Just sacred trees? Or is there a meatier magic to the weirwoods?

[Phylum of Alexandria]

1. Claws and Hammers

When Aeron Greyjoy visits House Goodbrother, this is how their keep is described:

“It was long after dark by the time the priest espied the spiky iron battlements of the Hammerhorn clawing at the crescent moon.” —The Prophet, AFFC

As Crowfood’s Daughter has detailed, what’s significant about House Goodbrother is that they are loaded with fertility god imagery such as goats, green lands, horns of plenty, and a shit ton of children, including triplets. The founder of their house, the “leal elder brother” to the Grey King, really comes off as a Garth Greenhand figure, or what the Ironborn call “the storm god.”

There’s also the hammer of the waters. We know that CotF summoned the hammer of the waters, whatever it was, and that magical act flooded the Neck, the arm of Dorne, and the Iron Islands. Not for nothing do most Ironborn hate the storm god, and tell stories of their leader slaying a demon tree who drank human blood.

Recognizing the Goodbrother connection to greenseer magic makes the name “Hammerhorn” take on new meaning. Especially when considering that passage about the Hammerhorn clawing at the moon.

This particular imagery is in keeping with passages involving weirwoods reaching for the sky or grabbing toward astral bodies such as the moon.

“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.” -- Jon VII, ACOK

“The Reeds decided that they would sleep in the kitchens, a stone octagon with a broken dome. It looked to offer better shelter than most of the other buildings, even though a crooked weirwood had burst up through the slate floor beside the huge central well, stretching slantwise toward the hole in the roof, its bone-white branches reaching for the sun. It was a queer kind of tree, skinnier than any other weirwood that Bran had ever seen and faceless as well, but it made him feel as if the old gods were with him here, at least." -- Bran IV, ACOK

That same weirwood then goes for the moon:

“Pale moonlight slanted down through the hole in the dome, painting the branches of the weirwood as they strained up toward the roof. It looked as if the tree was trying to catch the moon and drag it down into the well. “ -- Bran IV, ACOK

Even beyond the reaching and grabbing imagery, it seems that weirwoods have strong associations with the moon in particular. Here’s another passage from Bran IV ASOS:

"He was a quarter of the way around the well from Bran and Hodor and six feet farther down, yet Bran could barely see him. He could see the door, though. The Black Gate, Sam had called it, but it wasn't black at all.

It was white weirwood, and there was a face on it.

A glow came from the wood, like milk and moonlight, so faint it scarcely seemed to touch anything beyond the door itself, not even Sam standing right before it.”

This door carved from weirwood emits a moonglow, even in the darkest bowels of the Nightfort. That’s quite uncanny.

Not to mention: The Moon Door of the Eyrie is carved from weirwood, and the door in the House of Black and White is carved into a moon face; half with weirwood, half with “ebony.”

So…why is this important? Who cares about the moon? And why would reaching for it matter?

 

2. Moons and Meteors

Well, there is the matter of the Long Night.

"He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi," the Lysene girl said. "Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. That is why dragons breathe flame. One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return.” -- Danaerys III, AGOT

"A hundred days and a hundred nights he labored on the third blade, and as it glowed white-hot in the sacred fires, he summoned his wife. 'Nissa Nissa,' he said to her, for that was her name, 'bare your breast, and know that I love you best of all that is in this world.' She did this thing, why I cannot say, and Azor Ahai thrust the smoking sword through her living heart. It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon, but her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel. Such is the tale of the forging of Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes." -- Davos I, ACOK

David Lightbringer has made a great case for the mechanism of the Long Night resulting from a comet destroying one of the planet’s moons, resulting in a firestorm of “dragons” falling to the earth, in the destruction of Asshai, and in a cataclysmic impact winter. This prolonged period of darkness and cold provided the perfect conditions for the icy Others to wander further out than they typically can given their icy nature, and bring absolute mayhem to the land of the living.

I think this is a great theory, and stand by it.

But what exactly was the magic that made such an astral catastrophe possible? My take is that it was done by the weirwoods, va the same or similar magic as what we call the hammer of the waters.

 

3. A Tale of Two Garths (or more)

Recall that the Grey King ostensibly brought fire to the earth “by taunting the Storm God until he lashed down with a thunderbolt, setting a tree ablaze.” The Storm God is the fertile weirwood magic of the greenseers, coded elsewhere as Garth Greenhand.

