I've been thinking a weirwood seed is actually the heart of a greenseer. I think this makes sense for a few reasons. Obviously jojen paste. Dany eating the horse heart could be a symbolic telling of this. Dany's vision in the house of the undying of the floating blue heart is likely a corrupted heart of winter and that's probably a weirwood tree. And most obviously, they are called heart trees
The best truths are interconnected between several cultures. It's called blood magic, so the thing responsible of keeping the blood flowing would be extra powerful.
Well, Alys weirwood paste creeps me out because i can't stop thinking that a)weirwoods like sacrificed children b)kids can be refered as a seed c)Alys was a wet nurse with no living children
@@misanthropicservitorofmars2116 melisandra used seed to make assassin shadow babies, some mage choped off and burned Varys's manhood for visions. I am surprised no one tried to gather dangly bits of fallen foes just for fun(probably Boltons tried but they prefer skin in general)
Personally I like the idea that the weirwood faces aren't even carved in the first place. What if they're literally the faces of the first sacrificial victims? Immortal, stuck in the network. They could even be the faces of greenseers strapped up deep in the roots underground, like bloodraven and his tree town gang are. This fits pretty nicely with the way George describes the wall's weirwood door in Sam's chapter, as though a face just kept aging for thousands of years. In the case of the door, I think its face is one of the undying inside the wall. Remember that that one can open its eyes and even talk. That's no carving.
That’s what I imagine as well. I also like the idea that the Wall is entirely made of frozen weirwoods. Michael has some good theory crafting on this channel.
There's a theory that the trees can be used like a telephone system and the face of the tree reflects the most recent user. Supporting evidence being the WF tree looking like Ned, the Whiteharbour tree looking like Wyman and the tree in Jon's dream looking like Bran. Nit suggesting that Ned and Wyman are chatting but that they are unwittingly following part of the process by making blood sacrifice, like a pocket dial 😂
I think I figured out what's happening with weirwoods, and it involves eldritch horror: I've long been a fan of the idea that what's going on in warging involves sharing ancestry with the preferred creature. This could explain why wargs tend to have physical and personality traits in common with certain animals even when they haven't had the opportunity to warg them yet. In the ancient past of Planetos there were reported to be people who had more direct non-human admixture. Even myths of centaurs may have been literal (unlike metaphorical or mistaken characterizations of horse-riding people in our world). Warging seems to be an accidental offshoot of this hybridization objective: i.e. people who still look almost entirely human but who accidentally also having a psychic gene and can control the organism in question. One might even argue Valyrian dragon riding is a hijacking of a broader program to make gigantic sphinx-like people. This could also be related to a "city of winged men" in the far east. All this proposes a possibility about the Weirwoods that you and LmL and others have been getting pretty close to. I've also heard Preston Jacobs get pretty close to this. The idea hinges on the Green Men and goes something like this: They were tree wargs. The Green Men/First Greenseers were tree wargs who had an ability to psychically commune with trees and with the ecosystem more generally. Stories about "Garth the Green" are memories of a time when Greenseeing tree wargs would walk around the landscape making sure the ecology supported people. But here's the weird bid: As tree wargs they were also basically part tree, and they would get bigger and bigger and more treelike over the course of their lives. This would explain why they were bigger than men but not as big as giants. The "antlers" on their heads were the bows of a tree that would burst out of their head at a certain point in their life. Eventually a green man would get so big and tired they would have to settle down somewhere and just plant themselves. Over time their body would turn to wood, and even their faces would get less mobile. What we're seeing with the black gate is the original version of the Green Man. It's not someone who merges with the trees. It's someone who's slowly turning into a tree. This is why the original line about Howland Reed saying goodbye to the "Green Men" got edited into saying goodbye to the "Trees" or something like that. They're the same thing. The Green Men are the trees. This is also why the weirwoods are set up the way they are: near villages. Eventually the Green Man for that area would walk himself over to a central area and set himself down (or herself if it was a Green Woman). After that he or she would sleep most of the time as their face got more and more gigantic and hardened on the trunk of the tree. Eventually you would only ask them advice when you really needed help. And their giant face would open up for the first time in years and look at you. An even w e i r der bit is this: This is GRRM's version of ents. I think this goes to the very bottom of George's world building.
I've always wondered what is below the Moon Door in the Vale. Ground of some sort to splat upon obviously and not a river or lake which might break someone's fall, but is it rock? a pasture? a town? a forest? Specifically is there a weirwood growing near there that can benefit from the blood of those sacrificed through the Moon Door? Just because no weirwood was able to take root high up in the keep, doesn't mean that one couldn't do so at the base. Blood of the victims of the SkyCells might also be absorbed by weirwood(s) at the keep's base.
Nice thought! I wouldn't be surprised there is one there, even if mostly underground now that you mention it and now that I've watched several of Michael's videos on the subject! :)
If Bran saw someone being sacrificed and the tree was already there, maybe weirwoods are transformed from a regular tree, not planted. Like a willow becomes a weirwood after the sacrifice is made
What do they call Targaryen bastards in House of the Dragon? Dragonseeds What might you call a Greenseer -- a "bastard" human born from the magic of the Children of the Forest? Weirwood seed
Orton Scott Card’s book Xenocide features a planet where the species have a life cycle with animal and plant phases. What if dead weir woods grow from dead Children of the Forest?
IMO a simpler explanation is weirwoods would propagate via suckers. i.e. you already have the root network. Pour some blood in an empty spot over the existing root network, and a sucker might pop up and eventually turn into a sapling. A lot of shrubs grow this way, like the hedge in front of my house. . . only I think it drinks water and not blood.
Are we sure that the weirwood faces were physically carved by the Children or whoever? It would make much more (or at least some) sense if the faces were a result of the Lovecraftian alien fungus infecting a random tree whose roots later connect to the global fungal underground network, somehow mixed with human sacrifice in order to become a "were"wood, or man-wood, and the resulting face is the actual face of the sacrificed person.
I was thinking about your proposition that the stories of undead watchmen frozen in the wall are true, and if so I was wondering what you think about the possibility that due too the dwindling number of builders on the Wall... One of the undead watchmen escaped. And he is Coldhands. As for the topic at hand, I particularly enjoy the idea that Harren was trying to build a magically warded castle, and that Aegon inadvertently completed the process by sacrificing House Harren for the realm. I mean it's bleak as heck, but certainly intriguing.
I was reading Fire and Blood and highlighted two seemingly offhand remarks about Harrenhal. They made me think of Harren attempting to build a warded castle, like the ancient ones designed by Bran the Builder. After Alyssa Velaryon dies in childbirth, Rhaena warns Lord Rogar: "Hear this, my lord. Do not think to wed again ... If I should hear even a whisper of you taking some other poor maid to wife, I will make another Harrenhal of Storm's End, with you and her inside it." ...and, when Alysanne arrives on Silverwing at Winterfell, and is greeted by Lord Alaric Stark: "He then proceeded to declare that he did not want her dragon inside his walls. 'I’ve not seen Harrenhal, but I know what happened there.'" These suggest that Harrenhal was built to be an old-gods-magic-warded castle, and when Aegon I made it a huge, fiery, blood sacrifice, something about the magic got corrupted. Winterfell and Storm's End seem to work as intended -- the castles magically protect whoever holds them. Harrenhal seems to do the opposite -- it actively sabotages whoever holds it.
