Continuing nanother 's ideas about boy-Bran, I also came across this quote today:
He raced across the godswood, taking the long way around to avoid the pool where the heart tree grew. The heart tree had always frightened him; trees ought not have eyes, Bran thought, or leaves that looked like hands. (aGOT, Bran II)
Bran did not like the heart tree at all before his fall!
IMO Bloodraven visited both Jojen and Bran in their dreams and his appearance in the dream was of a crow with three eyes. Of course we can happily disagree.
But why would BR not know he is a crow? I think the 3EC is more than that. I could see it as BR if he and Bran were sharing a dream. Maybe.
My point is that those are the only two who spoke of a 3EC. Varamyr gives great detail of his life as a warg from childhood to adulthood and never mentions a 3EC. Yes, that does not mean he recieved no visit, but I am inclined to think he did not.
Oh! What about those other cotf who are in their weirwood roots in the cave. One of them tried to speak to Bran as Hodor. Maybe he was trying to say, "Where's the corn, punk!"
Interesting that the crow does not attempt to "give" Bran that third eye (stabbing him in the forehead, digging out bone and brain, by the way)... until after Bran's proven himself by flying. Almost like the 3EC needed to be sure Bran was the right one - the winged wolf - before "giving" him that third eye.
Exactly. "Fly, or die." The 3EC was either going to carry Bran into a new life, or usher him to the end of his present one.
If you ever take a peek at anthropological studies of shamanism, particularly those published when GRRM was coming of age as a writer, Bran's 3EC introduction becomes very familiar. I'll dig up a few choice examples tonight if anyone's interested.
"I can see it. You have more of the north in you than your brothers."
We have no reason to make this assumption. Did you see my response to you a few posts up re Varamyr?
Yes I did. Maybe I am not understanding what you consider "flying" or what you think is different about the use of the third eye? Sure Varamyr is the flip side of the Starks when it comes to opening his third eye, but the process is the same. Actually Bran is no different than Varamyr when he forces himself into Hodor. He just finds ways to dismiss what he is doing and maybe even justifies it.
True, but we don't know if Haggon's admonition is merely superstitious, dogmatic, or in line with the Old Gods. Haggon also warned against feasting on man-flesh, yet Coldhands serves them mystery meat and the heart tree drinks blood.
We have no evidence that the third-eye is at all connected to skinchangers. Jojen, after all, is not a skinchanger.
"I can see it. You have more of the north in you than your brothers."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only person other than Bran (and the 3EC, of course) that has been associated with having a third eye is Jon. Jon who has a Weirwood direwolf. So is Jon also meant to be a greenseer?
Possible. I believe wolfmaid7 has proposed as much afore.
I'm of the mind that Jon's wolf denotes an even more intimate connection than third-eye-ism. Rather than being gifted by the Old Gods (a mere warg/skinchanger), or intimately connected to them (greenseer), I think Jon IS weirwood/Westeros/the Old Gods in human form. North and South. Half Stark, half Dayne... The heart tree of Westeros in conflict with itself.
Is it based on the Bran Weirwood dream? Where is the association of Jon and third eye?
Yes, but the third eye is one eye, hence all the singular referents in Jojen's response. Bran tells Jon to open his eyeS, plural. Is it a typo? Does he mean all three eyes? Is it related to Bloodraven's 1001 eyes? Or weirwood eyes being the first of many eyes a greenseer uses to see?
It could be he is speaking of his and Ghost's eyes. I do like the trees as a possibility too. All the trees the wolf his own eyes and the third eye.
“My throat is dry. Do me a kindness and bring a cup of wine for me and warm milk for our friend Arya, who has returned to us so unexpectedly.†On her way across the city Arya had wondered what the kindly man would say when she told him about Dareon. Maybe he would be angry with her, or maybe he would be pleased that she had given the singer the gift of the Many-Faced God. She had played this talk out in her head half a hundred times, like a mummer in a show. But she had never thought warm milk. When the milk came, Arya drank it down. It smelled a little burnt and had a bitter aftertaste. “Go to bed now, child,†the kindly man said. “On the morrow you must serve.†That night she dreamed she was a wolf again, but it was different from the other dreams. In this dream she had no pack. She prowled alone, bounding over rooftops and padding silently beside the banks of a canal, stalking shadows through the fog. When she woke the next morning, she was blind.
Somehow the warm milk not only made her visually blind, but it appears to have cut off her connection to Nymeria. This passage seems to help explain why the dead in the crypts of Winterfell are blind too. Their connection to their wolves are severed, so they cannot see through their third eye.
It's not quite so simple, though. Next time we see her, she's having wolf dreams again:
A Dance with Dragons - The Blind Girl
Her nights were lit by distant stars and the shimmer of moonlight on snow, but every dawn she woke to darkness.
