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When I first watched Beginnings, I assumed that all of the information about Wan, Raava and the time they lived in, was pretty much unknown to the world at large (since it had never been referenced before in either show).

Are Raava, Vaatu, Wan, Harmonic Convergence etc things people (or even just people like fire sages, gurus and air nomad masters) know about?

As far as I know:

  • Korra's past lives mention Raava in Beginnings Part 1, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything - they are not their living selves anymore.
  • The Fire Sage mentions Harmonic Convergence at the end of Beginnings Part 2, which clearly means something. But it could just be that they know that the planetary alignment is "weeks away", and know that this event has to do with something called 'Harmonic Convergence', but don't know a whole lot more than that.
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  • Aang probably knew some of it at least. He at least knew about Lion Turtles, I think even before the library, which means that some Avatar history was probably taught by the air monks.
    – BlackThorn
    Commented May 23, 2017 at 19:35
  • 4
    This could easily segway into a question we're unlikely to be capable of answering: when the Avatar has downtime, does he just strike up casual conversations with his/her past lives? If Aang had a quiet day and decided to spend a few hours meditating, I'd find it to be pretty tempting to just start calling up past Avatars just to meet them and get to know about things from their times. If any Avatar does that, they'll soon discover Wan and be aware of Raava. At that point, it wouldn't be long before they'll converse with them directly.
    – Ellesedil
    Commented May 26, 2017 at 9:08
  • @Ellesedil it's segue btw, the Segway vehicle is named after the word segue, and they sound the same
    – GordonBennett
    Commented Aug 27, 2019 at 11:15

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Foreword

Through the graphic novels and cartoon, we have enough information to speculate what Avatar Aang knew. Not enough specific references are present to fully support anything, however.

What evidence leads us to believe Aang might know about these spirits?

  1. Avatar Aang, along with the Air Nomads as a whole, was deeply spiritual. It is reasonable to believe that the Air Nomads passed along deeper knowledge of spirits and existence as it more culturally relevant to the air nation. An example of this is Aang's knowledge of Lion Turtles and spirit-bending ability.
  2. Lion turtles. Yup. Lion turtles. Since the origins of bending are directly related to these massive creatures, it's incredibly reasonable that Aang was made aware of their role in the world/their history.

What suggests that he doesn't know about the first spirits?

  1. In season 2 of The Legend of Korra, the deeper subject matter revolving around harmonic convergence seemed like a distant memory for normal people. In other words, it seemed kind of like Christmas. We celebrate it, but a lot of the deeper history (how it came to be, why it was named what it is, who the original saint was, what is the role of paganism?, etc) gets lost (this can be observed during the huge festival thrown in the water nation). This would lead me to speculate that Raava and Vaatu were not well known entities (Also the general looks of shock and surprise when people see/hear about the spirits)

  2. It was never shown. Ever. It was never really directly hinted at. We don't know. That in itself is a strong point against Aang knowing the aforementioned information.

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