Heresy 10

[Bran Vras]

Here are the remaining warlocks when Dany left (ACoK):

But it was run or die. Xaro had learned that Pyat Pree was gathering the surviving warlocks together to work ill on her.

Dany had laughed when he told her. “Was it not you who told me warlocks were no more than old soldiers, vainly boasting of forgotten deeds and lost prowess?”

Xaro looked troubled. “And so it was, then. But now? I am less certain. It is said that the glass candles are burning in the house of Urrathon Night-Walker, that have not burned in a hundred years. Ghost grass grows in the Garden of Gehane, phantom tortoises have been seen carrying messages between the windowless houses on Warlock’s Way, and all the rats in the city are chewing off their tails. The wife of Mathos Mallarawan, who once mocked a warlock’s drab moth-eaten robe, has gone mad and will wear no clothes at all. Even fresh-washed silks make her feel as though a thousand insects were crawling on her skin. And Blind Sybassion the Eater of Eyes can see again, or so his slaves do swear. A man must wonder.” He sighed. “These are strange times in Qarth. And strange times are bad for trade. It grieves me to say so, yet it might be best if you left Qarth entirely, and sooner rather than later.”

Euron says he has captured four warlocks and offered one of them as dinner to the others.

“Shade-of-the- evening, the wine of the warlocks. I came upon a cask of it when I captured a certain galleas out of Qarth, along with some cloves and nutmeg, forty bolts of green silk, and four warlocks who told a curious tale. One presumed to threaten me, so I killed him and fed him to the other three. They refused to eat of their friend’s flesh at first, but when they grew hungry enough they had a change of heart. Men are meat.”

That might unfortunately suggest what is in the weirwood paste of Bran. I wonder if the four warlocks in question are the ones in bold above. I am not sure that Euron is not now unknowingly an agent of the Undying. True power remains hidden, as always.

[Iceborn]

On the topic of warlocks, I think that the meisters may be smiler to scourers who have forgotten magic. Part of the initiation is the lighting of a glass candle, and Quaithe states: “Half a year gone, that man could scarcely wake fire from dragonglass." just a thaught. as they are talking about true magic not wildfire or powders.

[Black Crow]

Euron tells Vic, that he wants the world, right after the story of the flying dream.

This raises something that has never been discussed in all my time on the board. The Three Eyed Crow came to Bran in his coma and took him up to see the whole world, offering him the chance to fly, offering in effect the world. It sounds very much like Euron had the same experience.

In the Christian tradition Jesus was alone in the wilderness when the Devil took him up and showed him the world, offering him dominion over it - the similarity is striking - and if it is what GRRM had in mind what does that make Bloodraven?

[Lummel]

Considering his current relationship to wood perhaps a Christ figure. I think you could describe it as an ecological crucifixion.

[Ser Leftwich]

BR might be a John the Baptist. Some kind of messenger that comes before Bran?

The more I think about it, it seems like some kind of seeking out or tempting of Euron happened when he was younger. He has always been a little messed up (if the Aeron abuse theory is correct) and then he went all the strange places and sought out mystical things.

Maybe his mind is tainted just by a contact from BR, even if he didn't get chosen like Bran did.

[Black Crow]

I suppose it all depends how you look at it.

It certainly sounds like Euron had a visit from the Three-Eyed-Crow, but failed the test. The question being why did he fail? Was he failed because he was tempted, or did he fall because he was too stubborn to give himself to the Crow.

On the same subject, isn't there another Northman wandering around with one eye because a crow pecked the other one out while he was lying on a battlefield? Don't recall his name, but he might be another of the impaled dreamers.

[Iceborn]

yes a karstark? or umber i think

[Lykos]

That would be "Crowfood" Umber the crows mistook him for dead.

ETA: He´s Mors Umber, the one that declared for Stannis, unlike his brother Hother "Whoresbane" Umber, who declared for Bolton to save the Greatjon´s life. He was blowing the horns at Winterfell and laid some traps with his green boys.

[Black Crow]

Yes... well did they, or was it the same three-eyed crow that took Euron's eye?

