One Power
From Wotpedia
In The Wheel of Time fantasy series by Robert Jordan, the One Power is the force that maintains the continuous motion of the Wheel of Time. It comes from the True Source, and it is separated into two halves: saidin (pronounced 'sah-ih-DIHN'), the male half, and saidar (pronounced 'sah-ih-DAHR'), the female half. It is used in the series (like magic) by people who can wield it -- such people are called channelers.
Contents |
Nature of the True Source
The source of the One Power, it is divided into male and female halves that work with and against each other to drive the Wheel of Time. The True Source cannot be consumed by channellers, even as a river cannot be consumed by a waterwheel. Each half of the One Power is able to be used only by people of the associated sex.
Channelers
Not everyone has the ability to "channel", or access, the One Power. Most have none at all, and some only have the ability to be taught, to one degree or another. But a few channelers are born with "the spark" -- an innate inclination that will lead them to touch the Source, whether they wish to or not. These wilders often die without ever gaining control over their innate ability; some research indicates the mortality rate for untrained channelers is 75% or more. Often, this survival comes with a price; they may not even know they are using the One Power to do things, they just know that sometimes, "things happen" when they want them badly enough. Wilders are also frequently saddled with a block -- an instinctive self-preservation behavior that causes them trouble when they do try to channel purposely. This can take the form of only being able to channel while angry, or only with one's eyes closed, or some other condition specific to the channeler. Those who do not have the spark can go their entire lives without touching the Power or even realizing they can.
Channelers are also not born equal--some are stronger in the Power and can handle more of it than others. Men and women are different in this and many other regards when it comes to the One Power.
Differences between Male and Female Channelers
When using the One Power one weaves flows of different elements: Earth, Water, Air, Fire and Spirit. Men are generally stronger with Fire and Earth, while women are generally stronger with Air and Water; strength in Spirit is equal, and equally rare. Male channelers, in general, are capable of holding more of the Power than female ones, while women generally are more dextrous in the weaving of the Power. Also, male channelers cannot link to form a "Circle" of multiple channelers working together without a woman's aid; only women can initiate a Circle, although there cannot be more men than women in a circle and no more than thirteen women may be joined without including any men.
Female channelers can tell when other women are touching the Source; a white glowing aura appears around their body, only visible to those trained to touch the One Power. Normally, there is no way for a woman to tell when a man is channelling; however, ter'angreal have been discovered that make it possible, along with a weave of the One Power that serves the same purpose. However, it must be mentioned that Moghedien confessed to the Dark One that the weave resulted in severe headaches for those who attempted to use it. Men feel women holding the Source as a tingling on their skin, like goosebumps; they can also sense when another man is holding the Power (though they cannot see it as an aura or by some comparable visual aid). Finally, male and female channelers experience the Power differently: a woman would describe it as a gentle force requiring patience, acceptance, guidance, and relaxation, while a man frequently describes it as a rough torrent requiring strict control and exertion of force. In short, women surrender to saidar, influencing it from within, while men seize saidin, manipulating it from without. This essential difference in the "feeling" of the Power means that a woman cannot teach a man to channel, and vice-versa (it has been tried, many, many times), especially as many "weaves" (spells) which work for one sex do not work the same way for the other. As an example, men can use a weave of Fire to dissipate the heat from a candle flame, whereas women must use Air or Water to snuff it; women who have tried the male way have been grievously injured, some even bursting into flame—just from a candle. Male and females also grow in the One Power differently; Women gradually increase in strength where as men gain strength in sudden leaps.
Channelers must always be careful, as the One Power is dangerous. The feeling of holding the One Power is described as general quality of being "more alive than ever before", as well as a powerful feeling of joy for women and a feeling of "holding a river of frozen fire and burning ice" for men, as well as a significant increase of sensory acuity. Besides providing an addictive stimulating quality, channelers who draw too much of the Power into themselves can kill themselves or render themselves brain-dead. If they are lucky—relatively speaking—they will only burn the ability out of themselves, leaving themselves unable to channel ever again. Channelers can be temporarily "shielded" from touching the Source using weaves of Spirit. They can also permanently cut off from it; in modern Aes Sedai parlance, this is called "stilling" when done to women, "gentling" when done to men, but archaically it was called "severing" for either gender. Regardless of the circumstances, those who lose the ability permanently also tend to lose the will to live. Very recently, an Aes Sedai named Nynaeve al'Meara, and an Asha'man Damer Flinn, have discovered how to heal severing, but the process only works completely when the healer is of the opposite gender than the healed. (As shown by Nynaeve's incomplete Healing of both Siuan Sanche and Leane Sharif.)
