Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Each of the creatures is most closely associated with a cardinal direction and a color, but also additionally represents other aspects, including a season of the year, an emotion, virtue, and one of the Chinese "five elements" (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water). Each has been given its own individual traits, origin story and a reason for being.
It affords an easy medium of expressing or symbolizing a virtue or a vice, by means of the virtue or vice usually attributed to the animal represented. Animal forms were traditional elements of decoration. Medieval designers returned to the direct study of nature, including man, the lower animals, and the humblest plants.
A motif may be repeated in a pattern or design, often many times, or may just occur once in a work. [1] A motif may be an element in the iconography of a particular subject or type of subject that is seen in other works, or may form the main subject, as the Master of Animals motif in ancient art typically does.
Unlike the other three elements, which correspond to the etymology of the horse as an animal in motion, the earth appears far removed from its symbolism. [152] The positive chtonian horse, capable of guiding its rider through subterranean and infernal regions, is especially present in Central Asia, notably through the myth of Tchal-Kouirouk .
The concept, which originated and became popular in Chinese Buddhism, features a pair of Asiatic lions—often one male with a ball which represents the material elements and one female with a cub which represents the element of spirit— that were thought to protect the building from harmful spiritual influences and harmful people that might ...
Makara (Hindu mythology) – half terrestrial animal in the frontal part (stag, deer, or elephant) and half aquatic animal in the hind part (usually of a fish, a seal, or a snake, though sometimes a peacock or even a floral tail is depicted) Mug-wamp - (Canadian) giant sturgeon monster said to inhabit Lake Temiskaming in Ontario. Name is of ...
Get AOL Mail for FREE! Manage your email like never before with travel, photo & document views. Personalize your inbox with themes & tabs. You've Got Mail!
The elements of the Christian tetramorph first appear in the vision of Ezekiel, who describes the four creatures as they appear to him in a vision: As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of ...