The Children of the Forest - The Neverborn

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

Back to the OP for a second.  I think the Neverborn are actually the White Walkers / Shadow Swords.  Mel and Stannis conceived a child, and in utero she used shadowbinding to turn it into a Shadow Sword assassin.  It was a baby that was never born, but turned into a Cold Shadow. 

Dany's baby was sacrificed in utero to "save" the Khal, and her baby was turned into a dancing shadow of death: 

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"That may be as it may be," answered Mirri Maz Duur, "yet the creature that came forth from your womb was as I said. Death was in that tent, Khaleesi.

"Only shadows," Ser Jorah husked, but Dany could hear the doubt in his voice. "I saw, maegi. I saw you, alone, dancing with the shadows."

And Patchface says "The shadows come to dance"--referring to the White Walkers coming down. 

Craster's sons become White Shadows.

In A Night at the Tarn House, Lirianne's baby was reabsorbed into her body, and she herself became a Shadow Sword assassin who could wear the faces of dead people.  (clear Arya parallel)

 

Also, there is this line from the Mystery Knight, associating Shadows with deaths of the unborn:

"A shadow came at his command to strangle brave Prince Valarr's sons in their mother's womb"

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

Back to Motes for a second.  In Anglo-Saxon mot means "moot, assembly" and the kingsmoot took place at Nagga's Ribs which is a weirwood circle, and the winner gets the driftwood crown which is a weirwood crown.  (in LoTR, the entmoot is a circle of trees deciding what to do)

A moot takes place at the motte (the God's Eye), and a new greenseer gets named Mot (the god of death).  Euron wants to become the god of death and Euron gets named Mot, and vran/uran means "crow" and he is the Crow's Eye.  Oh, and in gaelic cro#1 cro#2 means "eye", "gore, blood, death" and "hovel, prison"

There is also a moat around the motte at God's Eye, where Mot lives.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

This is what I wrote about Mote on here 3 years ago:

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The Mote in god’s eye (Mote for short) is a Larry Niven sci-fi novel from 1974, in which humans encounter their first alien species, a race of small, furry, harmless-looking creatures they call Moties.  The Moties turn out to be completely ruthless, ingenious, and masters of war and deception, who are peaceful when the population is low enough that there is sufficient living space, but when they overshoot the carrying capacity of their planet they engage in brutal civil war to such an extent that it crashes their civilization and leads to rapid depopulation and then they start over. 

The basic premises are that they can’t use birth control, they have to breed or they die (and they breed like rabbits), and they are stuck in their solar system as they have not figured out faster than light travel (but we have).  After the first couple of civ-resets they learned to establish something like an encyclopedia galactica so they could rapidly rebuild after each crash.  Obviously inspired by the Foundation series.  They have been stuck in this cycle for hundreds of thousands of years, and most of them are okay with it, but every so often there is a Motie who thinks they can break the cycle and they will make some attempt.  One of the attempts was to build a time machine and go back to a certain critical negotiation in history and try to fix whatever they thought went wrong.  The time machine didn’t work.  The humans’ solution (suggested by a Motie) was to cease contact with the Moties and attempt to contain them in their star system with a permanent blockade around the Motie solar system and destroying any ship that attempts to leave.

“Mote” means a small speck of dust, in the book it is a reference to the Motie solar system where there is a red giant (the eye), with a regular small yellow star in front of it (the mote) which is set against a backdrop of a very large nebula that is vaguely head-shaped, so that from seen from a great distance looks like a human head with a single red eye. 

I think GRRM was inspired by a few things in the book. 

The word “mott” means a small grove of trees, “mott” is very close to “mote,” there is a Mott in God’s Eye, there is a small grove of weirwood trees on the isle of faces in the Gods Eye lake.  

 

There is a throw-away line in Mote about an uninhabited moon whose only life form is a certain type of fungus which is found on other planets in the system.  The implication being that the fungus is able to eject spores into outer space (as in starship troopers movie) or a comet or asteroid strike took the fungus from one planet to another, or both, the fungus shot spores into space which hitches a ride on a comet.  I think that this happened to Planetos.  God’s eye lake is an impact crater, deposited interstellar fungus.  The twist is that the fungus is magical, feeds on blood, and apparently malevolent.  It is  able to mold the environment to suit its needs.  To restore balance on Planetos they will need to be eradicated, and that is what the Night King really wants.

