White Tiger

During the Han Dynasty in China, people believed the tiger to be the king of all beasts. Legend had it that when a tiger reached 500 years old, its tail would turn white. In this way, the white tiger became a kind of mythological creature. It was said that the white tiger would only appear when the emperor ruled with absolute virtue, or if there was peace throughout the world. Because the color white of the Chinese five elements also represents the west, the white tiger thus became a mythological guardian of the west.

The white tiger is an animal that lives solitarily up in the mountains. It distances itself as far as one can from the noise and smoke and stress of urban life. It is also a mystical animal that rarely shows as anything but a glimpse in the snow and it is as closely related to nature as any animal. It moves in all ways with a stoic calm that seems to suggest a spiritual life lifting its soul far above the dealings of the material world.

In all ways thus the White Tiger seems the perfect enbodiment of localism, spirituality and mysticism and much more. Of all the values indeed that oppose our current society of superficiality!