A theory of the Purpose of the Wheel of Time, the Pattern, and the Seven Ages

[bob bobato]

Hi everyone,

 

I recently finished aMoL and I thought I’d post my theories on the metaphysics of the Wheel of Time universe. For the most part these are based on how RJ himself presented and wrote about his world. I tried to limit my own speculations as much as possible, and the ones I have to make are generally open-ended. Hope you enjoy!

 

The Nature of the Pattern and the Purpose of the Wheel of Time

 

AS RJ wrote, the Pattern is the intricate web of human lives which are controlled by both good and evil, the Creator and the Dark One, in perpetual balance.

Based on that idea, and based on Rand’s interactions with the DO during the Last Battle, I propose that the purpose of the Wheel of Time is to receive the Consent of humanity¹ to exist in such a reality, torn between good and evil. Every Turning of the Wheel serves to renew this Consent and therefore maintain balance in the pattern. As long as humanity chooses to Consent the Wheel will continue to turn, and if ever he refuses his Consent by either destroying the DO on accepting his dominion, the Pattern will unravel and the Wheel will be destroyed.

 

Each of the seven ages exist to facilitate this process for mankind. First, by giving him the knowledge and wisdom to make the best choice, and then by providing this act of Consent with such a legacy that its influence could protect the Wheel for the rest of its Turning, which will set the stage for the process to begin again in the next cycle of Ages. Each Age is defined by the step it completes in this process; the way with which this achieved is immaterial. Any Age could end with a Breaking or a smooth transition, any Age could be heavenly or hellish, any Age could last a day or a billion years. Of course, some possibilities are much more likely than others according to the Age.

 

The First Age

 

This is the Age in which Humanity gains access to the True Source which drives the Universe, and learns to understand it.

 

In the first Age that preceded the third Age of the series, this was the age during which portal stones were created, the Ogier and Stedding appeared, the Horn of Valere, and talents such as Dreaming or Viewing appeared. These things may have appeared all at once, or gradually, or as a result of human experimentation. Ultimately the question cannot be answered and is fruitless – the Wheel willed that humans should have access to these things, and the Pattern made it so.

 

Throughout this Age humans experiment and explore these new powers in the quest of understanding what they mean. This process could involve long destructive wars or slow evolutions or anything at all. What matters is that in the main, humanity eventually gains true knowledge of the nature of the Universe: of the Wheel, of the Pattern, of the True Source... However, this knowledge is flawed in two ways which are fundamental to understanding the Second Age.  Firstly, since human understanding is coloured by the lived experience (ie, the metaphor of time as a ‘wheel’), its stated interpretation is slightly different from how it really is. Secondly, this initial vision of the Pattern is not aware of the existence of the Dark One and his struggle with the Creator.

 

The Second Age

 

In this Age, humanity lives according to its first understanding of the Wheel and ends by opening the world to the Dark One.

The Age of Legends began with the discovery of channeling and the establishment of global state whose stated purpose was the amelioration of the human condition. Yet the flaws of its understanding of the World limit its ability to achieve this and eventually bring its doom. Because the Age conceived of the True Source in terms of “channeling” “saidin” and “saidar,” it was unable to take advantage of powers deriving from the True Source which do not operate according to this theory, such as the Horn of Valere and the talents of non-channelers. For all their knowledge, the channelers of this age could not discover such skills as how to cure stilling.

 

Because the Age had no conception of the Dark One, it had no conception of the balance between good and evil.  It had a skewed system of morality that allowed some pretty questionable developments under its Utopian image. The nature of its age allowed many truly despicable people (the Forsaken) to thrive and find great success, and it did not see the problem with using the One Power to compel someone to act contrary to their will (as in the case of Semirhage). Because the Age of Legends believed in a vision of good that did not allow free will, because it did not recognize true evil, and because its conception of the True Source did not allow it to fully use it, the Age of Legends was a time during which humanity did not truly live according to the balance of the Pattern.