 

The Moties are very similar the Children of the Forest.  The first ones they meet are brown with white spots, big pointy ear, big eyes,

There is a Bran time-traveling timeline correcting character

The Moties genetically engineered unstoppable super-soldiers that look skeletal and are white, and kept that knowledge from the humans

 

In the Mote in Gods Eye, there is a planet-hopping fungus.  At the Isle of Faces, at the God's Eye, there is a planet-hopping fungus.  And the idea of going back in time to fix some pivotal moment in history is a plot idea.  Which George used in his short story Under Siege, where a cripple goes back in time and body snatches someone in the past to alter the timeline.

 

The planets in the Motie system are named after Celtic mythological characters.  The planet with the fungus is Fomor.  The leader of the Fomorians was Balor of the Evil Eye, who could shoot destructive beams out of his evil eye.  And the phrase Mote in Gods Eye, comes from the Mote and the Beam parable, about motes and beams in eyes. 

A beam coming out of the God's Eye.  A weirwood comet landing, and a weirwood comet taking off.

[TheSamsa]

First of this is a really nice idea, I like it a lot! Really refreshing, never heard anything like this before.

  And just to express a thought which struck me while reading this:

6 hours ago, MaesterSam said:

Wow, I definitely never thought of it this way before. It certainly is suspicious that we don't see male COTF! 

This and the fact layed out before that craster only has daughters but sacrifices his sons to be others led me to think that the others could be the brothers of the COTF. As far as I can remember every COTF was described like a female.

Also the quote

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The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers.

at first it reads the giants are both. But what if this suggests that the giants where their bane, but the others their brothers?

[LynnS]

6 hours ago, MaesterSam said:

Ah, but we are told the giants are vegetarians. They would have had no reason to hunt the COTF. In fact, it makes no sense that Leaf would call them their "bane". Giants don't seem violent if you don't provoke them, and they were sharing a large, mostly empty continent with only the COTF. Why would the two races ever fight? Over what??

Just kicking the can around a bit.  What do you suppose GRRM meant by bane and brother?  How would giants be useful to the weirwood?  What did giants eat during the long night or winters.  Bran says there are giant's skulls in the caves.

[LynnS]

6 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

Back to the OP for a second.  I think the Neverborn are actually the White Walkers / Shadow Swords.  Mel and Stannis conceived a child, and in utero she used shadowbinding to turn it into a Shadow Sword assassin.  It was a baby that was never born, but turned into a Cold Shadow.

Right.  I think that's probably what Martin was getting at when he first brought up the Neverborn as far as the WWs are concerned.  How do you suppose the weirwood came by the occult knowledge to make white shadows and give them a fixed form made of ice and snow and cold. .  

[MaesterSam]

7 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

Back to Motes for a second.  In Anglo-Saxon mot means "moot, assembly" and the kingsmoot took place at Nagga's Ribs which is a weirwood circle, and the winner gets the driftwood crown which is a weirwood crown.  (in LoTR, the entmoot is a circle of trees deciding what to do)

A moot takes place at the motte (the God's Eye), and a new greenseer gets named Mot (the god of death).  Euron wants to become the god of death and Euron gets named Mot, and vran/uran means "crow" and he is the Crow's Eye.  Oh, and in gaelic cro#1 cro#2 means "eye", "gore, blood, death" and "hovel, prison"

There is also a moat around the motte at God's Eye, where Mot lives.

This makes me wonder about Moat Cailin, and if maybe it was actually Mote Cailin and later people/FM just mis-interpreted it and assumed it was "moat"? There is no actual moat in this location (IIRC?) so the name seems a little off. It's also noteworthy that there does not appear to be a weirwood at Moat Cailin. Since they never die or at least never rot, if there ever was one it should still be around. 

Regarding the middle paragraph - what stands out to me is vran/uran meaning crow. Or in other words, Bran/Euron = crow. If Bran and Euron both fit here, then it may well be Bran who becomes the god of death. I've been thinking for a while that Euron is mistaken in thinking he is going to be the god of death, much like Rhaegar thought he was the promised prince. "A new god will rise from the graves and charnel pits" is what Euron has seen in visions or possibly read somewhere. But Euron, while he is killing lots of people, is not underground. He is not in a grave or a charnel pit. Bran is, literally. Thousands of COTF and various other beings are buried in his cave complex, and when wandering as Hodor he comes upon whole caverns filled with bones. That's the literal definition of charnel pit, a place to store bones. 

