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What is the point of Bran's last weirwood vision?


Mithras

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^^^ this is true. I do think it was highly ritualistic. The sickle or horned moon is also associated with ritual sacrifice, not execution.

My question is whether or not the humans learned that from the cotf or invented it themselves. Were the cotf living in Westeros "for a thousand thousand man years" and sacrificing each other to trees the whole time? Seems a bit odd. I suspect the sacrifice stuff only came about when humans came - who knows, maybe that's how humans were able to become greenseers in the first place. I think it's interesting that George has withheld so much about the cotf in this regard - right now, we could choose to see them as mainly benevolent or as very dark guardians of the earth who kill anyone who upsets the balance of things.

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Either way, I found the image rather disturbing, as it was disturbing for Bran. Call it a hunch, I don't think that CotF are supposed to be goody-goodies of the story. Perhaps not baddies, either, but the-old-race-that-possesses-ancient-wisdom-that-they-will-grant-to-the-hero is definitely a trope, so I expect there a twist.


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I see them as being loyal to the long term survival earth as a whole, and life in general, but that leaves room for quite a bit of darkness. If man is like deer overrunning the woods, we might have to cull some deer, you know? Earth first! It reminds me of the Dothraki belief that the earth is there mother and plowing the earth is akin to cutting her flesh. Therefore, they rape, murder, and enslave any who farm on their grassy plain. And that's not total Bs - they do indeed worship the earth as sacred. I suspect the Dothraki may have inherited these ideas from the Ifequevron who were right next door to their ancient lands (before Sarnor's fall, the Dothraki were mostly on the eastern end of the grasslands), who also to assuredly cotf. But whether they did or not, I believe it's a similar concept. Preserving the balance of nature forces might require any amount of slaughter. Even creating Others or the blood of the dragon could have been done by the cotf to restore balance under certain scenarios.

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I think you may be right :-)



Either way, the CotF live far, far North, they seem to lack nothing in their cave, are warded from the wights... it's men who are in trouble, not them.


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Ghost's days as a direwolf are numbered. His purpose will be to fulfill Jon's second life, worthy of a king.



And he's the one that deserves the honor to receive the sword. Ghost is don in pure white as snow, just like a sacrificial lamb to be slaughter for sacrifice. Jon is a dragon cloth in Stark skin, waking the dragon will be costly...



They had moved him back to his old cell in tumbledown Hardin’s Tower after the fire, and it was there he returned. Ghost was curled up asleep beside the door, but he lifted his head at the sound of Jon’s boots. The direwolf’s red eyes were darker than garnets and wiser than men. Jon knelt, scratched his ear, and showed him the pommel of the sword. “Look. It’s you.”


Ghost sniffed at his carved stone likeness and tried a lick. Jon smiled. “You’re the one deserves an honor,” he told the wolf … and suddenly he found himself remembering how he’d found him, that day in the late summer snow. They had been riding off with the other pups, but Jon had heard a noise and turned back, and there he was, white fur almost invisible against the drifts. He was all alone, he thought, apart from the others in the litter. He was different, so they drove him out.


**Jon will be deeply saddened and angry. He will be engrossed with rage when he returns to his body for a second birth and see Ghost lay there next to him in blood. Like Lyanna lay there in a bed of blood to give Jon his first birth.


And Theon? Martin had a plan for him since the first chapter...



His father took off the man’s head with a single sure stroke. Blood sprayed out across the snow, as red as summerwine. One of the horses reared and had to be restrained to keep from bolting. Bran could not take his eyes off the blood. The snows around the stump drank it eagerly, reddening as he watched.

The head bounced off a thick root and rolled. It came up near Greyjoy’s feet. Theon was a lean, dark youth of nineteen who found everything amusing. He laughed, put his boot on the head, and kicked it away.

“Ass,” Jon muttered, low enough so Greyjoy did not hear.

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Good stuff IceFire125, I'm on the same page with you on all of that. Very nice catch on the "deserves an honor" foreshadowing. Really, the Jon as Mithras angle puts the bloody writing up on there Wall. But again, Ijust have to emphasize, some part of Ghost will merge with Jon's soul, and reborn Jon will be part Ghost. Ghost is Jon's white shadow, a part of him, as Jon thinks to himself. As you say, Lyanna died to birth Jon, but so do Gerold Hightower, the "white bull." ;)


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The Daynes do not have "white" hair, they have silver hair, and not all of them have that either. A woman holding a captive is not odd. Northern women are fierce and she wasn't alone. There was a man there too.