My own theory is that weirwoods are just trees with human or CotF souls imbued within them. Any species of tree with human or CotF souls will eventually have their bark and wood wighten like a corpse, their sap become red, and grows a face. This is based on some of the observed qualities of the soul in Westeros: 1. The vessel changes the soul it holds (a human soul in a wolf becomes wolf-like, a human soul in a tree starts perceiving time like a tree). 2. The soul changes the form of the vessel (the characteristic appearances of the great houses are much too consistent for mendellian inheritance to explain, swords with human souls wail and scream when struck). 3. The soul of a dying creature flows from the body via the path of least resistance, through the path drawn by their life-blood. 4. Many (if not ALL) of the magical items and things in Westeros absorbs blood: weirwoods, the bloodstone, valyrian steel blades (but only when they have just been pulled glowing from the fire - quenching the blade in a living creature traps the blood and the souls within the very grain of the metal). One of the very best pieces of proof that weirwood trees are made by shoving a sentient soul into a tree is Bran's last vision in the Winterfell heart-tree which you are quoting. In that vision Bran can taste the blood. But WHO PRESENT IN THAT SCENE both possesses taste-buds and happens to have a mouth full of blood? It isn't Bran: his taste buds are hundreds of miles and hundreds of years away. It isn't the woman sacrificing the man: if she was gurgling a mouth full of blood, Bran would have noticed. It isn't the tree: trees don't have taste buds. The only one who could possibly have been tasting blood as the man's throat was slit was THE MAN WHOSE THROAT WAS BEING SLIT. Bran, through the tree, was tasting what the dying man was tasting. In my view, this is very compelling proof that you can permanently shove human souls into trees if you connect a person to a tree with blood, then kill the person.
The soul and magic part is brilliant. I also believe all magic in ASOIF is based on blood. Blood is clearly the magical key. The soul being directly tied to the blood flowing in a living creature is such a great idea and helps explain the magic system.
Having Warging being the only major evidence we have for the magic system makes it so compelling. So we know souls can move between bodies. A certain human soul can dominate lesser souls of beasts. If the soul can move to the body of an animal, and that you can bring a soul back to a body after it’s left. Youre right, you gathered all the significant evidence to show that manipulating a persons soul is the basis of magic, and you can do A LOT with that.
I see Bran tasting that blood from the ground or the tree roots the blood is spilled on. He sees everything from the perspective of the tree. Souls and blood are important yes, but what makes it special is that it needs to be a special person. Otherwise it would make all blood equal and King's blood being just as good as the local bar wench. Every scene of a great battle would be soaked in blood, kings very rarely join the battles. Bran being of the royal line of Winterfell has king's blood. Monarchies in our world believe in incest to preserve that blue blood, Westeros isn't any different in that regard.
@@misanthropicservitorofmars2116 Thanks for your comments. I posted a comment on Reddit over a year ago that put all magic in ASOIAF into one big picture with internally consistent rules which springs from the only verifiable "magical" phenomenon in Westeros: skin-changing. I can't link the post, but it's called "Abominations: Of souls, ice, blood and fire".
@@glandhound I respect your position. I agree that a king and a wench would have different qualities for the purposes of magic, but I would argue that this is because their souls have different qualities rather than some sort of "specialness" in the divine right of kings . Melisandre offered to use Davos' essence (blood or soul, it doesn't matter) to work magic when Stannis no longer had enough vitality and his blood is as common as it gets. Davos' soul has some attractive qualities for someone hoping to work magic to aid Stannis though: he's loyal and steadfast and dutiful. In my theory, the qualities of the soul being used to work magic had a huge impact on the finished product. A sword with an angry lion's soul rebels and breaks. A sword with the soul of a woman who receives a love confession from the man of her dreams SECONDS before he stabs her with it would be positively glowing with ardent, fiery love (i.e., a light-bringer). In that light, Euron's current collecting of a gaggle of wild-eyed, fervent holy men (who were generally unhinged to begin with), torturing them and giving them mind-altering drugs to open up their minds EVEN MORE is slightly concerning.
Assuming the Weirwoods are fungi, like the Erdtree, they wouldn't have seeds, but spores. Further assuming they're magical saprophytes feeding on human blood, that would explain the dichotomy of Jojen being weirwood seeds.
There is also an Arya scene in ACOK when they are burying a dead person, a boy from the Reach tosses a handful of acorns in the grave so a oak might one day grow from it and mark the grave. It might be an old custom from the days of Garth Greenhand “planting” weirwoods. And a few chapters later, Arya is eating acorn paste.
Company of the Cat brought up a quote in one of her early videos about Oak Tree symbolism in ASOIAF; in Arya II of ACOK, one of Yoren's recruits for the watch dies during the night. When they bury him, Praed, it says that "A boy called Tarber tossed a handful of acorns on top of Praed's body, so an oak might grow to mark his place." That would further support your theory that a cutting from an existing weirwood is taken and planted on the body of a sacrifice, to ensure a new Weirwood grows.
@@Grace-er9ep indeed that's why I love this Channel and several other channels because it feeds that Dragon and Wolf shaped hole in my mind and heart that has been empty all these years while waiting on the Winds of Winter
I always kinda thought the Stark statues may have originally been carved out of Weirwood and petrified over time. So maybe the old Stark kings “souls” were IN their statues which were Weirwood and turned to Stone over time. Not sure when they would have forgotten that and started making them out of stone in modern times. Also the faces Arianne see’s carved in stone could have maybe been originally like The Black Gate and turned to stone. But we do get the line from leaf saying Bran will eventually be able to see from the trees and stones. Something like that. Great video
Regarding the Vale, if there were actually weirwood seeds you'd probably want to plant them directly. Trees usually grow best from seed, grafting is traumatic, and uprooting an inground tree is a bit traumatic as well. Fruit trees are almost exclusively grown from grafts because every seed has a huge amount of genetic diversity but a graft is a perfect clone of the parent scion. However a seedling tree would typically outgrow a grafted one in speed, size, and strength. If you were trying to grow a tree outside its normal climate your best bet would be to grow from seed and then work to protect it from its weaknesses Gardener knowledge :)
If the HotD Harenhall weirwoods are (book) canon, doesn't that mean somebody will have to rip or burn them all out, since we know they're not there in the main (book) series, given that a highly observant POV character lives there for a good while and never sees any sign of them?
I'd like to posit some stuff for you, wonder what you think: 1. The Stone men and greyscale, coupled with the shrouded lord and old valyria/empire rhoyneland, is at least a parallel for the others. 2. If Qaarth is an extension of Westerosi magic used from afar, then what are these? Asshai? 3. What is a moveable magical entity, besides a dragon, a zombie, or wielder of magic like Melisabdre or Alys? We know of the corpse queen/nissa nissa, and of azor ahai, the last prince that was promised. Is one or the other a "stolen power" like a palantir or one ring, transplanted into westeros and causing disorder and death elsewhere? 4. Are the other hinges of the world vulnerable to this imbalance? Valyria was not wothout sacrificed souls, it shouldnt have had a weakening before the doom. Perhaps the doom is the blood/fire magic representation of imbalance equaling self destruction. 5. If the stone men are like wights, and the shrouded lord like an other, who in their neck of the woods fulfills the COTF role? I wonder if the merlings fit into this aspect, like the wet feet arya hears when blind. Is this the squisher council of essos? Their old ways amount to the same, no? Just some thoughts of had from watching your work. Great stuff.
Runners, Rhizomes. If you’ve ever been in a grove of white barked quaking aspen when a breeze rises you would get the creep factor of a weirwood George may have meant. It’s an experience! They chatter like the voices of the others described in the prologue if GOT Wikipedia : Aspens are also aided by the rhizomatic nature of their root systems. Most aspens grow in large clonal colonies, derived from a single seedling, and spread by means of root suckers; new stems in the colony may appear at up to 30-40 m (100-130 ft) from the parent tree. One such colony in Utah, given the nickname of "Pando", has been estimated to be as old as 80,000 years, They are able to survive forest fires, because the roots are below the heat of the fire, and new sprouts appear after the fire burns out.
