Heresy 101 The Crows

[JNR]

Maybe there is something more to Show Jojen's "the raven is you".

This occurred to me too.

Since the show seems to be taking the speedy route to the same end as the book in many respects, it may be doing so here, too.

It seems to suggest a sort of... "You're going to be a greenseer, Bran, and eventually your consciousness will become part of all Westeros -- an old god, basically -- and so you will be represented by the three-eyed crow, which is an abstract avatar of the godhead, and that's why in a sense the 3EC is you" sort of thing.

In this interpretation, Westeros is something like Ego the Living Planet, and... yawn. I can't be bothered to finish writing the cliche.

I hope the above isn't the case. I'd really rather the 3EC is just Bloodraven.

[Toccs]

In this interpretation, Westeros is something like Ego the Living Planet, and... yawn. I can't be bothered to finish writing the cliche.

More like Ewya from Avatar. And since there is a well thought out theory out there that Ewya was actually the bad guy of the entire movie (and ended up winning), this may not necessarily be a good thing.

[aDanceWithFlagons]

Nah. Bran will not become the 3EC. It already happened in the past when he was just a little tike. His 3EC greenseeing ability manifested in the weirwood connection, but didnt come to life until his coma. The 3EC was himself trying to survive and see in 3-eyed vision. Its all in the acorn to a tree to stump to an acorn. The weirwood memory. Not a future Bran.

[Toccs]

From Heresy 100.

Also with respect, that doesn't necessarily mean that the Pact only last 4,000 years. It just means that the Age of Heroes (the period of peace between the First men and the children) which lasted 4,000 years, and the Pact endured beyond that until the Andals invaded.

The Pact began four thousand years of friendship between men and children...The signing of the Pact ended the Dawn Age, and began the Age of Heroes."

"So long as the kingdoms of the First Men held sway, the Pact endured, all through the age of Heroes and the Long Night and the birth of the Seven Kingdoms, yet finally there came a time, many centuries later, when other peoples crossed the narrow sea. The Andals were first..."

The pact lasted for four thousand years and was broken by the Andals. The Age of Heroes and the Long Night occur within that four thousand years.

If we take the 4000 years between the Pact and the Andal invasion as accurate (which I don't necessarily), and then follow the Maester's lead and conservatively place the Andal Invasion at about 2000 years ago. We have the Pact being signed approximately 6000 years ago with the Age of Heroes and the Long Night coming afterwards.

Incidentally, this places the Long Night, as many of us myself included have often theorized as at around the same time as the rise of Valyria around 5000 years ago.

[JNR]

More like Ewya from Avatar. And since there is a well thought out theory out there that Ewya was actually the bad guy of the entire movie (and ended up winning), this may not necessarily be a good thing.

That would be another variation, yeah. It was a familiar idea even in the sixties when Marvel Comics did it, as Jack Kirby said in a 1969 interview:

I began to experiment ...and that's how Ego came about. ... A planet that was alive; a planet that was intelligent. That was nothing new either because there had been other stories [about] live planets but that's not acceptable.

Not acceptable, indeed.

But I actually don't think Bran will wind up this way; I think his future is as the next Bran the Builder. And I don't recall Bran the Builder spending his life underground.

If we take the 4000 years between the Pact and the Andal invasion as accurate (which I don't necessarily), and then follow the Maester's lead and conservatively place the Andal Invasion at about 2000 years ago.

I'm not sure why we should follow their lead, though.

These are the same maesters who think the world is (per the World book) at most 500,000 years old, right?

Well, if it's like our world, they are off by an astounding four orders of magnitude. Their world is literally about 10,000x older than they think!

So I'm not too impressed with the maesters' capacity to date anything.

[JNR]

BTW, is this a crows-only thread, or are other topics kosher?

[aDanceWithFlagons]

I don't think Bran will stay underground either. That is why BR is called the last greenseer. He will be the last one to be hooked into the weirwood. Plus we have bran with his little list of five things he will never do. 4 of the five have already happened. The only thing left to do is be a knight.

But he will learn his greenseeing stuff, I think, before he leaves.

