The Others Are Not The True Enemy

When we see black and white, the black Ironwood and white weirwood together, that symbolizes the true gods. White contains all the colors and black is the absence of color. The places we have seen that is in The House of Black and White, The House of The Undying and surprisingly the Tobho Mott, the man who works with Varys to find a smithing job for Gendry. Most chilling is the fact that they reverse Weirwood faces on Ironwood symbolizing conflict between Men and Others.

It was The House of The Undying where they tried to steal Dany’s dragons, beings of fire to fight against the coming cold. The Faceless Men are attempting to steal Death of Dragons. Dragons is plural. It may be a book on all the types of dragons fire, ice and sea.

They want the book so men don’t know how to fight back against the Ice Dragon… not because they want to kill them. But there is a very small man who just read one of the last remaining copies in the library of Winterfell before it burned (note: perhaps Littlefinger whose family is from Braavos, may have manipulated Joffrey allow him to burn the library the important Long Night fighting books in it).

The House of the Undying Ones had seemed to have no towers. Finally the stair opened. To her right, a set of wide wooden doors had been thrown open. They were fashioned of ebony and weirwood, the black and white grains swirling and twisting in strange interwoven patterns. They were very beautiful, yet somehow frightening.

-A Clash of Kings – Daenerys IV

The House of Black and White

They wore their robes of black and white, but as they took their seats each man pulled his cowl down to show the face he had chosen to wear that day.Their tall chairs were carved of ebony and weirwood, like the doors of the temple above. The ebon chairs had weirwood faces on their backs, the weirwood chairs faces of carved ebony.

-A Feast for Crows – Arya

The left-hand door was made of weirwood pale as bone, the right of gleaming ebony. In their center was a carved moon face; ebony on the weirwood side, weirwood on the ebony. The look of it reminded her somehow of the heart tree in the godswood at Winterfell. The doors are watching me, she thought.

Ned’s POV in Tobho Mott shop:

The double doors showed a hunting scene carved in ebony and weirwood. A pair of stone knights stood sentry

Ironwood may also be subtly described as black oak and other names.

I wonder what that means for Varys if he is associated with The Gods, that are the true enemy.

Those gods are jealous and scared of men for coming close to stealing Gods monopoly on godhood, so they create conflict Between Men and Others.

Quaithe tries to get Dany away from The Trees:

No. You are the blood of the dragon. The whispering was growing fainter, as if Ser Jorah were falling farther behind. Dragons plant no trees. Remember that. Remember who you are, what you were made to be. Remember your words. “Fire and Blood,” Daenerys told the swaying grass.

But Dany may have already made her choice. She sits on a black ironwood throne:

Instead she sat upon a simple ebony bench. It served, though she had heard the Meereenese muttering that it did not befit a queen. And

Dany shifted uncomfortably on the ebony bench. She dreaded what must come next. – A Storm of Swords – Daenerys VI

Jorah was also always trying to pressure Dany to go to Asshai, which like Braavos grows no trees and is the land of the enemy gods.

Other searchers returned with tales of other fruit trees, hidden behind closed doors in secret gardens. Aggo showed her a courtyard overgrown with twisting vines and tiny green grapes, and Jhogo discovered a well where the water was pure and cold. Yet they found bones too, the skulls of the unburied dead, bleached and broken.

“Ghosts,” Irri muttered. “Terrible ghosts. We must not stay here, Khaleesi, this is their place.”

“I fear no ghosts. Dragons are more powerful than ghosts.” And figs are more important. “Go with Jhiqui and find me some clean sand for a bath, and trouble me no more with silly talk.”

“I’ve brought you a peach,” Ser Jorah said, kneeling. It was so small she could almost hide it in her palm, and overripe too, but when she took the first bite, the flesh was so sweet she almost cried. She ate it slowly, savoring every mouthful, while Ser Jorah told her of the tree it had been plucked from, in a garden near the western wall.

“Fruit and water and shade,” Dany said, her cheeks sticky with peach juice. “The gods were good to bring us to this place.”

The Western Wall is a religious allusion of where that peach is from; the Garden of Edenos. And that village had everyone slaughtered, bones and remains everywhere. Not a good sign.

Stannis saw, and reached at once for the hilt of his sword, but before he could draw steel his brother produced. . . a peach.

“Would you like one, brother?” Renly asked, smiling. “From Highgarden. You’ve never tasted anything so sweet, I promise you.” He took a bite. Juice ran from the corner of his mouth.

“I did not come here to eat fruit.” Stannis was fuming.

“A man should never refuse to taste a peach,” Renly said as he tossed the stone away. “He may never get the chance again. Life is short, Stannis. Remember what the Starks say. Winter is coming.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

The peach and weirwood paste represent eating from the the fruit of the the two trees in the Garden of Edenos, the tree of eternal life and the tree of knowledge.

There were two trees that were forbidden trees. “You can eat the fruit of any tree in the place but not of this or of that one.” Tree number one was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of duality. Tree number two was the tree of the knowledge of eternal life.

…God kicked them out of the Garden and put at the gate two door guardians, with a flaming sword between them. And that’s the explanation of why we’re out here in the cold and not in the Garden. Christianity and Judaism are religions of exile: Man was thrown out of the Garden.”

“The tree of knowledge of good and evil [The white Weirwood] is the tree going down into multiplicity, and the tree of eternal life [The white Ironwood] is that of going from multiplicity to unity. It’s the same tree in two directions.”

– Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

God exiled man from the Garden of Eden after we ate from the Tree of Knowlege. If we ate from both the Tree of Knowledge as well as the Tree of Eternal Life then we would become gods ourselves.

Remember from The Garden of Edenos post, that the Gardner Kings of Highgarden are GRRM’s play on The Garden, complete with a magical tree and branch throne.

The next place Jorah and Dany went to was Qarth, and home of the House of The Undying with an entire grove of Ironwood trees. Where Daenerys drank shade of the evening representing the fruit of the Ironwood tree. She has eaten of both trees.

Daenerys has become a goddess. She is no longer mortal in the commonly held view of the word.

That is not good. That is not good at all.

Daenerys will sound the Hammerhorn of The Waters which is the Horn of Joramun. Euron’s horn ushers in the Long Night. No mortal man can sound it and she is no longer mortal.

Hornblowers blow horns, the bigger problem for humanity is the maestro behind the curtain. The god Hodor.

Of course not Hodor the kind giant, Hodor is the name of the Norse God of Darkness (Night’s King) and Winter (the name of the massive ice dragon).

Winter is flying.