Actually that makes a lot of sense about human sacrifice needing to grow a weirwood which is why it couldn't grow in the Erie because of all the rock and mountains and there's a line that joffrey says in Kings landing that the stones will not soak up blood no matter how hard he tries I think that's a hint to the fact that you need a reservoir of blood to grow where will tree and to sustain it
Last week your videos made me come up with an idea, you might like. It jumps off of your first night theory, and this reminded me of it. (Apologies if you've done this before and I haven't seen it yet). Why are the Dragonseeds called that. You said that the reason the dragons needed a soul is because they turned to stone. What if it's more that they turned to stone because they didn't have a soul. We see a lot of parallels in your theory between The Wall and The Fourteen Flames. And there is also, a first night. It also says these children were highly "valued". In fact the mothers of these dragon seeds would be highly rewarded "paid off". But it stops there. If the children of the first night in Westeros were sacrificed to the CotF and the Others, the children in Valyria were likely sacrificed to the Dragonriders, more specifically, to the Dragons. So their name is not just because they are the seed of the Dragon, but because they are the Seed of a Dragon. Their soul seeds the life and birth of a new dragon. Why else would a group that guards their genetics so much as to wed sister to sister, be so willing to spread it elsewhere. It's said that on Dragonstone many could claim they had a drop of the blood in them. Now this would also explain why the Dragons started to die out after the Dance of the Dragons, why they were weaker, why the knowledge was lost. 3 heads make a dragon. Viserys himself says that dragons are a power they shouldn't have trifled with. All of the older people who might have known the secret die in the war, leaving only a child who even if they knew, was so afraid of dragons would likely have never have said how they are made. Not only that, but the dance brings many Dragonseeds into the war, and many perish. The blood is dwindling. So you have less seeds out there, and the knowledge is gone on how to make more. Now who in Westeros could be left to tell the secrets of how dragons are made, but not only made, kept alive. Remember that glass candles need sacrifices to keep them going. Why would living embodiments of fire magic need anything less. The Maesters. To think not a single one witnessed these sacrifices and wrote it down somewhere seems unlikely. So when Marwyn says, who do you think killed all the dragons the last time, he's likely not saying who physically killed them, but who let them die. Like a doctor withholding treatment. Who let the secrets of dragon birth and life, die in the dance. And this would lend brilliantly as to why Marwyn would know that three heads make a dragon, and why he will likely be able to bond with Viserion. Because as an Archmaester, one of the highest ranking members at the citadel, he would be privy to the knowledge, or at least the ability to seek out that knowledge. And it would also give the story a way to introduce more dragons. If more eggs are introduced, and if, as you believe, Marwyn will return to offer his knowledge to Aegon, we could see another dance. What are your thoughts? Including anyone who's reading this.
My thinking has long been that ever since the seasons got messed up, weirwoods can no longer reproduce, they can only sprout new trunks from an existing root structure. Perhaps they can even sprout from dropped branches like willows can. My evidence for this is that we have never heard anyone talking about any reproductive structures being present on a weirwood, in any season; no flowers, no fruits, no cones, nothing. Lots of plants rely on regular seasonal changes to enable reproduction, so we should actually expect this to be the case for lots of plants. In fact I feel like Ive heard of at least one real plant in that exact situation
I kinda figured, that because we don't know what happens to Daemon after the Dance, he's sacrificed to the tree and becomes Rho'llor? Since Alys Rivers saying: "You'll die in this place", might be far deeper than we think.
Someone with the potential to bond with a dragon is called a Dragon Seed, so it makes sense, at least to me, that someone with the potential to be a Green Seer like Jojen, would be a Wierwood Seed. Someone who's Green Seeing ability is fully realized, like Bran would in turn be considered a Wierwood Sapling, and extrapolated from that idea, maybe the Greenseers who have reached the "end" of their life cycle like Bloodraven become an actual Wierwood tree. Perhaps Bloodraven isn't bound to a pre-existing tree, but the Wierwood he is bound to IS himself. Meaning every Wierwood tree may have a Green Seer bound to its roots, such as the one in the God's Wood of Winterfell, which we know has roots that reaches into the Crypts of Winterfell. This would also make the Jojen paste theory correct, as well as make the idea that the Weirwood Paste is made from.Wierwood Seeds not a lie.
Since the new calendar shows Weirwoods as green with faces on the Isle of Faces, and there is one like this that is the secret entrance of the Nightfort, I believe they actually do have seeds. To grow a corrupted Weirwood, aka the red leafed ones, I think it does involve a blood sacrifice. The seed, in my head canon, is placed in the blood and body of a corpse to provide the tree with enough nourishment to begin its growth.
Children have indigo blood = shade of the evening trees children weirwoods? Here is a really crazy idea wildfire from dragon weirwoods or rather the parasitic fungi part of the weirwood without the oak tree to grow on, grows on dead dragons in Asshai. Also I highly recommend @Ziostorm ‘s latest video about the fungal nature of the Erdtree in Elden ring
Honestly, it would make sense if any greenseer could become a Wearwood tree making that are Wearwood seeds or (paste). And you also see the three eyed crow stuck in a tree which looks to me like he’s actually a Wearwood in the process of maturing
Sometimes I get a weirwood seed in my purchase of leaves. When this happens, I try to grow my own weirwoods. But my cat always eat them before they can really get started sadly.
Essentially you're grafting the weirwood seed concept onto the dragon seed, correct? This isn't the worst idea. It actually makes a good deal of sense. There is a piece of your theory I'd like to see you dig into. Something I've attempted to argue in the past. Were weirwoods originally carved? With the sacrifice to a weirwood idea you're sort of blending a bit of Eldric and the concept within the story of a second life. I might best illustrate this idea by asking what the area BR is sitting in will look like in a thousand years. Were faces cut into a weirwood to resemble the individual about to begin a second life? Or are the faces really the faces of someone who was sitting on a weirwood throne so long they became part of the tree? If you saw a face, you'd assume it was carved. If you believed faces were carved you might begin carving faces into new trees that didn't have them. Is there an essential difference between a weirwood with a face and one without? Even the Dick Crab story itself mirrors the concept of a weirwood. With the gathered dead gathered into it to whisper to the person sitting on it. There is a reflection of the theory ideas about dragons reflected in this idea as I seems you're framing it. Three souls sacrificed for Dany's dragons, and souls sacrificed for weirwoods. Essentially weirwoods set up as foils to dragons. Which is not a horrible idea and may involve a subtle blending of the two. Mushroom claimed a dragon left eggs within Winterfell. Read that instead as Dragonseeds and you're left to wonder is a Weirseed and a Dragonseed are not just similar concepts, but different sides of the same coin.
The idea of sacrifice to grow a weird lot makes sense when you consider the one at The Wall that can actually talk. It's possible they can all talk, they just simply choose not to. Edit: The talking tree is at one of the gates at The Wall. I can't remember which one. It's been a decade since I read the last book.
If both Aegon and Harren knew more than we've been told about the deep Weirwoody magic of Ice & Fire, what are the chances Aegon understood what Harren's Weirwood castle meant as he was burning it?
😂in Danny's undying character the 1st door she goes through is the shape of a face made me think of a weirwood tree an a couple of other doors are the same round like a face it must mean something I've mentioned it before to David lightbringer he thinks yes it does what do you think
I don't know if anyone else has suggested this but maybe weirwood seeds were formed when Weirwoods had green leaves and so don't really exist outside the gods eye or were collected by the children many years ago when all Weirwoods were green and kept to create greenseers. Also how do you think a weirwood can be poisoned like the giant weirwood at the blackwood's?
the second ender book has a few tree planting scenes that are horrific. the Pequninos have several stages of life and the transitions are not nice at all. also, the common tongue in that book is named 'Stark'.
When we first meet Alice rivers in the show, someone mentions that she there to replace someone who just left. Alice might have said I I cannot remember, but if the person prior to Alice was also a healer, maybe they were a green seer. Maybe Alice killed them and made them into paste, feeding it to daemon
Truthfully, I think the carving of the faces on the trees is to help the consciousness of the sacrificed individuals "see" through the trees eyes. Almost like the need assistance, or something familiar from their past life, to view the world from a new perspective.
