How Did Rand Cleanse The Male Source?

[DuDZiK]

Okay I've read through it at least a couple dozen times and I still don't quite understand how Rand did it. I understand that he linked with Nynaeve and attatched the clean female source (saidar? saidin? I can never remember which is which) to... something, but I don't understand the reason.

 

Why was he at Shadar Logoth? Why did he only use the female source? Or did he use the male source as well? What the sam heck was that huge black ball? I'm assuming it's supposed to be the taint, since when it imploded the taint was gone, but why was it there?

 

I need some serious help understanding this... ??? :-\

[Corbett]

ya know how the two woulnds on his side seem like they are trying to kill each other. i think that both flin and nynaeve said it. well rand figured that sice one of them is from the shadar logoth daggar and the other is from the tainted staff that if he took the shield away thed take each other out. so he went to shadar logoth and created a conduit out of saidar to push pure saidin through, meaning he made no weaves with it. by doing this at shadar logoth the taint and the evil of shadar logoth fought and killed each other. so the taint is gone and shadr logoth looks as if it were never there. the end. get it?

 

[Zachary]

I'm not quite certain. You know strainers, that you use to get water out but catch things like noodles and keep it in? That's what I think of when I see it being cleansed. The weave made out of saidar(The Female Source) is a strainer, and Rand is putting all of saidin through it, so that it will keep the taint in the strainer and only saidin will leave.

[Baldar]

He used saidar as a funnel/filter and siphoned off all the taint in saidin, dumping the filth on Shadar Logoth.

[Corbett]

so i was half right. the evil of shadar logoth still killed the taint and in doing so destroyed itself.

[RobertAlexWillis]

Rand used a combination of the repelling force between saidar and saidin, and the attraction between the Dark One's taint and the Shadar Logoth taint, to get the taint to move off of saidin on its own.

 

First, he formed a "funnel" of saidar (the funnel was flower-shaped, because 1) saidin wasn't moving from one physical location to another, so the "shape" of the "funnel" didn't matter, and 2) saidar is female, so it has to decorate everything).  Then, he forced saidin into the funnel.  Because saidin and saidar repel one another, saidin was forced in on itself, and the taint brought to the "surface".  (Incidentally, this is probably why the female Choedan Kal was destroyed ... the taint wouldn't have been repelled from saidar.)  Then, he touched one end of the "funnel" to Shadar Logoth, and the two taints began pulling toward one another.

 

This is Jordan's comment on what happened next:

 

The evil of Shadar Logoth and the evil of the Shadow might be considered positive and negative poles.  They attract, as do the positive and negative poles of two magnets, but if they make contact, the result is more like making contact between the positive and negative poles of your car battery.  Big sparks.  Really big sparks.

 

http://www.dragonmount.com/RobertJordan/?p=26

 

So, the two taints mixed it up, and fought a battle of mutual annihilation ... no more Shadar Logoth, and no more taint on saidin.

 

There were three keys; first, putting enough pressure on saidin to get the taint to be more attracted to Shadar Logoth than to saidin, and two, putting the two taints in contact with each other, and three, making sure all of the taint got pushed into the mix.  It was really quite a masterstroke by Rand.

[icspots]

Good description RAW.  It would still be nice to hear the phrasing of the answer that Rand got from the Finns about how to cleanse the source.

[callandor]

  It was really quite a masterstroke by Rand.

  i think your in love with rand RAw

[Zachary]

He hearts Rand.

[Darth_Andrea]

A easier way of describing it would be like this.

 

Think of the Taint on the Male half of the Source as Matter, and the evil of Shadar Logoth as Anti-Matter. When Rand brought them together they anilalated each other completly. This cleansed the Male half of the source leaving men free to channel the power as they were during the AOL.

 

 

 

[glow=green,1,500]Darth_Andrea[/glow]

[Paviel]

I want to know why it melted not only the female access key, but even the female Choedan Kal.

 

It probably isn't a coincidence that the Sea Folk just happened to notice that the big hand holding the orb on Tremalking was destroyed.

 

Unless that was Mesaana's work...

[Guest durram laddel cham]

because the access key and the Choedan Kal are linked together, the same would have happened if the male access key was destroyed, then the male Choedan Kal would have been destroyed

[ignavus1223]

because the access key and the Choedan Kal are linked together, the same would have happened if the male access key was destroyed, then the male Choedan Kal would have been destroyed

 

I think it's more like the access key was destroyed because the female CK was destroyed.  Destroying the key wouldn't affect the larger sa'angreal.  They've already found a broken female key when they got the male a'dam. 

 

The sa'angreal could have been destroyed for any number of reasons... the taint, the strain of that much of the OP, drawing too much OP, or a manufacturing error. 

[Paviel]

The sa'angreal could have been destroyed for any number of reasons... the taint, the strain of that much of the OP, drawing too much OP, or a manufacturing error.

 

So I guess my next question is: Why the female access key and CK rather than the male one?

[Mr Ares]

The sa'angreal could have been destroyed for any number of reasons... the taint, the strain of that much of the OP, drawing too much OP, or a manufacturing error.

So I guess my next question is: Why the female access key and CK rather than the male one?

Possibly to do with how it was used - Rand is hardly an expert in using saidar, and his weave may have strained the CK.

[avacraft]

I think the female ck was destroyed because it was used to make a funnel for all of the taint to travel through.  Saidar has never been tainted (unless somehow there has been a time when it was a female dragon with a hundred female companions who sealed up the bore but anyway) so Saidar isn't used to touching the taine and then it is forced to touch ALL of the taint in one day and it was touching the Dark ball of Shadar Logoth when it all imploded so I believe that this reaction caused the ck to be completely destroyed which also destroyed the access key.  We know that destroying the access key doesn't destroy the ck becuase at some point right before the cleansing, all the forsaken gather and talk about how some of them thought all the access keys were destroyed.

[icspots]

Yeah destroying an access key doesn't destroy the Sa'angreal.  I'm betting on it being a flaw in the female Choedan Kal.  Remember how everytime someone from the AoL thought about them there was always the "they're untested" thing running through their minds.  It's possible that the taint had something to do with it, but I think it's more of over-using something with a flaw in it.

[RobertAlexWillis]

Well ... the amount of saidar used was almost certainly less than the total amount of saidin used, not only because Rand is stronger, inherently, than Nynaeve, but because the taint covered the full "surface" of saidin ... it don't see how a tube or funnel of saidar could possibly be more than that.

 

And the sa'angreal was made with a buffer ... otherwise Nynaeve probably would have been burned out ... so I doubt it was destroyed by using too much of the One Power.

 

The only wild card here is the taint, and we've seen tainted use of saidar have a deleterious effect on physical objects before.  The taint on the Ways comes from the taint on saidin, and when Moiraine used saidar focused through her staff (which is not even angreal, merely an aid to concentration) it was damaged by the use.  To quote:

 

She [Moiraine] tossed her staff on the ground and scrubbed her hand on her cloak.  Char, thick and black, marked the staff over half its length.  "The taint corrupts everything in that place."

 

TGH ch 45

 

Ironically, despite the fact that the taint is on saidin, the saidin channeled through the male Choedan Kal was less in contact with the taint than saidar was, in this instance, because of how Rand used the saidar as a funnel.  Saidin was forced in on itself, away from saidar, whereas Rand held the saidar funnel in place, and brought it in contact with the two combining taints in Shadar Logoth.

 

It seems very clear that it is contact with the taint that caused the destruction of the female Choedan Kal, not the lack of a buffer or inept weaving by Rand.