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1) Birgitte in Conversation: Mentions a past life named "Maerion": Maid Marion?
2) Sammael = Napoleon? Sammael is described as a great general. He is short. Illian's symbol is nine golden bees; Napoleon's symbol was a golden bee.
3) Yin-Yang symbol/Ancient Aes Sedai symbol: He (RJ) also spoke for quite some time on the splitting of the One Power into male and female halves, and on the disharmony produced when they don't work together.. this came across as one of the core elements in the origin of WOT. [ re: Yin/Yang - leaving out the little dots in the symbol is an intentional representation of the lack of harmony between male/female Power in Randland] [Emmet O'Brien, Dublin talk, 11/93]
4) The sword forms: It's research (books, not doing), and the forms come from Japanese sword fighting and some European fencing, before the advent of well-designed and well-made guns made swords obsolete. [Matthew Hunter at a signing, also mentioned by others]
5) Tolkien
6) Wolf-brother: a moosh of various myths from Europe, Native Americans, and Australian Aborigines. [America OnLine conference, 10/94]
7) Stones/Go: The game of Stones is based on the Asian game Go.
8) Tower of Ghenjei: There is a Japanese novel called The Tale of Genji. It is generally considered the first piece of work which qualifies as a novel, as the genre is defined today. Note the name's similarity to the Tower of Ghenjei in WOT. It was written by Lady Murasaki Shikibu in the early 10th century, during the Heian Period of Japanese history. [Jeff Han]
9) Millenarianism: The End of The World will come at the end of the millennium, or so some folks say. The year in Randland is pretty much congruent with that used in the West of our own world. Galldrian of Cairhien was assassinated in 998 NE. Since then, one winter has passed (taking us to 999) and most of the next year. The Feast of Lights that scandalized Perrin so much (in LoC) marks the last day of the old year; the Battle at Dumai's Wells takes place some days after that, and so must be early in 1000 NE. Tarmon Gai'don is coming soon, folks! [Don Harlow]
10) Gholam = Golem from Jewish folklore. According Gershon Scholem in "The Idea of the Golem," the Golem (pronounced goy-lehm), dates back to the Kabbalah, the ancient book of Jewish Mysticism. The most famous legend dates back to 16th century Prague, to a famous rabbi, Rabbi Loew, but it is a bastardization of an earlier, far more appropriate (from a TWOT persective) story of a Rabbi Elias in Poland, who shaped clay into a man-shape (very biblical), and then inscribed, in Hebrew, EMETH, which means TRUTH, on its forehead, granting it life. The Golem did menial tasks and the like for Elias, but the longer it lived, it grew in size and consequently in strength. When the Golem grew to an awesome size, Elias felt threatened by it, and attempted to destroy it by erasing the first letter (aleph) in EMETH, changing it to METH, Hebrew for DEATH. Elias succeeded, but was subsequently killed by the collapse of the creature into a big pile of clay. There are dozens of variants of the golem legend. In the Loew story, the golem collapsed, but did not kill Loew. Loew buried the remains in the attic of his ancient synagogue, where they remain to this day, and make for an unusual tourist attraction. Additional stories tell of the golem growing in both strength and lustiness, which added a whole new dimension of trouble to be caused.[Stewart S. Bushman]
11) Aelfinn/Eelfinn: The Elves/Faerie/Sidhe of Celtic mythology. The Sidhe were vulnerable to iron ("iron to bind"), and liked music ("music to daze"). There were two subgroups of Faeries, as Matthew Hunter elaborates: "The Seelie and Unseelie courts, of which one the Seelie were comparatively "nice" and honorable, although tricksters and inhumanly magical, while the Unseelie were essentially their evil counterparts -- delighting in tormenting and the kind of pranks that have nasty consequences. The spelling is phonetic, and the real spelling is somewhat different... I think 'Seighlie' is closer but still not right."
12) Another Celtic Connection: [TSR: 6, Doorways, 95] wrt the Snakes Doorway: "Elayne's first thought was for the children's tale Bili Under the Hill, but only because of the three answers." Compare to various tales of common humans visiting some Sidhe under a hill, and having various mystical experiences.
13) Nae'blis: Iblis, Another name for the devil in Muslim circles.
14) Asha'man: It has been pointed out that there are many similarities between the Asha'man and the Nazi SS. SS stands for Schütz Staffeln (Guardian Group) and was originaly created to protect Hitler. Asha'man means Guardians, and one of their functions is (nominally) to protect Rand. Both organizations use black as their color. The leader of the Asha'man is called "M'Hael," which is "leader" in the Old Tongue. The leader of the SS was the "Führer," which is "leader"in German. Six of the total 19 officer ranks the Waffen-SS contained the two words Sturm (storm) and Führer (e.g. Sturmbahnführer, Obersturmführer, Sturmscharführer). This is also seen within the Asha'man in the Tsorovan'm'hael (Gedwyn's title, from [TPOD: 21, Answering the Summons, 407]). Also, the SS was nominally created to fight Communism (color = red). The dedicated enemy of the AM is the Red Ajah. [Jimmy Sjöberg]
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The Wheel of Time FAQ. Copyright 1999 by Pamela Korda and Erica Sadun. HTML implementation by Matthew Hunter. This site maintained by Matthew Hunter (mhunter@andrew.cmu.edu). Comments and questions regarding the content itself should be directed to Pam Korda (kor2 @ midway.uchicago.edu).