Proof that Bran can have an effect on a time that we readers or characters in the story would class as "the past".

[LynnS]

9 hours ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

Bran is talking to Jon through a weirwood while Jon is having a wolfdream with Ghost. The location of the weirwood is odd because the George had just indicated earlier in the chapter that they were above the tree line, and we know from the Arryns' attempts to have a godswood in the Eyrie that weirwoods dont grow above the tree line. (All they could get to grow was some shrubbery, right?) So, now we know that Bran is greenseeing after having his third eye opened by Bloodraven, and that the lines between Bran and the weirwoods and Summer have kind of blurred. The earth, stone, and death are a hint that Bran was not killed by Theon but is hiding down in the Winterfell crypts. Liking the dark compares interestingly with Bloodraven telling Bran to use the dark, and Qhorin telling Jon that shadows are friends to the Nights Watch. Did anyone open Arya's third eye? 

Then, Jon sees the wilding host through Ghost's eyes before Orells eagle attacks Ghost. So, was Ghost magically transported from one location to another? Was the weirwood above the tree line actually in Jon/Ghost's consciousness rather than a physical location?

I'm inclined to think that the 'smell of death' and Ghost/Jon's reaction to it; is something they have experienced before with Othor:

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A Game of Thrones - Jon VII

Ghost leapt. Man and wolf went down together with neither scream nor snarl, rolling, smashing into a chair, knocking over a table laden with papers. Mormont's raven was flapping overhead, screaming, "Corn, corn, corn, corn." Jon felt as blind as Maester Aemon. Keeping the wall to his back, he slid toward the window and ripped down the curtain. Moonlight flooded the solar. He glimpsed black hands buried in white fur, swollen dark fingers tightening around his direwolf's throat. Ghost was twisting and snapping, legs flailing in the air, but he could not break free.

Jon had no time to be afraid. He threw himself forward, shouting, bringing down the longsword with all his weight behind it. Steel sheared through sleeve and skin and bone, yet the sound was wrong somehow. The smell that engulfed him was so queer and cold he almost gagged. He saw arm and hand on the floor, black fingers wriggling in a pool of moonlight. Ghost wrenched free of the other hand and crept away, red tongue lolling from his mouth.

The hooded man lifted his pale moon face, and Jon slashed at it without hesitation. The sword laid the intruder open to the bone, taking off half his nose and opening a gash cheek to cheek under those eyes, eyes, eyes like blue stars burning. Jon knew that face. Othor, he thought, reeling back. Gods, he's dead, he's dead, I saw him dead.

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A Clash of Kings - Jon VII

A weirwood.

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 his brother'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.

The question is whether the warm smell of earth, stone and the background smell of death describes the crypts of Winterfell and the dead outside or Bloodraven's cave with the wights shambling around outside.  The fact that Bran appears as Tree-Bran suggests that this contact is made after Bran is wed to the tree and located in BR's cave.  

The problem is that Bran has not yet crossed the Wall while Jon is at the Skirling Pass.  Bran's third eye is opened in the crypts but he is not sure that he saw Jon or dreamed him.  When Bran's 3rd eye is opened, he isn't constrained by time in his dreams; it's just as likely that this encounter is a dream of his own future, after he is wed to the tree.  This would also mean that Bran's future self is reaching back in his own past to connect to Ghost/Jon at the Skirling Pass.   This would be the meaning of the oak recalls the acorn and the acorn dreams the oak.  When Bran's 3rd eye is opened, he is both the acorn and the oak at the same time which is why he appears as a sapling sprouting from stone and growing into a tree.

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A Clash of Kings - Jon VII

A weirwood.

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 his brother's face. Had his brother always had three eyes?

The tree appears beginning with the roots sprouting up from the cracks and fissures of the rock and forms into a sapling tree continuing to grow until it reaches the sky.  This image of three-eyed Tree-Bran and Ghost-Jon together reminds me of Jon's description of Ghost, that he belongs to the old gods:

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A Storm of Swords - Jon XII

It was a long moment before he understood what was happening. When he did, he bolted to his feet. "Ghost?" He turned toward the wood, and there he came, padding silently out of the green dusk, the breath coming warm and white from his open jaws. "Ghost!" he shouted, and the direwolf broke into a run. He was leaner than he had been, but bigger as well, and the only sound he made was the soft crunch of dead leaves beneath his paws. When he reached Jon he leapt, and they wrestled amidst brown grass and long shadows as the stars came out above them. "Gods, wolf, where have you been?" Jon said when Ghost stopped worrying at his forearm. "I thought you'd died on me, like Robb and Ygritte and all the rest. I've had no sense of you, not since I climbed the Wall, not even in dreams." The direwolf had no answer, but he licked Jon's face with a tongue like a wet rasp, and his eyes caught the last light and shone like two great red suns.