Back to the crows. As discussed before, they like to flock to Raventree Hall's weirwood and the Citadel's. Both are dead. I don't recall any other times this happens except Coldhands' murder. At the little village with Sam.

[aDanceWithFlagons]

BTW, is this a crows-only thread, or are other topics kosher?

It is a crow themed thread. Crows and ravens plus those related like the Singers and Bran and being interpereters between the races and such.

I forgot about the uncrows. Did we not see some outside the cave?

[Aetta]

I would like to add one small thing to the three -eyed crow. In the cave of skulls, Meera asks after the three-eyed crow. Leaf is telling Bran and company To follow her deeper in the cave. Here is the passage.

(Leaf says] .... "It is warmer down deep, and no one will hurt you there. He is waiting for you.'

'The three-eyed crow?' Asked Meera.

'The greenseer.' And with that she was off, and they had no choice but to follow."

This is similar to Bran's question to Bloodraven. Leaf does not say yes. She gives another title and then away she goes. I will elaborate on this with other related items in another post.

You're right, she makes a distinction for Bran; Leaf is not struck as confused by the term "three eyed crow," she knows what Bran means...rather, she is clarifying. The three eyed crow is a manifestation, even a seperate being entirely, than the greenseer who sent it.

I also do not want to stray too far in this thread/post, but given the accusations of sorcery from the time Bloodraven was a young man, I wonder if it is at all possible that he sings the language of the crows, and the ravens, himself. I think GRRM would make his sorcery more subtle than BR having the ability to throw firebealls from his hand and turn kings into frogs. I think the subtlety would be in using his extreme and ancient connection to nature as his source of "magic," as noted, like the Direwolves are to the Starks. More like a medicine man than a magician, where there is mysticism just up to the point of the fantastical.

Finally, there's Old Nan's statment that all crows are liars. The likelihood is that she is speaking about a man that was a NW being a liar. But, another way to look at her statement is that crows are liars because they are not but a bird, they are the manifestation of men, of sorcerers, and wargs, and crows are not all they seem in this sense.

[TheButcherCrow]

Maybe in the earliest days of the NW the singers taught the brothers how to skinchange into crows to help them scout & that's where the name came from. If there are a lot of "shadows" of singers in ravens then there may be a lot "shadows" of NW brothers in the crows?

[Eira Seren]

There is a Grendel in literature prior to the one in GRRM’s works, and Tolkien wrote about Grendel as well. Grendel's story is part of an Anglo-Saxon poem titled Beowulf (AD 700-1000) contained in the Nowell Codex.

Grendel is usually depicted as a monster or a Giant although the text never directly describes his appearance. In most interpretations he is briefly referred to as a Sceadugenga, which means “shadow walker” or “night goer” given that he is repeatedly described to be in the shroud of darkness. In more modern interpretations Sceadugengan was meant to be a race of undead shapeshifters of which Grendel was a member.

Grendel and his mother are described as descendants of the Biblical Cain (credited as the first murderer), and that they eat humans.

The poem implies that Grendel may not be human, may be a berserker, or even a two-legged dragon. Here are a few lines from the poem:

…the other, warped

in the shape of a man, moves beyond the pale

bigger than any man, an unnatural birth

called Grendel by the country people

in former days.

Every nail, claw-scale and spur, every spike

and welt on the hand of that heathen brute

was like barbed steel. Everybody said

there was no honed iron hard enough

to pierce him through, no time proofed blade

that could cut his brutal blood caked claw.

It's funny that I made the connection to crow and Old English right before I got to your post! I'm bringing this in here mainly because I wanted to say that

We've talked about the role of crows before, and there are some interesting connections to payment/revenge in the Beowulf story, as well as another story about crows (a work of fiction), called Bellman and Black. It brings up something we've discussed here before.

There is a story . . . in which two ravens…were companions and advisers to the great God of the north. One bird was called Huginn, which in that place and time meant Thought, the other Muninn, which meant Memory. They lived in a magic ash tree where borders of many worlds came together, and from its branches they flew blithely between worlds, gathering information for Odin. Other creatures could not cross the borders from one world to another, but Thought and Memory flew where they pleased, and came back laughing.

