet been connected with them before he ate the paste.

All things are subjective. When you're in a dark hole with no way of telling how time is passing it can seem a very long time indeed, but the point as I say is that we're told Bran's third eye opens while he's down there and Bran himself says that he has dreamed of Jon at just the time when Jon dreams of Bran. In this connection its also relevant that both of them are wargs and communication is therefore going to be a lot easier than if one of the parties was an ordinary, ungifted, human.

ETA: as to the direwolves and Ghost shying away from the smell of death... Summer and Shaggydog have been down in the crypts before, and indeed both were hiding there with Bran and the gang, but Ghost (the different one) hasn't.

[Black Crow]

If Brans super powerful and can influence the past & the future, any chance he had something to do with the re-birth of Danys dragons?just before they hatch he finds out about Neds death. I don't know maybe he brings magic back to the world as a way to bring back his dad but it kinda goes not to plan?

Nah, I really don't see this one at all. Aside from promising no gods (and precious few heroes) GRRM has spoken of the magic being low level stuff. Dragons, glamours and raising the dead are one thing, having individuals manipulate everthing and everyone in the present, past and future - whether its Bloodraven or Bran - is a different matter entirely. ASoIF is in the end about people, fallible, real people, not about everything being worked and reworked by an individual with god-like powers.

[Hrafntýr]

Nah, I really don't see this one at all. Aside from promising no gods (and precious few heroes) GRRM has spoken of the magic being low level stuff. Dragons, glamours and raising the dead are one thing, having individuals manipulate everthing and everyone in the present, past and future - whether its Bloodraven or Bran - is a different matter entirely. ASoIF is in the end about people, fallible, real people, not about everything being worked and reworked by an individual with god-like powers.

I have to chime in my agreement here. Yes, people can access apparently supernatural powers, but with the exception of the Old Gods,* other religions in ASoIaF are portrayed as either "superstitious" projections of fearful people, or as outright manipulations of those who want power. The only thing that gives me any pause in rejecting outright the Bran manipulating everything hypothesis is the fact of all those Brans in the historical/mythical records of Westeros. But, once you've got a culture hero, his or her name can become very popular. And families definitely pass down certain names (e.g. Aegon Targaryen, fifth of his name).

*It seems to me that Martin seems to accord more respect to the religion of the Old Gods than to other religions, but mostly because it isn't institutionalized. He doesn't seem to like institutionalized religion, except, perhaps, when the offer the possibility of an individual practitioner going rogue.

[Black Crow]

... But, once you've got a culture hero, his or her name can become very popular. And families definitely pass down certain names (e.g. Aegon Targaryen, fifth of his name).

Hence Bryn Blackwood's remarks when (our) Bran mentions he has an uncle Brynden

[Tyryan Lannister]

On the topic of Bran "influencing" events (past, present, or future):

While I do believe that Bran does have/will have such a great ability so as to be able to sort of speak with actors--through cryptic dreams, the wind whispering a name, etc.--it is only as means to attempt to nudge, not as a means to actually act. Regardless of the means through which Bran can attempt to alter events, he is only able to do so to the extent that it could potentially point an actor in the right direction, but it is ultimately the actor's choice to do not only what is necessary but also to realize that Bran is trying to help; the actors are still the actors, and Bran is ultimately still a viewer--just one that can cryptically tell the network execs whether or not he likes where they are taking his show.

[nedhed]

I have to chime in my agreement here. Yes, people can access apparently supernatural powers, but with the exception of the Old Gods,* other religions in ASoIaF are portrayed as either "superstitious" projections of fearful people, or as outright manipulations of those who want power. The only thing that gives me any pause in rejecting outright the Bran manipulating everything hypothesis is the fact of all those Brans in the historical/mythical records of Westeros. But, once you've got a culture hero, his or her name can become very popular. And families definitely pass down certain names (e.g. Aegon Targaryen, fifth of his name).

*It seems to me that Martin seems to accord more respect to the religion of the Old Gods than to other religions, but mostly because it isn't institutionalized. He doesn't seem to like institutionalized religion, except, perhaps, when the offer the possibility of an individual practitioner going rogue.

