‘Game of Thrones’: What Do The White Walkers’ Symbols Mean?

The most haunting moment in the Game of Thrones Season 8 premiere happens close to the end. Tormund, Lord Beric Dondarrian, and the Night’s Watch collide in the Last Hearth, where they discover that young Ned Umber has been murdered by the White Walkers. The boy’s corpse is the only body left behind, and it is mounted on the wall in the center of a spiral design formed by amputated body parts. Soon, Ned Umber’s body jolts to life and attacks Tormund, which forces Lord Beric Dondarrian to smite the wight with his flaming sword. What happens next is equal parts beautiful and horrifying.

As the fire rips through the dead boy’s body, it lights up the connected corpse bits, revealing a spectacular spiral pattern that we’ve seen before. In fact, we’ve seen it many times. It’s the White Walkers’ preferred mode of “communication”: arranging corpses in the same way the Children of the Forest arranged stones around a Heart Tree.

It would seem that these circular and spiral patterns that the White Walkers are so fond of have an important meaning. So…what is it? Where have we seen it before? And what could it mean for the future of Game of Thrones?

What Are The White Walkers’ Symbols? And When Have We Seen Them Before?

The very first time we encountered the White Walkers’ mysterious circular symbols was in the first sequence of the Game of Thrones premiere, “Winter is Coming.” Three rangers of the Night’s Watch ride north of the Wall and discover that a group of Wildings have been brutally murdered, and their bodies arranged in a mysterious circular pattern with a slash through it. One of the party believes it’s a sign of something sinister, but it’s shrugged off…until the dead rise.

The next time the show makes a point to show us a magical, mystical, circular pattern is in the Game of Thrones Season 1 finale, “Fire and Blood.” Far from the frigid wastes of the North, Daenerys Targaryen has come upon the idea to burn Khal Drogo’s dead body along with the witch Mirri Maz Dur, her dragon eggs, and herself. Daenerys emerges from the ashes the next day, naked and reborn as the Mother of Dragons.

The next time the show goes out of its way to show us a pattern connected with the White Walkers is in Season 3, Episode 3, “Walk of Punishment.” Jon is hanging out with the Wildlings and they find a grisly spiral design made of the chopped up remains of — yikes — dead horses. Mance Raydar comments, “Always the artists,” which many have taken to mean that the illustrious Ranger-turned-Wildling leader has seen symbols like these before.

In Season 6, Episode 5 “The Door,” Bran Stark discovers the truth about the White Walkers. He flashes back in time to when the Children of the Forest created the Night King by plunging a dragonglass dagger into the heart of a man. We see that this is happening in the middle of a spiral of henge-like stones all encompassing a Weirwood tree. The stone symbol looks like what the White Walkers created with horse heads and limbs in Season 3.

Later in that same episode, Bran touches the roots of the Heart Tree without the aid of the Three-Eyed Raven and travels to a snowy version of this scene, where the Night King has assembled his army. This is the moment that the Night King sees Bran, brands him, and all hell breaks loose.

Elsewhere in Game of Thrones, we’ve seen a circular stone pattern, like a henge, in the North surrounding the executioner’s block where Ned Stark took that Ranger’s life in the premiere, and that same set up echoed in ice north of the wall where the White Walker takes Craster’s infant sons to give them “eternal life” as White Walkers.

It’s also perhaps worth noting that the House of the Undying in Qarth from the Season 2 finale is set up as a mysterious circular tower with spokes, and that the entrance features henge-like stones, as well. Circles within circles, that look like wheels…

What Do These Circular and Spiral Patterns in Game of Thrones Mean?

We’re not sure…but we do know where they came from.

In Game of Thrones Season 7, Episode 4, “The Spoils of War,” Jon Snow leads Daenerys Targaryen into the caves of Dragonstone. Not only does he show her the vast cache of dragonglass located right under her palace, but he also shows her some dazzling cave paintings. These images include various esoteric symbols, many of which look just like the circular and spiracle patterns the White Walkers have been leaving behind.

Jon uses the moment to impress upon Daenerys that the Children of the Forest and mankind once put aside their differences to battle the White Walkers. In HBO’s official post-episode featurette, showrunner David Benioff explains that this scene is also supposed to confirm that the White Walkers stole these patterns from the Children of the Forest.

So we still don’t have a Rosetta Stone-like translation for the meaning of these patterns, but it seems highly important that they originated with the Children of the Forest and they are being repeated, with more frequency, by the White Walkers. (But it is INTERESTING that Daenerys’s pyre for Khal Drogo shares a similar motif, eh?)

What Does This Have to Do With the Game of Thrones End Game?

Clearly something. After all, in Bran’s vision of the past, he sees that the Children of the Forest created the White Walkers by plunging a dragonglass dagger into the heart of a First Man tied to the center of the spiral pattern. The same motif shows up again in Season 3 with the horse corpses, and now Ned Umber has been left at the center of one. Could the spiral symbol first seen at the White Walkers’ beginning be a harbinger of humanity’s end? Or does it mean something else?

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Way back in the Season Four finale, “The Children,” Bran Stark, Meera Reed, and Hodor meet the Children of the Forest and the Three-Eyed Raven. One of the Children explains that — at this point — “[The wights and White Walkers] cannot follow us [past the threshold of the Three-Eyed Raven’s Weirwood cave]. The power that moves them is powerless here.” Of course, that changes when Bran lets the Night King touch him in Season 6. So it’s possible that there is some sort of great ancient power at the center of these spirals…which coincidentally was originally a Weirwood/Heart Tree.

Heart Trees are significant in Game of Thrones. There is one at Winterfell, a few beyond the Wall, and not many elsewhere. They are tied to the Old Gods, and the Children of the Forest explain to Bran that they created the White Walkers to defend themselves from men who were cutting down their sacred trees.

All this suggests that the Heart Tree in Winterfell may be even more important than we ever thought in the war ahead. The symbols have an ancient magical meaning — and probably profound magical power. I want to add that Jon translates the story on the cave walls as being about how the Children of Men teamed up with their enemies, the First Men, to defeat the White Walkers. But is that the whole story?  Jon Snow doesn’t strike me as much of a scholar of antiquity as some other characters on the show. Unlike Samwell Tarly, who wanted to be excused for stealing special tomes from the Citadel in the Season 8 premiere. Wonder if any of those books will help us decode the secret symbols before the Game of Thrones finale…

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