A GOD of Ultimate EVIL Bent on Destroying the WORLD - Wheel of Time Explained
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Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss the Dark One, a cosmic manifestation of evil and the main antagonist from the Wheel of Time series.And just a quick disclaimer before we get going: there may be spoilers for those reading the series or watching the first season, so if that will be a problem for you, this may not be the best video to watch.Let's get into it. The Dark One's true name was Shai'tan, but to name him so was to invoke him and thus draw his eye to you. Those who fought him avoided using his true name to avoid notice. And so, every race and culture used their own alternatives, yielding an array of substitute titles, including: father of lies, sightblinder, heartsbane, soulsbane, father of storms, lighteater, soulbinder - the list goes on; you could say that he had as many titles as there were ways for someone to have their life snuffed out and put in the grave. Those who swore their souls to the Dark One also avoid using his true name, but for a very different reason. To them, saying the true name was to blaspheme, so instead, they favour titles that extolled the Dark One, as opposed to the pejorative variety used by those who lived in the light. The most favoured title used by those who forsook their immortal souls was Great Lord of the Dark. There's a duality to the dark one, much as there's a duality to the primordial deities in Greek mythology, simultaneously existing as gods and as the fundamental manifestations of creation as they pertain to life and the material world. On the one hand, the Dark One was a force of supreme malevolence that sought to remake the world - creation itself, even - in his own twisted image. However, his true nature was more profound and complicated than being an unfathomably powerful force with wicked world-dominating goals. He was the manifestation of evil, the wellspring from which all evil came. To have removed him from creation would have been to remove the capacity to perform evil, which is insidiously awful, for the elimination of the capacity to perpetrate evil, by extension, precludes people from rising above evil to bring true good into the world. Binaries are defined by their opposites, so evil cannot exist in a world devoid of the capacity for good anymore than good can exist in a world devoid of the capacity for evil. Because of this dynamic, it becomes apparent that forever imprisoning the Dark One, not killing him, is the best course of action, because killing him obliterates evil, which, in turn, sanitizes creation in a way that would leave it in a perpetual state of grey, utterly lacking in black or white. And perhaps worst of all, this grey world would ultimately rob people of their agency, destroying free will, which, we can all agree, isn't an eventuality we'd like for ourselves.