Ao

nature_spirit earth Chinese single tradition · 5

Giant turtle.

↻ synthesized from 5 sources

When

First attested
300 BCE
Attested period
-300 – 2020
Historical notes
Mentioned in the story of Nüwa mending the heavens.

Relationships

serves
Nuwa
enemy of
Po
manifests as
Aotūroa, Aotahi
allied with
Ata, Whaitua

Expand to full subgraph →

Sources

Source passages

“Ao (Chinese) – Giant turtle.”

#4093 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001

“Ao, a mythological tortoise who has a burning shell and cheeks with magma on them.”

#4136 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001

“She then killed a giant turtle (or tortoise), some version named the tortoise as Ao, cut off the four legs of the creature to use as new pillars to support the sky.”

#21561 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001

“Ao appears evolving through the forms Aonui, Aoroa, Aowheneke, Ao-whetara out of the darkness as part of the great cosmological genealogies in Te Arawa's traditions, as part of the creation of the universe.”

#31564 · extracted by anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5

“Ao, a personification of light.”

#32256 · extracted by deepseek/deepseek-chat