So, as per usual for my comments, what follows is a bunch of rambling what-ifs supported by vague feelings about supposed book excerpts I can't name. What struck out to me about Bran's vision after eating Jojen-paste, was that the implement that they used for the sacrifice was a sickle. In other words, a farmer's tool, used by probably a farmer from a society of farmers. How it is with every profession, is that you get better at it the longer you do it and a long time farming would eventually know how to grow everything and anything. So the beginning for the tradition of growing weirwoods would be based on old knowledge and the weirwoods becoming gods would have happen after the network was already grown. This would also require the common belief that faith is grown by the faithful, or whenever enough people believe enough - it becomes true. Greenseers, who believe enough in weirwood gods getting sacrificed to weirwoods become the weirwood gods themselves. In other words, it's not that the new weirwood requires a human sacrifice - it requires a greenseer sacrifice. Then to make greenseers, you need a 'magical person' being fed a paste made of weirwood leaves and blood. In case of Daemon, a magical person (having Targaryen Magic Blood) fed weirwood paste becomes a greenseer - who then dies above an island that's completely made out of weirwoods and another tree is born. Weirwood might need regular human sacrifice to sustain themselves, but for the new trees, you need special humans. Perhaps there's a weirwood tree in the God's Eye that looks like Daemon Targaryen. As for the weirwood faces being carved, the act of carving could be an euphemism for the human sacrifice and if the sacrifice is special enough - the new weirwood would form the face on it's own. Alys Rivers being really old, follows the old gods and knows how to worship old gods with a correct type of a blood sacrifice. --- For the second part about weirwoods and building castles. Storm's end has a history of getting shattered by sea storms (wrath of storm gods). Then whichever storm lord hired Bran the Builder to build a new castle and his castle never got shattered, because weirwoods having magic of their own and a network of old gods that protects things around them. Now I can't remember if Harrenhal was built by Bran the Builder, but what I do remember is being told that Harrenhal would survive any siege. This means it had been sieged or otherwise no one would be talking about it. Sieges usually mean famines and a lot of human bodies.... the blood of your average human feeding the weirwood roots already protecting the castle. Obviously being attacked from above would negate any protection the weirwoods gave to the walls. Don't think I've written a comment this long, hopefully someone got all the way through.
What about the wirwood at the red keep, could it have been planted by aegon the conqueror, the tree is clearly cut down cause it doesn’t exist in game of thrones right?
was goign to say, if it was just Any blood thenthere would be lots more- but a Greenseer is rare and special, so a great number of them like at High Heart(?) would be a place where Many greenseers sacrificed Themselves
weirwood seeds = dragon seeds maybe? the sacrifice would need to be a green seer or maybe a stark because of other blood, as the dragon bond needs to be with a person of certain blood?
I always wondered this If it’s such an incredibly valuable building material why haven’t people (specifically the steaks or other north men) plant hundreds of thousands of these to create a weirwood forest that they could harvest 5-10k every year and replant them Seems like a fantastic way to increase wealth I thought this after dany spoke of planting olive trees
@@MasterDoctorBenji but there were weirwoods being used for building And aren’t the only gods the actual heart trees? Still seems like a bizarre resource not to utilise
I still think "Children of the Forest" means "young offspring of the network of trees" as much as it means "small people of the woodland biome". CotF were probably the original Weirwood seeds, but the First Men got in on it somehow, leading to the faces and probably other changes. So now greenseers and vaguely magical people carry that potential. How did all that happen though? I'm sure the maesters didn't get the full story, but maybe we can piece it together?
I feel they are just the indigenous people of Westeros. Every region of Westeros is filled with forests and being small is just the racial trait of the people like the pygmies for example. Andals were taller so they just called the small forest people children. They live in the forests so they become the children of the forests. Beyond racial traits, everything else is cultural. In Planetos, every race has their special sort of magic.... although, all magic seems to be blood based.
In Arya II ACoK, when they buried Praed (a sellsword), a boy tossed acorn seeds on top of the body, while the Red Comet was in the sky. Perhaps here's how to grow a weirwood tree.
Nah they tossed acorns on the body because that’s all they’ve been eating and all they had. Interestingly, you cannot just eat acorn seeds. Your body loses more energy breaking it down than it gets from a single acorn. You have to grind it into a paste so your body can actually gain nutrients from it. So you gotta mash the seeds into a paste to eat it. Fun connection.
Yoooo if it's true that a human sacrifice is required to grow a weirwood, this would explain why Garth may have been asking for them all the time; for planting all those supposed weirwoods! That would make it the first soul in the net for further souls to go into.
Weiroods used to be maple trees. Look at them. Maples..and the sap/syrup is corrupted now. Maybe if they used the 'pure, cold' water that Stannis has on the trees instead of blood....?
What if the wierwood seeds were being used as the dragon seeds? People that have some of the old magic in their blood, like people who have valyrian magic in their blood
A giant root network? That would make weirwoods 1 impossibly massive single organism. - & hardly “trees” at all; more akin to a immobile Ent, that absorbs the souls of the dead
I feel it's more like time not existing in the weirwood network. As long as a tree has existed, it can be viewed. You're not really there, you're just viewing.
What if the faces on the weirwoods aren't actually carved? What if the face appears naturally on the weirwood due to it containing the soul of the person who was sacrificed to it?
![The Weirwoods are Fungus! [ASOIAF Theory]](/img/1.gif)
Good morning!!! Start your day right with a fresh bowl of Jojen Loops!
Lol
🎵🎶 "Jojen Loops.... They make you One With the trees!"
Now with singers of the forest marshmallows!
@@Rebel_Lord_Taron 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@btaybreadtastic that's what I'm talking about laughter is the best medicine and everything else in between.
Silly Raven Jojens for Bran.
@@marjoe32 that silly Raven!
I've been thinking a weirwood seed is actually the heart of a greenseer. I think this makes sense for a few reasons. Obviously jojen paste. Dany eating the horse heart could be a symbolic telling of this. Dany's vision in the house of the undying of the floating blue heart is likely a corrupted heart of winter and that's probably a weirwood tree. And most obviously, they are called heart trees
Makes sense
The best truths are interconnected between several cultures. It's called blood magic, so the thing responsible of keeping the blood flowing would be extra powerful.
Well, Alys weirwood paste creeps me out because i can't stop thinking that a)weirwoods like sacrificed children b)kids can be refered as a seed c)Alys was a wet nurse with no living children
It's also implied that she eats stillborns to stay younger as she is actually very old
Yooo DAMN that’s spooky
GRRM the horror writer strikes again!
Also a man’s “seed”. How much ya wanna bet that they can use that seed just as well as blood? It’s got protein in it…
@@misanthropicservitorofmars2116 melisandra used seed to make assassin shadow babies, some mage choped off and burned Varys's manhood for visions. I am surprised no one tried to gather dangly bits of fallen foes just for fun(probably Boltons tried but they prefer skin in general)
Personally I like the idea that the weirwood faces aren't even carved in the first place. What if they're literally the faces of the first sacrificial victims? Immortal, stuck in the network. They could even be the faces of greenseers strapped up deep in the roots underground, like bloodraven and his tree town gang are. This fits pretty nicely with the way George describes the wall's weirwood door in Sam's chapter, as though a face just kept aging for thousands of years. In the case of the door, I think its face is one of the undying inside the wall. Remember that that one can open its eyes and even talk. That's no carving.
That’s what I imagine as well. I also like the idea that the Wall is entirely made of frozen weirwoods. Michael has some good theory crafting on this channel.
The faces described always sounded like they had long, Stark-like features.
I agree the faces are not carved but manifest when the tree is awakened.
There's a theory that the trees can be used like a telephone system and the face of the tree reflects the most recent user.
Supporting evidence being the WF tree looking like Ned, the Whiteharbour tree looking like Wyman and the tree in Jon's dream looking like Bran.
Nit suggesting that Ned and Wyman are chatting but that they are unwittingly following part of the process by making blood sacrifice, like a pocket dial 😂
I think the face warps to look like the greenseer using it. The stark tree looks like a stark.
I think I figured out what's happening with weirwoods,
and it involves eldritch horror:
I've long been a fan of the idea that what's going on in warging involves sharing ancestry with the preferred creature. This could explain why wargs tend to have physical and personality traits in common with certain animals even when they haven't had the opportunity to warg them yet.
