The One Power And The True Source
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The True Source is made up of two complementary parts: saidin, the male half, and saidar, the female half. Each has seperate properties and affinities, working at the same time with and against the other. Only women can touch saidar, and only men saidin. Each is completely unable to sense the other half of the Source, except as an absence or negativity. Even the methodologies by which men and women utilize the One Power that emanates from the True Source are so comletely different that no woman can trach a man to use the power, and no man a woman.

In some Ages, such as that called the Age of Legends, men and women used the complementary and conflicting halves of the Power together to perform feats that neither could accomplish seperately. In the present Age, part of the Power, the male half, has ben tainted, causing any man who channels saidin to go mad eventually and cause Power-wrought havoc unless he is killed or gentled.

Most people cannot sense or touch the True Source, even though its energy may be manifested all around them. Only a tiny portion or the population, about two or three percent actually have the ability, once taught, to touch and draw on the One Power, and today many of those cannot utilize its power in any effective manner .The act of drawing and controlling the flow of the One Power from the True Source is known as channeling.

Channeling draws of threads of the One Power and uses them singly or in combination in a weave designed to accomplish the particular task at hand. There are five different threads to the One Power, known as the Five Powers. They are named according to the elements their energies manipulate: Earth, Air (sometimes called Wind), Fire, Water and Spirit. In many cases only one of the Powers is required to accomplish a task. A weave of Fire alone will light a candle or control a fire. But certain tasks necessitate the weaving of flows in more that one of the Five Powers. For instance, one who wishes to affect the weather must weave a flow combining Air, Water and Spirit.

Anyone who can channel usually has a greater degree of strength with at least one or two of the Powers, yet they may lack any particular ability at all with some of the others. For example, someone strong in Wind may be all but unable to weave Fire, or may be weak in Earth but equally strong in Spirit and Air. Some few rare individuals have been found to be very strong in as many as three, or in very rare cases four, or the Powers. But since the Age of Legends no one has had great strength in all five. Even then, such individuals were very rare.

Levels of comparative strength also differ greatly from one individual wielder of the Power to another, and from men to women. Using records gathered from the Age of Legends (current data have little usable information concerning the use of saidin), it is possible to state certain facts about the strength and distribution of the ability in those men and women who could channel. In general, men were stronger in the use of the Power than women - that is, in sheer volume of the Power they could handle - though there were certainly individual women who had great strength and individual men who were comparatively weak. By the same token, though some men had great dexterity in their weaving, in general women outstripped men in this regard. Men usualy exhibited greater ability with Earth and Fire while women more often excelled in the use of Water and/or Air. Equal numbres of men and women were strong in the use of Spirit. There were, of course, exceptions, but they were rare enough that Earth and Fire came to be regarded a male powers, while Air and Water were considered female powers. Even today, women usually exhibit their greatest strength in Air or Water, or both. This probably prompted the popular saying among female channelers: "There is no rock so strong that water and wind cannot wear it away, no fire so fierce that water cannot quench it ot wind snuff it out." Any equivalent witticism among male channelers has been lost.

Of the tiny percentage of the population who have the potential to channel at all, only a small number have the ability inborn. It usually manifests itself in adolescence or early adulthood, though in general women show the ability at a younder age than men, often much younger. These few talented individuals wil eventually channel the Power with or without guidance, whether or not they wish to do so. In many cases they are not even aware of what they are doing. For such people, touching and drawing on the True Source is completely natural, and potentially deadly.

As far as is known, the One Power is not alive, but is a force of natural energy limited only by the strength of the channeler and the extent of his/her control. One warning must be emphasised: it's use is extremely addictive. One unwary of the danger inherent in channeling can easily be seduced into drawing more than he or she can handle, or drawing on it too often. Such mishandling of this power usually exacts a terrible price on the body and mind.

Drawing saidar and channeling it without the benefit of guidance or training results in death for four out of five women born with the ability. This death often takes the form of a lingering sickness that saps the individual of her life energy. Those who first touch the power unintentionally generally feel nothing unusual at the time, but suffer a violent reaction as much as ten days later. This reaction seldom lasts for more than a few hours. Headaches, chills, fever, exhilaration, numbness, dizziness and lack of coordination ar eonly a few of the most usual symptoms, often occurring simultaneously or in quick succession. These effects return after each incident of touching the Source. Each time, reaction comes closer to the actual act of touching, until the two happen almost simultaneously. At this stage the visible reactions stop, but unless some sort of control has been learned, death becomes a certainty. Some women die within the year, some survive as long as five years, yet without the control, that is almost impossible to learn without guidance, all die. Their final days are usually marked by violent convulsions and screams of agony. Once the last stages are entered, there is no known cure, even with the use of the One Power.