 

The Age of Legends ended because its people, in their hubris, opened the Bore and gave the Dark One unfettered access to the world, and the Dark One then destroyed the world in the Breaking. But in other Turnings of the Wheel, it could be that the Bore was opened not out of hubris but desperation, because its use and conception of creation fostered a terrible world which needed relief. It could have been anything. The point is that the second Age is an age during which the Pattern is imperfectly understood, which inevitably sets the stage for the Dark One to touch the world and create the great challenge of the third Age, which is the central challenge of the Wheel itself.

 

The Third Age

 

This is the crucial age of the Turning of the Wheel, the age where the Dark One has his greatest presence in the world. Faced with a true vision of the nature of reality, humanity is faced with the question: can it accept a world where both good and evil necessarily exist?

 

We know how this turned out in the series. The two previous ages gradually open to humanity the perspective with which it may understand the world. By giving humans access to the True Source, by spending two Ages teaching them how to use it, the Pattern provides them the ability to decide whether or not they want to continue their existence. At the end of the Age, as this challenge approaches, the full force of the True Source is made available to the world as powerful channelers are born and ancient non-chanelling abilities such as Dreaming, Viewing, and the Wolfbrothers are used as tools to fight the shadow.

 

Of all the Ages this is the one least likely to be a Utopia. Because of the Bore, the Dark One has too great an effect on the world, creating another imbalance in  the Pattern to follow the imbalance of the Second Age. It is the Dragon above all other people, as representative of humanity, who decides whether or not to restore the Pattern and thereby Consent to it. This is the one age during which he is definitely born; Ishamael posits that he is born in every age, and while that’s plausible it’s also unnecessary. Nevertheless if it is so then the Dragon probably would be born in every Age to ensure that its crucial step is fulfilled.

 

In the Third Age, it is important for the Dragon to be aware of himself as a reincarnation of a Dragon from the previous age, with all memories intact, because it provides him with a vision of the progression of human understanding. Because he has memories in two Ages he is able to see the flaws of the initial conception of the world and improve upon it, to correct the mistakes made in the Second Age. Unlike any other being he has the ability to appreciate the value the Dark One brings to creation by allowing free choice and giving humanity its worth.

 

If the Dragon Consents to accept the Pattern, the Bore is closed and the balance between good and evil is restored. In this act of affirming Consent, of restoring balance, the Dragon creates a Covenant for humanity, which provides it with the core beliefs needed to maintain balance in the Pattern. This Covenant, in one form or another, will persist until the Seventh Age.

 

The Fourth Age

 

This Age represents the pinnacle of human potential. Defined as the Age during which humanity holds and lives according to the true knowledge of the world, it lasts only as long as this knowledge persists.

 

The Wheel weaves as the Wheel Wills, and the Turning of the Wheel requires that this age, like all others, end. The way in which this happens depends greatly upon the underlying culture and the way in which knowledge of the world was learned (that is to say, knowledge of the True Source and of the Pattern). In some Turnings this Age could last three thousand years, and the cycle of human fortune gradually will lead to the destruction of this knowledge. But in other Turnings, it could be a Utopia which lasts tens of thousands of years, greater than the Age of Legends, which only loses knowledge to the inevitable wear and tear of time.

The Second through Fourth Ages, even will all the turbulence and cataclysms, are relatively stable in the sense that these Ages maintain a similar conception of the world and a similar shared culture. In the series, the common properties of these three Ages are their philosophies of the world, the concept of channeling (especially of Aes Sedai), a shared common language, and a sense of common history dating to the Age of Legends and revolving around the struggle with the Dark One. After the Dark One is defeated, however, this narrative and these commonalities become less relevant. Without the obvious presence of the Dark One in the world they gradually fade into myth and are become forgotten by the end.

 

 In the Fourth Age following the Third Age of the series, I imagine that the world gradually becomes more and more multipolar. There are periods of peace and periods of war, periods when nations fall and rise and dominate the world, which regularly wipe the memories of the previous society and destroy memories of the pre-Fourth Age world. With the rise of new powers and the valorization of post-Breaking channeler societies, such as the Wise Ones, damane, and Wind Finders, the Aes Sedai slowly lose their hegemony. As keepers of the legacy of the Second and Third Ages, their story and their ideology becomes less and less relevant and influential in the world, and the Age ends when they die out, bringing this legacy down with them. Perhaps the Age ends with the last fall of Tar Valon, or perhaps there’s a massive world war which wipes out existing society. If there is a Dragon in this age he will lead the charge against the Aes Sedai. Even if they represent the world’s greatest influence and the Dragon represents its most repellant, the Patterns wills that the Aes Sedai will fall and so the Dragon must make it so.

