One Power - The Taint On saidin

The Taint On saidin

In the current age, the Dark One's taint on saidin causes any male with "the spark," whether or not he learns to channel safely, to inevitably go mad and succumb to a wasting sickness which causes the sufferer to rot alive (these curses may come in either order, or concurrently, at varying speeds for each male channeler). The taint came into being at the end of the Age of Legends, when Lews Therin Telamon and the Hundred Companions (actually 113 male channelers) re-sealed the Dark One into his prison, but not before the Dark One caused saidin to become tainted. This act drove all those attempting to seal him immediately and irrevocably insane, and gradually all other male Aes Sedai fell victim to the same madness. The ensuing chaos and destruction caused the Breaking of the World or the Time of Madness. Men who can channel, in short, are a threat. With this in mind, certain members of the Aes Sedai formed a faction, the Red Ajah, dedicated to the hunting down and gentling of male channelers before they can cause (much) trouble. As with all severed channelers, these men rarely live for long afterwards, and few have children. Coincidentally, by the time of the novels, fewer and fewer people of either gender are being born with any channeling ability. The logic-minded White Ajah have suggested that there is a link between this and the thousand-plus years of gentling, comparing it to the breeding-out of distasteful traits in domesticated animals. Despite this, increasingly powerful channelers have been discovered throughout the series, though this could be due to the effects of ta'veren or the looming specter of the Last Battle.

At the conclusion of Winter's Heart, the ninth book in the series, saidin has purportedly been cleansed through the use of two of the most powerful sa'angreal ever made, called the Choedan Kal. They were used by Nynaeve al'Meara and Rand al'Thor in a linked Circle. The complex process destroyed the ruined city of Shadar Logoth and was sensed by most, if not all, channelers of both genders in the Westlands. However, some have confessed doubt over the effectiveness of the cleansing, due to three thousand years of fear. A strong argument at the time was that Lews Therin himself said the source was 'pure and clean again'; he being one of the few who knew the source before its taint, he then would know for truth if in fact it was clean. The question was not answered definitively until the eleventh book, Knife of Dreams, in which both Rand al'Thor and various Asha'man confirm that saidin has been cleansed completely of the taint. However, any taint absorbed by a male channeler before saidin was cleansed was not removed from that channeler; men who had gone half- or entirely mad due to the taint were not returned to sanity, though they will also not suffer further deterioration. This was confirmed by Lews Therin Telamon speaking to Rand in his head in The Gathering Storm. As of the end of Towers of Midnight, Nynaeve al'Meara has discovered a way to Heal the madness caused by the taint, although, due to the extent of his madness, she has been unable to Heal Rand al'Thor.