Let’s examine another instance of brother fighting brother, one that involves storm lords bedecked in the imagery of antlered fertility gods. Yes, I’m talking about Stannis and Renly.

Does this tell us anything about the advent of the Long Night?

Both Stannis and Renly have Garth stag imagery, but Stannis also has fire imagery: a flaming heart over his hart. Stannis is coded for Team Red, and Renly for Team Greenseer.

Stannis doesn’t wield a true flaming sword like he wants to, but he does use his pink sword of heroes to "stab" his pale Red Queen and spew his life fires. His queen’s moon-face opens in agony and ecstasy as she gives birth to great light and flame, followed by shadow. And Green-Garth is felled by the shadow, growing cold as the lights gutter out. 

That seems like some pretty strong Long Night imagery. And here’s another detail that strengthens the association.

 

4. The Missing Color

In that chapter of the shadow assassination, Renly has seven mobile guardians around him, one for each color of the rainbow, but one color was not represented, presumably so as not to represent The Stranger (and indeed, in the same chapter Renly dies, Catelyn sees a depiction of the Stranger as a shadow face, so the Stranger came for him). 

What was the missing color? Indigo. The color of the Stranger, of the shadow, was indigo.

If you search through ACOK, there are only 8 mentions of indigo in the entire book. One pertains to sunset in Jon VI, and one pertains to Cressen’s choker crystals from Asshai.

6 of the 8 mentions of indigo occur within the House of the Undying (Danaerys IV, ACOK). One of these pertains to Rhaegar’s eye color, but the rest are reserved for the chamber of the Undying:

• “A long stone table filled this room. Above it floated a human heart, swollen and blue with corruption, yet still alive. It beat, a deep ponderous throb of sound, and each pulse sent out a wash of indigo light.” 
• “Through the indigo murk, she could make out the wizened features of the Undying One to her right, an old old man, wrinkled and hairless. His flesh was a ripe violet-blue, his lips and nails bluer still, so dark they were almost black. Even the whites of his eyes were blue.” 
• “Then phantoms shivered through the murk, images in indigo.”
• “But then black wings buffeted her round the head, and a scream of fury cut the indigo air, and suddenly the visions were gone, ripped away, and Dany's gasp turned to horror.” 
• “Then indigo turned to orange, and whispers turned to screams. Her heart was pounding, racing, the hands and mouths were gone, heat washed over her skin, and Dany blinked at a sudden glare.” 

So aside from Rhaegar’s eyes, indigo is linked to sunset, Asshai, and most of all: the heart of the Undying.

Melisandre’s shadow magic, learned in Asshai, is linked by clever color-coding to the corrupted the heart of the Shade of the Evening tree’s power, which emanates indigo light.

The cataclysm that caused the Long Night, that turned the fertile Great Empire of the Dawn into the Shadowlands, and turned healthy sacred trees of that Dawn Empire into Shade-of-the-Evening trees, is played out symbolically in the Garth-against-Garth drama of Stannis and Renly.

 

5. Boulderized Eroticism?

LmL highlights in some of his videos that the Azor Ahai story has a sexual dimension to it, particularly Nissa Nissa’s cry of agony and ecstasy leading to a cosmic explosion. And Melisandre’s shadow birth scene mimics that to some extent.

There's another detail in Renly's final chapter that may also have a sexual connotation. Shortly before he's killed, he mentioned that Stannis considered using a trebuchet to fling the bodies of his own men who were unfaithful.

Trebuchets flinging bodies as well as boulders is a recurring image in the story, most prominently with the Three Whores, and the Six Sisters. In the case of the Three Whores, the people thrown are antler men. Garth men.

Three Whores and Six Sisters calls to mind the "Three Singers" passage from TWOIAF, which involved Garth Greenhand:

"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." -- TWOIAF, The Reach

So, multiple weirwoods where people think there’s just one. Hmmm. I take this as an important clue about the tripart ancestry of the weirwoods. But it’s a “brother killing brother” kind of relationship, unfortunately.