We have one other character currently living among charnel pits and that's Arya, also very (extremely!) strongly associated with death and godhood. Much more so than Euron who is just another killer (albeit a terrifying killer with magical power).

[LynnS]

3 hours ago, MaesterSam said:

This makes me wonder about Moat Cailin, and if maybe it was actually Mote Cailin and later people/FM just mis-interpreted it and assumed it was "moat"? There is no actual moat in this location (IIRC?) so the name seems a little off. It's also noteworthy that there does not appear to be a weirwood at Moat Cailin. Since they never die or at least never rot, if there ever was one it should still be around. 

Regarding the middle paragraph - what stands out to me is vran/uran meaning crow. Or in other words, Bran/Euron = crow. If Bran and Euron both fit here, then it may well be Bran who becomes the god of death. I've been thinking for a while that Euron is mistaken in thinking he is going to be the god of death, much like Rhaegar thought he was the promised prince. "A new god will rise from the graves and charnel pits" is what Euron has seen in visions or possibly read somewhere. But Euron, while he is killing lots of people, is not underground. He is not in a grave or a charnel pit. Bran is, literally. Thousands of COTF and various other beings are buried in his cave complex, and when wandering as Hodor he comes upon whole caverns filled with bones. That's the literal definition of charnel pit, a place to store bones. 

We have one other character currently living among charnel pits and that's Arya, also very (extremely!) strongly associated with death and godhood. Much more so than Euron who is just another killer (albeit a terrifying killer with magical power).

I agree Bran will rise as a new god from the bone pits of the cave of skulls.  Euron may think he will become the new god but he is bent on destroying all the gods including the small gods of the forest.  If there is a soul of ice/heart of darkness and death and it's opposite, a soul of fire/heart of light and life;  Euron strikes me as the soul of corruption/heart of malice and deception as personified by the corrupt blue heart in the House of Undying.  His sigil of the blood eye is not unlike Sauron's eye in LOTR.

The blood red moon that Benerro gestures towards is representative of Euron with it's twin reflected on the sea.  It's also a blood moon/flower moon/wolf moon eclipse giving it the red color and large size.  (We just had one last month.)  

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A Dance with Dragons - Tyrion VIII

Only the brightest stars were visible, all to the west. A dull red glow lit the sky to the northeast, the color of a blood bruise. Tyrion had never seen a bigger moon. Monstrous, swollen, it looked as if it had swallowed the sun and woken with a fever. Its twin, floating on the sea beyond the ship, shimmered red with every wave. "What hour is this?" he asked Moqorro. "That cannot be sunrise unless the east has moved. Why is the sky red?"

  The last line about the sunrise in the east lines up with Mirri's prophecy:  "When the sun rises in the east and sets in the west".  Only she wasn't talking about the sun but the blood moon.  

2021 Lunar Eclipse: What is Blood Moon - The Alig's ~ Current Affairs

An eclipse being  an ominous sign or portent:

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 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood.

THE BLOOD MOON AND THE APOCALYPSE—A TRUE SIGN IN THE HEAVENS? | FAITH HAPPENS BOOKS — Website Home of S. Douglas Woodward (faith-happens.com)

[Seams]

On 6/14/2021 at 5:45 AM, LynnS said:

OK, gimme your wildest tinfoil about the origins of the COTF and Weirwood.

If there is a single source or manipulator of life on the planet, I think Garth Greenhands and his children have to be part of the explanation. We know that House Gardener claimed descent from him but many other Houses also claim that he was a distant paternal figure. 

https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Rose_of_Red_Lake

The recorded history emphasizes human houses that descended from Garth. He was such a fertility figure, it would not surprise me at all if the entity that became known as Garth Greenhands was responsible for weirwoods and COTF as well.

I have a hunch that Arya's Weasel Soup experience at Harrenhal may be tied to the creation myth for Westeros. 

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The horn had stirred the castle from sleep; men were coming out into the ward to see what the commotion was about. Arya fell in with the others. A line of ox carts were rumbling under the portcullis. Plunder, she knew at once. The riders escorting the carts spoke in a babble of queer tongues. Their armor glinted pale in the moonlight, and she saw a pair of striped black-and-white zorses. The Bloody Mummers. Arya withdrew a little deeper into the shadows, and watched as a huge black bear rolled by, caged in the back of a wagon. Other carts were loaded down with silver plate, weapons and shields, bags of flour, pens of squealing hogs and scrawny dogs and chickens. Arya was thinking how long it had been since she'd had a slice off a pork roast when she saw the first of the prisoners.

