Healing Death?

[EmperorMayhem]

I'm curious if anyone has a quote from Robert Jordan, either confirming or denying if Healing death is possible?

 

I came across a couple parts towards the end of The Fires of Heaven, that make me ponder it more. (I have always been of the opinion that if anyone discovers how to Heal death, it'll be Nynaeve)...

 

pg. 569 (hc version), in chapter 49, its doing the details of the 3 women following them to Salidar (Nicola, Areina and Marigan- who we now know as Moghedien)

 

"Marigan had dealt with cures and herbs in Samara, though she had some odd ideas about both."

"All she had ever wanted to do was cure sickness, and she claimed to have done it well."

"...death was beyond the power to Heal. Even Marigan seemed to think it was not."

 

I've noticed throughout the series that if somebody says something is 'impossible', don't count on it. The fact that Healing Severing, and Insanity were both considered not possible in the AoL- by some of the most powerful Forsaken from the AoL, tells me that perhaps it is possible to prove death curable too. Perhaps some form of CPR or Defibrillation with the OP?

 

What are your thoughts?

[Vardar]

One would think it's possible, if the soul hasn't been reborn yet already. The Darkone does it right? He grabs a soul before it fully escapes and transplants it. I would suppose the one power could do it, it would just take an extreme amount, and probably a time limit. Elayne mentioned Nynaeve wouldn't be happy until she healed someone 3 days dead. So maybe 3 days (the whole jesus thing too)

[Terez]

I'm curious if anyone has a quote from Robert Jordan, either confirming or denying if Healing death is possible?

 

I came across a couple parts towards the end of The Fires of Heaven, that make me ponder it more. (I have always been of the opinion that if anyone discovers how to Heal death, it'll be Nynaeve)...

 

pg. 569 (hc version), in chapter 49, its doing the details of the 3 women following them to Salidar (Nicola, Areina and Marigan- who we now know as Moghedien)

 

"Marigan had dealt with cures and herbs in Samara, though she had some odd ideas about both."

"All she had ever wanted to do was cure sickness, and she claimed to have done it well."

"...death was beyond the power to Heal. Even Marigan seemed to think it was not."

 

I've noticed throughout the series that if somebody says something is 'impossible', don't count on it. The fact that Healing Severing, and Insanity were both considered not possible in the AoL- by some of the most powerful Forsaken from the AoL, tells me that perhaps it is possible to prove death curable too. Perhaps some form of CPR or Defibrillation with the OP?

 

What are your thoughts?

My thoughts? This is one of the best foreshadowings in the series, and only partly because "Marigan" was the one who taught Nynaeve how to do it.

[Maleshub]

Technically, Rand overcame the death of Mat (twice) and Aviendha (once) with balefire. It isn't healing death as much as "rewinding" a death to life. Still, Rand saw a dead Aviendha, balefired Rahvin, then saw this:

 

He became aware of tears on his cheeks, and let saidin and the Void go. He wanted to feel this. "Aviendha!" Snatching her up, he whirled her around, with her staring down at him as if he had gone mad. He didn't want to put her down, but - he did. So he could hug Mat. Or try to.

 

Mat fended him off. "What's the matter with you? You'd think you thought we were dead. Not that we weren't, almost. Being a general has to be safer than this!"

 

"You're alive." Rand laughed. He brushed back Aviendha's hair; she had lost her headscarf, and it hubg loose around her neck. "I'm happy you're alive. That's all."

..

..

"Where did you go?" Aviendha demanded. Not angrily. If anything, she looked relieved. "One second you were there, the next you were gone."

 

"I had to kill Rahvin," he said quietly. She opened her mouth, but he put his fingers over it to silence her, then gently pushed her away. Take what you can have. "Leave it at that. He's dead."

..

..

He began walking, not sure where as long as it was away from Aviendha.

 

Just love the scene. One of the best Rand - Aviendha moments.

[Vardar]

Technically, Rand overcame the death of Mat (twice) and Aviendha (once) with balefire. It isn't healing death as much as "rewinding" a death to life. Still, Rand saw a dead Aviendha, balefired Rahvin, then saw this:

 

Well Mat was still alive. Doing CPR on a dead person can't bring them back to life. Just a nearly dead or dying person, technically speaking.

[EmperorMayhem]

My thoughts? This is one of the best foreshadowings in the series, and only partly because "Marigan" was the one who taught Nynaeve how to do it.

 

what do you mean? As far as I can remember 'marigan/moghedien' doesn't teach Any Healing to nynaeve. she claims she knows as much of Healing as Nynaeve does of blacksmithing- though claims that anything short of death can be healed, and was in the AoL...

 

Well Mat was still alive. Doing CPR on a dead person can't bring them back to life. Just a nearly dead or dying person, technically speaking.

