Greenseeing & warging
The television Three-Eyed Raven is a tidy figure with a clear job. The novels give you something older and less finished: skinchangers who wear beasts, greenseers who look through trees, and a boy learning both from a man half-grown into a weirwood. This is the lore, its rules, and its taboos.
Warging & skinchanging
The commonest surviving magic in the world, and the one with the strictest unwritten laws.
The craft
Skinchanging: wearing a second skin
A skinchanger slips their mind out of their own flesh and into a beast's, and for a while the two are one — the man sees through the animal's eyes, runs on the animal's legs, hungers with the animal's hunger. The bond runs both ways: the beast leaves its mark on the man as surely as the man rides the beast. A warg, in the strict free-folk usage, is a skinchanger bonded to a wolf; the word has since been stretched to cover the whole art.
- Dogs are easiest, then wolves; cats are wilful, birds forget they were ever anything but birds.
- The stronger the changer, the more skins they may hold — the greatest are said to have ruled a whole pack.
Sources:A Dance with Dragons — Prologue (Varamyr Sixskins)
The abominations
The rules no changer should break
The free folk who fear these gifts most have named the sins that come with them. To eat the flesh of men while wearing a beast is abomination. To take another human being's skin — to ride a man as one rides a hound — is the blackest abomination of all, a thing even hardened wildlings will kill you for. The powers are real; so, the songs insist, are the prices.
- Beasts are one thing, the tale holds; men are quite another, and the line is not to be crossed.
Sources:A Dance with Dragons — Prologue (Varamyr)
What waits at the end
The second life
When a skinchanger's body dies, the tales say, they need not die with it: they can pass wholly into their bonded beast and live a second life inside its hide. But it is no true escape. Most fade within the year; those who cling too long forget the man they were and dwindle into the animal, until nothing human is left looking out through the eyes. A mercy with a trap in it, like most gifts of the old powers.
Sources:A Dance with Dragons — Prologue (Varamyr)
Greenseers & the weirwood net
Rarer than the wargs, and bound up with the children of the forest and the old gods. Later cards sit past the shield.
Rarer than wargs
Greenseers and the green dreams
Rarer by far than the skinchangers are the greenseers, who dream things that have not yet happened and, waking, prove right too often for comfort. A greenseer is a skinchanger and more: where the warg wears one wolf, the greenseer can also open the red eyes of the weirwoods and see through them. Among the children of the forest such a one was reckoned a great lord — 'a thousand eyes and one,' the saying went.
Sources:A Dance with Dragons — Bran (Leaf & the greenseer)
The trees remember
The weirwood net
The old gods keep no septs and no scripture. They have the heart trees: white weirwoods with faces carved into their trunks, red sap weeping from the eyes, said to watch over every godswood in the North and beyond. A greenseer looking out through those eyes sees not one grove but the whole net of them, and not only the present hour but the deep past — the trees, it seems, forget nothing they have ever seen. It is the closest thing the old gods have to a memory, and to a voice.
Sources:A Dance with Dragons — Bran · A Game of Thrones — (the godswood of Winterfell)
Diese Gabelungen nennen Tode, Enden und Wege, die in den Büchern noch nicht beschritten sind. Enthülle sie nur, wenn dir beide Wege bekannt sind — oder wenn du dich nicht fürchtest zu wissen.
Diese Gabelungen nennen Tode, Enden und Wege, die in den Büchern noch nicht beschritten sind. Enthülle sie nur, wenn dir beide Wege bekannt sind — oder wenn du dich nicht fürchtest zu wissen.
Diese Gabelungen nennen Tode, Enden und Wege, die in den Büchern noch nicht beschritten sind. Enthülle sie nur, wenn dir beide Wege bekannt sind — oder wenn du dich nicht fürchtest zu wissen.
Book vs show
One word — raven or crow — marks a wider gap between page and screen.
A word worth getting right
Three-eyed raven, or three-eyed crow?
The television series calls the teacher the Three-Eyed Raven and folds the role, the powers, and the greenseer of the roots into a single tidy figure. The novels say crow, not raven — a three-eyed crow that speaks to a sleeping boy — and keep the dream-guide, the man in the tree, and the greensight as threads still being drawn together rather than one settled character. If you came for 'Three-Eyed Raven explained,' the book answer is quieter, stranger, and not yet finished.
Sources:A Game of Thrones — Bran (the three-eyed crow) · HBO's Game of Thrones (adaptation)
What is warging in Game of Thrones?
Warging is skinchanging into a wolf. More broadly, a skinchanger slips their mind into a beast and controls it, sharing its senses and instincts; 'warg' is the free-folk word for one bonded to a wolf, though fans use it for the whole art. The bond runs both ways — the beast marks the person as much as the person rides the beast.
What is the difference between a warg and a greenseer?
A warg (skinchanger) enters the skins of animals. A greenseer can do that too, but is far rarer and also sees through the red eyes of the weirwoods — perceiving distant places, and the deep past, through the trees. Every greenseer is a skinchanger; not every skinchanger is a greenseer.
Is the Three-Eyed Raven in the books?
Not by that name. The novels call the dream-guide the 'three-eyed crow,' and keep it distinct from the last greenseer in the tree, rather than merging them into one settled character as the show does. If you searched for 'Three-Eyed Raven explained,' the book answer is quieter, stranger, and still unfolding.
Who is the last greenseer?
The last greenseer of the age is the one-eyed man enthroned in weirwood roots beyond the Wall — once a great lord and spymaster of dragon blood, now grown half into the tree, a 'thousand eyes and one.' He takes on a young student and begins teaching what the weirwoods can do. This is spoiler territory for the later books.