And then there's this passage, which sounds strongly symbolic, in a larger section on “sowing seeds:”

“It was Garth who first taught men to farm, it is said. Before him, all men were hunters and gatherers, rootless wanderers forever in search of sustenance, until Garth gave them the gift of seed and showed them how to plant and sow, how to raise crops and reap the harvest. (In some tales, he tried to teach the elder races as well, but the giants roared at him and pelted him with boulders, whilst the children laughed and told him that the gods of the wood provided for all their needs).” — TWOIAF, The Reach

To me, the pelting of Garth with boulders has sexual connotation. When taken together with the idea of giant female-coded trebuchets flinging antler men as well as boulders, I’m inclined to think that that weirwoods may psionically send off boulder-like seed pods or pull in or astral bodies for some reproductive function.

Maybe something like panspermia. And maybe that’s why the God-on-Earth, the Garth-like founding deity of the Great Empire of the Dawn, is said to have come to earth from the heavens, and traveled around the world on a pearl palanquin carried by his hundred wives.

If that is the case, it seems that this reproductive function was eventually weaponized, and used as a mechanism for the Hammer of the Waters and the cataclysm that led to the Long Night.

And any other similar destructive flooding event described in TWOIAF. There are quite a few descriptions of “walls of water” summoned by magical nature folk to protect themselves from enemy forces. Most prominently, beyond the Hammer of the Waters breaking the Arm of Dorne, there’s the flooding of the Thousand Islands, and evidence that the Dothraki Sea actually used to be a sea of water.

A hammer is a force that comes down and strikes, and an astral body coming down could definitely be mythologized as a type of hammer, one that results in giant walls of water and in major flooding that transforms the surrounding lands.

Such a notion would explain the recurring association with weirwoods and astral bodies like the moon, particularly if the Long Night really did result from the destruction of one of the planet’s two moons.

Why should we care about any of this? Well, I for one think that the birth of fire magic is directly linked to the cataclysm that brought on the Long Night. But that's for another post. For now, like David Lightbringer, I will simply point to the red comet that everyone saw in ACOK, and also point back to Doreah's moon myth:

"He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi," the Lysene girl said. "Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. That is why dragons breathe flame. One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return.” -- Danaerys III, AGOT

Surely that won't be relevant for the story going forward! 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

@Ser Arthurs Dawn, here ya go!

[Ser Arthurs Dawn]

9 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

@Ser Arthurs Dawn, here ya go!

 I can't believe you went to all the trouble! Thank you!! I was just reading an essay about 20 minutes ago that briefly went into Garth as a deity of fertility. For me, it served as a great intro for your post.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

7 minutes ago, Ser Arthurs Dawn said:

 I can't believe you went to all the trouble! Thank you!! I was just reading an essay about 20 minutes ago that briefly went into Garth as a deity of fertility. For me, it served as a great intro for your post.

Well, your comment made me realize that I never actually tried to spell it out in a post before! Just via some back and forths in the comments, so thanks for the prompt!

[Phylum of Alexandria]

Thinking more about the "leal elder brother" of the Grey King, especially coupled with the "brother killing brother" motif in the Ironborn legend, it's pretty clear that there was at least one more brother. The Grey King killed one of the brothers, and with the other one he formed an alliance.

Talking in terms of Garth/weir-magic, the Sea Garth brought fire to the earth by killing Garth-of-the-Dawn. Was Dawn Garth the so-called Storm God, which the Sea God taunted into sending down "lightning," setting a tree ablaze? If so, it would be suicide through trickery.

If Garth-of-the-Dawn was not the Storm God, what kind of Garth was he? Does Renly point to the answer? @Evolett has pointed out that Renly makes for a poor fertility god, as his flowers come from Highgarden, and his virility for procreation is not a priority, and that's a fair point.

Yet the GEotD legend does feature a succession of progressively more fallible and disappointing God-Emperors as a prelude to its cosmic cataclysm. I hate to say it...but I get the feeling that Renly is the symbolic stand-in for the Amethyst Empress, the "daughter" of the Opal Emperor. Perhaps that is why his death is linked to the color indigo, like the cursed Shade heart. 

Perhaps other ASOIAF scenes or World legends hold some other key details that we're still missing, such as the Storm God's role in it all. In the Baratheon narrative, the third brother is already gone. I don't think this will prove an important detail for the deeper magical plot, but I guess we'll see!

