Moon symbolism in Northern Water Tribe Architecture
Unsurprisingly the architecture features a lot of moon elements. Aside from the obvious moon paintings and carvings on the boats, walls and totems, the architecture also includes moon gates 月亮门 yue liang men.
A Moon Gate 月亮门 is a circular opening in a garden wall that acts as a pedestrian passageway, and a traditional architectural element in Chinese gardens. Moon Gates have many different spiritual meanings for every piece of tile on the gate and on the shape of it. The sloping roofs of the gate represent the half moon of the Chinese Summers and the tips of the tiles of the roof have talisman on the ends of them.
That the moon was chosen as a symbol for the Water Tribes was not accidental, and goes beyond the obvious tides parallel. Michael Dante DiMartino
Bryan Konietzko have created a Sino-centric world, the underlying Chinese cultural base mixed and supplemented by Inuit, Native American, Thai, Korean and Japanese influences in different places. It is always there, sometimes stronger sometimes weaker.What am I getting at with the moon:
Uncle Iroh says: Water is the element of change. The people of the Water Tribes are capable of adapting to many things. They have a sense of community and love that holds them together through anything.
In Chinese symbolism the moon’s roundness symbolizes family and unity.
The full moon is traditionally a symbol for reunion, tuanyuan, as yuan means round. The Chinese people celebrate by coming together as families to eat, drink and be merry.
Tui 推 and La 拉 i.e. Push and Pull are shown resembling the Yin and Yang symbol.
The concept of yin yang 阴阳 is used to describe how polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn. e.g. dark and light, female and male, low and high, etc. are thought of as manifestations of yin and yang (respectively).
Yin yang are not opposing forces (dualities), but complementary opposites that interact within a greater whole, as part of a dynamic system. Everything has both yin and yang aspects as light cannot exist without darkness and vice-versa, but either of these aspects may manifest more strongly in particular objects, and may ebb or flow over time.
Tui, the white fish with the black moon on his head also symbolizes Yang, the male force of yin-yang.
But Yue is a girl, how can she be part of the moon if the moon spirit is male?
Because Yin-Yang is about opposites. If they were both male or both female they could not form a greater whole.
Yue 月 means moon btw.
This is pretty damn awesome.