In the ancient past of Planetos there were reported to be people who had more direct non-human admixture. Even myths of centaurs may have been literal (unlike metaphorical or mistaken characterizations of horse-riding people in our world). Warging seems to be an accidental offshoot of this hybridization objective: i.e. people who still look almost entirely human but who accidentally also having a psychic gene and can control the organism in question.
One might even argue Valyrian dragon riding is a hijacking of a broader program to make gigantic sphinx-like people. This could also be related to a "city of winged men" in the far east.
All this proposes a possibility about the Weirwoods that you and LmL and others have been getting pretty close to. I've also heard Preston Jacobs get pretty close to this. The idea hinges on the Green Men and goes something like this:
They were tree wargs.
The Green Men/First Greenseers were tree wargs who had an ability to psychically commune with trees and with the ecosystem more generally. Stories about "Garth the Green" are memories of a time when Greenseeing tree wargs would walk around the landscape making sure the ecology supported people.
But here's the weird bid:
As tree wargs they were also basically part tree, and they would get bigger and bigger and more treelike over the course of their lives. This would explain why they were bigger than men but not as big as giants. The "antlers" on their heads were the bows of a tree that would burst out of their head at a certain point in their life. Eventually a green man would get so big and tired they would have to settle down somewhere and just plant themselves. Over time their body would turn to wood, and even their faces would get less mobile.
What we're seeing with the black gate is the original version of the Green Man. It's not someone who merges with the trees. It's someone who's slowly turning into a tree.
This is why the original line about Howland Reed saying goodbye to the "Green Men" got edited into saying goodbye to the "Trees" or something like that. They're the same thing. The Green Men are the trees.
This is also why the weirwoods are set up the way they are: near villages. Eventually the Green Man for that area would walk himself over to a central area and set himself down (or herself if it was a Green Woman). After that he or she would sleep most of the time as their face got more and more gigantic and hardened on the trunk of the tree. Eventually you would only ask them advice when you really needed help. And their giant face would open up for the first time in years and look at you.
An even w e i r der bit is this:
This is GRRM's version of ents.
I think this goes to the very bottom of George's world building.
Another great video
It's hard NOT to believe that this is what George had in mind.
Great work as always
I've always wondered what is below the Moon Door in the Vale. Ground of some sort to splat upon obviously and not a river or lake which might break someone's fall, but is it rock? a pasture? a town? a forest? Specifically is there a weirwood growing near there that can benefit from the blood of those sacrificed through the Moon Door? Just because no weirwood was able to take root high up in the keep, doesn't mean that one couldn't do so at the base.
Blood of the victims of the SkyCells might also be absorbed by weirwood(s) at the keep's base.
Nice thought! I wouldn't be surprised there is one there, even if mostly underground now that you mention it and now that I've watched several of Michael's videos on the subject! :)
If Bran saw someone being sacrificed and the tree was already there, maybe weirwoods are transformed from a regular tree, not planted. Like a willow becomes a weirwood after the sacrifice is made
What do they call Targaryen bastards in House of the Dragon?
Dragonseeds
What might you call a Greenseer -- a "bastard" human born from the magic of the Children of the Forest?
Weirwood seed
Orton Scott Card’s book Xenocide features a planet where the species have a life cycle with animal and plant phases. What if dead weir woods grow from dead Children of the Forest?
IMO a simpler explanation is weirwoods would propagate via suckers. i.e. you already have the root network. Pour some blood in an empty spot over the existing root network, and a sucker might pop up and eventually turn into a sapling. A lot of shrubs grow this way, like the hedge in front of my house. . . only I think it drinks water and not blood.
This is my theory but also i want a slightly more magical version of this...
Are we sure that the weirwood faces were physically carved by the Children or whoever? It would make much more (or at least some) sense if the faces were a result of the Lovecraftian alien fungus infecting a random tree whose roots later connect to the global fungal underground network, somehow mixed with human sacrifice in order to become a "were"wood, or man-wood, and the resulting face is the actual face of the sacrificed person.
I was thinking about your proposition that the stories of undead watchmen frozen in the wall are true, and if so I was wondering what you think about the possibility that due too the dwindling number of builders on the Wall... One of the undead watchmen escaped. And he is Coldhands.
As for the topic at hand, I particularly enjoy the idea that Harren was trying to build a magically warded castle, and that Aegon inadvertently completed the process by sacrificing House Harren for the realm. I mean it's bleak as heck, but certainly intriguing.
I was reading Fire and Blood and highlighted two seemingly offhand remarks about Harrenhal. They made me think of Harren attempting to build a warded castle, like the ancient ones designed by Bran the Builder.
After Alyssa Velaryon dies in childbirth, Rhaena warns Lord Rogar: "Hear this, my lord. Do not think to wed again ... If I should hear even a whisper of you taking some other poor maid to wife, I will make another Harrenhal of Storm's End, with you and her inside it."
...and, when Alysanne arrives on Silverwing at Winterfell, and is greeted by Lord Alaric Stark: "He then proceeded to declare that he did not want her dragon inside his walls. 'I’ve not seen Harrenhal, but I know what happened there.'"
These suggest that Harrenhal was built to be an old-gods-magic-warded castle, and when Aegon I made it a huge, fiery, blood sacrifice, something about the magic got corrupted.
Winterfell and Storm's End seem to work as intended -- the castles magically protect whoever holds them.
Harrenhal seems to do the opposite -- it actively sabotages whoever holds it.
My own theory is that weirwoods are just trees with human or CotF souls imbued within them. Any species of tree with human or CotF souls will eventually have their bark and wood wighten like a corpse, their sap become red, and grows a face.
This is based on some of the observed qualities of the soul in Westeros:
1. The vessel changes the soul it holds (a human soul in a wolf becomes wolf-like, a human soul in a tree starts perceiving time like a tree).
2. The soul changes the form of the vessel (the characteristic appearances of the great houses are much too consistent for mendellian inheritance to explain, swords with human souls wail and scream when struck).
3. The soul of a dying creature flows from the body via the path of least resistance, through the path drawn by their life-blood.
4. Many (if not ALL) of the magical items and things in Westeros absorbs blood: weirwoods, the bloodstone, valyrian steel blades (but only when they have just been pulled glowing from the fire - quenching the blade in a living creature traps the blood and the souls within the very grain of the metal).
One of the very best pieces of proof that weirwood trees are made by shoving a sentient soul into a tree is Bran's last vision in the Winterfell heart-tree which you are quoting.
In that vision Bran can taste the blood. But WHO PRESENT IN THAT SCENE both possesses taste-buds and happens to have a mouth full of blood?
It isn't Bran: his taste buds are hundreds of miles and hundreds of years away. It isn't the woman sacrificing the man: if she was gurgling a mouth full of blood, Bran would have noticed. It isn't the tree: trees don't have taste buds.
The only one who could possibly have been tasting blood as the man's throat was slit was THE MAN WHOSE THROAT WAS BEING SLIT. Bran, through the tree, was tasting what the dying man was tasting.
In my view, this is very compelling proof that you can permanently shove human souls into trees if you connect a person to a tree with blood, then kill the person.
The soul and magic part is brilliant. I also believe all magic in ASOIF is based on blood. Blood is clearly the magical key. The soul being directly tied to the blood flowing in a living creature is such a great idea and helps explain the magic system.
Having Warging being the only major evidence we have for the magic system makes it so compelling. So we know souls can move between bodies. A certain human soul can dominate lesser souls of beasts.
If the soul can move to the body of an animal, and that you can bring a soul back to a body after it’s left. Youre right, you gathered all the significant evidence to show that manipulating a persons soul is the basis of magic, and you can do A LOT with that.
I see Bran tasting that blood from the ground or the tree roots the blood is spilled on. He sees everything from the perspective of the tree.
Souls and blood are important yes, but what makes it special is that it needs to be a special person. Otherwise it would make all blood equal and King's blood being just as good as the local bar wench. Every scene of a great battle would be soaked in blood, kings very rarely join the battles. Bran being of the royal line of Winterfell has king's blood.
Monarchies in our world believe in incest to preserve that blue blood, Westeros isn't any different in that regard.
