Skip to main content

star wars - How does kyber crystal purification work?


Wookieepedia suggests that Ahsoka's lightsabers are white because she took red crystals and purified them:



"Ahsoka obtained the kyber crystals used in these lightsabers one year after the end of the Clone Wars, retrieving them from the lightsaber of Sixth Brother, an Inquisitor she had killed. Though the crystals originally emitted a red blade, she had purified them from the darkness tainting them, by her description."
Wookieepedia - Ahsoka Tano's White Lightsabers



If so, what is the process of this purification? Does purification always lead to a white lightsaber?




Answer



How does "purification" happen?


Based on what happens in the canon novel Ahsoka, crystals are purified by meditating with them; this is essentially the only thing Ahsoka does between the Inquisitor's (red) lightsaber exploding and her (white) lightsabers igniting:



Before she could even consider shouting a warning, the red lightsaber burst into a mess of noise and light. Bright spots pricked at her eyes, and then all was quiet. The creature wasn't going to bother her anymore.


[...]


She pushed aside her sense of urgency, even though she was in a hurry. Meditation came easily, as if she were sitting in safety in the Jedi Temple itself, instead of a dusty street with her enemies closing in. Her mind's eye sorted the preassembled components and those she had just retrieved into order, locking each into place with the others. When Ahsoka opened her hands, she was not surprised to find that two lightsabers, rough and unfinished, were waiting.


They would need more work, but they were hers.


When she turned them on, they shone the brightest white.


Ahsoka Chapter 28




Presumably, within the Force this is Ahsoka creating a bond with her crystal; Pablo Hidalgo has said on Twitter that this is how crystals change colour for Jedi, which is one of the few things we know about the process:


screencap of Twitter conversation



@primagrine what determines a light sider's lightsaber colour? do the crystals [have] anythin[g] to do w[ith] it [?]


@pablohidalgo The crystal takes on a color when a Jedi achieves a bond with "his/her" kyber. No one knows what the colors signify.



On an internal level, "purification" would seem to be resolving the Dark Side/Light Side conflict within the crystal; Ahsoka suggests that crystals are turned red by tipping the scales in favour of the Dark (emphasis mine):



Dark crystals were made, too, but not in that holy place. They were plundered from their rightful bearers and corrupted by the hands that stole them. Even rock could be changed by the power of the Force, bleeding alterations until their color was the deepest red. The balance was finely staged between the two, light and dark, and it took very little to upset it.



Ahsoka



Whether or not a crystal can be "purified" by anyone, or just by the person that crystal chooses as its proper bearer, is unknown.


Does "purification" always result in a white (or colourless) crystal?


We don't know; Ahsoka is the only example we have of this process in action, and her lightsaber colour explicitly symbolizes her detachment from both the Jedi and the Sith. Even Pablo Hidalgo doesn't know, having been asked this on Twitter:


screencap of Twitter conversation



@ReyaShankar Do red crystals turn only white when restored or can they change to other colors as well?


@pablohidalgo Unknown. In fact, Ahsoka was very surprised when it happened.




If forced to guess, I would assume that a "purified" crystal would turn to whatever colour was appropriate for the person who bonded with it; so, for example, Luke could have purified the crystal in Vader's lightsaber and turned it green. But this is, of course, only a guess.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...