The ghost-tree of Enir Ilim and why Marika needed the Hornsent
Summary
This post will provide evidence for the following claims:
- There's a giant, invisible ghost-tree at Enir Ilim
- Enir Ilim is the "brace" of the giant, invisible ghost-tree.
- Enir Ilim is a nursery for the ghost-tree's seedlings.
- The purpose of the jarring ritual is to produce the vast amounts of spirit-ash needed to grow hundreds of seedlings.
- Marika allowed the jarring ritual to continue because her golden bough had no roots and grafting was the only way she could propagate the Erdtree.
- Most Minor Erdtrees are genetic clones or 'shadows' of the Erdtree.
- The Scadutree is what happens when a graft of the Erdtree starts growing rootstock suckers.
- Marika = Radagon because the Erdtree is actually two trees grafted together.
- The Erdtree is a 'shadow' of the Erdtree.
- The Hornsent "invisible-manned" their giant, invisible ghost-tree.
Please note how the rays of light coming down looks like the rays of light from the Erdtree.
Invisible trees
One fact which doesn't get enough attention is that the Erdtree is almost entirely invisible.
To anyone not blessed by the Guidance of Grace the only part that's visible is the entrance to the Erdtree, which looks strikingly similar to both the entrance to the Nightlord's arena in Nightreign and to the Gate of Divinity.
Note the tree-like appearance of the door.
The Erdtree might currently be invisible but this wasn't always the case. The Blessed Dew Talisman's item description reads:
"It was once thought that the blessed sap of the Erdtree would drip from its boughs forever- but that age of plenty swiftly came to a close, and with time, the Erdtree became more an object of faith."
It seems that trees like the Erdtree start out as physical objects and become 'objects of faith' over time.
How trees become invisible
The Erdtree and the various ghostly trees we encounter throughout the game aren't the only thing which starts out physical and turns into spirits over time: the Spiritgrave Stone's item description states:
"In places to where the dead have been brought since antiquity, the oldest gravestones turn into spirits and then fade away."
Since both gravestones and the Erdtree have dead bodies buried beneath them, this suggest that that the bodies are linked to why gravestones and trees like the Erdtree turn into spirits.
Note: In one of my earliest posts (Spiritsprings) I mentioned that spiritsprings (which, until the Tarnished unblocks them, have ghostly stone cairns stacked on top of them) might also mark the location of dead bodies and that the unknown, upwards-moving force of the spiritsprings is clearly spiritual in nature.
Perhaps the force that powers spiritsprings and the force that turns gravestones and Erdtrees into spirits are the same.
Stone cairns used to mark the remains of the deceased.
This leads me to believe that trees like the Erdtree are destined to eventually turn in spirits and 'fade away'.
The brace of an invisible tree
If that's true, this means the Haligtree, too, will eventually 'fade away'.
Imagine how these buildings and and walkways would look if the Haligtree was invisible.
If the Haligtree fades away I believe that the structures built on its trunks and branches would look very much like the spiralling, gravity-defying architecture of Enir Ilim.
I think the first image to this post shows is painting of the ghost-tree that Enir Ilim was built around, complete with pale rays of light much like the light radiating from the Erdtree. Enir Ilim is the 'Brace' for this ghost-tree.
The Hornsent can see the ghost-tree
The description of the Spira incantation suggests that at least some Hornsent can perceive spiritual, invisible things such as the ghost-tree.
The glowing spiral which the incantation summons is described as a "normalized" Crucible Current, which implies that:
- Crucible Currents are usually NOT normalized ('normal', in this case meaning 'mundane', as compared to being 'abnormal' or 'spiritual'); and
- the Hornsent can perceive and manipulate Crucible Currents before they have been 'normalized'.
Just like how only a select few can see the Erdtree, I believe that Hornsent Inquisitors and Sages can see their ghost-tree. To anyone else, the only visible part of the ghost-tree is its entrance: the Gate of Divinity.
The dead bodies strapped onto it will be relevant much later in this post.