@@misanthropicservitorofmars2116 Thanks for your comments. I posted a comment on Reddit over a year ago that put all magic in ASOIAF into one big picture with internally consistent rules which springs from the only verifiable "magical" phenomenon in Westeros: skin-changing.
I can't link the post, but it's called "Abominations: Of souls, ice, blood and fire".
@@glandhound I respect your position. I agree that a king and a wench would have different qualities for the purposes of magic, but I would argue that this is because their souls have different qualities rather than some sort of "specialness" in the divine right of kings . Melisandre offered to use Davos' essence (blood or soul, it doesn't matter) to work magic when Stannis no longer had enough vitality and his blood is as common as it gets. Davos' soul has some attractive qualities for someone hoping to work magic to aid Stannis though: he's loyal and steadfast and dutiful.
In my theory, the qualities of the soul being used to work magic had a huge impact on the finished product. A sword with an angry lion's soul rebels and breaks. A sword with the soul of a woman who receives a love confession from the man of her dreams SECONDS before he stabs her with it would be positively glowing with ardent, fiery love (i.e., a light-bringer).
In that light, Euron's current collecting of a gaggle of wild-eyed, fervent holy men (who were generally unhinged to begin with), torturing them and giving them mind-altering drugs to open up their minds EVEN MORE is slightly concerning.
Assuming the Weirwoods are fungi, like the Erdtree, they wouldn't have seeds, but spores.
Further assuming they're magical saprophytes feeding on human blood, that would explain the dichotomy of Jojen being weirwood seeds.
Jojen's blood running through white mycelium sounds suspiciously weirwood-esque
I like the theory, but I'm enough of an autist to say that it's not a dichotomy. A dichotomy specifically is two forces that are polar opposites.
There is also an Arya scene in ACOK when they are burying a dead person, a boy from the Reach tosses a handful of acorns in the grave so a oak might one day grow from it and mark the grave. It might be an old custom from the days of Garth Greenhand “planting” weirwoods. And a few chapters later, Arya is eating acorn paste.
Company of the Cat brought up a quote in one of her early videos about Oak Tree symbolism in ASOIAF; in Arya II of ACOK, one of Yoren's recruits for the watch dies during the night. When they bury him, Praed, it says that "A boy called Tarber tossed a handful of acorns on top of Praed's body, so an oak might grow to mark his place." That would further support your theory that a cutting from an existing weirwood is taken and planted on the body of a sacrifice, to ensure a new Weirwood grows.
How the hell is my Fam of Ice and Fire doing today??
This is a great way to start the morning
Tomorrow is another HotD episode I am hyped this was perfect to feed the dragon shaped hole in my mind
@@Grace-er9ep indeed that's why I love this Channel and several other channels because it feeds that Dragon and Wolf shaped hole in my mind and heart that has been empty all these years while waiting on the Winds of Winter
Just started watching you recently. Absolutely been loving the theory videos and the dark truths of this story that are lost to time.
Good way to pull all these hints together - I like it 👍
I got Weirwood clones... 4 for 20$.
😂
Dope strain name, make sure it's super light green (almost white) with tons of red hairs on it, lol
would love to see you dive into 40k lore. there is a lot to work with.
Until you get to the point where there is no mystery anymore. There's an explanation for everything in 40k.
Yaaaay. Saturday mornings off to a good start🎉
Yes! This is the kind of thing we need more of! I love your weird theories like this. Love the linguistic analysis.
Blackwood tree comes back to life if it's watered with enough blood.
weirwood seed helicopters confirmed 🤣🤣🤣
Thank you! I was just thinking about this topic. I really like your track of theories. Your tree and glass candle videos are fantastic.
Was that A Weirwood TRee in the dragon pit when Hugh fell in and tumbled down? That was quite an offering 😂
i was wondering this too because they seemed to really focus on that tree & it was very pale white
@@bonghitsandheavyriffs I said Hugh- it was Ulf 😂 but ….. right?!??
Truly excellent work on this
I’ve always wondered this myself. Thanks for explaining
I always kinda thought the Stark statues may have originally been carved out of Weirwood and petrified over time. So maybe the old Stark kings “souls” were IN their statues which were Weirwood and turned to Stone over time.
Not sure when they would have forgotten that and started making them out of stone in modern times.
Also the faces Arianne see’s carved in stone could have maybe been originally like The Black Gate and turned to stone. But we do get the line from leaf saying Bran will eventually be able to see from the trees and stones. Something like that.
Great video
Great video ❤
I remember reeding in one of the books about a grove of young uncarved weirwoods
I always thought the language of the pact was interesting. The weirwoods were "given" faces and if I recall there were claims of mass sacrifice..
Regarding the Vale, if there were actually weirwood seeds you'd probably want to plant them directly. Trees usually grow best from seed, grafting is traumatic, and uprooting an inground tree is a bit traumatic as well. Fruit trees are almost exclusively grown from grafts because every seed has a huge amount of genetic diversity but a graft is a perfect clone of the parent scion. However a seedling tree would typically outgrow a grafted one in speed, size, and strength. If you were trying to grow a tree outside its normal climate your best bet would be to grow from seed and then work to protect it from its weaknesses
Gardener knowledge :)
IDK, reading the sentence "What are weirwood seeds?" immediately made me think green seer.
If the HotD Harenhall weirwoods are (book) canon, doesn't that mean somebody will have to rip or burn them all out, since we know they're not there in the main (book) series, given that a highly observant POV character lives there for a good while and never sees any sign of them?
it's especially interesting considering that Aegon burned everything that was to burn. Those weirwoods wouldn't have been there for that long.
"The Eyrie is impregnable." Takes on new meaning when you consider theres no eyes for the network to see.
I'd like to posit some stuff for you, wonder what you think:
1. The Stone men and greyscale, coupled with the shrouded lord and old valyria/empire rhoyneland, is at least a parallel for the others.
2. If Qaarth is an extension of Westerosi magic used from afar, then what are these? Asshai?
3. What is a moveable magical entity, besides a dragon, a zombie, or wielder of magic like Melisabdre or Alys? We know of the corpse queen/nissa nissa, and of azor ahai, the last prince that was promised. Is one or the other a "stolen power" like a palantir or one ring, transplanted into westeros and causing disorder and death elsewhere?
4. Are the other hinges of the world vulnerable to this imbalance? Valyria was not wothout sacrificed souls, it shouldnt have had a weakening before the doom. Perhaps the doom is the blood/fire magic representation of imbalance equaling self destruction.
5. If the stone men are like wights, and the shrouded lord like an other, who in their neck of the woods fulfills the COTF role? I wonder if the merlings fit into this aspect, like the wet feet arya hears when blind. Is this the squisher council of essos? Their old ways amount to the same, no?
Just some thoughts of had from watching your work. Great stuff.
Great advice to grow a Weirwood!
Hahaha love that you clarified we should not try this at home kids 😂
Runners, Rhizomes. If you’ve ever been in a grove of white barked quaking aspen when a breeze rises you would get the creep factor of a weirwood George may have meant. It’s an experience! They chatter like the voices of the others described in the prologue if GOT
Wikipedia : Aspens are also aided by the rhizomatic nature of their root systems. Most aspens grow in large clonal colonies, derived from a single seedling, and spread by means of root suckers; new stems in the colony may appear at up to 30-40 m (100-130 ft) from the parent tree.
One such colony in Utah, given the nickname of "Pando", has been estimated to be as old as 80,000 years,
They are able to survive forest fires, because the roots are below the heat of the fire, and new sprouts appear after the fire burns out.
Actually that makes a lot of sense about human sacrifice needing to grow a weirwood which is why it couldn't grow in the Erie because of all the rock and mountains and there's a line that joffrey says in Kings landing that the stones will not soak up blood no matter how hard he tries I think that's a hint to the fact that you need a reservoir of blood to grow where will tree and to sustain it
7:00 aint no way bro dropped that realisation on us so casually, that sounds like GRR's intention tbh
Last week your videos made me come up with an idea, you might like. It jumps off of your first night theory, and this reminded me of it. (Apologies if you've done this before and I haven't seen it yet).