By his bearing and the proud way he held his head, he must have been a lord. She could see mail glinting beneath his torn red surcoat. At first Arya took him for a Lannister, but when he passed near a torch she saw his device was a silver fist, not a lion. His wrists were bound tightly, and a rope around one ankle tied him to the man behind him, and him to the man behind him, so the whole column had to shuffle along in a lurching lockstep. Many of the captives were wounded. If any halted, one of the riders would trot up and give him a lick of the whip to get him moving again. She tried to judge how many prisoners there were, but lost count before she got to fifty. There were twice that many at least. Their clothing was stained with mud and blood, and in the torchlight it was hard to make out all their badges and sigils, but some of those Arya glimpsed she recognized. Twin towers. Sunburst. Bloody man. Battle-axe. The battle-axe is for Cerwyn, and the white sun on black is Karstark. They're northmen. My father's men, and Robb's. She didn't like to think what that might mean.

The Bloody Mummers began to dismount. Stableboys emerged sleepy from their straw to tend their lathered horses. One of the riders was shouting for ale. The noise brought Ser Amory Lorch out onto the covered gallery above the ward, flanked by two torchbearers. Goat-helmed Vargo Hoat reined up below him. "My lord cathellan," the sellsword said. He had a thick, slobbery voice, as if his tongue was too big for his mouth. (Clash, Arya IX)

There's something about Arya thinking that she is releasing Robb's bannermen but the later revelation that they were going to be freed by Vargo Hoat; and Arya thinking that Hoat is the enemy when he actually had switched his loyalties to Robb. Then Robb sending in Roose Bolton to take charge but Bolton having secretly switched loyalties to House Lannister . . . .

To me, these changes are similar to the "seems benevolent; actually sinister" (and vice versa) situations with many of the forces of nature and magic in ASOIAF. Arya opened Pandora's Box when she freed Jaqen, Rorge and Biter from the cage in Yoren's wagon train. The Weasel Soup episode may represent further damage unleashed inadvertently by Arya. Could this be a parallel to the arrival of "alien" forces of nature through the handiwork of Garth Greenhands? (Arya had a friend named Lommy Greenhands . . . .)

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

6 hours ago, LynnS said:

How do you suppose the weirwood came by the occult knowledge to make white shadows and give them a fixed form made of ice and snow and cold. .  

In Clark Ashton Smith's Vulthoom, the satanic white alien subterranean telepathic tree can cast 3d holograms with its mind (and it is served by the Aihai [Ahai], and it is associated with 3-headed dragons).  And Vulthoom landed on Mars as a falling star, and wants to launch himself to Earth.  Vulthoom secretes a psychotropic prefume, not unlike weirwood paste, and he sleeps for thousands of years.

ETA: the Aihai are toads, so they are green men in a sense--the white bole is served by greenmen.

It is also the plot of Forbidden Planet:

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I just watched Forbidden Planet (1956) for the first time on the recommendation of Frey Family Reunion who mentioned that Bran's plot parallels the plot of Forbidden Planet, and that Bran might be telepathically casting the White Walkers from his nightmares while inside the weirwood network (which I seem to recall Preston mentioning this in passing at least once also).   George has said that it is the best sci-fi film ever made, and has seen it over 100 times, and he owns a life-size replica of Robby the Robot.

In the movie, Dr. Morbius lives inside/under a green round-domed building surrounded by trees with red leaves and white trunks (they look like weirwoods and he lives under something that resembles a weirwood hill).  He was a member of a small group of colonists who landed on the planet Altair-4, to set up a colony 20 years ago.  Underneath his house is a vast network of tunnels built by a now-extinct ancient alien civilization.  Among the things the Morbius found in tunnels was a supercomputer containing all the scientific knowledge of the Krell aliens.  He found another device that amplified his intelligence, and the machine performed another function as well--it could manifest thoughts into physical reality--it would read your mind and whatever you wanted to create it would create.  Morbius could not yet master this function while awake, but unbeknownst to him, while he slept, the monsters that he dreamed were manifest in the real world and killed all of his fellow colonists  He says they were killed by a "planetary force."  In the climax of the film, Dr. Morbius is being attacked by his own psionic projection, and is forced to retreat to his safe-room underground, but the monster is almost infinitely powerful and breaks into the safe-room.  The monster is only defeated by Morbius acknowledging that he himself is the monster, then it vanishes. 