The spirit-tree nursery
The existence of a ghost-tree at Enir Ilim re-contextualizes everything about it.
- The Hornsent aren't just hanging around a floating tower: they're worshiping their ghost-tree.
- The strange-looking trees throughout Enir Ilim aren't just decorative topiary: they're the seedling from their ghost-tree grown by the Hornsent.
- The Hornsent Inquisitors and Sages aren't just 'praying' to their strange-looking trees; they're using spiral incantations like Spiral to channel Crucible Currents into their holy seedlings to encourage them to grow faster.
Enir Ilim is a gods-damned spirit-tree nursery and the Hornsent have grown hundreds of seedlings.
The spirit-ash factory
One of the many curious things about the seedlings which the Hornsent are tending to is that every single one of them grows on a bed of ash: most likely spirit-ash.
This makes sense: the Icon Shield shows a tree dripping golden sap also growing on a bed of ash.
Growing of a bed of corpse-ash (and possibly corpses, I see a rib-cage and a face).
This means that the Hornsent would need vast quantities of spirit-ash to grow their hundreds of seedlings.
Fortunately, the Hornsent devised a way to produce spirit-ash on an industrial scale.
I believe that Bonnie Village, Belurat Gaol and the Cleansing Chamber are three steps in a spirit-ash production line..
From Marika, the Grandmother at Shaman Village and the decapitated Shaman at Bonnie Village we know that Shaman leave stone corpses.
We also know, from Marika's body during the in the Frenzied Flame and Age of Stars endings, that Shaman corpses crumbles into dust or spirit-ash.
The solution to the Hornsent's need for large amounts of spirit-ash would appear to simply be to kill all the Shaman.
However, there's two problems with this approach:
- Based on the size of the Shaman Village (or even Bonnie Village, presuming that Shaman also used to live there) there simply aren't enough Shaman to produce the amount of spirit-ash needed to grow the hundreds of seedlings the Hornsent evidently did.
- A seedling grown from Shaman spirit-ash would, presumably, be full of Shaman souls, rather than the rather than the souls of pure, god-fearing Hornsent.
This was unacceptable.
Lucky, the Hornsent found a solution to these problems too and it relied on two quirks of Shaman biology:
- Shaman flesh can 'meld' with practically anything.
- Anything that is grafted onto a Shaman also crumbles into spirit-ash when she dies.
This means that the Hornsent could get ten, twenty times the amount of spirit-ash-per-Shaman by grafting dozens of Hornsent prisoners to her before killing her.
Furthermore, the Hornsent could keep Shamans alive, 'fresh' and ready to receive further grafts if they stored them in a nice cool location like the freezing conditions of Belurat Gaol.
The (ethnic) Cleansing Chamber
Once the Hornsent had grafted as many Hornsent body parts that they could to a Shaman the next step of the jarring process is to transport her to the Cleansing Chamber in Enir Ilim, where she's killed and converted into spirit-ash.
The final step in the jarring process (and the final indignity to be heaped on the Shaman) is to 'cleanse' the spirit-ash.
I believe that the main function of the Cleansing Chamber is to separate the Shaman spirit-ash from the Hornsent spirit-ash: 'cleansing' the Hornsent spirit-ash of 'impurities'.
Only Hornsent spirit-ash and Hornsent souls will be used to nurture their sacred seedlings. The Shaman spirit-ash is useless to them and, having served the purpose, the remains of the Shaman are discarded.
Your feet are soiled with the remains of almost the entire Shaman race during your battle with Leda.
THIS is how the jarring ritual works.
Note: The current consensus amongth theorists seems to be that Living Jars and Jar Innards are the finished products from the jarring ritual. I respectfully disagree.
The fact that the Hornsent have been keeping Jar Innards in the freezer-like conditions of Belurat Gaol strongly suggests that they were either being stored for future use or processing.
We also learn that the purpose of the Living Jars is to collected dead bodies and to shatter themselves at the base of the Minor Erdtrees. This indicates that Living Jars are a means to transport corpses to trees: they weren't the final product to the process.
