Books The Wheel of Time Original Sin and Predestination: What “The Strike at Shayol Ghul” Adds to the Worldbuilding of The Wheel of Time How did the drilling of the Bore affect the world depicted in The Wheel of Time? By Sylas K Barrett | Published on January 28, 2025 Credit: Amazon Prime Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Amazon Prime The short story “The Strike at Shayol Ghul” is presented as an in-world introduction for scholars to the subject of Lews Therin’s attack on Shayol Ghul. In its introduction, a historian named Jorille Mondevin recounts the discovery of a manuscript, “a partial copy of no less than a history of the world from the drilling of the Bore into the Dark One’s Prison to the End of the Breaking of the world.” Most important to the interests of this historian, and the current Age, the manuscript contains the only known account of the sealing of the Bore by Lews Therin Telamon and the Hundred Companions. Mondevin describes the shape of the War of the Shadow, and how, eventually, the Dark One began to gain ground continually, leaving the Light unable to turn the tide, or win back any of the ground taken by the Dark One’s forces. They were losing, being pushed toward inevitable defeat with increasing speed, and if they were to win at all, it must be done quickly. Two different plans were proposed. One was Lews Therin Telamon’s plan to lead a strike force of soldiers and a circle of thirteen Aes Sedai into Shayol Ghul, where the Bore was detectable, to secure seals around “seven focus points” which would close up the Bore and seal the Dark One away for good. Another plan, which was favored by a powerful Aes Sedai named Latra Posae Decume, was to construct two great sa’angreal which would give the Aes Sedai enough power to push the Shadow back to Shayol Ghul and erect a wall around it, until a safe way to seal the Bore permanently could be discovered. Both plans came with dangerous risks and little certainty of success, but Latra Posae gathered a great deal of support for the sa’angreal plan. What’s more, she convinced every female Aes Sedai of sufficient strength that Lews Therin’s plan was too dangerous, and they all swore not to take part in it. Without women to create a circle, Lews Therin abandoned his plan and the sa’angreal became the focus of the Aes Sedai’s work. But when the Shadow (unknowingly) gained control of the area where the access ter’angreal were, the Aes Sedai lost their ability to be able to use the sa’angreal. Lews Therin argued again for his plan, acknowledging the risks but saying that was now the only chance, yet Posae maintained her opposition. Belief in the danger of misplacing the seals had spread, and many more female Aes Sedai had pledged to the “Fateful Concord,” including a great number who were nowhere near strong enough to qualify for the raiding party circle. Tempers and passions rose, and an apparently unprecedented division along male-female lines began to develop among the Aes Sedai in general, if not within the Hall itself. Finally the Hall decided to continue with Latra Posae’s plan, and her people began working to smuggle the access ter’angreal out of Shadow-controlled territory. But they were unable to recover the ter’angreal, and as certain defeat loomed and still the female Aes Sedai held to their Concord, Lews Therin decided to lead his soldiers and a group of male channelers in a desperate gamble to enact his plan without the aid of any female Aes Sedai. The seals were placed successfully, and by some great stroke of luck, all the Forsaken happened to be gathered in Shayol Ghul at the time and were trapped as well. Even though the taint on saidin and the Breaking also occurred as a result of Lews Therin’s actions, the sealing away of the Shadow and its generals did result in the rest of the Shadow faltering as Darkfriends fought each other for control over the Shadow’s forces, cut off from the Dark One and his Chosen generals. The Wheel of Time is a series rich in themes, tackling subjects such as the ethics of wielding power, the burden of duty, the effects of trauma in wartime, and many others. But one of the most interesting themes of the story is the division between male and female channelers, which exists in a world where the driving force of creation is made up of two separate-but-equal halves, each belonging to one of the sexes. (For the purposes of this essay, I will use the term “sex” and “gender” interchangeably, and to mean the binary of “male” and female” as it exists in the world of The Wheel of Time.) Jordan often plays with the division between the sexes throughout the series, showing different societies with different attitudes towards gender roles, some of which (Andor, Cairhien) are of the sort traditional in standard western fantasy, and others (Seanchan, the Aiel, Far Madding) which offer interesting and alternative social structures and gender norms. In the Aes Sedai, he presents the reader with an organization that is all-female by necessity, an organization which is one of the most powerful in the world and at the same time is hampered and dwindling as it tries to carry a burden that is meant to be shared. Of course, it takes several books for the reader to understand this about the Aes Sedai. In The Eye of the World we only know that they are very mysterious, very powerful, and cannot be trusted. We also learn early on that male channeling is associated with the Dark One and that the Dragon himself is basically considered to have been a Darkfriend. People suspected of being Darkfriends often have the Dragon’s fang scrawled on their door, and men who present the ability to channel are ostracized by their community, sometimes killed, even if they have been gentled