They realize that this technology is was what wiped out the alien civilization 200,000 years ago--the Krell dreamed of monsters, and those monsters completely obliterated their civilization, practically overnight.  (I think the collaspse of the Great Empire of the Dawn parallels this)

The last act of Morbius is to activate a self-destruct so that this technology can never be used again.

In Roman mythology, Morpheus is the god of dreams, and Morbus is the god of disease, Mors is the goddess of death, and Morbius is a combination of these.   moribund means "death"

 

So, Morbius is named after the gods of dreams and death, and he lives under a proto-weirwood grove, he finds and ancient alien computer that is a repository of all knowledge, his brain is plugged into the device, and is gives him vast psychic abilities, including the ability to cast ghostly shadow monsters while dreaming.  (oh and Morbius' daughter has the ability to control animals)  His creation turns on him.  He is forced to destroy the psychic supercomputer. 

Under a weirwood grove, in a cave full of skulls and bones, Bran finds an ancient alien weirwood network that is a repository of all knowledge, his brain is plugged into the network, and it gives him vast psychic abilities, including the ability to cast ghostly "shadow swords"--White Walkers--while dreaming.  He will realize that humans have created their own monsters through the weirwood network.  And I think he will use the White Walkers to destroy the weirwood network.

 

 

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

4 hours ago, MaesterSam said:

This makes me wonder about Moat Cailin, and if maybe it was actually Mote Cailin and later people/FM just mis-interpreted it and assumed it was "moat"? There is no actual moat in this location (IIRC?) so the name seems a little off. It's also noteworthy that there does not appear to be a weirwood at Moat Cailin. Since they never die or at least never rot, if there ever was one it should still be around.

Good catch.  In gaelic caoile means "a narrowing" and caoil-eang means "a narrow strip of land" and the only way to get to Moat Cailin is to follow the causeway, and it is in the neck of Westeros (more maze symbolism).  All of Westeros is a giant living creature, and armies that march into the neck get swallowed by it, and dead armies wait under the water to return at the Long Night. 

This is Moat Cailin? It's no more than a—
 —death trap

(the constellation Cetus is a sea-monster and the star Mira is in the Neck)

Moat Cailin is a metaphor for the weirwood, with the Children's Tower at the Mote in a swamp where the CoTF worked magic to bring down a meteor from space to break Westeros in two.  Emphasized by the scattered remains of towers like a space object landed there.

ETA: ceal means "death, oblivion" and cealaim means "to eat" and ceall means "church"

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

3 hours ago, Seams said:

I think Garth Greenhands and his children have to be part of the explanation. We know that House Gardener claimed descent from him but many other Houses also claim that he was a distant paternal figure. 

Garth is a metaphor for the weirwoods themselves.

Highgarden is a White castle on a hill with hedge maze and has weirwoods at the center, built by Garth the Gardener—Garth means enclosed garden and fishing weir.  Labyrinth with a white bole / white bull at the center.  Weirwood is the Minotaur (Moloch / Melkor)

"Highgarden is girded by three concentric rings of crenellated curtain walls, made of finely dressed white stone and protected by towers as slender and graceful as maidens. Each wall is higher and thicker than the one below it. Between the outermost wall that girdles the foot of the hill and the middle wall above it can be found Highgarden's famed briar maze, a vast and complicated labyrinth of thorns and hedges maintained for centuries for the pleasure and delight of the castle's occupants and guests...and for defensive purposes, for intruders unfamiliar with the maze cannot easily find their way through its traps and dead ends to the castle gates."

. . .

"And Highgarden's lush green godswood is almost as renowned, for in the place of a single heart tree it boasts three towering, graceful, ancient weirwoods whose limbs have grown so entangled over the centuries that they appear to be almost a single tree with three trunks, reaching for each other above a tranquil pool. Legend has it these trees, known in the Reach as the Three Singers, were planted by Garth Greenhand himself."

Weirwoods at the center of a maze.  Also a reference to the Three Norns of Norse mythology who live in the well of Urd (pronounce Earth?) and who weave the fates of men (the names of the norns mean "past, present, and future") and they water the World Tree.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

5 hours ago, LynnS said:

I agree Bran will rise as a new god from the bone pits of the cave of skulls.  Euron may think he will become the new god but he is bent on destroying all the gods including the small gods of the forest.  If there is a soul of ice/heart of darkness and death and it's opposite, a soul of fire/heart of light and life;  Euron strikes me as the soul of corruption/heart of malice and deception as personified by the corrupt blue heart in the House of Undying.  His sigil of the blood eye is not unlike Sauron's eye in LOTR.