Those women, often called Wilders, who do manage to survive and train themselves in the use of the Power usually develop a mantal barrier, probably as a survival mechanism, that makes it difficult for them to reach their ful potential. Some think that these blocks are partially caused by the social stigma often associated with the use of the Power, and by the unwillingness of the individual to consider or acknowledge the fact that she can channel. Such blocks can sometimes be broken, though not easily, with assistance from those who have proper training. If the barriers are broken, wilders are often the most powerful of channelers. MAny of those who have undergone the training in what is considered the proper sequence look down on the self-taught, using "wilder" as a derogatory term indicating the unpredictability of a wild talent and the savagery of a wild animal.
Even tose with training risk much every time they channel. If a woman draws too much saidar, or draws saidar too often, she can be burned out or overloaded, losing her ability to channel, or, at worst, killing herself. If she weaves powers she cannot adequately control, she may cause her own death and damage those around her.

Before the time of the Breaking of the World, men faced much the same risks as women when born with the ability to channel. After the Bore was sealed, that changed. The Dark One, in the last moments of the battle, managed a final counterstrike that tainted the male half of the One Power. Since the Time of Madness that followed, no man has been able to channel saidin without eventually going completely and horribly insane. Even those who do manage to learn some control die either from a slow wsating sickness that causes the sufferer to rot alive. In either case, the danger to those around the male channeler is great. Those men who manage to live long enough to go mad usually end up wielding the power of tainted saidin in horrible ways, often destroying everyone and everything around them. During the Breaking of the World it was such men who completely destroyed the world and known civilisation. It is because of this danger that men are not only not encouraged to learn how to channel; those who do learn, or even try to, are hunted down and rendered harmless or killed.

In the Age of Legends, the process by which a man or woman was rendered incapable of channeling was called "severing", as in "being severed from the True Source". In the present day, the process is given a different name depending on whether it is done to a man or a woman.

The severing of a man from the True Source is now known as "gentling". He can still sense the Power, but is unable to touch any saidin in any way. He is therefore harmless to those around him, or "gentled". If he is gentled soon enough, the madness and the wasting sickness are also arrested, though not cured, and death by insanity or rot is averted. Unfortunately most who are gentled lose the will to live when their connection to the True Source is severed. They fall into a deep depression and often commit suicide soon after if not forcibly prevented. Those who do not kill themselves usualy die within a year or two anyway, for without the will to live the body eventually fails.

For women, the intentional removal of the ability to channel is called "stilling". If the ability is lost by accident the process is called being "burned out", though the term "stilling" is sometimes used for this also, a deplorable loss of precision in speech since the Old Tongue fell out of use. In any case, the results of bing stilled or burned out are much the same. The stilled woman, like the man who has been gentled, is cut off from the True Source, always tantalised by the sense of saidar, yet unable to touch or channel it. The woman who is burned out can neither channel nor sense the Power. Stilling is usually done as punishment for a crime, while burnout occurs through overload or misuse of the power, or is the result of losing to an attack by a greater power while channeling. It is assumed that men are susceptible to burnout as well.

Like the men who have been gentled, women who have been stilled lose the will to survive. In fact, less is known about them than about gentled men, who are held prisoner until they die. Women who have been stilled or burned out usually flee as far as they can from women who retain the ability they have lost. Women who can channel rarely make any effort to find stilled or burned-out women; the claim is that they should not be taunted in their misery by the presence of women who remain whole, but it should be noted that women who can channel often become queasy, even physically ill, at the mere thought of the fate suffered by those others, a fate they themselves could also face. It is believed that stilled women olive only if they succeed in finding something to fill the void left by the absence of the One Power. Few manage to find a focus that powerful.

All records insist that gentling or stilling cannot be cured, but cases have been rumoured of limited healing, using all threads of the Power. Historically, however, loss of the baility to channel has been irreversible. Certainly in the Age of Legends, when feats beyond the comprehension of the present day weere a matter of course, severing was considered final, beyond all ability to heal.

One of the ways to reduce the chance of accidental stilling or burnout is to use angreal and sa'angreal, artifacts made during the Age of Legends and perhaps earlier which enhance the channeler's ability to draw and focus the One Power. And angreal allows the channeler to safely control a greater amount of the Power than she or he could possibly draw unaided. Sa'angreal are similar, but much more powerful. There are considerable variations among angreal and sa'angreal, but in general a Sa'angreal can be said to allow one to channel as much mpore of the One Power over that of the angreal as the angreal does over channeling unaided. Both angreal and sa'angreal were keyed during their making for use by either men or women. A woman cannot use one made for a man and vice versa. There are rumours of angreal and sa'angreal usable by both men and women, but they remain unconfirmed.

