Purpose of the eye of the world

[spoke]

My few thoughts on the purpose of the Eye of the world. Moraine (in EOTW) questions whether or not the Eye was used for it's intended purpose?

 

This begs the question what was it's intended purpose.

 

First the Eye was a giant super-charged well of pure clean Saidin. Why does one need pure clean Saidin?

 

Lews Therin (or the madman in Rand's head) mentions that something has to touch the dark one, and there is the general accepted theory that had women joined in the sealing of the DO's prison, Saidar would have been tainted as well.

 

There was no successful way until Shadar Logoth came along to clean Saidin. So the only thing to filter Saidin was there own mortal bodies in order to produce it (in the end killing themselves) and after 3000 years, no one knows why it was created, other than those who may have possibly been around at the time to know what was going on. The only one still alive who fits this category would be Ishmael/Moridin.

 

Ishmael wanted the Eye to be used for it's un-intended purpose, which is anything for which it is not intended.

 

My thoughts are that since something needs to touch the DO, and if anything that does touch it becomes tainted, lets create a source that can only be used up and not tainted -- AKA the Eye.

 

So the Eye was created to fight the DO (specifically in a way directly aimed at him), but so that Saidin cannot be touched. Now that Saidin is clean, and the Eye is empty, there really is nothing left that can touch him safely unless they find a way to refill the Eye.

[Demiandre]

The problem is that the Banner is here to herald. The Horn is here to be present at the last battle. The seal has to be mended/broken. How to do that all if they are trapped inside a pool of saidin?

 

I think the pool was there to herald the Dragon Reborn to the World, before he reveal himself. Ishy baited the boy to the Eye because of that. The DO as been looking for the Dragon, and trying to use him, since quite a long time. It might have proven necessary for the DO to makr what was necessary for Rand to reveal himself (Ishy printed the Heron -> Once a Heron, to set his pass twice the Heron, to mark him true)

[BrandonXRoss]

I had been wondering myself how Rand intended to attack the DO. Up until the end of TGS I had this bad feeling that he intended to fire balefire directly into the bore. After the conclusion of TGS I think Rand will be taking a more careful approach.

 

Though, I have to wonder what Lews Therin used when he sealed the DO. We know he used Saidin, but we don't know if he actually dared to use balefire. Maybe he didn't even mean to touch the DO, but did so accidentally while attempting to use a different weave that focused on closing the hole in the DO's prison, rather than attacking directly.

 

I definitely think there is a strong possibility that Rand and Egwene, along with their followers will create a new Eye, now that Saidin is probably clean. I doubt they will even need to sacrifice anyone to do it, since they won't have to worry about cleansing the taint as they go. I think the difficult part will be differentiating between the source of the One Power, and the Eye.

 

There is one potential downfall to the idea though. If a channeler is using the Eye to attack the DO, then there could still be a possibility for the DO to touch Saidin or Saidar. If the DO taints the Eye, then the channeler of the Eye, it might be possible for it to then taint the channeler's main source through the channeler, since they are all technically connected. Even if the DO can't reach Saidin or Saidar through the channeler when they are channeling the Eye, it might still drive the channeler insane, and cause him to attack the DO with the OP instead of the Eye.

[Gaidzag]

Consider this though: from the point of view of the Aes Sedai who made the Eye, saidin would always be tainted, up to and including the time when the DR would have to fight the Last Battle. What would it matter then if he touched the DO with saidin again? What would they be preventing? It getting tainted? It's already tainted!

 

Making the Eye for the reason suggested would only make sense if they had reason to believe that saidin would be cleansed at some point. But if they believed that, then they would have no need to make the Eye because it could be made less lethally afterward.

[Corlock]

Maybe they created a pool of pure saidin for the Dragon to use until such a time as he figured out how to cleanse saidin to stave off the onset of the madness. After all, he'd need to defend himself from the Dark One, the One Power is an excellent way to do that. Perhaps it was to give him Saidin he could use without going mad. I imagine that they did think that Saidin would be cleansed at some point, whether or not they thought the Dragon Reborn would do it is another question. I say this because they knew that time is a Wheel, and Ages come and go and come again. In the Age of Legends Saidin was clean, therefore by the time the Age of Legends came again, Saidin must be clean as well. Therefore someone must figure out how to cleanse it. Maybe they hoped the Dragon Reborn would be able to do this. So perhaps the Eye of the World was meant to be used as a means to prevent the madness, and to be used gradually rather than all at once.