[Craving Peaches]

10 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

...but I get the feeling that Renly is the symbolic stand-in for the Amethyst Empress, the "daughter" of the Opal Emperor.

So does that make Stannis the stand-in for the bloodstone Emperor?

[Phylum of Alexandria]

20 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

So does that make Stannis the stand-in for the bloodstone Emperor?

Yeah, though I think people have made that conclusion before, at least to the extent that Azor Ahai and BSE have been theorized as different sides of the same coin, and that Stannis at his worst gives off the darker aspects of both.

[The Commentator]

Sacred to the barbarians who were sacrificing people to them. It’s an evil tree to most.  

[Craving Peaches]

3 hours ago, The Commentator said:

Sacred to the barbarians who were sacrificing people to them. It’s an evil tree to most.  

Yeah, and you would agree Dragonstone is an evil island? After all the Targaryens likely sacrificed people there. Don't forget all the Valyrian roads in Essos. How many died to build them. Evil roads!

[Phylum of Alexandria]

3 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

Yeah, and you would agree Dragonstone is an evil island? After all the Targaryens likely sacrificed people there. Don't forget all the Valyrian roads in Essos. How many died to build them. Evil roads!

Yeah, pretty much every type of magic on Planetos seems rooted in blood. Maybe glamors are an exception.

"How does the grass grow? Blood! Blood! Blood"  -- Garth Greenhand, possibly

[The Commentator]

On 3/13/2023 at 10:28 AM, Craving Peaches said:

Yeah, and you would agree Dragonstone is an evil island? After all the Targaryens likely sacrificed people there. Don't forget all the Valyrian roads in Essos. How many died to build them. Evil roads!

There are no records of the Targaryens sacrificing people on Dragonstone. Whereas the text is direct about the Starks sacrificing people to feed their evil trees.

[Craving Peaches]

1 hour ago, The Commentator said:

There are no records of the Targaryens sacrificing people on Dragonstone.

There are no records of the Starks sacrificing people to Weirwoods.

1 hour ago, The Commentator said:

Whereas the text is direct about the Starks sacrificing people to feed their evil trees.

Quote

Then, as he watched, a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickle in her hand.

The woman grabbed the captive by the hair, hooked the sickle round his throat, and slashed. And through the mist of centuries the broken boy could only watch as the man's feet drummed against the earth … but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood.

How on earth is the text direct about this?

• No evidence whether it was a sacrifice or an execution
• No evidence whether the person who was carrying out the sacrifice was a Stark
• No evidence whether it was done to 'feed their evil trees'
• No evidence whether the trees are evil.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

2 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

How on earth is the text direct about this?

• No evidence whether it was a sacrifice or an execution
• No evidence whether the person who was carrying out the sacrifice was a Stark
• No evidence whether it was done to 'feed their evil trees'
• No evidence whether the trees are evil.

I don't know about Dragonstone or the Targaryens per se, but the Valyrians certainly practiced blood sacrifice, and many other abominable acts. If the Targaryenswho came to power never did, it speaks more to a lack of means than anything about their character. Their ancestors did so with no qualms.

But the North likely did too, at least in ancient times. Aside from various mentions in TWOIAF, there's this exchange from Davos' POV in ADWD:

"I never knew that northmen made blood sacrifice to their heart trees."

"There's much and more you southrons do not know about the north," Ser Bartimus replied.

Sacrifice and execution are not mutually exclusive. There's certainly more moral justification for humans killing criminals rather than innocents, but both can serve the religious/ magical purposes of blood sacrifice.

Just as it makes no difference if the blood was spilled "to feed" the trees, or whether humans simply spilled the blood in the sight of the gods...and the trees just happened to soak up that bloody nutrition. GRRM's short stories are full of these blurring of distinctions. Whatever the circumstances were for the humans, the weirwoods soaked up the blood. 

 

[Craving Peaches]

1 minute ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I don't know about Dragonstone or the Targaryens per se, but the Valyrians certainly practiced blood sacrifice, and many other abominable acts. If the Targaryenswho came to power never did, it speaks more to a lack of means than anything about their character. Their ancestors did so with no qualms.

But the North likely did too, at least in ancient times. Aside from various mentions in TWOIAF, there's this exchange from Davos' POV in ADWD:

"I never knew that northmen made blood sacrifice to their heart trees."

