Como funciona a reencarnação na série Wheel of Time?

A reencarnação entre espécies pode ocorrer:

INTERVIEW: Dec 9th, 2002 Wotmania and Dragonmount Q&A
How does the idea of souls apply to constructs such as Nym and Trollocs? Could either of them be reborn?

ROBERT JORDAN: To whoever put this one forward, this is one of the best questions I've ever gotten! Nym and Trollocs both have souls, and either could be reborn, but since Nym were a pure construct (i.e. each of them was individually made, like hand-crafting) a Nym would not be reborn as a Nym. You might say that a Nym's soul was borrowed temporarily from the supply of souls awaiting rebirth. A Trolloc, however, bears a twisted, or corrupted soul, and would be reborn as a Trolloc. Though frankly, a Trolloc's soul is such a pitiful thing, it hardly seems worth calling a soul.

Você poderia quase relacionar isso com o Escuro Roubando as almas dos seus Escolhidos e colocando-os em novos corpos, incluindo aqueles com diferentes gêneros.

As habilidades podem se transferir com a alma, mas somente se essa habilidade realmente existir na Idade em que a pessoa renasce:

INTERVIEW: Jan 25th, 2005 TOR Questions of the Week Part II (Verbatim)
WEEK 13 QUESTION
If a wolfbrother is reborn in another Age, will he be a wolfbrother again? In other words, is being a wolfbrother a trait related to the soul? Can women be wolfbrothers?

ROBERT JORDAN: Women certainly can be wolfbrothers, though the term would be wolfsisters. A wolfbrother or wolfsister reborn in another age would only be a wolfbrother or wolfsister again if that were possible in that Age. The ability to speak with wolves doesn't exist in every Age. In the "current" Age, it is a fairly new thing, appearing not too long ago. There are tales of it, sometimes just vague stories of people who supposedly "can talk to animals," without necessarily mentioning wolves, but remember that Elyas's ability was taken, at least by some Aes Sedai, as a sign that he was linked to the Shadow.

Há algumas suposições feitas por Brandon Sanderson de que os talentos são da mesma forma que os lobisomens.

Em relação ao uso do The One Power:

RJ (Sep '05): I don't think I have said if you are born with the spark you would have the have the spark again. I have said if you were born with the ability to channel, to learn or with the spark, you will, when your soul is born again, you will have the ability again, whether with the spark or without. And neither burning out or stilling affects that except in this lifetime, your current lifetime.

Mas também:

RJ (Oct '05): For Papazen, while I have spoken of souls being born with the ability to channel in response to questions, I think of it as being genetic also. In the Age of Legends, between 2 and 3% of people had some ability, following a bell curve distribution in strength. For over 3000 years, though, Aes Sedai have been removing men who actually learned to channel from the gene pool. They have been very efficient at this. As a result, the "present day" sees about 1% of the population who can learn to channel, with a much, much smaller percentage of that being born with the spark.

O que indica que a alma pode habitar um corpo físico que não permite o uso pleno das habilidades da alma.

E ser ta'verin não está ligado à alma:

RJ (Jul '02): You might say that ta’veren-ness ebbs and flows. For one thing, remember that even for someone like Rand, the effects are really occasional, not continuous. Even when he is causing dozens of coincidences in a particular place, many more events pass off quite normally. For another thing, no one is born ta’veren. Rand, Mat, and Perrin only became ta’veren just before Moiraine appeared. You become ta’veren according to the needs of the Wheel. Like the Heroes linked to the Wheel, who are spun out as needed to try to keep the weaving of the Pattern straight, a man or woman becomes ta’veren because the Wheel has “decided” to use them as an influence on the Pattern. And, no, the Wheel isn’t sentient. Think more of a fuzzy logic device that uses feedback to correct what it is doing in order to do it in the most efficient way.

Isso também é confirmado no último livro

When the boys lose their ta'veren status

E no blog do RJ :

The Wheel creates ta'veren at need, making someone who is already alive one. You aren't born ta'veren. Can you imagine being around a ta'veren who is teething?

