The TV show Game of Thrones and the book series A Song of Ice and Fire
Cross post of theory about Ghost, Jon, and the Gods of the Trees. Deus Ex Lupo: A Ghost Among the Trees
As I discussed in part one of this series, Deus Ex Lupo, Jon and Ghost have an extremely deep connection that goes beyond the normal warg-animal relationship. Ghost seems to be able to reach out to and warg Jon on his own, something unseen even among his packmates. Also Ghost displays intelligence and accurate assessments of human situations far beyond any other animal we've seen. What lurks behind those red eyes that sets the white wolf apart from all others? The best place to look is in inside Ghost’s mind. While Ghost is not a point of view character, George has written two instances of Jon having wolf dreams, pulling back the curtain on the direwolf’s mind.
A wolf dream is what happens when a warg falls asleep. They often spend their nights not dreaming in their own mind, but instead reaching out to their animals and riding along as a psychic passenger. Jon does this often, but we’ve only been privy to specific dreams twice. Setting up the first dream, Jon and Qhorin Halfhand are high up in the Frost Fangs in the Skirling Pass beyond the Wall trying to find Mance Rayder and the elusive wildling army after Jon let Ygritte escape.
First Wolf Dream
When he closed his eyes, he dreamed of direwolves.
There were five of them when there should have been six, and they were scattered, each apart from the others. He felt a deep ache of emptiness, a sense of incompleteness. The forest was vast and cold, and they were so small, so lost. His brothers were out there somewhere, and his sister, but he had lost their scent. He sat on his haunches and lifted his head to the darkening sky, and his cry echoed through the forest, a long lonely mournful sound. As it died away, he pricked up his ears, listening for an answer, but the only sound was the sigh of blowing snow.
Jon?
The call came from behind him, softer than a whisper, but strong too. Can a shout be silent? He turned his head, searching for his brother, for a glimpse of a lean grey shape moving beneath the trees, but there was nothing only . . . A weirwood.
It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from the myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother's face. Had his brother always had three eyes?
Not always, came a silent shout. Not before the crow.
He sniffed at the bark, smelled wolf and tree and boy, but behind that there were other scents, the rich brown smell of warm earth and the hard grey smell of stone and something else, something terrible. Death, he knew. He was smelling death. He cringed back, his hair bristling, and bared his fangs.
Don't be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them. But first you have to open your eyes. See? Like this. And the tree reached down and touched him.
And suddenly he was back in the mountains, his paws sunk deep in a drift of snow as he stood upon the edge of a great precipice. Before him the Skirling Pass opened up into airy emptiness, and a long vee-shaped valley lay spread beneath him like a quilt, awash in all the colors of an autumn afternoon.
A vast blue-white wall plugged one end of the vale, squeezing between the mountains as if it had shouldered them aside, and for a moment he thought he had dreamed himself back to Castle Black….There were men down in the valley, he saw now; many men, thousands, a huge host. Some were tearing great holes in the half-frozen ground, while others trained for war….Everywhere crude earthen shelters and hide tents sprouted haphazardly, like a pox on the face of the earth….
This is no army, no more than it is a town. This is a whole people come together. - ACOK Jon VII
Dreaming or Dreamer?
At first blush, the dream appears to be Jon sharing Ghost's mind as he walks through a forest. But that's odd; neither Ghost nor Jon are in a forest. The Frost Fangs are giant spires of ice, rock, and snow devoid of plant life. And right before Jon falls asleep, he sees Ghost padding off into the treeless, frozen cliffs.
Perhaps instead this is just a dream of Jon's alone where he is pretending to be Ghost. The scene has changed, Ghost is howling (which Ghost has never done before in earshot of Jon), and it seems disconnected from reality, almost fantastical. However there are a few hints that anchor this away from Jon being the dreamer.