The original cover art for the Fellowship of the Ring depicts a Red Eye inside the Ring.

Sauron is described as being an Eye, a Red Eye, an Eye rimmed with fire, a Lidless Eye, the Evil Eye, and a red star that is a “watchful eye”

When Frodo looks into the Mirror of Galadriel:

“But suddenly the Mirror went altogether dark, as dark as if a hole had opened in the world of sight, and Frodo looked into emptiness.  In the black abyss there appeared a single Eye that slowly grew, until it filled nearly all the Mirror.  So terrible was it that Frodo stood rooted, unable to cry out or to withdraw his gaze.  The Eye was rimmed with fire, but itself was glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.”

The waters that surround the Isle of Faces is a Mirror*. and The God’s Eye is a Lidless Eye of sorts.  An Eye that never blinks, and that is always watching.  Weirwoods have red leaves.  A Red Lidless Eye.  Weirwoods themselves have red eyes.  Under the weirwoods is a black abyss, where creatures with cats' eyes live. 

In ASoIaF, the green men on the Isle of Faces have "antlers" which refers to the weirwood trees above their heads when they are seated on their weirwood throne in their weirwood cave, they wear the ring of weirwoods like a crown.   And the Baratheons are a metaphor for these Antlered Green men, and barathrum means "abyss" in Latin.

*There is some word play going on with "Myrish lens" and "Myrish mirrors" in ASoIaF, as mere means "sea or lake" and sounds identical to myr so a "Mere-ish lens" is a lake that is an eye, and a "Mere-ish mirror" is a lake that is a mirror.

I learned the word "eyot" from LotR, an eyot is an island in a river.  (An eye surrounded by water.) 

Ey means "island" in Old Norse.

 

The Ring is called a “wheel of fire” and Sauron’s Eye is an Eye “rimmed with fire” --Weirwoods grow in a weirwood circles and "The red leaves of the weirwood were a blaze of flame among the green"--the weirwood circles are a wheel of fire.

The Ring gives great power to its wearer, it makes people invisible when they put it on—Bran and Bloodraven became invisible when they go into the past through the weirwood network.  (When you put on the ring you enter “wraith-world” and everything is misty—George’s story With Morning Comes Mistfall is based on this idea.)

One of the main themes of LotR is that many people would like to take possession of the Ring in order to use it for themselves, but the Ring only answers to Sauron, and would corrupt and destroy anyone who tried to use it.  It prolongs the life of the wearer, but at the same time drains the life-force from the wearer. 

Weirwoods drain the life-force of greenseers, that is their source of food.  When Bran enters Bloodraven's cave, they "came into an echoing cavern as large as the great hall of Winterfell, with stone teeth hanging from its ceiling and more poking up through its floor."  He is literally walking into the mouth of a cave, that is going to consume him.

And the only course of action is to destroy the Ring, the only course of action is to destroy the weirwoods.

 

The red star that is a watchful eye:

“The Hunter’s Moon waxed round in the night sky, and put to flight all the lesser stars.  But low in the South one star shone red.  Every night, as the Moon waned again, it shone brighter and brighter.  Frodo could see it form his window, deep in the heavens, burning like a watchful eye that glared above the trees on the brink of the valley.”

Jon Snow looks at Mars in the night sky and thinks that it is watching him (through the trees): "Jon glimpsed the red wanderer above, watching them through the leafless branches of great trees as they made their way beneath. The Thief, the free folk called it."

The Red Wanderer is a red eye watching Jon through the great trees--that is, using the great trees to watch Jon.  Nearly the same phrasing is used to describe Sauron's eye and Mars, a watching eye + trees.

 

The Nazgul

Sauron’s servants are the Ring-wraiths--the Nazgul (nasg means “ring” and “chained” and “wooden ring / wooden collar” and “sworn / oath” in Gaelic).  They were Great Kings of men who put on the rings, had their life-force drained from them, and they were enslaved by the One Ring. 

Bloodraven put on the weirwood ring and had his life-force drained from him and he was enslaved.

