Robert Jordan - The World of Robert Jordan’s the Wheel of Time

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To Harriet

with love

This compilation of the worlds geography, sociology, and history uses information dating from the earliest available records of the Age of Legends through the current era.

Reliable sources are limited. Almost all documents from before the War of the Hundred Years survive only as copies, or copies of copies, etc., and thus may well include mistakes made by the scribes. Few complete books or manuscripts of any kind survive from the War of the Hundred Years. The earlier period, from the end of the Trolloc Wars to the end of the War of the Hundred Years, left even less. All information from the time of the Breaking of the World to the end of the Trolloc Wars was pulled from manuscript fragments of varying sizes, sometimes not even consisting of consecutive pages. No books or manuscripts have yet been found dating from before the Breaking. All the information from the Age of Legends is based on documents from the first few centuries after the Breaking, when the writers might have had access to sources that had survived.

Wherever possible, the information has been at least partially verified by writings contemporary with their contents, but the older a document or manuscript, the harder it is to date pages precisely.

Some difficulties arise not from age or verifiability, but from problems of translation, for the older documents were written primarily or completely in the Old Tongue. Within the Old Tongue, as all scholars know, words have variable meanings, and some meanings have shifted to varying degrees over time.

The authors hope that the reader will forgive the occasional inaccuracy that may arise within these pages and relish instead the immense diversity and energy within the legacy of the Pattern and the World of the Wheel.

T HE W HEEL OF T IME TURNS , and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. So begins each saga within the World of the Wheel, a universe in which the major controlling factor is the Wheel of Time and the Great Pattern it spins. A pattern in which light and dark, good and evil, male and female, and life and death struggle for balance within the weave of destiny.

Rands Heron-Marked Hand

What is the Wheel of Time? Imagine a great cosmic loom in the shape of a seven-spoked wheel, slowly spinning through eternity, weaving the fabric of the universe. The Wheel, put in place by the Creator, is time itself, ever turning and returning. The fabric it weaves is constructed from the threads of lives and events, interlaced into a design, the Great Pattern, which is the whole of existence and reality, past, present, and future.

Within the influence of this Lace of Ages are not only the earth and stone of the physical world, but other worlds and universes, other dimensions, other possibilities. The Wheel touches what might be, what might have been, and what is. It touches the world of dreams as well as the world of waking.

In this world there is no one beginning or one end, for each spoke of the great Wheel represents one of the seven Ages, receding into the past and returning in the future as the Wheel spins, the fabric of each age changing only its weave and pattern with each passing. With every pass the changes vary to an increasingly greater degree. For each Age there is a separate and unique pattern, the Pattern of the Age, which forms the substance of reality for that age. This design is predetermined by the Wheel and can only partially be changed by those lives which make up the threads within the weave.

No one knows the length of time it takes for a full turning of the Wheel, nor is there a set time for each Age. There is only the certainty that all will come around again, though surely long past the span encompassed by human memory, or even legend. Yet that knowledge provides the basis for the philosophy and history of the known world. No ending, even death, is necessarily final within the turning of the Wheel. Reincarnation is a part of the way of the world. Prophecies are believed and heeded, since they tell as much of what was as of what will be. The only questions are when and in what manner the prophecies will unfold.

In such a world change is simply a predetermined part of the mechanism. Only a few individuals, special souls known as taveren, can cause the fabric of the pattern to bend around them, changing the weave. These taveren are spun out as key threads around which all surrounding life-threads, perhaps in some cases all life-threads, weave to create change. These key threads often produce major variations in the Pattern of an Age. Such major changes are called, in the old tongue, tamaralailen, or the Web of Destiny.

Even the taveren and the Web of Destiny woven around them are bound by the Wheel and the Great Pattern; it is believed that the Wheel spins out taveren whenever the weave begins to drift away from the Pattern. The changes around them, while often drastic and unsettling for those who must live in the Age, are thought to be part of the Wheels own correcting mechanism. The more change needed to bring the Great Pattern into balance, the more taveren spun out into the world.

The Great Wheel is the very heart of all time. But even the Wheel requires energy to maintain itself and its pattern. This energy comes from the True Source, from which the One Power may be drawn. Both the True Source and the One Power are made up of two conflicting yet complementary parts: saidin, the male half, and saidar, the female half. Working both together and against one another within the True Source, it is saidin and saidar which provide the driving force that turns the Wheel of Time.

Birgitte

The only known forces outside the Wheel and the Pattern are the Creator, who shaped the Wheel, the One Power that drives itas well as the plan for the Great Patternand the Dark One, who was imprisoned outside the pattern by the Creator at the moment of creation. No one inside and of the Pattern can destroy the Wheel or change the destiny of the Great Pattern. Even those who are taveren can only alter, but not completely change, the weave. It is believed that if he escapes his prison, the Dark One, being a creature or force beyond creation, has the ability to remake the Wheel and all of creation in his own dark image. Thus each person, especially each of those born taveren, must struggle to achieve his or her own best destiny to assure the balance and continuation of the Great Pattern.