Wise Ones

General

Among the Aiel, some women are chosen, or choose to learn to be Wise Ones and so to have influence over clan and Sept chiefs. A Wise One can go into any Aiel hold regardless of clan, as not even blood feud touches a Wise One. Wise Ones may not be taken as gai’shain (TSR, Ch. 23). The Wise Ones find all young women who can channel and train them. All female Aiel channelers are Wise Ones, but not all Wise Ones can channel (TSR, Ch. 23).

A Talent a few Wise Ones do possess, one thought lost to the White Tower, is Dreaming. This allows the Wise Ones to communicate with others through their dreams (TSR, Ch. 34) and to gain a limited and often metaphorical view of the future (TSR, Ch. 23). Dreamers also have free access to Tel'aran'rhiod, the World of Dreams.

Training

Training is harsh, and punishments of pointless exercise (such as digging a hole with a spoon and then filling it in again) are often used to drive points home. The Wise One Melaine calls the training of novices and Accepted in the White Tower “coddling” (TSR, Ch. 23). All Wise Ones are trained in healing through herb lore and other means, but, despite the strength of many in saidar, the Talent of Healing in almost unknown to the Wise Ones (TSR, Ch. 34). There are, however, things that the Wise Ones can do that the Aes Sedai can or will not, such as picking apart, or unweaving, a weave of saidar (TPoD, Ch. 2).

During her training to become a Wise One, a woman enters the city of Rhuidean twice. The first time she enters a ter'angreal: three circular arches that, when stepped through, reveal the many possible futures. Memories of this fade almost entirely, but often resurface when events foreseen within the rings occur in reality (TSR, Ch. 23). The second entrance to Rhuidean, at the end of training, takes the potential Wise One into the heart of Rhuidean and through the same glass columns as a candidate for clan chief. Again a ter’angreal, the journey through these glass columns reveals the history of the Aiel back to the Age of Legends, when their ancestors, the Da’shain Aiel, lived by the pacifist code of the Way of the Leaf.

When a young woman is thought ready to become a full Wise One, she is pushed hard and punished severely, with no justification given until she stands up to the Wise Ones and rejects her punishment, telling them she considers herself their equal (This passage needs a reference)

Characters

Main article: Wise One Character List