Toward the end of Episode 801, Winterfell, the fate of Lord Umber is revealed. The army of the Night King has killed him. His body is nailed to the wall. He is at the center of a spiral formed by severed limbs. He awakens as a wight only to be incinerated by Beric Dondarrion, who mentions that the spiral is a message from the Night King.
Throughout the series, viewers have seen several scenes in which spirals or circular shapes composed of mutilated body parts are left by the White Walkers. I am not going to be detailing all of them since there are several articles online already doing that. However, there are two things to consider at this time:
- These spirals or swirls predate the Night Walkers. Episode 605, The Door, reveals that they are, in fact, associated with the Children of the Forest. Places with those spirals are ritualistic and, in the world of Westeros, probably filled with magic. No wonder, the Children of the Forest, created the first White Walker, the Night King, at this location. Probably, it is not just the dragon glass but also the location what made the creation of the Night King possible.
- Fans have noticed the resemblance of these spirals with the sigil of House Targaryen, especially the burning spiral with the body of Lord Umber. However, the Children of the Forest predate the dragon lords of Valyria. It is possible to find cultural similarities between different populations. What matters in this particular case is that magic is also required to give rise to dragons.
In regards to the first point, the Night King was tied to a weirwood tree. The scene is puzzling because viewers first see him as a sacrificial victim, but there is no sign of him dying but becoming a White Walker instead. In the books, Bran has a particular vision in which somebody is being sacrificed to the weirwood tree in Winterfell (or at the tree):
Then, as he watched, a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaved, a bronze sickle in her hand.
“No,” said Bran, “no, don’t,” but they could not hear him, no more than his father had. The woman grabbed the captive by the hair, hooked the sickle around his throat, and slashed. And through the mist of centuries the broken boy could only watch as the man’s feet drummed against the earth . . . but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood.
This passage from A Dance with Dragons reflects a sacrifice or an execution. What matters is the similarity of the ritual (at the weirwood tree). Was the Night King captured by the Children of the Forest? Or, did somebody exchange him for something else (somebody of the First Men)? Of course, the first notion seems to be the case, but it does not explain why the Night King wants to attack not only his creators but humankind.
In Episode 508, Hardhome, Daenerys mentions to Tyrion that the other houses are spokes on a wheel, and that she will not just stop the wheel but break it. This notion of the wheel might be correlated with the spirals. So far, no matter who is in power in the Seven Kingdoms, things will always be the same. The common people do not benefit at all. However, it looks like the White Walkers might put an end to this cycle by actually “breaking the wheel” in a different way. Of course, their concern is not politics but something else, which is hard to define at this stage.
I decided to read more about spirals for this post. Here are some fascinating details I found. https://thespiritofwater.com/pages/sacred-symbol-uses
Reflected in the natural world, the spiral is found in human physiology, plants, minerals, animals, energy patterns, weather, growth and death.
There are some interesting words in the passage. It could be that the spiral is a magical tool used to cause winter storms and bring extreme cold weather to new places. In regards to the relationship between spirals and death, I found the following article (which is about spirals in art, and Mance Rayder did say once that White Walkers are like artists): http://www.hundertwasser.at/english/oeuvre/malerei/malerei_diespirale.php
This spiral lies at that very point where inanimate matter is transformed into life.
Based on this information, it seems that spirals are used by the White Walkers to reanimate the dead. Probably, Beric Dondarrion is wrong. The spirals may not be a message from the Night King. They seem to be just tools to create wights and bring winter. The article emphasizes the main difference between the spiral and the wheel. The spiral is not fully closed, which means that events might be repeated over and over but with some changes happening. Therefore, an event in the present may be similar but not equal to one in the past or future (which means that Bran will have a hard time figuring out how to beat the Night King).
If spirals are something that interests you, I suggest reading the following link which has different theories about them in Game of Thrones. The article mentions that the Starks are the last descendants of the First Men. That is not the case. Most houses in the North and the Wildlings beyond the Wall are First Men. https://www.ranker.com/list/what-do-spirals-mean-in-game-of-thrones/rebecca-shortall?fbclid=IwAR0NNBCi3sxMheR_0YUADAu6X4DdpIap4SFOmq5V3seCPevyxUGVylyptEs
Thanks for reading!