On the other hand if the ritual was a complete failure, or if (as some theorize) Marika was the only successful product of the ritual, the extremely high failure rate would most likely to have been mentioned at some stage.
I'm reasonably confident that the Hornsent, at least, believed that the jarring ritual was a successful and productive endeavour. This suggest that the Hornsent did something with the jarred Shaman.
Marika approved genocide
All the evidence strongly suggests that the Hornsent continued to jarring Shaman all the way up until Messmer's crusade.
Why on earth would Marika allow this?
The answer starts to reveal itself if you consider the facts:
- Until the Shattering everyone thought that it was impossible for Erdtree seeds to exist. It seems that trees like the Erdtree will only release their seeds just before they 'fade away'.
- Minor Erdtrees are scattered throughout the game.
It's possible that all of the Minor Erdtrees grews from seeds which emerged after the Shattering but it appears that these seeds tended to grow into Illusory Trees rather than Minor Erdtrees. This opens room for an alternative explanation.
When you look at locations of the Minor Erdtrees on the in-game map a curious pattern emerges: instead of a drawing of the Minor Erdtree, a much larger, green-leafed tree is depicted.
This green-leafed tree looks nothing like the Minor Erdtree the Tarnished encounters and (even disregarding the leaves) looks different from the depiction of the Erdtree on the same map.
Taken at face value, this suggests that the giant, green-leafed trees previously existed but that they had all been replaced by by the Minor Erdtrees by the time the Tarnished arrives at The Lands Between.
What would be implications of this?
I believe that this strongly suggests that Minor Erdtrees weren't grown from seeds: instead, Minor Erdtrees were propagated by grafting cuttings onto the stump of pre-existing green-leafed trees.
Grafting to rootstock
Most citrus trees grown by farmers are actually two plants grafted together.
The top of the tree, with the leaves and branches, is the variety of citrus advertised on the label.
The bottom of the tree (i.e., the roots and the base of the trunk) is actually a related but different variety of citrus.
The top plant is the 'scion' or 'graft' and the bottom plant is the 'rootstock'.
There are several reasons to propagate plants by grafting.
One reason is which is because the 'scion' (despite containing traits the grower finds desirable) is either cannot be grown from seeds or because the seedlings only grow in very specific conditions that are rare in the wild.
Some common varieties of plants can only be propagated by grafting because either the original branch which the scion came from can't grow roots or because the very traits which made the scion desirable to grow prevents viable seeds from being formed (e.g., most rose varieties and seedless mandarins).
Hopefully, you can see why this is relevant to the Minor Erdtrees and how, before the Shattering, Marika would only be able to propagate her "golden bough" via grafting to rootstock.
This is why Marika allowed the Hornsent to continue generating the vast quantities of spirit-ash necessary to grow their sacred seedlings.
She encouraged the Hornsent to plant their seedlings throughout The Lands Between (where they grew to be the giant, green-leafed trees we see on the in-game map) because she'd always planned to every single one of them once they were large enough and to graft a scion from her golden bough to the resulting stumps.
Marika had intended to betray the Hornsent from the very beginning.
Shadows of the Erdtree
If this therory is correct, almost all Minor Erdtrees are scions and genetically identical clones of the Erdtree.
In a sense, Minor Erdtrees are 'shadows' of the Erdtree.
The Scadutree
This theory might also explain why the Scadutree looks the way it does.
As previously explained, one of the reasons to propagate a plant through grafting is because the 'scion' just doesn't grow as well outside of specific conditions, whereas the 'rootstock' is thriving at their location before it is cut down and turned into rootstock.
In horticultural terms, the plant that becomes the 'rootstock' can be consider to be more 'vigorous' than the scion.
This vigor causes a problem which grower need to actively manage. A plant that has been converted into rootstock sometimes tries to re-establish its autonomy by growing buds at the base of its trunk.
These buds are called 'rootstock suckers' and, since they grow from the more vigorous rootstock, they can potentially out-grow and out-compete with the scion.