[Bran Vras]

Considering his current relationship to wood perhaps a Christ figure. I think you could describe it as an ecological crucifixion.

Ecological concern, or a direct version of what every theologian knows, that the "True Cross came from a tree that grew from part of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil".

[Lummel]

Yes? is that still current theology?

Bloodraven willingly sacrifices himself for the good of others through his union with the tree. That union represents both death and resurrection into eternal life (weirwoods we are told can live forever), in fact we are also told that you become part of the godhead. We can still this symbolic punishment for the original sin of cutting down the weirwoods and breaking the original balance of the pristine environment of pre-First men westeros.

There is an anglo-saxon poem about the crucifixion called "the Dream of the Rood" (told by the tree, which is made into the cross, with whom the poet can talk in a dream) in which the cross talks about being stained by Christ's blood. Perhaps there are echoes of that in the blood that Asha sees in the Weirwood's mouth on the island, the blood sacrifice that Bran sees and the red of the weirwood sap.

Regular readers of these threads will not be surprised that I now mention the story of the last hero who sets out as the thirteenth person with twelve followers none of whom are with him at the end. How and why did the Children help him - did he gain the power to end the long winter by sacrificing himself through marriage and eternal union to the weirwoods like Bloodraven has done and like we see Bran doing? I suppose though that if this was the case it certainly wasn't something explicit in the story that Bran was told else the situation in the children's cave would have seemed more familiar to him.

[alienarea]

Yes? is that still current theology?

Bloodraven willingly sacrifices himself for the good of others through his union with the tree. That union represents both death and resurrection into eternal life (weirwoods we are told can live forever), in fact we are also told that you become part of the godhead. We can still this symbolic punishment for the original sin of cutting down the weirwoods and breaking the original balance of the pristine environment of pre-First men westeros.

There is an anglo-saxon poem about the crucifixion called "the Dream of the Rood" (told by the tree, which is made into the cross, with whom the poet can talk in a dream) in which the cross talks about being stained by Christ's blood. Perhaps there are echoes of that in the blood that Asha sees in the Weirwood's mouth on the island, the blood sacrifice that Bran sees and the red of the weirwood sap.

Regular readers of these threads will not be surprised that I now mention the story of the last hero who sets out as the thirteenth person with twelve followers none of whom are with him at the end. How and why did the Children help him - did he gain the power to end the long winter by sacrificing himself through marriage and eternal union to the weirwoods like Bloodraven has done and like we see Bran doing? I suppose though that if this was the case it certainly wasn't something explicit in the story that Bran was told else the situation in the children's cave would have seemed more familiar to him.

If weirwoods can live forever and are part of the godhead, maybe cutting down one weirwood too many triggered the White Walkers/Others like a reaction of the immune system? That would fit with them not having a society and being undead things.

[Lykos]

I think my head explodes, or has it already?

Well first I wanted to explain the similarity of the Greenseers becoming part of the godhood of the Children to the believe of afterlife, I fashioned for myself. I believe that after death our soul becomes one with a great pool of souls and we don´t exist as the entity we were, but are born again as parts of new soul bearing entities.

It seems that the Greenseers by their "marriage" to the Weirwood become one with the "network", with all former Greenseers and possibly even future Greenseers that go into the Childrens Godhood, for time doesn´t seem to matter (The tree seems to be a symbol for time in many religions, with the roots representing the past, the trunk - the present, and the leafs - the future).

The Greenseer gives up his individual life and ceases to exist as an individual. He is no longer "quick" or him at all. They are everpresent, omniscient, allways and for the most part impartial. They can only comunicate with humans via Weirwood, Greendreams, or as Bloodraven does, as partially transformed Greenseer, who lingered to guide and teach Bran. If this qualifies as a sacrifice, I´m not sure, yet.

I have always seen Jon as the one who would sacrifice himself or his power and I can also see Dany giving up her dragons in the end, which would be a sacrifice, since they are her children ( though it might be a necessity and doesn´t count as sacrifice).

*****

Now back to my exploding head, somehow I connect everything with Martin´s world at the moment.