 

I imagine that the Ogier and the stedding would also disappear during this Age. Lacking RJ’s conception of them I cannot speculate as to why.

And yet, even though the direct legacy of the Second and Third Age becomes lost, humanity’s Consent to the Pattern remains intact, because the new ideologies that replace it retain the essence of its Covenant, by continuing to valorize key features of it such as a struggle between good and evil or of free will.

 

The Fifth Age

 

This is the Age after humanity loses its true conception of the True Source,  but retains the ability to access it. Once this ability is finally lost, the Age ends.

This could be an age of fantasy, when those who use the True Source are witches and wizards, gods, goddesses, elves, sprites; “magic-users” who use and conceive of their powers according to the faulty theories of their day. It could be an age of wilders,  when such people learn to strike it out by themselves. But it is not an age of channelers, of the Pattern, of the World of Dreams, because even if such things are still available to the world the conception of them as such is no longer even a folk memory.

 

And yet this age, too, can be a Utopia. Imagine the Fourth and Fifth Age existing as a Super-Age lasting 50,000 years, the age of a world state which rules in peace and harmony in full obeisance to Pattern. As millennia pass the world that existed before this state becomes dwarfed by it, and gradually becomes mythical forgotten. The way in which the world is understood gradually evolves, but even as it does the core of their knowledge and their humanity is retained.

This is an important Age in the Turning, because it provides the Covenant made during the Third Age with the vitality to last for Ages more. The true understanding of humanity’s place in the world changes metaphor and theory according to the tenor of the time, and in so doing retains its relevance and continues to impart its blessing. As long as humanity remembers this Covenant the Pattern is in balance.

 

The Age can end in many different ways. It could end because the Pattern wills it and less and less people are born with the ability to access the True Source. Or it could end because as the Ages’ “magical” structures diverge further and further from the truth, the methods used by “magic-users” become less and less effective at using the Source, until they reach a point where it cannot be used at all.

 

The Sixth Age

 

This is a transitional Age. It begins with the end of preexisting society and ends with the birth of a new one.

 

This age could be a Primitive Age following the collapse of the world of the previous age. For long millennia memories of previous civilizations fade quickly and sociolinguistic change is rapid. All that is preserved is the core knowledge of the Covenant of humanity through the guise of spiritual beliefs, though it is increasingly debased from the truth. With the recovery of civilization, the age ends. Or, this Age could be the cataclysm itself, a horrible event such as an asteroid strike which totally destroys the world of the Fifth Age and forces a return to a primitive state.

 

The Seventh Age

 

This is our modern Age. It is the age where humanity’s Consent to the Pattern is finally lost, thus triggering a new Turning of the Ages to renew it.

This Age establishes the cultural substratum which will persist for the following Turning of the Wheel. It establishes the basic cultural and civilizational norms which future Ages will be built on. The legacy that we in the Seventh Age gave to Rand and company in Third is an Indo-European phonological system, a cultural aesthetic derived from European, Middle Eastern, and East Asian civilization, and social values which on the whole are very similar (how else would we be able to identify with these characters?).

 

In our Age we have become technologically advanced, but that is not necessary to the Seventh Age. The crucial fact about it is that the new civilizations are so different from the civilizations that existed during the previous Ages that the form in which Covenant of humanity was agreed upon is no longer believed. Furthermore, the religions which impart this Covenant have changed so much over the Ages that eventually all trace of it disappears. Throughout the centuries the Patterns rejuvenates humanity with new spiritual movements (such as the transition from polytheism to monotheism), but even these measures fail eventually, threatening the balance of the Pattern.² In our world today, where organized religion is gradually disappearing, it would seem that we are approaching our final centuries before a new Turning of the Wheel must begin. The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills.