This process is called 'rootstock sucker re-emergence' and, if the rootstock suckers are not cut off, results in a tree with one large trunk (the vigorous rootstock sucker) and one smaller trunk (the scion).
This is what we see when we look a the Scadutree.
The twisty trunk is the rootstock sucker.
Note: When searching for an image showing rootstock sucker re-emergence for the Scadutree I discovered this post, which proves that others have had the same idea.
The 'slave' is overthrowing its 'mistress'.
Marika = the Erdtree = Radagon
What if the Erdtree was also a scion (or "golden bough") grafted onto the stump of an existing tree?
If this was the case, this would mean that the Erdtree is a single tree which also happens to be two distinct trees: a single entity with two identities, a 'master' scion and an 'enslaved' rootstock.
This would explain how Marika = Radagon.
There are clues on the statues of Marika and Radagon which might support this idea.
Statues of Marika depict her hovering above the ground. If she represents the 'scion' part of the Erdtree her 'root-less', ungrounded pose would reflect this perfectly.
Statues of Radagon, on the other hand, shows him standing on (emerging from?) a sturdy tree-stump which is firmly rooted to the ground: exactly how you'd expect someone representing the the 'rootstock' part of the Erdtree to be depicted.
The fact that there's a physical tree-stump in Radagon's statue while there are only patterns hinting at tree-leaves in Marika's statue might also suggest that the bottom part of the Erdtree (i.e., the rootstock) is physical while the upper part (i.e., the scion) is spiritual.
I believe that Radagon isn't just an aspect of Marika: he's the spirit of the stump of the original tree which the Erdtree enslaved as rootstock.
Through that lens, Radagon's actions in the game are not the actions of someone trying to usurp Marika: he's the former master of The Lands between that's been enslaved and is now fighting for his freedom.
Note: This would also cast the meaning of Marika's words when she calls Radagon "leal hound of the Golden Order" ("dog of the Golden Order" in the Japanese translation) in an entirely different light.
Radagon isn't a "leal hound" because he chose to be loyal, he's a dog to Her Golden Order because She's the one that enslaved him.
Marika make Radagon her Elden Lord (a god's physical anchor to the mortal world) because he's literally the physical rootstock anchoring her spiritual scion to The Lands Between.
If it wasn't for the physical rootstock, it possible that the Erdtree would float away, just like the spirit-trees we encounter in Night Reign.
A spirit-tree without physical roots.
'Invisible-manning' the ghost-tree
Back to the original premise of this post: the giant, invisible ghost-tree of Enir Ilim.
How do you make something invisible visible?
Anyone who's seen a show where a character is invisible knows the answer: you splash something like paint (or blood) onto the invisible man.
Screenshot from the movie \"The Hollow Man\".
For something as large and spiritual as a giant, invisible ghost-tree, you'd need something more spiritual than just paint, or even blood. You need corpses, hundreds and hundreds of corpses.
And it would be incredibly wasteful to scatter corpses over the entire ghost-tree, especially when the only part the Hornsent need to access is the entrance into its trunk.
The Gate of Divinity and the entire arena we fight Promised Consort Radahn in is a part of the giant, invisible ghost-tree Enir Ilim, made visible and tangible by large numbers of dead bodies.
Which leads us to one last observation.
The final arena of the Shadow of the Erdtree is a flat, circular space in front of a gate formed by the vertical walls of the ghost-tree.
There's only one part of a tree which could possibly form a flat, circular space, the floor of the hollow inside the tree.
This would suggest that we've been inside the giant, invisible ghost-tree the entire time. By stepping through the Gate of Divinity to revive Radahn Miquella wasn't coming out the ghost-tree, he was coming back inside it.
From a western philosophical perspective, Miquella was stepping back into Plato's cave. From a Buddhist perspective (because Miquella is very Bhuddist-coded), he had transcended the endless cycle of karma and reincarnation (causation and regreesion) but decided to return to save the rest of us.
Posted Oct 25, 2025, 7:26 AM UTC