All men and women with the spark come to a point of crisis in which they are in severe danger of dying without training, as the One Power is dangerous. Many women who die of mysterious—and, unfortunately, excruciatingly painful—circumstances in their late teenaged years are actually wilders who have failed to cope with their abilities. The women who survive invariably develop mental blocks that prevent channeling in the absence of certain conditions; three known blocks required severe anger, thoughts about men, or even closed eyes (which would prevent most channeling, as sight is required) before their sufferers could allow themselves to channel. Serious and sometimes drastic counseling is often required to overcome blocks. These blocks are known as bars by Taim. One example of a block is Nynaeve's inability to surrender to saidar except while angry. Another is an Asha'man's inability to channel at anything beyond a certain distance.
Some other differences include:
- A woman's shield for her dreams is a crystal barrier between the dreamwalker and the dream, while a man's shield for his dreams is described as a barrier showing dreams as if looking into "muddy water."
- To make a gateway for Traveling a man must "fold" the Pattern of an Age and "bore" a hole through it. But a female must make the point of the entry gateway so similar to the exit so that there is no real difference between the two.
- Women can detect the ability to channel in another woman but a male must weave Saidin for a long period of time, until they sense a resonance of the power in them. This is an equivalent of how a man can feel a woman channel automatically but a woman must do a complicated weave to feel a man channel.
- The weaves for healing with saidin are specific to each ailment, while for a woman, or saidar, the same weave is used no matter the degree of the condition.
Aes Sedai
The current Aes Sedai are the largest organized group of women who wield the One Power. Their headquarters, the White Tower, is on the island city of Tar Valon. Other groups of organized channelers have sprung up on the mainland (the "Westlands"), such as the Kin and the Daughters of Silence, but they have either kept themselves totally secret or been neutralized by the Tower. Some Aes Sedai will refer to any female channeler who is not affiliated with the Tower as a "wilder", although this is not strictly correct. Many of the peripheral cultures in the Westlands have their own independent associations of female channelers, separate from (and frequently unknown to) the White Tower.
The Taint on Saidin
In the current age, the Dark One's taint on saidin causes male channelers, even those who survive the struggle to learn to channel safely, to inevitably go mad and succumb to a wasting sickness which causes the sufferer to rot alive (these curses may come in either order, or concurrently, at varying speeds for each male channeler). The taint came into being at the end of the Age of Legends, when Lews Therin Telamon and the Hundred Companions (actually 113 male channelers) re-sealed the Dark One into his prison, but not before the Dark One caused saidin to become tainted, driving all of those attempting to seal him in immediately and irrevocably insane (other male Aes Sedai took longer for the taint to affect them). The ensuing chaos and destruction caused The Breaking of the World or the Time of Madness. Men who can channel, in short, are a threat. With this in mind, members of the Aes Sedai formed a faction, the Red Ajah, dedicated to the hunting down and gentling of male channelers before they can cause (much) trouble. As with all severed channelers, these men rarely live for long afterwards, and few have children. In a possibly connected affliction, fewer and fewer people of either gender are born with any channeling ability, a fact the logic-worshipping White Ajah have compared to the breeding-out of distasteful traits in domesticated animals. However, the exact cause(s) of the decline of channeling remain unknown, as there have been increasingly more powerful channelers discovered throughout the series.
At the conclusion of Book 9, saidin has purportedly been cleansed through the use of two of the most powerful sa'angreal ever made, called the Choedan Kal. They were used by Nynaeve al'Meara and Rand al'Thor in a linked Circle. The complex process destroyed the ruined city of Shadar Logoth and was "felt" by most, if not all, channelers of both genders in the Westlands. However, some have confessed doubt over the effectiveness of the cleansing, due to three thousand years of fear. It has not been proved conclusively that the cleansing was successful.
Asha'man
Formed by Rand al'Thor in preparation for Tarmon Gai'don, the Asha'man are an all male group of channelers. Their name, an adaption of the Old Tongue word for "guardian" or "guardians", is meant to distinguish them from the now all female Aes Sedai. In addition, the type of guardian that Asha'man describes is one who will not fight for an unrighteous cause.