 

Notes:

1. I say that the purpose of the Wheel is to receive Consent from all of humanity, but it could very well be that it needs Consent from all living beings.
2. This is not a value judgment on the worth of different spiritual beliefs. It’s just that within this theory, where knowledge and Consent to the Pattern is vital, what’s most important to “morality” or “spirituality” is how close human philosophy remains near this core belief.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

interesting theory. I'm not sure I see much of it suggested in the source material.

 

I'm fairly certain the wheel of time isn't meant to imply anything about any kind of theism beyond the certain existence, in that paradigm, of the creator and the dark one.

 

the creator is clearly almost completely disinterested and with very little exception a non-participant in events.

 

the spiritual and cultural practices and beliefs of humanity etc., except where they turn to dark friendship, appear to be likewise irrelevant to the story.

 

RJ isn't CS Lewis.

[dawnflower8]

While this is interesting, the age that we are in now is the First Age, not the Seventh. We are probably early-to-mid First Age, though. 

[Barid Bel Medar]

While this is interesting, the age that we are in now is the First Age, not the Seventh. We are probably early-to-mid First Age, though. 

 

Actually, I believe RJ said that our age is most definitely not the First Age. At the very least, there has been no indication of which is our age, apart from the fact it isn't 2,3 or 4. 

[Azrayne]

Hasn't RJ stated that it was the discovery of the One Power which gave birth to the AoL?

[Barid Bel Medar]

In a way, yes, but not in terms of 'which age is which'. He always left that pretty vague. The discovery of the OP did lead to the Age of Legends, and the stories say that Tamyrlin (whose ring Lews Therin wore) was the first channeler. What we don't know is what "Age" this occurred. The people of the AoL seemed to know at least stories of the first channelers, so it mustn't have been too far from the AoL, but I don't think channeling was discovered in the AoL. The Age is renown for it's peace and prosperity stemming from the OP. It would take some time for the 'first channelers' to reach that kind of level, I don't think it would be considered a part of the Age of Legends. I suspect the AoL would have started when peace was established and channelers found their equilibrium. That suggests that channeling was discovered in the Age prior to the Age of Legends, the First Age. 

 

Thematically, it would make sense that the Wheel starts with the discovery of the OP, and ends with the OP totally forgotten, waiting to be rediscovered in the next Turning. Exactly where 'our' age fits in is anyone's guess. With stories of witchcraft and magic still persistent, there is a possibility that 'magic' is the dying out of the OP, making it the 6th Age, and possibly the not too distant future with science becoming more prevalent the notion is finally wiped out once and for all in the 7th Age, an age of science and logic. 

 

Or it could be as the OP stated, and our age has already lost its sense of magic, and will end when 'magic' is once again reborn. 

[dawnflower8]

Considering Lenn who flew to the moon in an eagle made of fire, his daughter Salya who walked among the stars, the giants Mosk and Merk, Elsbet, the Queen of All, and Materese the Healer all live in the First Age, it's pretty clear that this would have to be the First Age. The portal stones and discovery of the one power don't happen until the end.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

egad I think I agree with dawn. unless those

were myths and legends carried down from the last seventh age, those were very clear references to the present day

[Barid Bel Medar]

egad I think I agree with dawn. unless those

were myths and legends carried down from the last seventh age, those were very clear references to the present day

 

They were, and Thom did indeed say that they were from the 'First Age'. I had forgotten that he specifically mentioned the Age. There is a possibility that Thom is mistaken and they were references from an earlier age, which was distorted and put into the First Age, but I doubt it. 

 

The next question is, when exactly did our age actually begin? 

 

The earliest reference was Queen Elizabeth, so would be at least a few hundred years old. 

 

I'm inclined to believe RJ would have thought the death of Christ - whoever he may have been to the Pattern - was the turning of the Age. 

 

And when does our age end? There are no time limits - the only one we know of is 3000 years, but the BWB indicates the AoL was considerably longer. Enough time had passed that the world had forgotten the meaning of war. 

 

Our age may be 10,000 years, or 1,000. Or even less. There's too much unknown, but I'd personally say it lasts quite some time. 