 

I'm afraid you're wrong... people are declared DOA at hospitals all the time and brought back to life. Longest I heard of was a kid who was under the ice in a river for half an hour before he was pulled out and revived- and his heart was not beating. that equals death. My guess is that if they do something with Nynaeve (or whoever) healing death, it'll be a case like that, as oppose to someone who bled to death or got beheaded :)

[Byzantine279]

It depends on exactly how you define death. According to RJ's definition Mat was not dead when he was hung.

[Roxinos]

Well Mat was still alive. Doing CPR on a dead person can't bring them back to life. Just a nearly dead or dying person, technically speaking.

 

I'm afraid you're wrong... people are declared DOA at hospitals all the time and brought back to life. Longest I heard of was a kid who was under the ice in a river for half an hour before he was pulled out and revived- and his heart was not beating. that equals death. My guess is that if they do something with Nynaeve (or whoever) healing death, it'll be a case like that, as oppose to someone who bled to death or got beheaded :)

 

To both of you...I'm pretty sure Theodril was referring to the time that Mat got drooled upon by the Darkhound.

[Suttree]

Well Mat was still alive. Doing CPR on a dead person can't bring them back to life. Just a nearly dead or dying person, technically speaking.

 

I'm afraid you're wrong... people are declared DOA at hospitals all the time and brought back to life. Longest I heard of was a kid who was under the ice in a river for half an hour before he was pulled out and revived- and his heart was not beating. that equals death. My guess is that if they do something with Nynaeve (or whoever) healing death, it'll be a case like that, as oppose to someone who bled to death or got beheaded :)

 

To both of you...I'm pretty sure Theodril was referring to the time that Mat got drooled upon by the Darkhound.

 

That and when he was killed by Rahvin and then brought back...

[Maleshub]

Thanks, Roxinos and Suttree, for explaining the reference to Mat's two balefire rewinds. Yes. I was referring to the Darkhound and Rahvin experiences.

[Barid Bel Medar]

There are a lot of examples of "healing death". the DO obviously, Balefire is another. Birgitte being ripped out of TAR could technically be healing death, she WAS dead, hanging round. (possibly how Nynaeve will revive Rand.)

 

I don't think there will be any universal "heal death" techniques. If they do find another way, I think it will be very specific to the circumstance or the person (Rand.) Actually "healing death" would really mess up the world and nature. People are supposed to die and be reborn. Not to mention overpopulation and food shortages and aging etc...

 

I know this probably isn't what you meant, just thought to put it in there, no "cure" type thing will be found, but something that requires specific circumstances and power will probably be used to bring someone back from the dead. (My bet is on Nynaeve ripping Rand out of TAR like Moggy-Birgitte

[Vardar]

 

I'm afraid you're wrong... people are declared DOA at hospitals all the time and brought back to life. Longest I heard of was a kid who was under the ice in a river for half an hour before he was pulled out and revived- and his heart was not beating. that equals death. My guess is that if they do something with Nynaeve (or whoever) healing death, it'll be a case like that, as oppose to someone who bled to death or got beheaded :)

 

Being declared DOA and actually being dead are two different things. Just like showing no signs of life and being dead. Being declared DOA means you show no signs of life, death in our world is forever. Anything thing else is just bringing someone back from near death. Or very near death in some cases.

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[Terez]

My thoughts? This is one of the best foreshadowings in the series, and only partly because "Marigan" was the one who taught Nynaeve how to do it.

 

what do you mean? As far as I can remember 'marigan/moghedien' doesn't teach Any Healing to nynaeve. she claims she knows as much of Healing as Nynaeve does of blacksmithing- though claims that anything short of death can be healed, and was in the AoL...

 

That's part of the irony of it, that she has no interest in Healing—the story in the bit you gave was, of course, entirely fabricated—and yet she taught Nynaeve how to 'heal' death when she ripped Birgitte out of Tel'aran'rhiod. Note the name of the chapter, 'To Boannda'. Another healing reference, and a reference to Boann and The Dagda. It's a healing reference because both Boann and The Dagda have name parallels in WoT: Nemene Damendar Boann was Semirhage's name in the Age of Legends—third names were granted for notorious accomplishments, and hers probably had something to do with Healing—and Dagdara is a Yellow, and she was the best of the Healers in Salidar before Nynaeve arrived. She was also Black Ajah, meaning the name parallels are references to both healing and evil. The story of Boann and The Dagda is probably going to be paralleled at least partly in Rand's death when the earth's rotation stops, essentially 'stopping the sun'. There is also a reference to Tel'aran'rhiod there, as Boann and The Dagda cross the veil to the otherworld, where time flows differently, for nine months, so that their son could be conceived and birthed on the same 'day'. Birgitte is a parallel to Birgit, daughter of The Dagda, and sometimes portrayed as one aspect of a triple-goddess, either with Boann and Ceridwen (who also has a healing-evil reference in TGH), or with her two sisters, both also named Birgit. Linda parallels Marigan to Morrigan, who was one of the wives of The Dagda. In other words, none of this is accidental.