Outros já mencionaram sexo, mas acrescentarei que RJ indicou que Mat & Birgitte são bons exemplos. Se você se lembra, Birgitte Silverbow é sempre uma mulher, e as memórias de Mat são sempre de homens ( mas eles não eram memórias de suas vidas passadas , então pegue o que você quiser com isso, mas ele mencionou em outro lugar:

...so the soul of the Dragon Reborn is always going to be male, just as Birgitte's soul is always born as a woman, just as Ameresu's soul is always born as a woman. There are divisions here, and they are not interchangeable.

Algo importante a notar é que as respostas do RJ às vezes mudam. Há inconsistências entre o quão nocivo afeta a alma, por exemplo. Originalmente, a queimada terminou seu ciclo de reencarnação, como nós o entendemos. Mas, comentários posteriores da Jordânia afirmam que, ao contrário, isso apenas impede Shai'tan de transmogrificar a alma em um novo corpo, e deve renascer através da Roda. Há também esse comentário sobre Mat acima. Então, ainda há espaço para interpretação pessoal nesta cosmologia.

Em um ponto, Sanderson chegou a trazer isso em uma entrevista:

BRANDON SANDERSON: Here's the thing. There are three million+ words of notes, and RJ changed his mind about a lot of things as he wrote, explored, and made decisions. (He talked about this being his process. He saw the Wheel of Time as an organic thing.) So any time I speak on an issue like this, there's the chance that Maria (his assistant) will come to me and say "Actually, Brandon, he changed his mind on that. Look here for the revision." Half the time, it's something he mentioned in passing to her, Harriet, or Alan and isn't even written down.

    

Na roda do tempo, o gênero está na alma. Brigitte e os outros Heróis do Chifre sempre renascem com o mesmo gênero de antes. Halima / Aran'gar é um sexo diferente do que antes, quando era Balthamel, mas sua alma como Halima / Aran'gar ainda é masculina. Pegue esta citação que explica:

All of her [Halima's] mannerisms had changed since she became a woman, but not the core of what had been placed into that female body. Demandred hardly scorned fleshy pleasures, but one day her cravings would be the death of her. As they already had been once.

(Demandred on Halima, Winter's Heart Chapter 13)

E outra citação, do POV de Halima sobre Graendal (Faca dos Sonhos, Capítulo 3):

She had always fancied Graendal. She no longer really remembered having been a man. In her memories, she wore the body she did now, which did make for a few oddities, yet that body's influence had not changed everything. Her appetites had not altered, only broadened.

Quanto às outras coisas que você mencionou, não consigo encontrar referências explícitas a isso nos livros, mas podemos especular; é provavelmente o mesmo. O Escuro, quando ele regenera as pessoas, leva sua alma - incluindo memórias, identidade de gênero, interesses, sentimentos, etc. - e a coloca em um novo corpo.

Dito isto, aqui está algo que o RJ disse numa entrevista :

QUESTION

The question is, with Rand and Lews Therin, do they have one soul or two souls in the body?

ROBERT JORDAN

They have one soul with two personalities. The reincarnation of souls does not mean reincarnation of personalities. The personality develops with each reincarnation of the soul. This is the cosmology that I have cobbled together.

Isto parece ser apenas sobre Lews Therin e os Heróis do Chifre. Em outras palavras, o que eu disse lá em cima parece ser verdade apenas sobre aqueles regenerados artificialmente, ou seja, pelo Escuro. Outras regenerações, feitas pelo padrão, são diferentes, com base no que RJ disse.

    

Desde que o gênero está aparentemente ligado à alma, meu palpite é que as mulheres são sempre mulheres, e os homens são sempre homens, então eu acho que eles se aplicam ao humano / Ogier, especialmente porque os Ogier são na verdade alienígenas . Tome Aran'gar (Halima), por exemplo ... originalmente um homem, mas reencarnado como uma mulher. Ela ainda fala falando , o que significa que ela tem uma alma masculina. Este não é o único caso, visto que ela é apenas uma mulher vista canalizando saidin com a exceção de Semirhage, e a única maneira que ela foi capaz de fazer isso foi através de Rand quando ele estava usando o a ' barragem