I wanted to tell you that I associated Euron with Odin, because of the Dirk Gently novel The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, by Douglas Adams. Odin isn´t a very nice character in this novel. He gave up his devine power to an unscrupulous couple of the post modern finance world, just for a quiet life, though he tried to trick them, the lawyer found a way around the trap in the contract by passing it on as a "hot potato". Of course Euron is the one after power, but I think he might be tricked by the "red lot". A nice thing is that Douglas Adams´ title goes back to the Dark Night of the Soul.

I also found (wanted to find?) some connection in one of my favorite songs, I listened to yesterday. I´d really like to know if you can see some underlying references. The band´s lyrics were influenced by James Joyce, A. A. Milne, Lewis Carrol and I found some Ionesco bits. This song I always saw as natural conservationist statement, but now I´m not so sure.

Eskimo Blue Day

Grace Slick / Paul Kantner

Snow cuts loose from the frozen

Until it joins with the African sea

In moving it changes it's cold and it's name

The reason I come and go is the same -

Animal game for me

You call it rain

But the human name

Doesn't mean shit to a tree

If you don't mind heat in your river and

Fork tongue talking from me

Swim like an eel fantastic snake

Take my love when it's free

Electric feel with me

You call it loud

But the human crowd

Doesn't mean shit to a tree

Change the strings and notes slide

Change the bridge and string shift down

Shift the notes and bride sings

Fire eating people

Rising toys of the sun

Energy dies without body warm

Icicles ruin your gun

Water my roots the natural thing

Natural spring to the sea

Sulphur springs make my body float

Like a ship made of logs from a tree

Redwoods talk to me

Say it plainly

The human name

Doesn't mean shit to a tree

Snow called water going violent

Damn the end of the stream

Too much cold in one place breaks

That's why you might know what I mean

Consider how small you are

Compared to your scream

The human dream

Doesn't mean shit to a tree

The emboldened part puzzles me the most.

[alienarea]

I think my head explodes, or has it already?

Well first I wanted to explain the similarity of the Greenseers becoming part of the godhood of the Children to the believe of afterlife, I fashioned for myself. I believe that after death our soul becomes one with a great pool of souls and we don´t exist as the entity we were, but are born again as parts of new soul bearing entities.

It seems that the Greenseers by their "marriage" to the Weirwood become one with the "network", with all former Greenseers and possibly even future Greenseers that go into the Childrens Godhood, for time doesn´t seem to matter (The tree seems to be a symbol for time in many religions, with the roots representing the past, the trunk - the present, and the leafs - the future).

The Greenseer gives up his individual life and ceases to exist as an individual. He is no longer "quick" or him at all. They are everpresent, omniscient, allways and for the most part impartial. They can only comunicate with humans via Weirwood, Greendreams, or as Bloodraven does, as partially transformed Greenseer, who lingered to guide and teach Bran. If this qualifies as a sacrifice, I´m not sure, yet.

I have always seen Jon as the one who would sacrifice himself or his power and I can also see Dany giving up her dragons in the end, which would be a sacrifice, since they are her children ( though it might be a necessity and doesn´t count as sacrifice).

*****

Now back to my exploding head, somehow I connect everything with Martin´s world at the moment.

I wanted to tell you that I associated Euron with Odin, because of the Dirk Gently novel The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, by Douglas Adams. Odin isn´t a very nice character in this novel. He gave up his devine power to an unscrupulous couple of the post modern finance world, just for a quiet life, though he tried to trick them, the lawyer found a way around the trap in the contract by passing it on as a "hot potato". Of course Euron is the one after power, but I think he might be tricked by the "red lot". A nice thing is that Douglas Adams´ title goes back to the Dark Night of the Soul.

I also found (wanted to find?) some connection in one of my favorite songs, I listened to yesterday. I´d really like to know if you can see some underlying references. The band´s lyrics were influenced by James Joyce, A. A. Milne, Lewis Carrol and I found some Ionesco bits. This song I always saw as natural conservationist statement, but now I´m not so sure.

