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Symbol · ◇ Light

Yin and Yang

Taijitu · The Great Ultimate

majorattestedTaoism

The two turning aspects of the one Tao — dark and light, yielding and firm, valley and mountain — each carrying the seed of the other and each becoming the other at its extreme. The archive’s great counter-image: not two enemies locked in war, as light and dark are everywhere else in these pages, but a single circle in which the dark half is not the enemy of the light but its partner in the turning.

Reach85
Depth78
Influence74
Mystery70
✦Signature powerThe UnknownA power not yet set down in the record.
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Its universe

The mythic order Yin and Yang belongs to, who comes before and after in the story of this world.

Voices & connections

Figures bound to Yin and Yang, family and rivals within the myth, and the thinkers and writers who shaped how we know them.

The Taosymbolizes

Read the story

Illustrated chapters where Yin and Yang appears. Start reading in a click.

Illustrated storyThe Old Master and the GateEvery other story in this archive is a war of light against dark. This one is the tradition that refused the war. An old archivist, sick of a corrupt age, rides west on an ox to vanish from the world — and a gatekeeper will not let him pass until he writes down what he knows. The five thousand characters he leaves are the Tao Te Ching: the way of water, the empty hub, the dark and the light as one turning circle.Begin reading →