First, there's the line “There were five of them when there should have been six, and they were scattered, each apart from the others.” At the time of this dream, only Sansa's direwolf Lady has died. In the grand tradition of Jon Snow, another thing he doesn't know. He left for Castle Black before the Starks made their way to King's Landing and Lady was killed by Lord Stark. When Lord Commander Mormont is telling Jon about Ned's arrest, Jon asks about Sansa and Arya and here is the Lord Commander's reply,
"My lord, what of my sisters? Arya and Sansa, they were with my father, do you know—"
"Pycelle makes no mention of them, but doubtless they'll be treated gently. I will ask about them when I write." Mormont shook his head. - AGOT Jon VII
And again after Ned's execution later in the book, Jon inquires further about the fate of his sisters.
Pain shot through his burned fingers. "What of my sisters?"
"The message made no mention of Lord Eddard or the girls." He gave an irritated shrug.
"Perhaps they never got my letter. Aemon sent two copies, with his best birds, but who can say? More like, Pycelle did not deign to reply. It would not be the first time, nor the last. I fear we count for less than nothing in King's Landing. They tell us what they want us to know, and that's little enough." - AGOT Jon VIII
Up until this dream in ACOK, Jon makes no mention of knowing what has happened to Arya, Sansa, or their direwolves. And yet, in this dream, only one direwolf is correctly noted as being dead. There's little reason for Jon, who has had no news about either of his sisters, to assume one or both wolves are dead. This information being correct is very odd, it's reminiscent of Rickon and Bran knowing Ned has been killed even before the ravens arrive.
The Sapling in the Forest
But it could be a lucky guess, or Jon using his imagination right? The following quote, though, puts the nail in the coffin of Jon being the dreamer.
A weirwood.
It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from the myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother's face. Had his brother always had three eyes?
Not always, came a silent shout. Not before the crow. - ACOK Jon VII
Bran, as a weirwood tree, grows into the scene from inside a rock and contact Ghost and then talks directly with Jon. Bran later confirms that this dream-like connection did actually happen in an internal monologue, it wasn't made up in Ghost's or Jon's minds.
Here in the chill damp darkness of the tomb his third eye had finally opened. He could reach Summer whenever he wanted, and once he had even touched Ghost and talked to Jon. - ACOK Bran VII
This vision of tree Bran is growing from a rock, mirroring Bran's growth as a greenseer. A new weirwood sapling growing into the larger, ageless forest from a solid rock, or a new greenseer entering the weirwood collective from deep under Winterfell. So where is this supposed forest then? Based on Bran's form, it seems likely the forest exists as a visual representation of the great network of weirwoods being interpreted by Ghost. Each tree, each greenseer, each Child of the Forest making up one tree (Like a living Hall of Faces) in the ancient, endless forest that Ghost is walking through, trying to find his siblings making Ghost a greenseer himself.
What is happening in the first dream is that Ghost is trying to find his packmates with whom he has enjoyed a seemingly constant mental connection with. After so long beyond the Wall with no contact, Ghost has begun experimenting with his other abilities, greensight and greendreams, in order to find them. He walks through the forest of the dreamers, seeing if he can catch the scent of home and his family not realizing, truly, what a massive accomplishment this is for non-humanoid.
The Pack Survives
Why is Ghost doing this at all? We see in the second wolf dream in A Dance With Dragons that Ghost can, seemingly at will, see into the minds of all of his siblings like their humans do.
Far off, he could hear his packmates calling to him, like to like. They were hunting too. A wild rain lashed down upon his black brother as he tore at the flesh of an enormous goat, washing the blood from his side where the goat's long horn had raked him. In another place, his little sister lifted her head to sing to the moon, and a hundred small grey cousins broke off their hunt to sing with her. The hills were warmer where they were, and full of food. Many a night his sister's pack gorged on the flesh of sheep and cows and horses, the prey of men, and sometimes even on the flesh of man himself. - ADWD Jon I
There's no evidence of green sight here, it looks exactly like the warging we see from the Stark children. So what is the difference? Where Ghost and Jon physically are at the time of the first wolf dream is the key here. Up in the Frost Fangs, the Wall is in between Ghost and all of his living packmates. As we’ll see later in the second wolf dream, this is actually a problem and the Wall seemingly blocks warging. EdIt: As /u/kienn12 found, at least Summer has shown an ability to find the other Direwolves as well in a limited way from ASOS Bran I,
He had a pack as well, once. Five they had been, and a sixth who stood aside. Somewhere down inside him were the sounds the men had given them to tell one from the other, but it was not by their sounds he knew them. He remembered their scents, his brothers and his sisters. They all had smelled alike, had smelled of pack, but each was different too.