Relatively few angreal have survived since the Age of Legends, and far fewer, only a handful, of the more powerful sa'angreal. The knowledge and skills required for their making was lost during the Breaking of the World.

Another way to venture beyond the capacity of an unaided channeler is the process of linking several chanelers together. In the current age, drawing and channeling the flow of the One Power is usually a solitary act, but linking, a comon technique in the Age of Legends, allows several flows to combine, thus increasing the overall strength and precision of the flow. A group that is linked is called a 'Circle', even when it is only two people. The primary value of the circle is its capacity for singular forces of multiple energies. It is impossible to focus two or more individual flows precisely on the same task, no matter how skilled the channelers, but when linked the person leading the circle can direct and channel the combined flows with the same pinpoint accuracy as if she/he were directing only one flow.

These combined flows handle more Power than any one member could channel alone, with more precision than several seperate flows, but the linked flow is not as strong as each of the seperate strengths added together. In other words, the link does not combine flows in a purely additive manner. Two women linked can handle more than either could seperately, and ith much greater control than with multiple flows - because it is a single flow - but they cannot handle as much as the two could seperately. This limit holds however large the circle. It is the precision of the circles that makes them so powerful. The exact strike of one chisel can split a stone that would withstand any number of blows from a hammer.

Linking also has gender-based limitations due to the inherent differences between Saidin and Saidar. Men have the greater general strength in the Power, but women are essential for linking. Women can initiate a link; men cannot, though they can be part of it and even lead in certain circumstances.

Linking can be learned by any woman who can channel, and one who does not know how to form a link can be brought into one by someone who does know how. Leading a circle, however, depends on both strength and skill, which are not the same thing. The greater the combination of strength and skill, the larger the circle that a woman, or man, can lead.

The one who forms a link is not necessarily the one to lead it. Control can be passed voluntarily, and in the cases of some mixed gender circles, must be passed in order to weave flows.

A circle of up to thirteen female channelers can be linked together without the presence of a man. If a man is added to the thirteen women, they can then increase the link to include thirteen more women, or a total of twenty-six women and one man. Two men can take the circle to include thirty-four women. The next total is forty-five with three men linked with forty-two women, then fifty-four (four men, fifty women), then sixty-three (five men, fifty-eight women), and finally seventy-two (six men and sixty-six women). This last, a circle of seventy-two, is the maximum possible link in terms of numbers.

Other gender mixes are possible in a link as well .The number of men in a circle is limited only by the fact that with the exceptions of the linking of one man with one woman, or of two men and one woman (and, of course, two men and two women), there must always be at lesat one more woman in the circle than the number of men. Thus three men would need four women to be in a circle together, four men would need five women, and so on. There can also be smaller circles than thirteen, whether of women alone, or of men and women.

The cumulative strength of a circle depends on its size, the strengths of the individuals linked, whether or not angreal or sa'angreal are used, and the balance between male and female members in the circle. Although men are stronger than women, the strongest linked circles were those which contained nearly equal numbers of men and women. A smaller circle with a closer balance can be stronger than a larger, unbalanced circle.

The most powerful circle potentially, depending on the strengths and gifts of those linked, would be one containing thirty-five men and thirty-seven women, achieving the maximum possible size of seventy-two members as well as the greatest possible balance of male and female.

In most cases, either a man or woman can control the link - this is called leading, focussin, or guiding - but in the case of a circle of seventy-two, a circle of only one man and one woman, or in most circles of up to thirteen thich contain more than one man, a man must lead. Excepting the examples given above ,and the other circles of thirteen or less, a woman must lead where the minimum number of men are present.

Certain fragmentary manuscripts, largely forgotten, contain tantalizing hints about the nature and use of circles in the Age of Legends, but unfortunately only hints. According to what the circle was intended to achieve, members were recruited depending on their strengths in the Five Powers while the leader was chosen more for skill. It also seems that certain balances of male with female were considered best for certain tasks, and also certain sizes of circles. A circle of seventy-two may have been the largest and msot powerful combination, but it was not always the best for the desired results. Some tasks were best accomplished by a circle of one man and one oman, despite its limited strength, while others were more efficiently done with greater numbers. The details remain lost in the ruins of the Age of Legends, although it is possible that there may be sources hidden away in the library of the White Tower.