She opened her eyes and stared up blind at the black that shrouded her, her dream already fading. So beautiful. She licked her lips, remembering. The bleating of the sheep, the terror in the shepherd's eyes, the sound the dogs had made as she killed them one by one, the snarling of her pack. Game had become scarcer since the snows began to fall, but last night they had feasted. Lamb and dog and mutton and the flesh of man. Some of her little grey cousins were afraid of men, even dead men, but not her. Meat was meat, and men were prey. She was the night wolf. But only when she dreamed.
The blind girl rolled onto her side, sat up, sprang to her feet, stretched. Her bed was a rag-stuffed mattress on a shelf of cold stone, and she was always stiff and tight when she awakened. She padded to her basin on small, bare, callused feet, silent as a shadow, splashed cool water on her face, patted herself dry. Ser Gregor, she thought. Dunsen, Raff the Sweetling. Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei. Her morning prayer. Or was it? No, she thought, not mine. I am no one. That is the night wolf's prayer. Someday she will find them, hunt them, smell their fear, taste their blood. Someday.
"I know that some men are saying that Tormo Fregar will surely be the new sealord," she answered. "Some drunken men." "Better. And what else do you know?"
It is snowing in the riverlands, in Westeros, she almost said. But he would have asked her how she knew that, and she did not think that he would like her answer. She chewed her lip, thinking back to last night. "The whore S'vrone is with child. She is not certain of the father, but thinks it might have been that Tyroshi sellsword that she killed."
So she's warging Nymeria again. No mention of cat dreams so far, only wolf ones. Maybe because her day identity is now Blind Beth instead of Cat of the Canals?
Each night at supper the waif brought her a cup of milk and told her to drink it down. The drink had a queer, bitter taste that the blind girl soon learned to loathe. Even the faint smell that warned her what it was before it touched her tongue soon made her feel like retching, but she drained the cup all the same.
"How long must I be blind?" she would ask.
"Until darkness is as sweet to you as light," the waif would say, "or until you ask us for your eyes. Ask and you shall see."
I did not realise (or I forgot) that they kept giving her the 'milk'.
As she made her way past the temples, she could hear the acolytes of the Cult of Starry Wisdom atop their scrying tower, singing to the evening stars. A wisp of scented smoke hung in the air, drawing her down the winding path to where the red priests had fired the great iron braziers outside the house of the Lord of Light. Soon she could even feel the heat in the air, as red R'hllor's worshipers lifted their voices in prayer. "For the night is dark and full of terrors," they prayed.
Not for me. Her nights were bathed in moonlight and filled with the songs of her pack, with the taste of red meat torn off the bone, with the warm familiar smells of her grey cousins. Only during the days was she alone and blind.
Again, no mention of cat dreams at all.
She was in luck tonight. The tavern was near empty, and she was able to claim a quiet corner not far from the fire. No sooner had she settled there and crossed her legs than something brushed up against her thigh. "You again?" said the blind girl. She scratched his head behind one ear, and the cat jumped up into her lap and began to purr. Braavos was full of cats, and no place more than Pynto's. The old pirate believed they brought good luck and kept his tavern free of vermin. "You know me, don't you?" she whispered. Cats were not fooled by a mummer's moles. They remembered Cat of the Canals. ...
The Lyseni took the table nearest to the fire and spoke quietly over cups of black tar rum, keeping their voices low so no one could overhear. But she was no one and she heard most every word. And for a time it seemed that she could see them too, through the slitted yellow eyes of the tomcat purring in her lap. One was old and one was young and one had lost an ear, but all three had the white-blond hair and smooth fair skin of Lys, where the blood of the old Freehold still ran strong.
And here we are. It might or might not be the same cat she slipped into when she first drank the 'milk', which might or might not have been her favourite tom with the chewed ear. She seems to recognise this cat, in any case.
"It is good to know. This is two. Is there a third?"
"Yes. I know that you're the one who has been hitting me." Her stick flashed out, and cracked against his fingers, sending his own stick clattering to the floor.
The priest winced and snatched his hand back. "And how could a blind girl know that?"
I saw you. "I gave you three. I don't need to give you four." Maybe on the morrow she would tell him about the cat that had followed her home last night from Pynto's, the cat that was hiding in the rafters, looking down on them. Or maybe not. If he could have secrets, so could she.
She figured it out pretty fast (well, apart from the long gap after her first and only known cat dream).
Sansa's almost was as well. And if Lysa pushed her through the Moon Door, might a crow have asked her for lemoncakes? (Am now wondering if lemoncakes are a parallel for corn...little...yellow...different... Edit: I'm tagging you here SlyWren and Lady Dyanna... Could this be a thing, lemoncakes=corn? Or is my pot completely cracked now?)
As I await your input, I will crack it a bit further. I'm kind of seeing Sansa now as a little bird, circling the broken tower, waiting for corn.
"I can see it. You have more of the north in you than your brothers."
Geeze, nevermind. It's too long. I remember while writing it being curious what your perspective was on certain parts - mostly the wolf pup stuff, and how the kids manifest things I think - but the post is so damn long and rambling I can't find it now. LOL
"I can see it. You have more of the north in you than your brothers."