Weirwoods grow in rings, the White Walkers are a kind of wraith / ghost / shade--the White Walkers are literally Ring-Wraiths—shadows cast by the weirwood,  They are Shadow Swords. 

Pg. 237 of the Two Towers when the Nazgul flies over Frodo, Sam, and Gollum in the Dead Marshes, the air gets noticeably colder, suggesting that the Ring Wraiths bring the cold.

  

The Nazgul live in Minas Morgul, a spooky white city with a White Tower that has a face on it: “the topmost course of the tower revolved slowly, first this way and then another, a huge ghostly head leering into the night.” 

The sigil of Minas Morgul depicts a moon with a skull of death on it, "a moon disfigured by a ghastly face of death"--suggests the face of a moon being the face of Death.

The Ring-Wraiths live in a White Tower with a face carved on it.  It used to be Minas Ithil (the Tower of the Moon) but it is now Minas Morgul (the Tower of Black Arts / Tower of Sorcery in Sindarin) 

In Gaelic morgad (pronounced "morgu") means "act of corrupting, decaying, putrefying" an alternate spelling is morgtha which is very close to Morgoth.

The Ring-wraiths essentially live inside a weirwood tree. 

In ASOIAF, I think the White Walkers are shades cast by the weirwood, which I did an extensive write-up on here.

 

When Frodo and Sam are at Minas Morgul, Mt Doom erupts and at Minas Morgul lightning shoots from the White Tower into the sky:

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"… At that moment the rock quivered and trembled beneath them. The great rumbling noise, louder than ever before, rolled in the ground and echoed in the mountains. Then with searing suddenness there came a great red flash. Far beyond the eastern mountains it leapt into the sky and splashed the lowering clouds with crimson. In that valley of shadow and cold deathly light it seemed unbearably violent and fierce. Peaks of stone and ridges like notched knives sprang out in staring black against the uprushing flame in Gorgoroth. Then came a great crack of thunder.

And Minas Morgul answered. There was a flare of livid lightnings: forks of blue flame springing up from the tower and from the encircling hills into the sullen clouds. The earth groaned; and out of the city there came a cry. Mingled with the harsh high voices as of birds of prey, and the shrill neighing of horses wild with rage and fear, there came a rending screech, shivering, rising swiftly to a piercing pitch beyond the range of hearing. The hobbits wheeled round towards it, and cast themselves down, holding their hands upon their ears

So, the White Tower with a face on it where the Ring-wraiths live can shoot things into the sky. (recall the tree struck by lightning, and set ablaze, from the Grey King myth)

The Dark Lord is defeated by destroying the Ring, in which his spirit was bound.  In ASOIAF the Great Other’s spirit is contained within the weirwood (when Mel sees a vision of the Great Other she sees a wooden face and Bran, the White Walkers are the Others and the weirwood/Bran is the Great Other) and the only way to destroy it is to destroy the weirwood ring. 

Sauron is a red eye in a tower, that blankets itself in Shadow, and wants to cover all the Earth in Shadow.  When the Ring is destroyed:  "Then rising swiftly up, far above the Towers of the Black Gate, high above the mountains, a vast soaring darkness sprang into the sky, flickering with fire."  The destruction of the Ring coincides with something shooting off into the sky.

 

[MaesterSam]

4 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

Good catch.  In gaelic caoile means "a narrowing" and caoil-eang means "a narrow strip of land" and the only way to get to Moat Cailin is to follow the causeway, and it is in the neck of Westeros (more maze symbolism).  All of Westeros is a giant living creature, and armies that march into the neck get swallowed by it, and dead armies wait under the water to return at the Long Night. 

(...)

ETA: ceal means "death, oblivion" and cealaim means "to eat" and ceall means "church"

So Moat Cailin is the mouth of Westeros, sitting atop the neck and eating armies that come through? Works for me! 

I agree that mazes are going to be important in some way - they are everywhere in the story. There is a "warlock's maze" included in the part of Xaro's mansion he lets Dany stay in (in ACOK). Also there is a place called Madhan's Maze in Meereen, and Arya walks past the Pattern-maker’s Maze".

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Only those who learn to walk it properly will ever find their way to wisdom, the priests of the Pattern say.

-Arya, ADWD

Also the icy paths shoveled through the snow in Winterfell are referred to as mazes multiple times. 

[MaesterSam]

10 hours ago, LynnS said:

Just kicking the can around a bit.  What do you suppose GRRM meant by bane and brother?  How would giants be useful to the weirwood?  What did giants eat during the long night or winters.  Bran says there are giant's skulls in the caves.