Why are the Dragonseeds called that. You said that the reason the dragons needed a soul is because they turned to stone. What if it's more that they turned to stone because they didn't have a soul.
We see a lot of parallels in your theory between The Wall and The Fourteen Flames. And there is also, a first night. It also says these children were highly "valued". In fact the mothers of these dragon seeds would be highly rewarded "paid off". But it stops there.
If the children of the first night in Westeros were sacrificed to the CotF and the Others, the children in Valyria were likely sacrificed to the Dragonriders, more specifically, to the Dragons.
So their name is not just because they are the seed of the Dragon, but because they are the Seed of a Dragon. Their soul seeds the life and birth of a new dragon.
Why else would a group that guards their genetics so much as to wed sister to sister, be so willing to spread it elsewhere. It's said that on Dragonstone many could claim they had a drop of the blood in them.
Now this would also explain why the Dragons started to die out after the Dance of the Dragons, why they were weaker, why the knowledge was lost. 3 heads make a dragon.
Viserys himself says that dragons are a power they shouldn't have trifled with. All of the older people who might have known the secret die in the war, leaving only a child who even if they knew, was so afraid of dragons would likely have never have said how they are made.
Not only that, but the dance brings many Dragonseeds into the war, and many perish. The blood is dwindling. So you have less seeds out there, and the knowledge is gone on how to make more. Now who in Westeros could be left to tell the secrets of how dragons are made, but not only made, kept alive.
Remember that glass candles need sacrifices to keep them going. Why would living embodiments of fire magic need anything less.
The Maesters. To think not a single one witnessed these sacrifices and wrote it down somewhere seems unlikely.
So when Marwyn says, who do you think killed all the dragons the last time, he's likely not saying who physically killed them, but who let them die. Like a doctor withholding treatment. Who let the secrets of dragon birth and life, die in the dance.
And this would lend brilliantly as to why Marwyn would know that three heads make a dragon, and why he will likely be able to bond with Viserion. Because as an Archmaester, one of the highest ranking members at the citadel, he would be privy to the knowledge, or at least the ability to seek out that knowledge.
And it would also give the story a way to introduce more dragons. If more eggs are introduced, and if, as you believe, Marwyn will return to offer his knowledge to Aegon, we could see another dance.
What are your thoughts? Including anyone who's reading this.
13:14 DUDE he set the walls in blood. The entire place was roasted humans toasted with dragon flame… it is everything a Wierwood needs
I totally think Alyce is giving Daemon Weirwood paste.
My thinking has long been that ever since the seasons got messed up, weirwoods can no longer reproduce, they can only sprout new trunks from an existing root structure. Perhaps they can even sprout from dropped branches like willows can. My evidence for this is that we have never heard anyone talking about any reproductive structures being present on a weirwood, in any season; no flowers, no fruits, no cones, nothing. Lots of plants rely on regular seasonal changes to enable reproduction, so we should actually expect this to be the case for lots of plants. In fact I feel like Ive heard of at least one real plant in that exact situation
I kinda figured, that because we don't know what happens to Daemon after the Dance, he's sacrificed to the tree and becomes Rho'llor? Since Alys Rivers saying: "You'll die in this place", might be far deeper than we think.
I've heard potting soil works well. Fertilize at 4-6 weeks after planting
Someone with the potential to bond with a dragon is called a Dragon Seed, so it makes sense, at least to me, that someone with the potential to be a Green Seer like Jojen, would be a Wierwood Seed. Someone who's Green Seeing ability is fully realized, like Bran would in turn be considered a Wierwood Sapling, and extrapolated from that idea, maybe the Greenseers who have reached the "end" of their life cycle like Bloodraven become an actual Wierwood tree.
Perhaps Bloodraven isn't bound to a pre-existing tree, but the Wierwood he is bound to IS himself.
Meaning every Wierwood tree may have a Green Seer bound to its roots, such as the one in the God's Wood of Winterfell, which we know has roots that reaches into the Crypts of Winterfell.
This would also make the Jojen paste theory correct, as well as make the idea that the Weirwood Paste is made from.Wierwood Seeds not a lie.
Since the new calendar shows Weirwoods as green with faces on the Isle of Faces, and there is one like this that is the secret entrance of the Nightfort, I believe they actually do have seeds. To grow a corrupted Weirwood, aka the red leafed ones, I think it does involve a blood sacrifice. The seed, in my head canon, is placed in the blood and body of a corpse to provide the tree with enough nourishment to begin its growth.
Would that make it a chest-nut?
I laughed too hard at this
If I ever isolate a new shroom strain I’m naming it weirwood 😜
Children have indigo blood = shade of the evening trees children weirwoods?
Here is a really crazy idea wildfire from dragon weirwoods or rather the parasitic fungi part of the weirwood without the oak tree to grow on, grows on dead dragons in Asshai.
Also I highly recommend @Ziostorm ‘s latest video about the fungal nature of the Erdtree in Elden ring
There are dragon seeds...could a green seer be considered a "weirwood seed"?
makes sense
Honestly, it would make sense if any greenseer could become a Wearwood tree making that are Wearwood seeds or (paste). And you also see the three eyed crow stuck in a tree which looks to me like he’s actually a Wearwood in the process of maturing
Sometimes I get a weirwood seed in my purchase of leaves. When this happens, I try to grow my own weirwoods. But my cat always eat them before they can really get started sadly.
I'm pretty sure you are right about why a weirwood won't grow in the Vale.
Essentially you're grafting the weirwood seed concept onto the dragon seed, correct?
This isn't the worst idea. It actually makes a good deal of sense. There is a piece of your theory I'd like to see you dig into. Something I've attempted to argue in the past. Were weirwoods originally carved?
With the sacrifice to a weirwood idea you're sort of blending a bit of Eldric and the concept within the story of a second life. I might best illustrate this idea by asking what the area BR is sitting in will look like in a thousand years. Were faces cut into a weirwood to resemble the individual about to begin a second life? Or are the faces really the faces of someone who was sitting on a weirwood throne so long they became part of the tree?
If you saw a face, you'd assume it was carved. If you believed faces were carved you might begin carving faces into new trees that didn't have them. Is there an essential difference between a weirwood with a face and one without? Even the Dick Crab story itself mirrors the concept of a weirwood. With the gathered dead gathered into it to whisper to the person sitting on it.
There is a reflection of the theory ideas about dragons reflected in this idea as I seems you're framing it. Three souls sacrificed for Dany's dragons, and souls sacrificed for weirwoods. Essentially weirwoods set up as foils to dragons. Which is not a horrible idea and may involve a subtle blending of the two. Mushroom claimed a dragon left eggs within Winterfell. Read that instead as Dragonseeds and you're left to wonder is a Weirseed and a Dragonseed are not just similar concepts, but different sides of the same coin.
The idea of sacrifice to grow a weird lot makes sense when you consider the one at The Wall that can actually talk. It's possible they can all talk, they just simply choose not to.
Edit: The talking tree is at one of the gates at The Wall. I can't remember which one. It's been a decade since I read the last book.
You could get a line of weirwoods planets in a line up the mountain. Maybe that’d help?
If both Aegon and Harren knew more than we've been told about the deep Weirwoody magic of Ice & Fire, what are the chances Aegon understood what Harren's Weirwood castle meant as he was burning it?
😂in Danny's undying character the 1st door she goes through is the shape of a face made me think of a weirwood tree an a couple of other doors are the same round like a face it must mean something I've mentioned it before to David lightbringer he thinks yes it does what do you think
I don't know if anyone else has suggested this but maybe weirwood seeds were formed when Weirwoods had green leaves and so don't really exist outside the gods eye or were collected by the children many years ago when all Weirwoods were green and kept to create greenseers.
Also how do you think a weirwood can be poisoned like the giant weirwood at the blackwood's?
the second ender book has a few tree planting scenes that are horrific. the Pequninos have several stages of life and the transitions are not nice at all. also, the common tongue in that book is named 'Stark'.
i think it makes a lot of sense plus it would mirror valyrian steel and why there hasn’t been any new swords or trees made in hundreds of years.