Sansa's almost was as well. And if Lysa pushed her through the Moon Door, might a crow have asked her for lemoncakes? (Am now wondering if lemoncakes are a parallel for corn...little...yellow...different... Edit: I'm tagging you here SlyWren and Lady Dyanna... Could this be a thing, lemoncakes=corn? Or is my pot completely cracked now?)
But my initial take is that those cakes are more the exotic temptation that turned . . . oh dear. . . sour.
I can't think of anything with Sansa and the cakes as being warging or third eye oriented. In her very first POV in Game, She tries to tempt Arya into Cersei's wheelhouse by pointing out that they have lemon cakes. Arya points out that they can't take their direwolves into the wheelhouse. Seems like the cakes help divide her form her family. If anything, they remind me of the blue roses. An exotic, rare treat gone horribly wrong.
If there's a third-eye warging thing for Sansa, I'd say it's the snow. Which is, luckily, building up around her. She seems to see and hear things in the Vale.
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Oscar Wilde.
Is it possible that Ghost's call is the howl Arya hears in the Harrenhal godswood, that prompts her to claim her identity as a wolf and to be "done with wooden teeth?"
Looked into it, and I'm satisfied the answer to this is yes. In fact - it seems more than possible, to me. The chapter sequence works, without making it obvious. And the similar descriptive language in Jon and Arya's chapters is suggestive.
Remarkable that all three Stark kids - Bran, Jon, and Arya - take noticeable steps forward in their wolf-dreaming, coinciding with Jon's dream-howl in the Skirling Pass.
I wanted to say this for a long time, but kept getting distracted: that's an awesome catch!
27/10/299 ASOS Cat 1 Judged, news of Robb taking the Crag 27/10/299 COK Arya 10 News of WF discussed. News of Robb's marriage arrives 27/10/299 COK Jon 7 Milkwater. Contact Bran in the crypts 28/10/299 ASOS Arya 1 escaping Harrendal.
I don't know if he also made the connection between the two howls, or there was some other reason he has all those things happen on the same day, and it has to be taken with sizeable lumps of salt in any case, but still remarkable.
It is, no doubt, a crackpot. But still, one could make just as obvious a fundamental distinction between Bran's three-eyed crow, and the fact that no other skinchangers seem to have encountered it.
Well, yes, obviously. There are only two people known to have encountered the Crow (both in a life or death situation), both ended up in Bloodraven's cave. Only one of those two was a skinchanger, the other one just a boy with green dreams, prodding and guiding the skinchanger to where he was wanted for greenseer training.
"The only breath we smell is yours," said Cersei. There was a jar of some thick potion by her elbow, sitting on a table. She snatched it up and threw it into the old woman's eyes. In life the crone had screamed at them in some queer foreign tongue, and cursed them as they fled her tent. But in the dream her face dissolved, melting away into ribbons of grey mist until all that remained were two squinting yellow eyes, the eyes of death.
Hmm strange, according to Ned, the eyes of death are blue...
Hmm. I don't know. Now that you mention it a lot of those same attributes can be applied to the corn as well. With Bran's fall that corn may very well have turned sour for him as well. In addition the corn led Bran away from his family as well. All the way to the top of a tower alone so that he could feed the crows. Who's to say that the crows might not like lemon cakes even better?
This is what I was thinking... sorta. Both Sansa and Bran are lured away from the pack by little yellow edibles. Then, added to this, is bird stuff. Both Sansa and Bran are described as birdlike.
Maybe--both tempted to fly too far or high.
And now both are in the hands of plotters I don't trust.
We must not forget Arya. No obvious bird (or corn) references that I can recall, but she does end up in the clutches of the Faceless Men after getting separated from the 'pack'.
Dunno, Bran brings corn for the crows, lemon cakes are for Sansa herself. Seems a fundamental difference to me.
Good point. Bran is climbing because it's in his nature. The cakes are just a treat Sansa loves--and they get used to curry favor with her.
The part I'm not sure of is Baelish's Giant's Lance lemon cake (in Winds). Which is just weird. But it feels like a big fat temptation to make her feel like the whole dance is for her. But she makes the comment that it took all of the lemons he could get. Like he's using up his capital with her? Hmmm.
Though I would say Bran's climbing is less about courtly dreams. He also wants to be a knight. . . which might fit more with the "ambitions."
Definitely, and that's why I'm reluctant to take the parallel too far. For Sansa, her (apparent) nature, her dreams (the beautiful and pure maiden of songs), and what's expected from her as a highborn lady, seem to be fairly well aligned. Not so much for Bran - he wants to be the valiant knight of songs, but, as Jojen says: 'A knight is what you want. A warg is what you are.' Part of the reason he's so slow to get moving is that both his dreams (of knighthood) and his perceived duties (as the Stark in Winterfell) hold him back. Then there's Arya - she's not much of a dreamer, she can't seem to fit the expectations of her family, she fits in with the FM somewhat better, but ... she's not quite willing to give up her nature, I guess? She's also trapped, feeling that she has nowhere to go, should the FM send her away.