Well it was technically Leaf who said it, not GRRM, so it could be untrue or misleading. The "brothers" part could mean the two races are related, or even that both were created by the weirwood to serve it. This would explain the giant skulls in the cave, though Odin's Beard in his own OP mentioned a Lovecraft story where a small alien race captures people and uses their brains to see into the past and future; to do this the brains are basically set on a shelf and hooked up to some device - like the skulls are hooked up to the weirwood net through roots. So the giants may have been victims rather than choosing to die in the cave.

However, the one giant we meet in person, Wun Wun, was in a weirwood grove when he was found, and there are legends that the COTF and giants both helped build the Wall so that would suggest the children, giants and weirwoods are all on the same team. 

I don't understand the "bane" part at all, unless giants long ago were very different than they are today. This is possible; maybe they were more intelligent and more dangerous (and not vegetarians) and were re-engineered to be more useful.

No idea what they would have eaten during the Long Night. In Bran's cave they eat mushrooms among other things, so maybe those? I think most animals (including humans) will resort to cannibalism if they get hungry enough. We really hear no mention of them in connection to the LN at all. Maybe 99% of them starved to death which resulted in a complete civilization collapse and a return to almost-animal behavior? 

There is something weird about Ygritte crying when she sings the "last of the giants" song; after which Jon responds that there are hundreds of them, he just saw them - and she answers "you know nothing". This seems to be a hint that the "real" (original?? intelligent?) giants are all gone and those that are left don't count for her. 

[Targaryeninkingslanding]

3 hours ago, MaesterSam said:

There is something weird about Ygritte crying when she sings the "last of the giants" song; after which Jon responds that there are hundreds of them, he just saw them - and she answers "you know nothing". This seems to be a hint that the "real" (original?? intelligent?) giants are all gone and those that are left don't count for her. 

This is cool theory but i think there is a more literal meaning. hundreds for a whole species is not a lot. "There are hundreds of humans" is not a reassuring statement. at one point giant probably existed all around Westeros.

I think the mammoths and giants could just as well symbolize modern elephant, which like the giants and mammoths exist in a fraction of their numbers centuries past.

this is a vintage picture of an elephant herd unlike what we have today: https://i.redd.it/frs7izep46651.jpg . Its gets sadder if you sing the last of the giants while looking at it.

[MaesterSam]

13 hours ago, Targaryeninkingslanding said:

This is cool theory but i think there is a more literal meaning. hundreds for a whole species is not a lot. "There are hundreds of humans" is not a reassuring statement. at one point giant probably existed all around Westeros.

I think the mammoths and giants could just as well symbolize modern elephant, which like the giants and mammoths exist in a fraction of their numbers centuries past.

this is a vintage picture of an elephant herd unlike what we have today: https://i.redd.it/frs7izep46651.jpg . Its gets sadder if you sing the last of the giants while looking at it.

You're probably right and I'm overthinking it; nevertheless you have given me another idea. Jon is surprised to see how hairy the giants are - like their mammoths. Mammoths are of course extinct in our world, partly due to human hunting but also because they were well adapted to living in the ice age and then the ice age ended. Their non-hairy cousins the elephants were doing fine until humans decided that ivory is worth killing them for. 

Bottom line: there are two forms of the animal - hairy mammoths and smooth elephants. The giants Jon sees (notably living in the far North where it's cold, just like the mammoths) are hairy as well, yet apparently Old Nan did not mention this in her stories or Jon wouldn't have been surprised. This could be yet another clue that these primitive, animal-like giants Jon meets are not the giants of legend. Giants once lived all over Westeros, as you said. The ones in the south wouldn't have been hairy, and those all seem to be gone. 

ETA: What an amazing picture. It does make me sad. Humans are the worst.

ETA #2: There is also the fact that Mance looks for the horn of winter in old giant's graves in the Frostfangs, which may suggest Joramun was a giant. Even if he wasn't, the possibility of this magical horn being buried with a giant at least suggests that giants of old had magic. Furthermore, the horn Mance pretends is the horn of winter came from the Frostfangs and is incredibly big. It's not the horn of winter but it does appear to be a magical horn, engraved with runes which are equivalent to glyphs. If a giant made or used this, the giants once had magic and they were somewhat literate. Giants in the present barely even use tools (tree trunks as weapons).