and all danger of exposure to the taint has been removed. Few people know more about the origins of taint than that the Dragon’s mistake led to the Breaking and that male Aes Sedai are at fault for what happened to the world at that time. In fact, there is even a vague but prevailing sense, when the subject of the Breaking is spoken of by more learned characters, that it was hubris that led Lews Therin to attack Shayol Ghul directly, that he was overconfident in his abilities and put himself and the men he led into a dangerously vulnerable position that he should have known to avoid. It’s never said outright, but it has always felt implied to me by the narrative, and by the way certain characters speak of the historical incident. I have always wondered how true this interpretation of events was. Should Lews Therin be blamed, in a moral sense, for the taint on saidin? Was it overconfidence, or ego, or something else that made him decide to lead an assault on Shayol Ghul itself, an attack which resulted in a cataclysmic disaster, the end of an Age, and a near-severing of humanity from half of the One Power? And if it wasn’t hubris, why would he have made his attack without the aid of a single female Aes Sedai? “The Strike at Shayol Ghul” gives us an answer to that question. It’s somewhat bare bones and without the detail that Lews Therin, Latra Posae, and their fellow Aes Sedai might have given us if the tale had been recounted from their point of view, rather than by a historian of the Third Age translating a copy of an only partially-legible ancient text. However, the context that Latra Posae was influential enough to dissuade all of the female Aes Sedai from participating in Lews Therin’s plan is a fascinating one, not least because we learn that “an apparently unprecedented division along male-female lines began to develop among the Aes Sedai in general, if not within the Hall itself” and that “the lines of division […] hardened to a point where many female Aes Sedai refused to speak to male Aes Sedai, and the reverse as well.” The fact that there was such a powerful division along gendered lines before the taint was placed on saidin is such an important piece of context when it comes to the theme of male and female channelers working (or not working) together. I have always thought that the true masterstroke of the tainting of saidin—more than the resultant Breaking of the World and subsequent danger of future male channelers, more even than the huge reduction in the overall number of channelers in future generations—is the fact that even the most powerful circle of Aes Sedai is reduced tremendously in its overall strength and effectiveness if it is only comprised of one gender of channeler. If the Dark One had dramatically reduced the number of viable candidates for Aes Sedai in some other, non-gendered way, it would still have been a devastating blow to the Light, but it would not have reduced the Aes Sedai’s collective power in quite the same way. While that remains true, it is also true that a powerful division between male and female channelers occurred before the Dark One touched saidin, and that it might even have been responsible for the opportunity the Dark One had to place the taint. In a footnote, Mondevin mentions that many scholars ponder how things might have gone differently if female Aes Sedai had accompanied Lews Therin and his male Aes Sedai into Shayol Ghul. Would saidar have been tainted, too? Or would the presence of female channelers, the use of both halves of the One Power, have made the circle strong enough to protect itself from the Dark One’s touch, and to complete the placing of the Seals without giving the Dark One a chance to touch either half of the One Power? One can’t know for sure, of course, and Mondevin herself (perhaps voicing Jordan’s own opinion) scorns such fruitless speculation, but it’s hard to deny that, viewed from a certain angle, one could say that the tainting of saidin is actually the fault of the female Aes Sedai. Latra Posae is presented in the text as being basically responsible for the division among the Aes Sedai of the Age of Legends, and there is something vaguely sinister in the way that the other female Aes Sedai made an accord among themselves against Lews Therin and his plan. If the text were to say that Lews Therin struggled to convince anyone of his plan, and was only able to recruit a certain number of men and no women, it might read differently. But as it is stated in “The Strike at Shayol Ghul,” the suggestion is that the women, at the behest of Latra Posae, basically ganged up against the men. Lews Therin was the Dragon, after all, known to be the reincarnated champion of the Light. While this doesn’t make him a ruler or dictator, or mean that everyone should just have done as he commanded without question, his decisions regarding a war against the Dark would, and should, carry a great deal of weight. The fact that Latra Posae was able to—alone, as far as any record shows—turn almost all of an entire gender against him really does smack of interference by the Dark. Could Latra Posae have been an agent of the Dark One, working to undermine the Aes Sedai of her time the way we have seen Black Sisters do in the Third Age? It’s certainly possible. And even if she wasn’t, it is clear that the destruction wrought by the Shadow during her time, the fear and desperation the forces of the Light felt as their defeat approached, would have been part of the reason that the Aes Sedai became so viciously divided at a time when they most needed to stand together. While there is no way of knowing what might have happened if female Aes Sedai had accompanied Lews Therin to Shayol Ghul for the sealing of the Bore, we do