A Way to Evade the Oaths (Full Spoilers)

[Senexx]

You have a possible point.

 

I'm not a friend of the dark, I am one of the Chosen.

 

I am Nae'blis.

[Lambada]

Seriously? In 6 days no-one has posted a criticism / fault with my last post?

 

Wow... that must be a record *goes to note it in my diary*

[MikeRiley]

Seriously? In 6 days no-one has posted a criticism / fault with my last post?

 

Wow... that must be a record *goes to note it in my diary*

 

It's still just taking it out of context and it's been debated for 55 pages. That's the problem with splitting up a quote and examining it a little at a time. Lawyers use that trick to keep murderers out of prison.

 

3. Question: She could swear that she’s not a Darkfriend on the Oath Rod, right?

 

3. Answer: As long as she believed it to be true.  Every remaining Aes Sedai in the Tower has retaken the three oaths.  You should be thinking about ways to defeat the Oath Rod.  There is a way to do it.

 

 

Hey man, Mesaana could take the oath against lying and still say she's not a darkfriend, right?

 

If she believed it to be true. Everybody in the Tower retook the three oaths.

 

This is the solid part everybody understands. The problem comes about with "You should be thinking about ways to defeat the Oath Rod. There is a way to do it." This comes after he brushes off that she could say she's not a darkfriend if she believed it. He would not say "ways to defeat the oath rod" if the first two sentences of his answer already did it. Why even say it at all? Every last reader and every other guy in Randland knows you can "defeat" the oaths by dancing around the words. The issue here is that it wasn't "the oaths" but "the oath rod."

 

To get the proper context you really only need to read this part:

As long as she believed it to be true.  Every remaining Aes Sedai in the Tower has retaken the three oaths.  You should be thinking about ways to defeat the Oath Rod.

 

He shrugged off the possibility of "mental gymnastics" and suggested there was a way to defeat the oath rod. It's like saying yeah, you could catch a bullet with your teeth but there are other ways to stop it.

 

But really, if nobody responds it's just because we're all going in circles and each mostly have a firm belief on what this means or doesn't mean. It's the problem with gigantic threads on this forum. Better to just have individual theories posted in their own threads in a special section for it. You don't get as many repeat theories and you can discuss one or the other easier.

[Kaman]

I haven't read this whole thread so this may have been mentioned already. As I understand it you have to be physically holding the Oath Rod to use it. Mesaana could have inverted a flow of air and wrapped the Rod in a very thin amount of it so that she wasn't coming in contact with it, but it appeared that she was holding it.

[yoniy0]

I haven't been following this thread for a time, so maybe I missed something, but there's an aspect to these quotes that I don't think we've considered yet. That is, that even if Brandon confirms the theoretical feasibility of the 'not a Darkfriend' theory, he does that in a way that doesn't suggest it's what actually happened (I guess that was MikeRiley's point as well). If it was, I doubt he would be willing to comment on the issue at all, and he surly wouldn't have been that dismissive (by saying that, in general, they consider themselves Darkfriends).

Of course, none of that applies if what he meant is that she could've used the 'not BA' technic.

 

As an aside, I think Brandon is mistaken (again, that doesn't affect what really happened, since it's HIGHLY unlikely that Brandon isn't, at this point, aware of how Mesaana bypassed Egwene's test) regarding the Forsaken thinking themselves Darkfriends. See

You certainly sound as if you dont trust them. So-called? A thought came to him, but he could not manage to say it. Are you a . . . ? Are you . . . ? It was not the kind of thing you accused someone of.

A Darkfriend? Selene said mockingly. She sounded amused, not angered. She sounded contemptuous. One of those pathetic followers of Baalzamon who think he will give them immortality and power? I follow no one. There is one man I could stand beside, but I do not follow.

[DaughterOfNight]

 

Not that I'm adding anything important or revolutionary but I came across this little tidbit today while re-reading tFoH and it made me wonder what Asmodean had in mind.

 

Chapter Pale Shadows:

"Rand was sure he caught [Asmodean] in a lie this time.  Moiraine said that in the Age of Legends men and women had been equally strong in the Power, and she could not lie.  ...  [Asmodean replied,] What Moiraine believes to be truth, she tells as truth whether or not it is; one of a thousand weaknesses in those fool oaths."

 

We all know that Aes Sedai can speak a lie if they believe it to be truth but what, exactly, are some of those weaknesses Asmodean refers to?  Like I said, this quote obviously doesn't reveal anything but I couldn't help to wonder...

 

 

[Silentvoice]

I read through the majority of this thread and didn't see this particular point made, it's one I made in another thread but I think it wasn't appropriate for it so I'ma say it here:

 

"

"Speak no word that is not true."

 

There's a flaw in the oath. Words as such can not be assigned truth or falsity (is "dog" true? what about "and?") While the spirit of the oath is quite clear due to cultural context, the wording leads to an ambiguity which could be exploited.

 

An oath itself is a willing declaration of intent, a promise. When someone makes an oath, they are declaring that they will do something or behave in a certain way. Most Aes Sedai who swear the oath may speak the flawed language, but really be swearing to "make no assertions which are untrue" and so they are bound to that oath. "

 

Hopefully I'm not clobbering somebody else's exact same statement, I did my best to make sure nobody else has noticed this. In the case of Mesanna, she could easily say "I am not a darkfriend" while under the oaths. Through scrutiny of the oath she can convince herself that she can make false statements without breaking it, since the wording is ambiguous (ambiguous because its meaning is idiomatic, and not explicitly detailed in the language).

[yoniy0]

Oh, it was suggested before. The thing is, as you say, that words aren't in themselves true or false, so the Oath obviously isn't to be taken literally. We know that (at least as far as Moiraine and the BA hunters know) there aren't any AS who can even write down a false statement, let alone speak one.

[Sharaman]

A very large chunk of this thread has been devoted to asserting variations on a method Brandon admitted as possible, in the very first post that originated the thread itself.

Yes, according to Brandon himself, Mesaana can take the oaths and swear she isn't a darkfriend, if she thinks of herself as not being a DF.

But Brandon suggests that is not what she did; she exploited another hack to beat the rod.