I would hesitate to say that GRRM is really taking a stance against institutionalized religion, or that the religion of the old gods wasn't institutionalized. As all of you have so thoughtfully stitched together, he draws on the mythology of many, many religions, from zorastrianism to the norse eddas. Digging down into the history religious history of ASOIAF is very similar to researching the evolution of religions in the real world- as societys grow in scope and size, the religious institutions change and evolve. It's just sort of a fact- sometime it creates conflict, sometimes it helps cultures survive and persist, usually both.

I'm not a very religious person myself, but the way religion is portrayed in ASOIAF reminds me of the parable about how god is like an elephant and various religions are like blind men that can only touch a part of the elephant, so everyone thinks they've got something different. Which is to say, an elephant is going to melt down the wall with fire flaming from its snout and the ensuing flood will wipe out almost all of the ihabitants of ASOIAF, allowing things to begin again ;)

[Daenerys Flint]

ASoIF is in the end about people, fallible, real people, not about everything being worked and reworked by an individual with god-like powers.

Very true. But i'm wondering how easy it would be any way? People forget. So few followers left. So few opportunities to communicate, and also there is crippled Bran to consider... He is aging as he dreams, how long does he have to do anything?

[King Tyrion VIII]

He does speak of being in the dark like he has been in the dark for quite some time, more time than he was in the Winterfell crypts, where his third eye had just opened. He is already instructing on the matter? Plus a smell of death which Ghost shies away from, but yet none of the other direwolves shied away from the WF crypts when they entered them.

Edit: Plus he comes in the form of a weirwood, he had not yet been connected with them before he ate the paste.

I think it's a great plant by Martin. It's made to make us assume Bran is talking to Jon from the Winterfell crypts. But when reading it I don't get that impression.

"..It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had hisbrother’s face. Had his brother always had three eyes? Not always, came the silent shout. Not before the crow. He sniffed at the bark, smelled wolf and tree and boy, but behind that there were other scents, the rich brown smell of warm earth and the hard grey smell of stone and something else, something terrible. Death, he knew. He was smelling death. He cringed back, his hair bristling, and bared his fangs. Don’t be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them. But first you have to open your eyes. See? Like this. And the tree reached down and touched him...."

Bran is instructing. But in ACOK he had barely begun to learn.

[King Tyrion VIII]

Nah, I really don't see this one at all. Aside from promising no gods (and precious few heroes) GRRM has spoken of the magic being low level stuff. Dragons, glamours and raising the dead are one thing, having individuals manipulate everthing and everyone in the present, past and future - whether its Bloodraven or Bran - is a different matter entirely. ASoIF is in the end about people, fallible, real people, not about everything being worked and reworked by an individual with god-like powers.

I feel that Bran can reach back in the past and communicate with Jon and it still be low level magic. That act is pretty simple. Just a nudging influence.

[ELITEFORCE850]

In reference to the door at the house of black and white, when reading I red that Illryio dealt in Dragon bone and thought that the black part of the door might be made out of dragon bone, doesn't Arya describe it as black in AGOT when she runs Tommen over and is hiding in the red keep?

[wolfmaid7]

I think it's a great plant by Martin. It's made to make us assume Bran is talking to Jon from the Winterfell crypts. But when reading it I don't get that impression.

"..It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had hisbrother's face. Had his brother always had three eyes? Not always, came the silent shout. Not before the crow. He sniffed at the bark, smelled wolf and tree and boy, but behind that there were other scents, the rich brown smell of warm earth and the hard grey smell of stone and something else, something terrible. Death, he knew. He was smelling death. He cringed back, his hair bristling, and bared his fangs. Don't be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them. But first you have to open your eyes. See? Like this. And the tree reached down and touched him...."

Bran is instructing. But in ACOK he had barely begun to learn.

:agree: Same here i get that impression too,his whole essence seems more advanced older as if he was a teacher,vs being thought.If he reached out from the crypts( which i don't believe) how does one instruct someone about something you yourself have not truly learnt to do. BR had said something in ADWD about the trees having no sense of time and to me this could have happened only if Bran was already plugged in,he was somewhere in the loop. Touching Jon was a memory,no matter where he was it was a memory cus it already happened.