"My hope of salvation and rebirth"- When?

[Alexius]

Can souls be born/reborn more than once in an Age?

 

I know that a lot (if not all) of Mat's memories are from Manetheren, but we don't yet (AFAIR) have a confirmed case of rebirth (as opposed to summoned Heroes of the Horn) twice in an Age, and we don't know that Mat's memories are from reincarnation. Also, the only non-DO-caused (Aginor/Balthamel) reincarnation we do know for certain about (Rand/LTT), plus the one which is only suggested (Elayne/Ilyena) are between Ages. That leaves us with these possibilities:

Reincarnation is once-an-Age for specific individuals (the Dragon, and possibly other heroes) and after death for most.

All souls are reincarnated only once an Age.

All souls are immediately reincarnated after death. The same soul always inhabits different iterations of heroes, but has lives in between.

 

[Majsju]

Mats memories (with the exception of the one when he was healed in the White Tower) are not his own, they were given to him by the finns, and thus have nothing to do with his eventual earlier incarnations.

 

We do however know that at least Heroes can be reborn more than once during an Age, thanks to Birgittes musings about the memories she is losing.

[aevogt]

We've really only got one good example.

 

Birgitte was spun out in the Second age, the AoL.  She specifically mentions meeting Moghedien who threatened her with an eternity of tears.  (which begs the question of how Moghedien recognized her for what she was, a spun out Hero.  Special Talent perhaps?)

 

It is also mentioned that "There was no Kandor the last time she was spun out"  which would put her birth before the War of the Hundred years.

 

I did a cross reference a list of Birgitte's sayings with a history of the Wheel.

 

She mentions by name

Tova and Shiota - Nations that rose after the Trolloc wars.

 

and

 

Shaemal, the capital of Coremanda, one of the Ten nations destroyed during the Trolloc wars, which she would have been able to know if she was alive during or after the Trolloc Wars.  

 

However, in her conversation with a hungover Mat Cauton, she mentions his Old Tongue accents as coming from nations from the Compact of the Ten Nations which if those nations were destroyed in the trolloc wars, wouldn't it be difficult for her to know what the accents sounded like.  But,

 

Gaidal Cain was just spun out and he is almost always older than Birgitte, so she would have had some length of time before she was spun out naturally.  The age is, presumably, going to end with TG and if left to the devices of the wheel, she would have most likely been spun out after that time, in reference to being younger than GC.

 

by her example;  She was spun out in the AoL, In the Third age shortly after the Trolloc wars, and was about to be spun out at the beginning of the Fourth age.

 

Unless Brigitte was spun out both before and after the Trolloc wars, a soul gets one crack at living per age.

[Majsju]

In WH we hear that Birgitte has said that she does not remember anything clearly before the founding of the White Tower, which strongly suggests she was around at some point during that. The founding took place between 98AB and 202AB, which means it was finished 800 years before the trolloc wars.

[Bob T Dwarf]

Rand is probably more boggled by meeting Birgitte at Falme than he is by meeting Hawkwing.

 

He, and later The Wonder Girls seem to know several, possibly dozens of legends about Birgitte Silverbow.  That argues that she has been born several times in the current age since knowledge passes into legend and even legend fades away.  After more than a couple of Ages, if she were only born once each Age, no more than the one or two most recent legends about her would survive, not as many as they recall.