"There's much and more you southrons do not know about the north," Ser Bartimus replied.

Sacrifice and execution are not mutually exclusive. There's certainly more moral justification for humans killing criminals rather than innocents, but both can serve the religious/ magical purposes of blood sacrifice.

Just as it makes no difference if the blood was spilled "to feed" the trees, or whether humans simply spilled the blood in the sight of the gods...and the trees just happened to soak up that bloody nutrition. GRRM's short stories are full of these blurring of distinctions. Whatever the circumstances were for the humans, the weirwoods soaked up the blood. 

I am not denying the Northmen practiced sacrifice at some point in time but there is nothing to suggest the 'evil Starks' were evilly sacrificing people to the evil tree just because of how evil they are.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

1 minute ago, Craving Peaches said:

I am not denying the Northmen practiced sacrifice at some point in time but there is nothing to suggest the 'evil Starks' were evilly sacrificing people to the evil tree just because of how evil they are.

Certainly not any Starks from anywhere near the main story's timeline. But I am not against the idea that the ancient kings of winter were at some point just as cruel and ruthless as the Valyrians were. It's not yet clear, but there are some clues that point to that possibility.

[Craving Peaches]

Just now, Phylum of Alexandria said:

But I am not against the idea that the ancient kings of winter were at some point just as cruel and ruthless as the Valyrians were. It's not yet clear, but there are some clues that point to that possibility.

Certainly. But there is no scenario with kind, benevolent Valyrians and those evil Starks. Because if the ancient Starks are bad for their blood sacrifice and ruthlessness, then so are the Valyrians e.g. the ancient Targaryens. So you can't criticise one and not the other without it being hypocritical.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

3 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

Certainly. But there is no scenario with kind, benevolent Valyrians and those evil Starks. Because if the ancient Starks are bad for their blood sacrifice and ruthlessness, then so are the Valyrians e.g. the ancient Targaryens. So you can't criticise one and not the other without it being hypocritical.

Agreed. I find such quarrels really puzzling. It's pretty much a given that the Targaryens, save for a few exceptions, were decadent at best and evil at worst.

What the ancient Starks were like it still up in the air, but if they're found to be evil, the revelation would be:  "oh, the Starks and the Valyrians had more in common than we thought!"

[kissdbyfire]

Considering there are no accounts or reports or anything saying ancient Starks were the main enslavers of other peoples in Westeros (or anywhere) nor that they ever practiced systematic sibling fucking, there’s no way that they will compare to ancient Targs. 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

24 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Considering there are no accounts or reports or anything saying ancient Starks were the main enslavers of other peoples in Westeros (or anywhere) nor that they ever practiced systematic sibling fucking, there’s no way that they will compare to ancient Targs. 

Slavery, probably not, though I'm not completely discounting possible ancient Ironborn-->Winter King connections. It's something I'm trying to look into at the moment to see if it's a worthwhile trail or BS. If there was an Ironborn connection, then thralldom would be part of that ancient history.

But even without slavery, the "prima nocta" tradition of the North didn't come out of nowhere. Not that the Starks would have been the only kings to rape and pillage, but as the ones who amassed the most power in the North, I imagine they did more than their fair share.

[kissdbyfire]

1 hour ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Slavery, probably not, though I'm not completely discounting possible ancient Ironborn-->Winter King connections. It's something I'm trying to look into at the moment to see if it's a worthwhile trail or BS. If there was an Ironborn connection, then thralldom would be part of that ancient history.

I’m not sure if this is what you mean, but I take for certain that the IB originate from a splinter group of the FM.  And that doesn’t really change anything for me. Meaning, we have no reports or accounts or anything claiming the FM practiced slavery or thralldom in any way. This seems to be a practice the IB started once they settled the II. 

1 hour ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

But even without slavery, the "prima nocta" tradition of the North didn't come out of nowhere. Not that the Starks would have been the only kings to rape and pillage, but as the ones who amassed the most power in the North, I imagine they did more than their fair share.

The practice of FN is horrible, w/o question. And it’s something that the FM started, Andals didn’t abolish upon arriving, and Targs joined in gleefully. So my point remains since this would still keep them at a draw in terms of “evil practices”. With Valyrians still being a nation that was a massive enslaver of other peoples w/ the added “bonus” of full on sibling on sibling incest.