Thought and Memory had a great many offspring, all of whom were gifted with great mental powers allowing them to accumulate and pass on a good deal of knowledge from their ancestors.

The rooks that lived in Will Bellman’s oak tree were descendants of Thought and Memory. The rook that fell was one of their many-times-great-grandchildren…Rooks are made of thought and memory. They know everything and they do not forget.

In Will Bellman's case, he kills a crow; eventually it comes back to haunt him, as it becomes clear that payment is required to balance the account. Thought and Memory, though, are interesting inclusions. In GRRM's world, the crows also seem to share some characteristics of Odin's ravens. I'm beginning to see them more and more as free agents. The questions I still have are how are they affiliated with the Singers, who else might they be affiliated with, and are they interested in any kind of balancing of accounts?

I may come back to the Beowulf/Grendel discussion if we do a thread on monsters.I think there's more stuff to be said about 'em.

No. I'll try to clarify. The ravens are the ones that are used to transport messages between castles, and the ravens are the ones the Children/singers used as familiars, but whenever the word "crow" is used, it's associated with humans. Bloodraven is a three-eyed crow, and if the HBO tv version is canon then Jojen calls Bran a three-eyed crow, and the Night's Watch are called crows. If Bloodraven and Bran are able to slip inside a raven, why would they then be called a three-eyed crow? Why not a three-eyed raven? Or are crow and raven interchangeable?

I'm not any closer to deciding if there's a difference, but thought I'd bring it back into this thread.

I find it quite interesting that the Watch is so named. . . Watching for the Night? And seem to perform some similar duties to the crows, especially, perhaps the ones that are warged by a Singer. . . they are watching, too. And reporting back. . . to who? Only to the COTF? Bloodraven? Are they keeping an eye out for similar things?

[Black Crow]

That is actually how I see the three-eyed crow. A greenseer who is able to slip into a raven is a three-eyed crow. I think we need to drop "the" and replace it with "a or an".

That's pretty much what I was suggesting in the OP and a good way of putting it. It reconciles the apparent involvement of Bloodraven coming to Bran in his dreams and Jojen's statement to Bran in the show, without involving time travelling and explaining also as I said why Bloodraven appeared as a crow rather than say a kindly old man.

As to JNR's preference that Bran should become Bran the Builder, I don't think that he two are incompatable in that the story of how the Builder learned the speech of the Singers "best left for another time" may well involve a crow visiting him in his dreams.

[Black Crow]

BTW, is this a crows-only thread, or are other topics kosher?

Lets stick with the crows for now and move on later - unless of course some dramatic revelation occurs such as a new SSM identifying Coldhands as...

[Black Crow]

Mormont has never been shown to be a skinchanger. So no. His raven who now hangs with Jon is a rare bird , but I do not think it belongs to anyone.. I might go so far as the Lord Commander belongs to the raven. Meaning whoever has the title of LC, the bird will be on his side as long as the raven accepts the man. He did seem to choose Jon for LC. The raven may have flown to Jon because everyone was talking about him, and the bird has been around Jon a lot since he became Mormonts right hand.

The raven may have a part of a Singer inside, the way the ravens do in the caves. But this would be only a shadow of a soul left in the bird.

That's why I threw in that suggestion that perhaps the same raven once sat on Qorgyle's shoulder, but whether it is linked to a Singer or Bloodraven or neither, there's an interesting bit of magic going on if Sam didn't put the lid on the pot.

[Dagda]

We are missing the dislike that the white ravens and the black ravens are displaying in Oldtown. This would seem to indicate that there are more players in this game than is supposed.

The black ravens have a well described history through out the books. The white ravens we know next to nothing about besides the fact that they are the harbingers of the change of seasons.

[Melifeather]

If Gendel in this story turns out to be like Grendel, there could be a dragon or wyvern in the caves that the Children are feeding. Grendel's mother turns into a type of dragon. In the movie Beowulf she looked like a cross between a dragon and a giant spider.

Does anyone know of a connection between the Grendel in Beowulf and crows or ravens? In nature, ravens belong with wolves, but with so many in the caves, they look to be aligned with the Children.

