I mentionned that because Birgitte and co. have a body in TAR, and Kari appeared in TAR as well, so why wouldn't she have a body? In Tar, Birgitte technically is dead, in between lives.

The body in TAR seems natural. The soul would create it without thinking, I guess (even in the "interzone", Egwene has troubles making abstraction of space and time, and the fact she has no physical reality there).

What speaks against Kari being real there is that she was still "Kari al'Thor". Why not the sum of her lives like the Heroes? Idle question anyway, as I don't believe in the possibility that Kari was more than an illusion created in TAR.

We know there is an afterlife for the souls awaiting rebirth, disctinct from that of the Heroes waiting in TAR. Rj said there was one, but it's all we know about it. We have no idea if those souls are "awake", conscious of all their lives like the Heroes, or if they are in some sort of limbo. I'm guessing it's the former, as otherwise what's the point of RJ speaking of that as an afterlife if it's just a soul pool?



Ah... that's because she doesn't always have that appearance. That's the appearance(and name) of her last incarnation, and the appearance she got when she got ripped out of TAR. It probably come naturally to the Heroes to give themselves their most recent appearance, that's still how they see themselves subconsciously (it's also more practical than trying to hold to an appearance, or shift constantly!)

Her last life was that of the Birgitte Silverbow, companion of Gaidal Cain. They lived in the years of Hawkwing, around the same time as Rogosh Eagle-Eye etc. They are the Heroes around which the Great Hunt cycle got started. The stories and legends about Birgitte with her golden braids and her silverbow are about that life, and they've been part of the folklore for 1000 years at the time of the series's timeline (and Birgitte seem to say many have been made up, or liberally altered by gleemen over the years). There are other stories about "Birgitte", but no one but Birgitte knows it's about her as she has other names and appearances, and not exactly the same personality, nor obviously the same life story with the Hero last-known to her as Gaidal (probably not even the silver bow itself that's probably a unique trademark to her last incarnation, but that's debatable).

One thing to keep in mind is that it's not part of the stories that Heroes come back under new names and new appearances over and over (no more than it is known that the Dragon is one of them), so no one in the series is playing "spot the hero". People have not figured this out, they rather believe the worthy Heroes through the Ages are singled out and go wait somewhere for the call of the Horn at the time of humanity's greatest need - they have no clue at all about them being regular corrective mechanisms of the Wheel, like ta'veren, spun out over and over. Rand became aware of the heroes being reborn again and again under different names when the Horn was sounded and he got an intuitive feeling of their many lives and names, and the girls were told about that from Birgitte herself. Birgitte seems to still be the only one in the series to know "Rand" is one of the Heroes (ie: if Rand died before TG, right now Birgitte is the only one who knows he could be brought back as leader of the Heroes at TG by the Horn. As far as we know, not even the Shadow knows about this).