[Kaznen]

But when Saidin is used it recycles back into the OP. There is a finite amount of Saidin and Saidar, that's why it could be cleansed by mortla means in the first place.

[Demiandre]

Even if the Saidin would have been cleansed eventually, according to the cyclic nature of the Wheel, the AoL Aes Sedai had no way to know if it woulf have taken place in the next age, except by deducing it from the Karaethon cycle, and the "wound of madness" the Dragon Reborn was to heal...

 

I think the Eye had no other purpose than what it was. By hidding what it hid under a pool of saidin, only a male channeler could find those object. And another detail I find coincidental is that male Aiel channeler go find glory in the Waste.

 

With the fate of male channeler, and the difficulty to find the Eye tell me there was nothing more to it than what we saw in tEotW.

[Phelix]

This might just be me, but I thought the reason for the Eye was fairly obvious: to Force the growth of the Dragon Reborn's channeling ability.

 

We're told that Forcing is when a Channeler is made to learn and channel faster and more than they should be able to do. Damane and the Black Tower train this way, which is opposed to the White Tower's method of allowing the channeling ability to blossom naturally and slowly. We know that men grow in fits and starts, leaping power levels, while women grow in a nice, normal rate.

 

With saidin tainted, the Aes Sedai in the AoL knew that if the Dragon Reborn were to take all the time he needed to naturally grow to his full strength, which could be years, he would likely be fully mad by that point and more a danger to the world than its savior. To counter this, they put items in the Eye that he would need to fulfill prophecy (the banner, the seal, the horn) which requires him to channel away the entire pool of saidin. His fight with Aginor forced Rand to suddenly be channeling at a much higher level than he had before. Anything he did with the Eye would have Forced him.

 

He went from channeling about three times before the Eye to being able to wield enough power to transport dozens of people via a Portal Stone in very short time, a handful of weeks. Before the Eye, he could move a boom on a boat, he could wipe Bela's tiredness away, that kind of thing... after the Eye, he could use Portal Stones, duel Ishamael, and cause localized earthquakes.

[Corlock]

I'm just saying they probably feared the Dragon going mad and breaking the world again. It was a fact that he would be born again, I'm not saying they knew he was going to cleanse Saidin, only that maybe they thought he might. I mean, if you're the Dragon Reborn and you are sort of forced to channel Saidin that drives you mad, wouldn't your first priority be to somehow make it so you didn't go mad? I think that would be a logical thought process in their minds. So the Eye was meant as something of a stop gap measure against the taint, to give the Dragon Reborn a means of channeling to protect himself, without going mad from the taint, until such a time as he could figure out how to cleanse all of Saidin, if he could. Just a thought really.

 

EDIT

 

I now agree with Phelix. That makes a whole lot of sense.

[Demiandre]

Indeed Phelix, I like what you suggest. And more, it doesn't contradict me! So I totally agree with you :)

[The Fisher King]

I personally have always felt that The Eyo of the World (the object itself, not the book) was an early goof on Jordan's part.

 

Remember. At the time of The Eye's bit in the series, Jordan had no idea the series was going to end in 14 books and approximately 13, 000 000 pages. He originally thought his story would be a trilogy, hard though that may be to believe.

 

I think once he realized he had ALOT more story to tell than he originally thought, he dropped/retconned the Eye out of existence. I mean, is The Eye ever even mentioned a single time again in the series after Book 1??? Ive read each book millions of times and I can't recall a single additional reference to it after Book 1.

 

One Cool Idea for The Last Battle would be: Since Saidin is clean now, Rand and all the Ashaman channel enough to fill the Eye back up with Clean Saidin and then they use the Eye itself to kill the DO.