In Westeros, instead of the Moai stoneface emoji, they'd have Weirwoodface emoji.
When you cut a branch of a Weirwood tree is it green inside or white all the way through or maybe red
The red weirwood paste and its psychoactive properties reminds me of ayahuasca
When we first meet Alice rivers in the show, someone mentions that she there to replace someone who just left. Alice might have said I I cannot remember, but if the person prior to Alice was also a healer, maybe they were a green seer. Maybe Alice killed them and made them into paste, feeding it to daemon
There was talk that she was the local healer in place of a maester because maesters didn’t adapt well to living in Harrenhal.
Truthfully, I think the carving of the faces on the trees is to help the consciousness of the sacrificed individuals "see" through the trees eyes.
Almost like the need assistance, or something familiar from their past life, to view the world from a new perspective.
So, as per usual for my comments, what follows is a bunch of rambling what-ifs supported by vague feelings about supposed book excerpts I can't name.
What struck out to me about Bran's vision after eating Jojen-paste, was that the implement that they used for the sacrifice was a sickle. In other words, a farmer's tool, used by probably a farmer from a society of farmers. How it is with every profession, is that you get better at it the longer you do it and a long time farming would eventually know how to grow everything and anything. So the beginning for the tradition of growing weirwoods would be based on old knowledge and the weirwoods becoming gods would have happen after the network was already grown. This would also require the common belief that faith is grown by the faithful, or whenever enough people believe enough - it becomes true.
Greenseers, who believe enough in weirwood gods getting sacrificed to weirwoods become the weirwood gods themselves. In other words, it's not that the new weirwood requires a human sacrifice - it requires a greenseer sacrifice. Then to make greenseers, you need a 'magical person' being fed a paste made of weirwood leaves and blood.
In case of Daemon, a magical person (having Targaryen Magic Blood) fed weirwood paste becomes a greenseer - who then dies above an island that's completely made out of weirwoods and another tree is born. Weirwood might need regular human sacrifice to sustain themselves, but for the new trees, you need special humans. Perhaps there's a weirwood tree in the God's Eye that looks like Daemon Targaryen. As for the weirwood faces being carved, the act of carving could be an euphemism for the human sacrifice and if the sacrifice is special enough - the new weirwood would form the face on it's own.
Alys Rivers being really old, follows the old gods and knows how to worship old gods with a correct type of a blood sacrifice.
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For the second part about weirwoods and building castles. Storm's end has a history of getting shattered by sea storms (wrath of storm gods). Then whichever storm lord hired Bran the Builder to build a new castle and his castle never got shattered, because weirwoods having magic of their own and a network of old gods that protects things around them.
Now I can't remember if Harrenhal was built by Bran the Builder, but what I do remember is being told that Harrenhal would survive any siege. This means it had been sieged or otherwise no one would be talking about it. Sieges usually mean famines and a lot of human bodies.... the blood of your average human feeding the weirwood roots already protecting the castle. Obviously being attacked from above would negate any protection the weirwoods gave to the walls.
Don't think I've written a comment this long, hopefully someone got all the way through.
What about the wirwood at the red keep, could it have been planted by aegon the conqueror, the tree is clearly cut down cause it doesn’t exist in game of thrones right?
What if it has to be a greenseer or someone like jojen, bran, or blood raven?
was goign to say, if it was just Any blood thenthere would be lots more- but a Greenseer is rare and special, so a great number of them like at High Heart(?) would be a place where Many greenseers sacrificed Themselves
weirwood seeds = dragon seeds maybe?
the sacrifice would need to be a green seer or maybe a stark because of other blood, as the dragon bond needs to be with a person of certain blood?
I always wondered this
If it’s such an incredibly valuable building material why haven’t people (specifically the steaks or other north men) plant hundreds of thousands of these to create a weirwood forest that they could harvest 5-10k every year and replant them
Seems like a fantastic way to increase wealth
I thought this after dany spoke of planting olive trees
I mean, if the trees are your gods I feel like that would be sacrilegious.
@@MasterDoctorBenji but there were weirwoods being used for building
And aren’t the only gods the actual heart trees?
Still seems like a bizarre resource not to utilise
I still think "Children of the Forest" means "young offspring of the network of trees" as much as it means "small people of the woodland biome". CotF were probably the original Weirwood seeds, but the First Men got in on it somehow, leading to the faces and probably other changes. So now greenseers and vaguely magical people carry that potential. How did all that happen though? I'm sure the maesters didn't get the full story, but maybe we can piece it together?
I feel they are just the indigenous people of Westeros. Every region of Westeros is filled with forests and being small is just the racial trait of the people like the pygmies for example. Andals were taller so they just called the small forest people children. They live in the forests so they become the children of the forests. Beyond racial traits, everything else is cultural. In Planetos, every race has their special sort of magic.... although, all magic seems to be blood based.
I wonder if air propagate would work for saplings
In Arya II ACoK, when they buried Praed (a sellsword), a boy tossed acorn seeds on top of the body, while the Red Comet was in the sky. Perhaps here's how to grow a weirwood tree.
Nah they tossed acorns on the body because that’s all they’ve been eating and all they had.
Interestingly, you cannot just eat acorn seeds. Your body loses more energy breaking it down than it gets from a single acorn. You have to grind it into a paste so your body can actually gain nutrients from it. So you gotta mash the seeds into a paste to eat it.
Fun connection.
Nimble Dick is the true King of wrsteros. Change my mind.
Can't change a moron's mind.
Watch out fer them squishers!
Maybe you have to put your seed into the weirwood?
This makes a dark compound theory with Jojen-paste...
😂
To summarise:
How to plant a weirwood 101:
Blood
???
Tree profit
*Gentle places tinfoil on the counter. This just makes sense
Yoooo if it's true that a human sacrifice is required to grow a weirwood, this would explain why Garth may have been asking for them all the time; for planting all those supposed weirwoods! That would make it the first soul in the net for further souls to go into.
Weiroods used to be maple trees. Look at them. Maples..and the sap/syrup is corrupted now. Maybe if they used the 'pure, cold' water that Stannis has on the trees instead of blood....?
Actually, Brienne sees a slender, young weirwood in The Whispers!
Oh, you got to that part, I'm impatient!
I will say season 2 has done ALOT to bolster your trees in ice theory
Are you saying Bran will become the Wise Mystical Tree?
I always thought that the paste was seeds mixed with jojen
Weirwood seeds,,, dragon seeds. Maybe jojen is related to the soul scarified to weirwood 🤷🏽♀️
What about the weirwoods on the God’s Eye that are green leafed and a non-white wood?
@@pyropulseIXXI fake news
What if the wierwood seeds were being used as the dragon seeds? People that have some of the old magic in their blood, like people who have valyrian magic in their blood
Dragon seeds aren't dragons. Weirwood seeds aren't Weirwoods, but those with strong connection to the weirwood and greenseers like Jojen
The seed could have been injected into Howland on the Isle of faces
I’ve got 3 of them. I simply planted them and pissed on them twice a week.
Goddamn do your theories tickle my fancy
So... Was Harren trying to create a Nightfort of his own? 🤔
So the person is being sacrificed... to what exactly to create a weirwood sapling?
And what if harren was trying to build a wall like structure but it wasn’t finished in time to protect from the dragons?
Harrenhal was finished 2BC, before dragons were a thing in westeros.
A giant root network? That would make weirwoods 1 impossibly massive single organism. - & hardly “trees” at all; more akin to a immobile Ent, that absorbs the souls of the dead
I love Elden Ring lore.
Do you think that job getting killed, potentially as a result of a time travelling Bran, could somehow be part of this?
I feel it's more like time not existing in the weirwood network. As long as a tree has existed, it can be viewed. You're not really there, you're just viewing.
What if the faces on the weirwoods aren't actually carved? What if the face appears naturally on the weirwood due to it containing the soul of the person who was sacrificed to it?
YUNG WEIRWOOD sounds like the hottest new westerosi rapper.