Eskimo Blue Day

Grace Slick / Paul Kantner

Snow cuts loose from the frozen

Until it joins with the African sea

In moving it changes it's cold and it's name

The reason I come and go is the same -

Animal game for me

You call it rain

But the human name

Doesn't mean shit to a tree

If you don't mind heat in your river and

Fork tongue talking from me

Swim like an eel fantastic snake

Take my love when it's free

Electric feel with me

You call it loud

But the human crowd

Doesn't mean shit to a tree

Change the strings and notes slide

Change the bridge and string shift down

Shift the notes and bride sings

Fire eating people

Rising toys of the sun

Energy dies without body warm

Icicles ruin your gun

Water my roots the natural thing

Natural spring to the sea

Sulphur springs make my body float

Like a ship made of logs from a tree

Redwoods talk to me

Say it plainly

The human name

Doesn't mean shit to a tree

Snow called water going violent

Damn the end of the stream

Too much cold in one place breaks

That's why you might know what I mean

Consider how small you are

Compared to your scream

The human dream

Doesn't mean shit to a tree

The emboldened part puzzles me the most.

I assume you were listening to the Gub Club version of Eskimo Blue Day whichis more fitting to the general mayhem in Westeros? ;-)

[Lykos]

@alienarea: I was listening to the Airplane version on Volunteers. I find the Gun Club version a bit dull, but I think it´s the best you can find on you tube, since the Airplanes "live" were a bit hard on the harmonies. And never listen to Starship.

describes how I feel about what they did after the name change. Sorry for leading people so far off topic.

<snip>I think Mel finally realizes that she has been misinterpreting the visions not just about who is AA/tPtwP but about other things as well including how AA is reborn. <snip>

I wanted to answer to you for quite a while. I also have the feeling that there is something changing in Melisandre, though it´s hard to tell because it´s her first POV chapter.

But I have come to a different conclusion. I think Bloodraven is messing with Melisandre´s flame-o-vision (maybe the snow made me think of the white noise in Poltergeist ). I think he is influencing her with increasing success.

Show me Stannis, Lord, she prayed. Show me your king, your instrument. Visions danced before her, gold and scarlet, flickering, forming and melting and dissolving into one another, shapes strange and terrifying and seductive.

She saw the eyeless faces again, staring out at her from sockets weeping blood. Then the towers by the sea, crumbling as the dark tide came sweeping over them, rising from the depths. Shadows in the shape of skulls, skulls that turned to mist, bodies locked together in lust, writhing and rolling and clawing. Through curtains of fire great winged shadows wheeled against a hard blue sky. ...

A face took shape within the hearth. Stannis? she thought, for just a moment … but no, these were not his features. A wooden face, corpse white. Was this the enemy? A thousand red eyes floated in the rising flames.

He sees me. Beside him, a boy with a wolf’s face threw back his head and howled. The red priestess shuddered. Blood trickled down her thigh, black and smoking. The fire was inside her, an agony, an ecstasy, filling her, searing her, transforming her. Shimmers of heat traced patterns on her skin, insistent as a lover’s hand. Strange voices called to her from days long past. “Melony,” she heard a woman cry. A man’s voice called, “Lot Seven.” She was weeping, and her tears were flame. And still she drank it in.

Snowflakes swirled from a dark sky and ashes rose to meet them, the grey and the white whirling around each other as flaming arrows arced above a wooden wall and dead things shambled silent through the cold, beneath a great grey cliff where fires burned inside a hundred caves. Then the wind rose and the white mist came sweeping in, impossibly cold, and one by one the fires went out. Afterward only the skulls remained.

Death, thought Melisandre. The skulls are death. The flames crackled softly, and in their crackling she heard the whispered name Jon Snow. His long face floated before her, lined in tongues of red and orange, appearing and disappearing again, a shadow half-seen behind a fluttering curtain. Now he was a man, now a wolf, now a man again. But the skulls were here as well, the skulls were all around him. Melisandre had seen his danger before, had tried to warn the boy of it. Enemies all around him, daggers in the dark.