 

Well Mat was still alive. Doing CPR on a dead person can't bring them back to life. Just a nearly dead or dying person, technically speaking.

 

I thought we were talking about when he died by lightning and was resurrected by balefire...

[baalsmistress]

He wasn't so much resurrected, as un-deaded.

 

The action that caused his death was undone, and so he never actually died.

[Terez]

But according to RJ, he died well enough (in that instance) to fulfill the Aelfinn prophecy. And people remember him being dead, so...

[Barid Bel Medar]

Again, depends on your interpretation of death. If by death you mean gone and not come back till your reborn naturally, then it is impossible to heal it, since if you did heal it, you wouldn't be dead in the first place.

 

I view death in this instance to = when the soul leaves the body to return to its resting place where it waits to be reborn, for heroes TAR, and wherever normal souls go. Intervention like balefire or ripping out of TAR does not prevent the person from dying, but grabs their soul and pulls them back into life (albeit by different methods). Moggy's version forcibly ripped the soul out into the real world. Balefire rewinds the events.

 

They still happened, its just that balefire erases it.

 

Like answering a question on an exam, just because you erase something, you still wrote it in the first place, even if it ceases to exist.

[EmperorMayhem]

I wasn't really talking about death 'healed' by balefire. moreso utilizing the OP with more in-depth anatomy in mind... i think it was one of the Forsaken who used it to access the pain/pleasure center in the brain during that one torture session... also, when Lanfear attacks Egwene and Avienda by the docks in Cairhein right before Moraine takes her out... she tells rand to die and he feels pain directly on his heart. i think perhaps his brain too... Other characters from this age don't usually try going for specific organs like that.

 

anways, i was more meaning using something like Air/Fire in combo with delving/healing to spark the heart back to beating (defib) and also using a Healing weave that doesn't take energy from the recipient but the OP (as referenced by Moghedien when describing AoL healing abilities). This could be used to heal someone who'd died in a battle maybe an hour or 2 or 3 ago.

[Sephie913]

IMO, DEATH is brain-death. Heart and lung inactivity falls short. Rand could have done CPR on Mat with OP after the hanging, and it probably whould have worked, if he knew how. But he was too scared to because of the incident with the girl in the Stone. So I would say, yes, anything short of DEATH(total loss of brain activity) can be healed.

 

I agree with the popular opinion on how to "heal" DEATH: Moggy's way.

 

(Or you could always stab Moridin and then Heal him. I know, dumb pun, but I couldn't resist.)

 

 

**edit**

 

And btw, you're thinking of Simirhage with the pleasure and pain centers. One of my favorite creepy-creepy moments in the series.

[IsharMorradChuain]

Healing Death is a very touchy thing in the series. Other than the one comment on Nynaeve's stubborness, people avoid talking about ressurrection like the plague. This has always made me wonder about it. In all of the wonderous things that people do and even with them doing quite a few "impossible" things, it's still taken as a given that death cannot be healed.

 

I have always worked under the assumption that it can be. In this world made by Robert Jordan people do not really die. Their essense lives on, their threads are re-woven into the pattern. All the heroes of the horn are "dead". I think arguing about our version of death is a moot point, because they do not follow the same rules we do.

 

With Balefire I do not see them as coming back from the dead mainly from a weird space-time continuum thing. I think Birgitte is the best example. last time she was walking the earth she died, then she came back. This however is not true ressurrection anymore than the whole balefire thing is though. As long as you can pull a person from TAR into the real world and you can restore, thoughts, memories, etc (as we know from Matt and the 'Finns), and you can heal a body, I don't see why you can't bring a person back from death. Even three days of it. Go Nynaeve!

 

Kind of going on with what EmperorMayhem is saying, when you can input memories (say if Egwene figures out how to do it by finding the person in TAR and instead of pulling the entire person like was done with Birgitte, but just their memories and thoughts.) and combine that with the ability to revive a dead body. And you could heal someone three days dead! Sorry I didn't see your post at first EmperorMayhem so this post is a little disjointed.

[TristanWebb]

I don't think it is possible. My impression is that when a soul leaves the pattern it is put into a big vat (or 4, one for males, females and channellers of each) outside the pattern and the wheel just grabs one when it is needed. Though vacuoles are outside the pattern at the OP can be used to go there, so maybe it is, but I like my idea of a barrel of souls outside the pattern and that the DO has the time from when it is moved from the pattern to when it is put back in the barrel to transmigrate someone otherwise even he can't pick out an individual thread.

 

Bound to the wheel threads are different so maybe you could revive a Hero, but I don't think ressurrecting someone would be possible on a day-to-day basis.