Honorable mention... The closest I came to seeing parallels was the Tinkers. However I think they were used to setup flashbacks rather than a belief system. From there all the different people's have their beliefs and myths. Rand goes by multiple names... even evil or at least enemies from Rands perspective draw their heritage back to the breaking and events there. Which is why I think everything is more about world building than anything specific. Well other than predetermined and the elect rather than personal choice. Maybe that's the point, and I miss that being Catholic based.

In my opinion, and I'll reread the op in case my mind is changed. The Path of Daggers audio book is on so I don't want to read anything too deep. Anyway my take... Books 1-3 he was exploring a new fun whimsical world where "the wheel weaves" and doesn't explain much. He tells in the prologue what he does, and we see who broke the world and also saw the dark one have some kind of a role. Then we see these characters again in Rand and the same dark one using his previous name. Nothing too deep there, and sets up the world. From there he seems to explore a mostly modern magical world (medieval-punk?) And then what happens when that world is broken and some magical parts lost, and are relearned. He also has more of the world and people of the world than something like LOTR has - or that we read about there. He has some aspects that we could consider as religion, however it also seems pretty passive if not predestination elect vs any free will. Sure the big bad evil seems to be motivated and have free will, but also it seems "the wheel weaves" and the baddies plans are foiled. There doesn't seem to be the active God figure(s) like in Tolkien for instance. I've gone through a pretty extensive Bible class. I don't claim to be an expert on it, I know more than some, can't really quote verse... but anyway I just don't see any deep parallels to at least Christianity. Also worth mentioning in the books, so far, there aren't references to cathedrals or temples. So to me, it's more about the world and the story than any deep found religion, other than "death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain." That's about it. Again in my opinion.

Yeah, agree with this and others. It'd have been nice to go back and rewrite those in light of where things went. That said it's a fun journey and I'm not reading this (well audio book) for anything consise or deep. So the twists and turns are welcome.

I made a similar comment on this on X, and signed up to share some thoughts, although maybe not as specific or in depth as others here. I'm also "reading" the series on audio book, and using it as a replacement for other media. So I welcome the long drawn-out soap opera nature of the books. I'm also only in the middle, so my opinion may change as I get farther or finish. What I would do differently or suggest to the author if I was a friend reading this - before publication... He should go back and rewrite the first 2 to 3 books to fit into where the story went after book 4 or so. The story seems to meander around, and he tries too hard to keep up story lines that maybe shouldn't have been opened in the ways they were. I think I get what he is trying to do, at least with my limited knowledge on ligature (not an English major here), in that he doesn't want the story or world to need all kinds of study guides to help someone through. So I get the details, I get going in depth on things... But, for instance, just my opinion... I don't think we needed P. Fain running around with the dagger. I don't think we needed 5 of them, plus others, leaving in the first book. I think Perrin could have been left out. All of this was fine in a limited series of 3 books, but it's just way too much to juggle once the main story gets going.