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Deciphering the Gate of Time

el :BeoWolf:

When all else fails use fire
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Feb 5, 2016
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Centaleon
The gate of time is a mysterious device created by the Goddess Hylia that can transport the user from the present to the past just after Hylia sealed demise and sent Skyloft skyward. Like many artifacts in Hyrule it is covered in mysterious emblems but no one really knows what they mean.

Of course one recognizes the goddess crests and the Triforce but what of the outer 12 symbols? Many believe they are simply numbers like the face of a clock, but what if they were also zodiac signs measuring the months perhaps. Screenshot_20200712-145237~2.png
Aries is the clearest sign and going clockwise most symbols can easily be interpreted as the rest. Gemini looks awfully similar wouldn't you agree? Cancer resembles a crab with its claws curled in. Leo is a lion, or lynel, from the front. The pentagon as a stylized mane. Scorpio resembles the eyeball seen on many monsters but more specifically Moldarach
320px-SS_Moldarach_Render.png

Pisces is a heavily simplified fish jumping out of the water.

Next is to note on the cover of Skyward Sword the gate of time can be seen with additional writing on it. In Twilight era Hylian we can see the name of the goddesses and their virtue
Screenshot_20200712-155211~2.png
Farore's is unseen but we can imply it would say "Courage" then "Farore". These labels help to indicate which part of the song belongs to which goddess.
What song is that?
Screenshot_20200712-153801~2.png
Right here we can see something of a musical scale with some spots colored some not. It's difficult as to how exactly one would play these but it's quite interesting to note the music seems to feed into the center Triforce. Could the gods have created the world through music? Music has played an important role in the series for ages, even in new age spiritualism they make importance of vibrations and frequencies.

One last thing to note is we are told the order in which the gods created the world; din, nayru, farore, yet the gate implies din, farore then nayru. Interesting nonetheless.
 

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It's been a commonplace theory that the outer symbols represent the zodiac symbols, though I haven't seen the implication of the song notes closer to the center, and I'd be interested to see a musicians take on them and if they could piece a song together from it... @Mellow Ezlo

These are all interesting theories, but it seems study of the Gate of Time is pretty much near its end, and the results are dead ends. Back in 2012 I tried deciphering the gate while it's in it's dormant state, and I even made an illustration of what I came up with.

20191213_211203.jpg
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I got nowhere from deciphering it. At one point I thought maybe there was significance in the sequence that the symbols began to glow, and that's what the markers illustrate on the depiction of the front. That also was a dead end. All I found was that the Gate serves to add some characters to this version of Hylian that don't show up elsewhere. I also noticed the 18th row from the top just repeats the same sequence as the top row, showing it's missing symbols, and the rows afterwards are also the same as rows after the first one at the top.
 
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