know that men and women working together, channeling saidin and saidar in harmony, can achieve feats that cannot be achieved by either on their own. Lews Therin’s strike at Shayol Ghul was already a desperate gamble if both sexes had accompanied him. With only one, the chances of success would have been greatly reduced—perhaps to impossibility. Since we know that the champion of the Light is always a man, and that the division between male and female Aes Sedai at the end of the War of the Shadow was instigated and perpetuated by a woman (Lews Therin did capitulate to trying Latra Posae’s plan first, while she refused to try his even after access to the Choedan Kal was lost), it is difficult not to read the story as telling us that the taint on saidin is the fault of women’s stubbornness and self-certainty. I’m not sure if Jordan intended this implication to be read as a certainty or merely as an interesting possibility, but he’s clearly playing with the idea throughout the series. As I mentioned in the beginning of this essay, distrust between male and female channelers is a core theme in The Wheel of Time. In the Third Age this division exists because of the taint and the Aes Sedai have no better strategy for dealing with the threat of madness other than gentling, however, the narrative does become increasingly critical of their approach to dealing with male channelers, despite its acknowledgment that they have little choice in how they handle men born with the spark. For example, most members of the Red Ajah are depicted as hating, or at least distrusting, all men, even though their work involves only a small subset of that gender, and could very well be viewed as a compassionate act intended to reduce suffering as much as possible. Another example is the way that Lelaine and Maigan (neither of whom are even Red) are willing to suggest using a version of Compulsion to subjugate and control the Asha’man. The way many Aes Sedai believed for a while that the Dragon should be captured and held by the White Tower to be wielded like a weapon by the Aes Sedai is also an example of the same theme. In each case there is reason for the woman or women’s position, but the increasing immorality that they turn to in the face of the question around the taint is significant—especially if the female Aes Sedai of the Age of Legends are even partially to blame for the fact that the men of Lews Therin’s strike force were unable to defend against the placing of the taint on saidin. It doesn’t help that Lews Therin is a full character in the reader’s eyes, through his presence in Rand’s head and the fact that his soul is also Rand’s. We are inclined to be connected and sympathetic to him because we know him, while Latra Posae is only a name with only a few facts attached to it, one of which is that she stood in opposition against Lews Therin and turned many others against him as well. Even if both sides share the blame equally for what happened during the strike at Shayol Ghul—or if both sides are be considered blameless given how desperate and uncertain their circumstances were—it still remains that it is male channelers who were willing to risk everything for what they saw as the only chance for the world’s salvation, and generations of male channelers who bore the brunt of the pain and destruction that follows. However, as I consider all the lessons that we might glean from this glimpse into the last days of the War of the Shadow, it occurs to me that there is another way of interpreting the story of the strike at Shayol Ghul. Though neither Lews Therin nor Latra Posae could have known what would come of their choices, or have seen the results in their own lifetimes, both the setting of the Seals on the Dark One’s prison and the construction of the Choedan Kal do eventually prove equally necessary for the survival of humanity. Lews Therin’s actions trapped the Dark One and the Forsaken for a time, breaking up the Shadow’s advance and undermining its remaining forces. (Indeed, one could even argue that the Breaking, as horrible as it was, contributed to this, as it metaphorically and literally wiped the board clean.) It may be that, as imperfect as his solution was, it bought the world the time it needed to prepare for a renewed conflict, with new champions of the Light, that will eventually win the Last Battle and find a way to seal the Dark One’s prison for good, just as Latra Posae believed necessary. Although the Choedan Kal weren’t used in the War of the Shadow, without their creation Rand never would have been able to cleanse saidin. Latra Posae’s choices may have resulted in the opportunity for saidin to be tainted, but they also provided the means by which it would one day be cleansed. So even this division amongst the Aes Sedai of the Age of Legends could be seen, through a certain lens of hindsight and maybe a little squinting, as collaboration, with each gender providing a vital piece of protection for humanity’s future. Saidin and saidar aren’t only supposed to work alongside each other, after all. They also push against each other to provide the force that drives the Wheel of Time and spins out the Pattern of Creation. At the end of day (if such a thing exists, there are neither beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time), perhaps these two forces can’t ever be truly divided. They only seem to be to those inside the Pattern, with an imperfect view of its totality. Your regularly scheduled Reading The Wheel of Time will return next week as we embark on Book Eleven of the series, Knife of Dreams.[end-mark]  The post Original Sin and Predestination: What “The Strike at Shayol Ghul” Adds to the Worldbuilding of The Wheel of Time appeared first on Reactor.