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

he

might have meant the death of Christ, but there's Arthur as well, and the shift from dark age to Renaissance and I think any

messianic legend (Arthur kind of was that in a way, one with the land and such) might qualify for an age shifter, but I think RJ left all

this deliberately obscure.

[dawnflower8]

 

egad I think I agree with dawn. unless those

were myths and legends carried down from the last seventh age, those were very clear references to the present day

 

They were, and Thom did indeed say that they were from the 'First Age'. I had forgotten that he specifically mentioned the Age. There is a possibility that Thom is mistaken and they were references from an earlier age, which was distorted and put into the First Age, but I doubt it. 

 

The next question is, when exactly did our age actually begin? 

 

The earliest reference was Queen Elizabeth, so would be at least a few hundred years old. 

 

I'm inclined to believe RJ would have thought the death of Christ - whoever he may have been to the Pattern - was the turning of the Age. 

 

And when does our age end? There are no time limits - the only one we know of is 3000 years, but the BWB indicates the AoL was considerably longer. Enough time had passed that the world had forgotten the meaning of war. 

 

Our age may be 10,000 years, or 1,000. Or even less. There's too much unknown, but I'd personally say it lasts quite some time. 

 

For some reason I thought that around the time of the Renaissance, because that's when Queen Elizabeth ruled. But it is probably much older than that. The death of Christ is a pretty significant event, so that could be it.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

our written and verbal history may encompass more than one or two ages

[bob bobato]

interesting theory. I'm not sure I see much of it suggested in the source material.

 

I'm fairly certain the wheel of time isn't meant to imply anything about any kind of theism beyond the certain existence, in that paradigm, of the creator and the dark one.

 

the creator is clearly almost completely disinterested and with very little exception a non-participant in events.

 

the spiritual and cultural practices and beliefs of humanity etc., except where they turn to dark friendship, appear to be likewise irrelevant to the story.

 

RJ isn't CS Lewis.

 

Most of my theory and schema of the Ages are just an extrapolation, but they are based on ideas that were present in the book. I'll try and explain:

 

1. The Dragon Reborn's battle with the DO genuinely risks destroying the Wheel of Time. Because the opening and closing of the Bore are the only periods during the Turning of the Wheel when the DO has direct access to the world, it seems that this period is the only time when humanity actually has the opportunity to destroy the Wheel. This means that the DR's battle with the DO is the single most important event in the entire turning.

 

2. As the battle was written in aMoL, Rand's critical insight was that the DO really is necessary to the Pattern and is not actually "the enemy". It is this insight which prevents him from destroying the DO and allows the Pattern to remain in balance between good and evil. To me, this suggests that this insight is very important for humanity to understand. Furthermore, because the purpose of the balance is to give free will to humanity, it seems important to me that humanity needs to somehow "choose" to live in the Pattern. In other words, humanity needs to "consent" to their existence within it (which echoes Moridin's desire to destroy the Pattern in order to achieve "oblivion").

 

3. In order to battle the DO, the DR needs to have knowledge of the Wheel of Time, the Pattern, and the True Source. This means that if he battles the DO every 2nd and 3rd Age, every Turning of the Wheel needs to ensure that those Ages have this knowledge. Since the Third Age is an Age of human failing since the DO touches the world (causing nations to fall, channelers to steadily become weaker and weaker), I don't think the people of the Third Age could ever get the chance to build up the sufficient understanding needed to defeat the DO and restore balance to the Pattern. Considering the complexity of channeling, humanity needs a very long time to learn how to do it.

It's also worth noting that the beliefs and achievements of the Age of Legends are often critiqued within the series. Lews Therin thinks back in aMoL on how its dreams for perfection were flawed, there are many talents or elements of the True Source channelers of the time didn't understand, and most importantly, it didn't recognize the existence of the DO until the Bore was opened. Their errors had grave consequences for humanity, showing how a misunderstanding of the Pattern could risk disrupting it.