Bran is seeing through the weirwoods, as the text says. He's not hooked up to any Ironwoods. And Gared was not executed at Winterfell, but at a nearby town.

This. The Starks are not descendants of the Daynes. They may have a common ancestor, but the "Daynes of Winterfell" is wishful fan fic

I think the part about Bran tasting the blood is super important. The blood gets soaked/absorbed by the roots of the trees, so the weirnet -and those connected to it- eventually consume it in some way.

So this is the third time (not counting Jojen Paste) that Bran eats people or consumes meat in a ritualistic/sacrificial fashion:

1) First, Coldhands feeds them human flesh of the mutineers at Craster's

2) Then they eat the elk, even Bran, who at first said they don't eat their friends, but he eats him anyway

3) Bran "tasting" the blood of the man sacrificed in the vision

And there's also the recurring motif since aSoS of Bran feasting on flesh while in Summer's skin

So if I had to guess, the vision is Bloodraven's or the Children's way of indoctrinating Bran to the way of cannibalism/human sacrifice, like saying, "Look, it's cool, Starks have been doing this for hundreds of years".

And maybe the horror of Bran at the end is because he put two and two together and thought, "oh, shit, they just sacrificed Jojen like they did this dude here, and I totally ate his blood!"

Bran ate human flesh once. As a wolf he feasted on human flesh more than once. Jojen paste is a lie

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Good stuff IceFire125, I'm on the same page with you on all of that. Very nice catch on the "deserves an honor" foreshadowing. Really, the Jon as Mithras angle puts the bloody writing up on there Wall. But again, Ijust have to emphasize, some part of Ghost will merge with Jon's soul, and reborn Jon will be part Ghost. Ghost is Jon's white shadow, a part of him, as Jon thinks to himself. As you say, Lyanna died to birth Jon, but so do Gerold Hightower, the "white bull." ;)

Yes! :thumbsup:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zWs8v9xc8kw/UhyJJCGynDI/AAAAAAAAQrA/6B17pbo780M/s1600/greg_hildebrandt_03_mithras_and_the_white_bull.jpg

Martin did not have the Lord Commander there at the tower by accident, he was there by design... for a higher purpose.

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Yes! :thumbsup:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zWs8v9xc8kw/UhyJJCGynDI/AAAAAAAAQrA/6B17pbo780M/s1600/greg_hildebrandt_03_mithras_and_the_white_bull.jpg

Martin did not have the Lord Commander there at the tower by accident, he was there by design... for was a higher purpose.

Lol, should I think that it is no accident that I am currently re-reading Mary Stewart's Merlin trilogy, with the Mithras cult, and Merlin manipulating events for the PTWP Arthur to be conceived? :D

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Nice pic share IceFire125, and no Ygrain, I don't really believe in coincidence anyway.

You two may be interested in my two newest essays, the first of which which focuses on the moon-destruction-to-cause-the-Long Night idea in detail, the idea that the Bloodstone Emperor = Azor Ahai, the idea of the moon's being sacrificed and drowning, releasing a blood tide and birthing dragons. In the second one, I am attempting to unravel the Hammer of the Waters, the God's Eye, etc. I'm drawing from Mithras lore in both (I'm a big fan of Scmendrick's) and specifically the idea of the sacrificial bull whose blood tide brings life to the world in the second.

If you haven't read any of my essays, you may want to start with part one, (the links above are part 2 and 3 of the series) if I can hold your interest.

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My favourite pet theory is that the blood sacrifice thing the First Men learned was a total con job by the Singers because I can't imagine a people with low numbers but long lives would kill each other, even as sacrifice but they may have told the First Men that as a black humour style revenge for invading their land and killing so many of them.


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I'm not sure about the idea it was a trick to get men to kill themselves, but your point that it would be weird for long lived people with a small population like the cotf to engage in human (children) sacrifice.


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I don't really want this to happen but Theon could be the sacrifice rather than Ghost if Bran does the resurrecting. It would be interesting if Melesandre is simultaneously resurrecting and she believes she brought him back by burning Shireen.


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His father took off the man’s head with a single sure stroke. Blood sprayed out across the snow, as red as summerwine... Bran could not take his eyes off the blood. The snows around the stump drank it eagerly, reddening as he watched.

With different emphasis, that quote seems a little ominous in light of Bran's later weirwood vision.

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