 

Ive always been bugged at the way Jordan dropped the Eye after Book 1 - and bugged also by how events in TSR (during Rand's trip through the Rhuidaen Columns) greatly contradict the events at the end of Book 1.

 

 

 

Fish

[Demiandre]

I don't know if they contradict. They just don't fit precisely. But to refill it, they will have to link with women. It's impossible to fill a spoon with power, if I understood correctly. So there has to be a singular manipulation to do, like the cleansing.

[HighLordXanthus]

The biggest clue, as stated above, are the items hidden in its depth. We have the Horn, a seal, and the banner of the dragon. Why would these things be left so guarded? Plus the location was hidden so a person could only find it once, and tended by the greenman in a location within the blight. So we have a list of safe guards in place.

 

1 - The blight itself

2 - Single access restriction

3 - The Greenman

4 - The Well of Saidin aka The Eye of the World

 

So viewed that way, it looks more as if it was more about the items protection until a given time of thier need (likely driven by a foretelling). And shortly after they were revealed, they had prophesized uses. Mat blew the horn, and Arthur Hawkwing says they are restricted and need the banner to proceed.

 

"The Pattern weaves itself around our necks like halters. You are here. The banner is here. The weave of this moment is set. We have come to the Horn, but we must follow the banner. And the Dragon."

 

So it becomes fairly obvious that the the "eye" was used at its intended time. Now that does not mean it was used as the "Eye's" creators intended, but surely as the pattern intended.

 

I do like the theory of it being there partially to "force" Rand, although the idea of forcing rand this way is unlikely. It is more of a form of a Catalyst of Prophesy, a trigger event that sets other forces in motion, and in a lesser way a catalyst to jump start rand toward saidin and his exceptance of his place as the Dragon.

 

And a quick side note, the concept of the Eye being a Well. As in a ter'angreal designed to hold an amount of the power. So as such, the thought of it being filled again is a good idea.

[Demiandre]

It's not the same as a Well. You just have to channel through the Well to fill it. For the Eye, they needed a circle. Normally, a single man with a lot of time could have filled it entirelly. But maybe the circle was creating the Eye, and filling it with pure saidin...

 

Thanks, HighLordXanthus! I agree even more with what I said earlier, thanks to your post ^.^

(It's common with me. I often ask people to explain what I mean, and formulate what I think. I find this funny :) )

[rane008]

But when Saidin is used it recycles back into the OP. There is a finite amount of Saidin and Saidar, that's why it could be cleansed by mortla means in the first place.

 

Hey Kaznan,

 

I seem to remember a RJ quote specifically stating that there is an infinite amount of saidar/saidin, and that what Rand did at the Cleansing was to funnel the taint towards SL which created a kind of chain reaction, pulling all of the taint off of saidin. Rand didn't funnel all of saidin into the Construct, just enough and for long enough to get the process going.

[HighLordXanthus]

It isnt that the OP is infinite. It is a force that is "channeled" to various purposes. You cannot use up all of "gravity" for example. No matter how many apples fall from a tree (to use isaac newton's example of gravity), its force is not used up or diminished. The tree may run out of them, or die from old age, but that doesnt change another tree's ability to drop its apples.

 

The same principle exists with the force in the wheel of time known as the One Power. By this concept, I dont think the Eye could be used as an alternate "source" for the power to be used to seal the bore in the Dark One's prison. I imagine it's sealing will occur much as Rand cleansed the source. Men linked with women, using Saidin and Saidar in union in a circle (I theorize with the use of Callandor, linked with two women) and the meaning of the prophesy "He shall hold a blade of light in his hands and the three shall be one."

 

There is an other post theorizing something similar, but it thinks the use of the True Power as well. I dont think this will be the case, but it has alot of merit becides that(I admit I havent really followed that one, so I may be repeating here). I believe one aspect of the One Power to "buffer" (as Rand did at the cleansing) to keep the other aspect of the power free of the touch of the Dark One during the sealing of the bore. It wasnt simply touching the Dark One with saidin during Lews Therins attempt to seal him up that caused the "backlash" of the Taint, it was that the "Seal" that was woven touched him. By use of this "buffer" concept would sidestep this, in theory of course.