 

 

4. The culture of Randland, with its Old Tongue, philosophy of the Wheel, and channeling, is a legacy of the Age of Legends preserved by the Aes Sedai. Eventually, for the Wheel to keep on turning and history to become legend to become myth, and for us in the modern age to forget about it, this legacy needs to eventually fade away. Indeed, the process has already begun in the Third Age - witness how the Seanchan have a really flawed conception of channeling and how they consider the belief in "ta'veren" to be superstitious. It is the obvious presence of the Shadow in the world which forces at least some element of humanity to retain knowledge of the Pattern.

RJ himself has said that the main reason why there is no organized religion in Randland is because the DO makes it unnecessary. However, once the DO is defeated, there is no longer a force in the world compelling humanity to keep believing in the Pattern as it actually exists. Therefore, in the absence of the DO, the Aes Sedai will lose their edge against other channeling groups and belief systems such as the damane, Wind Finders, Wise ones, and Amayyad. 

However, in order for the Wheel to remain stable, some conception of it needs to be retained. In order to understand the danger of balefire, for example, a channeler needs to recognize the effect it has on the Pattern. If the DO's presence ensures that knowledge of the Wheel is retained for the most part during the Third Age, the world needs to have some way of retaining this knowledge once he is gone. That's where my idea of "Consent" and "Covenant" comes in - its a way of planting the seed of this knowledge in the belief systems that will sprout once the DO is defeated.

 

5. My plan for the different ages is mostly speculative. It really just tried to model how humanity would learn and then forget about the Pattern and the True Source: what steps are necessary and why. To be very clear I don't think RJ meant the series to have any deep spiritual meaning at all, and I certainly don't believe in the WoT as a religious belief. What I did is I tried to make sense of the underlying themes of the series and map it into a coherent system.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

I think that's all logically deduced from the text right up till the end of the fourth point, where it becomes speculation.

 

not that there's anything wrong with that, I just don't see a basis for any covenant in any sense of the word I understand within the text.

 

doesn't mean it mightn't have been in the author's mind. just means he didn't expreas it in any way I ever detected.

 

one thing about all the ages that he writes of - there is no doubt about the existence of his creator or his dark one. I don't know if that's what he believed in, God and the devil, but it's what randlanders took as givens, no belief required. so

I don't see a covenant playing into it any more than we need a covenant with gravity.

[bob bobato]

I think that's all logically deduced from the text right up till the end of the fourth point, where it becomes speculation.

 

not that there's anything wrong with that, I just don't see a basis for any covenant in any sense of the word I understand within the text.

 

doesn't mean it mightn't have been in the author's mind. just means he didn't expreas it in any way I ever detected.

 

one thing about all the ages that he writes of - there is no doubt about the existence of his creator or his dark one. I don't know if that's what he believed in, God and the devil, but it's what randlanders took as givens, no belief required. so

I don't see a covenant playing into it any more than we need a covenant with gravity.

You're absolutely right in that. Personally I don't like calling it a "covenant" either because that term doesn't appear in the text, but a better term escaped me. My idea is somewhat more general - that the Last Battle reinforces or affirms humanity's sense of itself and its nature. That somehow, Rand's insight into the nature of the DO and the Pattern gets shared by the rest of humanity and this insight preserves it. We see some hints of this in the sense that after the Last Battle the nations of the world seem to be trying to set up some peaceful system of world governance, under pressure from the Dragon, who is trying to search for some great meaning in his fight with the DO. How Aviendha's vision of the possible future of the Aiel shows her how important it is to ensure that the Aiel remain committed to their ideas of honour and obligation.  If RJ saw some greater meaning in the Last Battle he probably saw as a potential renewal of humanity's vision of itself, encompassing the "covenant" I described above but also efforts to encourage peace and honour which may not be directly related to the Pattern.

 

At its least speculative level, my conception of the 4th-7th Ages describes the success of that renewal and the triggers needed to spark this renewal again in the next Turning of the Wheel. At its most speculative level, my idea posits that the Pattern requires humanity to give its consent to exist, and this consent endures from the Fourth to the Seventh Age, after which time a new Turning is needed to receive this consent once more. 