His angry brother with the hot green eyes was near, the prince felt, though he had not seen him for many hunts. Yet with every sun that set he grew more distant, and he had been the last. The others were far scattered, like leaves blown by the wild wind.
Sometimes he could sense them, though, as if they were still with him, only hidden from his sight by a boulder or a stand of trees. He could not smell them, nor hear their howls by night, yet he felt their presence at his back . . . all but the sister they had lost. His tail drooped when he remembered her. Four now, not five. Four and one more, the white who has no voice.
This is earlier than Ghost's ADWD warging display, so it's possible they have all progressed in their abilities in time. That being said, Summer's warging is much more limited in detail. Summer knows Shaggydog is nearby, but isn't seeing through his eyes or feeling what he feels like Ghost does later. The same for the others.
four remained … and one the white wolf could no longer sense.
"Snow," the moon insisted.
The white wolf ran from it, racing toward the cave of night where the sun had hidden, his breath frosting in the air. On starless nights the great cliff was as black as stone, a darkness towering high above the wide world, but when the moon came out it shimmered pale and icy as a frozen stream. The wolf's pelt was thick and shaggy, but when the wind blew along the ice no fur could keep the chill out. On the other side the wind was colder still, the wolf sensed. That was where his brother was, the grey brother who smelled of summer. - ADWD Jon I
In this second dream, again the location of the direwolves is important. Ghost, Nymeria, and Shaggydog are South of the Wall meanwhile Summer is North of the Wall. And Ghost's attempts at warging confirms this. He sees Nymeria leading her Chekov's wolf army howling at the moon. He also sees Shaggydog after killing a goat and sustaining an injury. Summer though, with the Wall between them, is cut off from Ghost. He makes an educated guess, taking into account his previous experiences beyond the Wall, and correctly pinpoints Summer as being beyond the Wall. Ghost has learned how the Wall's magical barriers work, what the limitations of his warging and greensight are, and makes an advanced logical conclusion based on them. The more I have read passages with Ghost in them, the more he seems like a human running around inside a wolf's body.
The red eyes of the weirwood
The rest of the dream is fairly straightforward, Bran opens Jon's third eye and we see where Ghost actually is during these dreams. He was overlooking Mance's wildling army from a cliff (not in a forest). There is another hint, however, to Ghost's odd connection with the weirwoods and other green dreamers, his albino coloring.
George points out several times from Jon's perspective what the direwolf resembles the most, the weirwoods themselves.
And suddenly Ghost was back, stalking softly between two weirwoods. White fur and red eyes, Jon realized, disquieted. Like the trees… - AGOT Jon IV
In the deepening glow their eyes looked black, but in daylight they would be blood-red, Jon knew. Eyes like Ghost's. - ADWD Jon VII
An odd coincidence for sure, but it stops being a coincidence when you remember the only other two albinos in the entirety of ASOIAF, Brynden Rivers (the Bloodraven) and the Ghost of High Heart. Brynden Rivers himself provides an explanation while speaking with Bran about this physical relationship between eye color and the ability to see into the great weirwood forest,
In a sense. Those you call the children of the forest have eyes as golden as the sun, but once in a great while one is born amongst them with eyes as red as blood, or green as the moss on a tree in the heart of the forest. By these signs do the gods mark those they have chosen to receive the gift. - ADWD Bran III
Brynden is an albino with his red eyes and pale white skin and hair. The other confirmed albino in the story is actually the Ghost of Highheart, the small woman who heavily resembles the children of the forest and has astounding and highly accurate prophetic dreams. A third possibile albino, but not confirmed, comes from /u/yolkboy of Radio Westeros fame and his Melony Seastar theory, where he argues that Mellisandre is an albino as well who dyes or glamours her hair a deep crimson red. Whether or not you believe his take on Mel's albinism, the other two are certainly confirmed to have extremely strong connections with the weirwoods, the Children, and greensight. High Heart itself is actually an ancient ring of chopped down Weirwoods, a destroyed holy place for the Children. Ghost falls in line neatly with the others confirming the information Brynden imparts on Bran.