'My People': Deportations, Cries, and Lies

Is this the "Sputnik moment" of artificial intelligence?

The original photo from 2017 and the follow-up from 2018 show something massive moving about.

The effect remains even when you're not high.

"The World has not made sufficient progress on existential risks threatening all of humanity."

Imprinting genes have long been a stumbling block for unisexual reproduction in mammals, but scientists have now found a way past it.

Move over, phubbing – there’s a new annoying behavior in town.

If parallel universes exist, then there is at least one way to get to a place that is different from our reality. So far, the existence of parallel universes is mostly associated with science fiction. But there are scientific theories that suggest that other universes exist. If so, how can we get there? Physicist Paul Sutter believes that such a possibility exists, but it is a very difficult journey, writes Space. Theories suggesting the existence of parallel worlds The existence of parallel universes is suggested by at least two well-known theories in physics. One of them is called the inflation theory and describes an extremely early universe. Soon after the Big Bang, not one, but a huge number of universes could have been created, which began to expand at an accelerated rate. Moreover, each universe has different physics and distribution of matter. But getting to other universes is extremely difficult, because they are beyond the visible space and are moving away from us faster than the speed of light. Another theory, known as the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, says that when some random quantum process occurs, one universe gets one of the possible outcomes, while other universes get other outcomes. This creates a multiverse with all possible quantum outcomes. How to get to a parallel universe? To get into one of these parallel universes, you need to create a time machine to go back to the past. Usually, such time travel leads to the emergence of various paradoxes. For example, if you go back to the past and destroy the time machine, it will not exist, which means that you cannot go back in time. But the journey has already taken place. According to Stephen Hawking’s chronology-protection hypothesis, it is impossible to travel back in time. On the other hand, Novikov’s self-consistency principle suggests that traveling to the past is possible, but changing the past is impossible. But how can you travel to the past without changing it? This is possible if you go back in time, but not to your own past. Instead, you get into an alternate history and you can change things there. If you go back to the future, the past in this reality will remain unchanged. The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics offers a natural platform for creating such alternative histories. If the universe is constantly splitting anyway, then time travel simply moves you from one reality to another. On the other hand, going back to the future can create a new reality that did not exist before. But no one knows exactly how it works. It is not known how this process unfolds or by what mechanism an alternative history arises. To get into one of these parallel universes, you need to create a time machine to go back to the past. What does quantum physics say? Attempts to understand this question by studying quantum mechanics have yielded mixed results. Quantum fields tend to break down when time machines are involved. They can be stabilized by giving up some of the theory’s core principles, such as the correspondence principle, which states that quantum processes eventually lead to macroscopic behavior and that fundamental reactions are reversible. No one is willing to give these up, since they seem central to the theory. But even classical, non-quantum systems face problems. Suppose you have a switch that can turn a time machine on and off, perhaps by opening or closing a wormhole. We don’t know how alternate histories can accommodate such changes in their space-time structures, regardless of what quantum processes are going on at the subatomic level. If we could build a time machine, we could easily test whether alternative histories are created. All we would have to do is change something in our own past. If we can’t do that, then there is only one timeline. If we can, then alternative histories exist and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct. It is not known whether any of these are possible, but such possibilities cannot be completely ruled out. So, although traveling to a parallel universe may be a very difficult process, it is not completely impossible. The post How to get to a parallel universe: the answer from physicists may surprise appeared first on Anomalien.com.