[The Snowfyre Chorus]

If Gendel in this story turns out to be like Grendel, there could be a dragon or wyvern in the caves that the Children are feeding. Grendel's mother turns into a type of dragon. In the movie Beowulf she looked like a cross between a dragon and a giant spider.

Does anyone know of a connection between the Grendel in Beowulf and crows or ravens? In nature, ravens belong with wolves, but with so many in the caves, they look to be aligned with the Children.

"The author hasn't uploaded a copy of this talk." But the abstract is interesting, isn't it?:

http://www.academia.edu/1728196/Hygelac_and_the_Happy_Bird_an_interpretation_of_Beowulfs_blithe-hearted_raven

[aDanceWithFlagons]

That's why I threw in that suggestion that perhaps the same raven once sat on Qorgyle's shoulder, but whether it is linked to a Singer or Bloodraven or neither, there's an interesting bit of magic going on if Sam didn't put the lid on the pot.

Your suggestion about Qorgyle led me to the crow being the owner of the LC position. For now, I think the crow is on his own. Of course being the only crow that speaks common tongue as fluently as it does, raises a few questions. The kettle incident has been left hanging, and we have an istance of the Watch calling the raven black.

We are missing the dislike that the white ravens and the black ravens are displaying in Oldtown. This would seem to indicate that there are more players in this game than is supposed.

The black ravens have a well described history through out the books. The white ravens we know next to nothing about besides the fact that they are the harbingers of the change of seasons.

Maester Cressen claims the white ravens are bred for their specific use and are not albino. Why one would need white crows bred to use once every few years???

The white raven sent to Cressen also speaks.

[Yield.]

I don't think it's necessarily a link, but a parallel. Overall, I'd guess he might be roughly the 'dragon' version of Jojen, but in this particular situation both he and the ravens see things in ways they're not supposed to. And I'm sure Martin did this on purpose. I'm just not entirely sure what that purpose is.

What if the LCs raven has a shadow of a soul of a former older LC in him. One who was a skinchanger. Could be why the raven likes to hang out with LC all the time. Just like old times. Just a thought.

I've had a little theory for a long time now about the LC's raven. I think that raven used to be Bloodraven's bird. Let me be clear on this though, I don't think BR is skinchanging the bird. He may from time to time take a peek through it's eyes just as I think he does with Balerion the black cat in KL, but I don't think it was BR that told Jon what to do with the fire in Mormont's solar. BR is not controlling the bird, the raven is it's own being.

Since we know that when one skinchanges with a particular animal a part of the skinchanger is in the animal and part of the animal is in the skinchanger. This would account for the intelligence of this raven. Part of BR's consciousness in that bird so it knows much more than your average raven.

We know BR rose to be LC of the NW but we have no knowledge of how he came to be attached to the weirnet. I think he left the raven behind for two reasons. First so that it looks like he died, possibly in some ranging south of the Wall (we know Mormont's north of the Wall ranging was the first time an LC ventured further than the Weirwood grove.) If the raven returned and he did not it could look like he was dead rather than deserting. Second reason I think is due to BR's character. This is a man that had control of a huge spy web in KL and was always in the know. I don't think the newly promoted BR to greenseer could so easily cut ties with his past and his modus operandi. In fact he says so himself when speaking of the memories of the weirwoods to Bran. The raven (like the cat) would keep him in the loop of what's happening in the two places BR held powerful positions.

Now the interesting part is that Aemon must know that raven was his bastard cousin's bird. It helps to explain how Aemon knows things and 'sees' things that others don't. If he has access to the raven then he has access to BRs shadow left in the bird and is in a position to understand the bird's ramblings much better than anyone at the Wall.

[Tyryan Lannister]

BTW, is this a crows-only thread, or are other topics kosher?

Unlike the various ones from 91-97, you can go off topic if needed, it's basically that BC realized that The Crows/Ravens was probably another topic we should have included back there--but this is Heresy, be Heretical in your Heresies :commie: :commie: :commie:

EDIT: speaking of OT, new trailer