Impact on the larger story
A final question about the greenseer abilities of Ghost, what is this significance of this ability for the overall story? In a broad sense, it means that as long as Ghost is by Jon's side, other greenseers have an indirect way of contacting or leading Jon's attention to or away from things. And as Bran demonstrates, if Jon is asleep and dreaming with Ghost you can talk to Jon's mind even if the Wall is in between you. It also explains why Ghost sometimes knows so much about situations, or has knowledge that it doesn't seem that even Jon has. A fellow greenseer could implant knowledge or intention in the wolf and have it carried out sometimes. I say sometimes because Ghost actually gets annoyed when he's been contacted by someone other than Jon or his pack. Seen here in the second wolf dream I referenced earlier,
The white wolf ran from it, racing toward the cave of night where the sun had hidden, his breath frosting in the air. On starless nights the great cliff was as black as stone, a darkness towering high above the wide world, but when the moon came out it shimmered pale and icy as a frozen stream. The wolf's pelt was thick and shaggy, but when the wind blew along the ice no fur could keep the chill out. On the other side the wind was colder still, the wolf sensed. That was where his brother was, the grey brother who smelled of summer.
"Snow." An icicle tumbled from a branch. The white wolf turned and bared his teeth
Interrupt his nightly hunts or his play time with Jon, and Ghost gets very aggravated. There may be greenseers like Bloodraven reaching out constantly to Ghost, trying to check up on him or Jon among other reasons, and he seems to be showing aggression and annoyance at it. They could often be sending him dreams, like happens with Bran and Jojen, and exploiting this connection to see South of the Wall and Castle Black. The other greenseers could even be implanting dreams and thoughts in Ghost's mind to influence the wolf into doing things for them.
But why is Ghost like this? Why are there no other animals running around in the greendreams as far as we know? And how did Ghost and his packmates even end up South of the Wall? I'll be attempting to answer those questions in the final part of this essay series.
TL:DR Ghost is not just a warg, he's also a greenseer making him a unique and powerful animal in Westeros. Jon's wolf dreams bear this out that Ghost uses green dreams/green sight unwittingly to try and contact his packmates. His ability to contact other green seers and use the weirwoods makes all of his adventures with Jon potentially monitored or influenced by the COTF/BR, changing how we should perceive those events.
Sorry in advance if this is too book heavy or long winded for Imzy, trying out posting my theories here as well. Dipping my toes in the water so to speak.




Fascinating theory.
On the show we still don't know if Jon and Ghost can warg right?
For the books this has great potential for coordination between Bran, Ghost, and Jon in the wars to come.
Yeah, they've been downplaying that a lot. I'm not sure if we'll see it happen. Imagine it'll be a big shocking moment if they do. There have been indications though. Robb and Grey Wind had some scenes, like the one with Jaime, where you can see them acting together. However how much they've been mowing down the direwolves in the most recent episodes makes me think they're gonna skip most of this content. Which is a bummer but understandable. Filming warging and wolf dreams is almost impossible, and the wolves are expensive to animate.
As for the books, I think it'll be used the most to reveal R+L=J. If Jon wargs into Ghost on his death, Ghost may show him things in the weirwoods. Or Bran may do it. Personally I want a scene of an avatar of Jon walking through the weirwood "forest" discovering all this with Ghost guiding him, finally making noise. Coordination of forces and possibly speaking with the Others too are things I'd expect to happen.
I like the theory that this is how the books will reveal R+L=J. Great thought!
And I hope Ghost and Nymeria are around for a while. The way the show just killed off two direwolves seems like such a waste of their potential in the narrative.
Ghost was the runt of the litter, right? GRRM seems to like tints becoming special.
Good point about Robb and Grey Wind. I do hope the show surprises us an uses the remaining direwolves and or Jon's ability to warg in an unexpected way.