I agree that this shows that Melisandre becomes convinced of Jon´s importance and that there is the possibility that she sent the letter. When the letter arrives, Jon doesn´t send to Melisandre even though he thinks that she saw it coming. He sends everyone away except for Tormund and makes plans for two hours.

There are hints that the letter wasn´t sent by Ramsay. Unlike at the other two events when Asha and Jon receive letters from Ramsay there is no mentioning of the large spiky handwriting in dried blood. When Tormund looks at it, he says:

“Might be all a skin o’ lies.” Tormund scratched under his beard. “If I had me a nice goose quill and a pot o’ maester’s ink, I could write down that me member was long and thick as me arm, wouldn’t make it so.”

While I doubt that Tormund would recognise Maesters Ink, I´m sure he´d know dried blood.

The problem I have with your theory is, that Melisandre is seeing the effect of her actions in the vision that makes her act. Daggers in the dark - writing false letter.

*****

I want to bring up another example of Melisandre´s misinterpretations, since I think it might be related to Euron.

He thinks they are going to try to force the Bridge of Skulls again.” “Some may.” Could the skulls in her vision have signified this bridge? Somehow Melisandre did not think so. “If it comes, that attack will be no more than a diversion. I saw towers by the sea,submerged beneath a black and bloody tide. That is where the heaviest blow will fall.” “Eastwatch?” Was it? Melisandre had seen Eastwatch-by-the-Sea with King Stannis. ... The towers in her fire had been different, but that was oft the way with visions.

I know that people have speculated that the towers by the sea refer to the Iron Islands. I agree, but I think the "black and bloody tide" is not the Children´s Waterhammer. I think it´s Euron and his magic slavers.

[Francis Buck]

I know that people have speculated that the towers by the sea refer to the Iron Islands. I agree, but I think the "black and bloody tide" is not the Children´s Waterhammer. I think it´s Euron and his magic slavers.

I agree with this. And just to mention a possibly relevant one-off (though I'm sure many of you already know this): Odin supposedly gave one of his eyes for magical power, and both the magical Crows we're talking about are missing an eye. I think it would more properly fit Euron, since we already know how Bloodraven lost his eye, and since Euron definitely seemed to gain magical abilities and/or knowledge that he did not have years ago.

[Lummel]

...Now back to my exploding head, somehow I connect everything with Martin´s world at the moment...

If you are serious Lykos you should take a break - go swimming or visit the zoo or some other non-GRRM related activity, certainly you should avoid drinking mead or playing cvyasse!

I believe that you also get that idea of the union of souls in Sufism. And that central tree that ties time and the world together can be found among the Maya of central America as well as the Norse with their Yggdrasil. I wonder if the Irminsul of the Saxons was similar.

[Black Crow]

I agree with this. And just to mention a possibly relevant one-off (though I'm sure many of you already know this): Odin supposedly gave one of his eyes for magical power, and both the magical Crows we're talking about are missing an eye. I think it would more properly fit Euron, since we already know how Bloodraven lost his eye, and since Euron definitely seemed to gain magical abilities and/or knowledge that he did not have years ago.

I'm still wondering if Mors Umber fits in here somewhere as well - unless he's just camoflage to disguise the significance of Euron's missing occular

[Iceborn]

@lycos the boy with wolf's face, is that Robb or Jon, rob ended up with a wolf head after all. and he was making plans, it is odd that Jon the one who gave up yigrette to rejoin the watch would break it for winterfell, a place that he accepts as not his home. I think is was a test, a test that went badly wrong. on a sad not I am getting simmiler vibes to the red wedding, wolfs howling ect. we may have to see Jon dead :crying: arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh :commie:

[Lykos]

@Iceborn: It´s Bran and Bloodraven in the cave of the Singers.

@Black Crow: I think Martin wants us to wonder, but I´m not sure to what end. We haven´t seen much of Mors yet, but he clearly had a near death experience when he lost his eye, unless it´s just a tall tale. And he is of great strategic value to Stannis battle, and showed some cunning. I think it´s possible he had help, but I don´t see him as a Greenseer.