CBS’s Stephen Colbert twisted himself into a logical pretzel on Monday’s installment of The Late Show. First, Colbert suggested that President Trump’s immigration enforcement was the stuff of Nazis, but immediately afterwards, he conceded that former President Biden did pretty much the same thing. Taking his cues from a CNN headline, Colbert lamented, “Daddy Donny is keeping his promise to round up immigrants in order to save the dogs that weren't being eaten from imaginary Mexican Hannibal Lecter. Over the weekend, his administration launched a nationwide immigration enforcement blitz. Really? Blitz, short for blitzkrieg? Just once, can we do fun German stuff? I'd love to see a headline that says, ‘Trump administration launches nationwide strudel.’”     Before anyone could ask if the defensive football tactic was beyond the pale, Colbert conceded, “so far, ICE says these roundups are going after criminals, something like Biden tried to do.” So, not Nazi-like? Regardless, Colbert continued by recalling Sunday’s international incident with Colombia, “but unlike Biden, Trump's doing it in a way that pisses off our allies. Cuz yesterday, the president of Colombia refused to let a military transport filled with handcuffed migrants land in his country. So, Trump posted, [TRUMP VOICE] ‘Emergency 25 percent tariffs on all Colombian goods coming into the United States.’ [NORMAL VOICE] To which Don Jr. said, ‘Wait, not everything from Colombia, right? Dad? Dad?’” Colombian President Gustavo Petro is a funny definition of an ally. He’s old Marxist guerrilla who is an anti-Semitic Hamas propagandist who cozies up to Venezuela’s Nicholas Maduro. On Sunday, he authorized the use of deportation flights, but canceled them while they were in the air all over the type of plane being used because he wanted to become the main character in the global anti-Trump resistance. Here is a transcript for the January 27 show: CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert 1/27/2025 11:41 PM ET STEPHEN COLBERT: Daddy Donny is keeping his promise to round up immigrants in order to save the dogs that weren't being eaten from imaginary Mexican Hannibal Lecter. Over the weekend, his administration launched a nationwide immigration enforcement blitz. Really? Blitz, short for blitzkrieg? Just once, can we do fun German stuff? I'd love to see a headline that says, “Trump administration launches nationwide strudel.” So far—or even blitzes with strudel—so far, ICE says these roundups are going after criminals, something like Biden tried to do, but unlike Biden, Trump's doing it in a way that pisses off our allies. Cuz yesterday, the president of Colombia refused to let a military transport filled with handcuffed migrants land in his country. So, Trump posted, [TRUMP VOICE] “Emergency 25 percent tariffs on all Colombian goods coming into the United States.” [NORMAL VOICE] To which Don Jr. said, "Wait, not everything from Colombia, right? Dad? Dad?”