 

EDIT: In terms of "humanity giving consent to exist within the Pattern", it could be that the Pattern only needs the DR to offer this consent as humanity's representative. As long as humanity remembers and believes that the DR fought the DO then the Pattern will consider this consent to be valid - even if humanity behaves atrociously and isn't even aware of the DR's "insight". Maybe the extent to which humanity is aware and acts upon the DR's insight and "renews" itself affects its overall happiness for the rest of the Wheel. And perhaps the Wheel spins faster to go through turbulent Ages quickly, in order to receive a more beneficial "consent" ASAP.

[mb]

There were similar threads on this forum.

 

My theory has been that the First Age of each cycle begins with some sort of creation and that the Seventh Age of each cycle ends with some sort of destruction.  the who/what (and how) of both I am now not certain.

[Azrayne]

My theory has been that the First Age of each cycle begins with some sort of creation and that the Seventh Age of each cycle ends with some sort of destruction.  the who/what (and how) of both I am now not certain.

 

 

That doesn't make any sense afaik, (feel free to correct me if official sources cite otherwise) in the only example of the transition between ages show that transition taking place in a single event - in the 2nd Age it was the War of Power and specifically the sealing of the Bore, which lead to the Breaking, with the third age being shaped largely by the aftermath. Then the third age ended with Tarmon Gai'don, or more specifically the more stable re-sealing of the Bore, and instead of the breaking we have the Dragon's Peace and the technological/channeling innovations brought about by Ta'Veren and other major figures, presumably leading to the 4th age getting off to a better start than the 3rd did.

 

I also don't think it makes sense to view the 1st age as a "beginning" and the 7th as an "ending," the wheel of time is, after all, a wheel, it has no beginning or ending, as Jordan takes pains to point out.

 

Of course it doesn't really make sense at all to argue about a fictional cosmology. At the end of the day it's just something put together to create a cool setting for a story.

[mb]

to Azrayne::

Robert Jordan told that details would be different in each cycle but that the general picture would be similar.

 

Oh, yes. I think of time in this world as fixed circular, but with a drifting variation. There are slight differences in the Pattern each time through so that if you thought of the Pattern as a tapestry and held up two successive weaves, you couldn't see any differences from a distance, only close up, but the more time turnings between tapestries, the more changes are apparent. But the basic Pattern always remains the same.

from here::  http://13depository.blogspot.com/2009/03/rjs-blog-posts-pre-knife-of-dreams.html

Not entirely sure, but one difference could be the shape of the world.  If so, some kind of destruction & creation would need to occur; and likely at the transitions between cycles.

The examples you gave, some people might interpret those as multiple events in each case.  destruction & creation; those can be either a single event or multiple events.

[Azrayne]

But creation (or change) and destruction generally necessitate each other, especially once you reach a large enough scale, and certainly on the scale of the transitioning of an age.

[mb]

destruction and creation occurred in the Breaking and in Tarmon Gaidon.

also; destruction + creation could be implied in Thom's speech in Two Rivers.  Eye of World chapter 4.

[Azrayne]

destruction and creation occurred in the Breaking and in Tarmon Gaidon.

 

 

That's my point. The old is destroyed and reshaped/recreated into something new.

[Guest Blind Boy Grunt]

Reading through these replies it appears I've missed where RJ said/described that an end of an age isn't marked by a battle between the dragon and the DO.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

Dylan fan? have you used that nick before, boyo?

[mb]

I would guess that most readers would agree that an Age does not always end with a battle against the Dark One.

Only 2 Age endings were told in the books; the Age of Legends, and the Age of the main series.  of those 2 endings, only the later was a battle against the Dark One.

Not sure if either author told about the other Age endings.  maybe such info might be told in the upcoming Companion.

[Azrayne]

We know that the transition into the AOL was the discovery of the One Power, which doesn't sound like it would have necessarily been a violent turmoil, although it could have been. Imagine if over the next few years random people started learning to develop demi-Godlike powers - how many of them would use those powers to cause destruction and havoc, to manipulate and control, to form armies, set themselves up as figures of worship or carve out empires? On the flip side, if the discovery was slow, gradual, centralized (given the dangers, the first two at least sound pretty likely, and from what I remember there were suggestions that the discovery was centered around a single individual, suggesting the latter), then it could have been a peaceful transition.