Red eyes, Jon realized, but not like Melisandre's. He had a weirwood's eyes. Red eyes, red mouth, white fur. Blood and bone, like a heart tree. He belongs to the old gods, this one. And he alone of all the direwolves was white. Six pups they'd found in the late summer snows, him and Robb; five that were grey and black and brown, for the five Starks, and one white, as white as Snow.

The second strange detail is that Bran encounters Jon while deep in a wolf dream rather than a tree dream although he appears to Jon as a tree.  Which brings me to the mystery of GRRM's small but significant plot device that warg's can't sense the direwolves if they are separated by the Wall.   How does Bran make contact with Ghost at all, separated by the Wall, while he himself is warging Summer?

There is a slight discrepancy in the chronology of events experienced by Bran and Jon:

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A Clash of Kings - Bran VII

"The wolf ate," Jojen said. "Not you. Take care, Bran. Remember who you are."

He remembered who he was all too well; Bran the boy, Bran the broken. Better Bran the beastling. Was it any wonder he would sooner dream his Summer dreams, his wolf dreams? Here in the chill damp darkness of the tomb his third eye had finally opened. He could reach Summer whenever he wanted, and once he had even touched Ghost and talked to Jon. Though maybe he had only dreamed that. He could not understand why Jojen was always trying to pull him back now. Bran used the strength of his arms to squirm to a sitting position. "I have to tell Osha what I saw. Is she here? Where did she go?"

"Once he had even touched Ghost and talked to Jon" described as an event in the Bran's past rather than an event that has just occurred.  Then he's not sure, he may have only dreamed it.  Once again this is the oak recalling the past and the acorn dreaming of the future.

Jon experiences the chronology of events in a reverse order.  Bran speaks to Ghost/Jon first and then touches Ghost.

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A Clash of Kings - Jon VII

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.

For Jon, time is experienced as moving in one direction - present to future.  Bran speaks to him first and then touches Ghost.

Bran experiences those events in reverse order - he touches Ghost and then talks to Jon. This suggests that Bran is moving from the future to the past in his own dream timeframe.  If he was only experiencing time flowing in one direction; he would describe those events in the same order as Jon.

So can Bran affect the past?  I'd say he is able to only contact those who are still living, co-existent with him in other words and only those who have third eye or green dreaming capability.    

[SiSt]

I sincerely hope that any time travel is incredibly limited in scope, reach and consequence, since I find time travel stories to be very disappointing in general. Fine for a short story where a quick twist can be welcome, not so much in a multi - volume epic. (With caveats to GRRM being able to pull it off in a much better way than I can possibly imagine, of course.) 

I like the idea of limitations either being set by (blood) sacrifice, or simply the "weil" to the past being too thick to penetrate with any significant information. This meshes nicely with the idea of sacrifice in general as laid out in the books, in which a sacrifice has to be really difficult, hard or costly (in all respects) in order for it to have any effect. The faceless men being a notable example of how a death has to be paid for (dearly).

Or how Arya has to give up her self in order to become No One, which she resists and possibly subverts through other talents (warging, being a Stark). This may be a foreshadowing of Bran resisting the plan of the greenseers/green men/old gods/COTF of making him their asset, so to speak, and him rebelling internally against their collective will.

Spoiler

The show version of Bran seems not to have managed this (at least not yet), as he seems to have lost himself more or less completely and become a new vessel for BR and the rest of the godhood, aka "three eyed raven". 

There's also the option that Bran is capable of affecting change in the past only through the Winterfell weirwood, or limited to those close to him through family, acquaintance or in time, the latter which would also explain why BR needs to be replaced, as his kin and contemporaries are all gone and his powers therefore are dwindled. 

As for the OP, I agree absolutely, it proves that Bran can affect the past. That's a binary question, no matter the level of change he can actually cause. 

 

Bonus: Bran skinchanging Hodor, can only say "Hodor", meaning he's limited by the abilities of whoever/whatever he's moving his spirit into:

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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 this may be a limiting factor in speech/communication regardless of time travel or not.