"I'll tell you a little secret, young airbender. Just as you reshaped those clouds, you have the power to shape your own destiny."
— Aunt Wu speaking to Aang.[1]
Aunt Wu was an elderly citizen of Makapu Village who was able to predict the future. She received a cloud reading book when she was a little girl.[2] When she was old enough, she studied with other fortunetellers, learning different methods such as reading bones and clouds. Aunt Wu spent many years traveling the Earth Kingdom, telling people's fortunes in each town she visited. When she arrived in Makapu Village near the active volcano Mt. Makapu twenty years prior to AvatarAang's visit, she knew this was where she was meant to be - the people in this town needed her, as everyone started to rely on Aunt Wu's fortunes.[3] The people of Makapu were so confident in her abilities that they abandoned going up the volcano to check if it would erupt, rather relying on Aunt Wu's predictions.[1] Well-regarded for her free and accurate readings, every prediction she made was taken as gospel by the village at large. Her methods of divination ran from palmistry to oracle bones and cloud reading. She was helped in her hut by her assistant, Meng.
Team Avatar visited Makapu in early 100 ASC, and Wu performed readings for them. She predicted that Katara would marry a powerful bender, while Sokka would live a life of mostly self-inflicted pain and misery, and foretold Aang's future battle between the forces of good and evil. When a curious Aang asked about his potential love life, she told him to simply trust his heart and he would be with the one he loved.
When Aunt Wu's cloud readings predicted the nearby volcano would not destroy the village, Katara and Aang accepted the reading, while the skeptical Sokka grew frustrated with the populace's blind faith in the fortuneteller. After this, an enamored Katara returned to Wu for several more predictions, which began to annoy the fortuneteller. She finally shut her out after Katara asked if she should have mango or papaya for breakfast.
Aunt Wu predicting the volcano would not destroy the village.
After an expedition to the volcano proved that the volcano had become very active, the three determined that the only way to convince the villagers of the impending danger was to manipulate the clouds through waterbending and airbending. They would deliberately shape them to elicit a more accurate reading according to Aunt Wu's Book of Clouds, who had been given to the Avatar by Meng when he tried to steal it. After the villagers were convinced the town was in danger, they helped Aang and the others to successfully protect the village from the volcano's fiery lava. Since the town was not destroyed just as Aunt Wu predicted, the villagers believed in Aunt Wu's fortune telling all the more, much to the displeasure and frustration of Sokka.
Unlike her brother, Katara became enthralled by the mysticism of fortune telling and the notion of knowing her future. Her reading predicted that she would one day marry a powerful bender, which sent an eavesdropping Aang into elation. Sokka later noted on the immensity of Aang's bending power as he saved the village, which caused Katara to make a connection between Aang and her fortune.
After they saved the village, Aang returned the book to her. She seemed angry at first, accusing them of playing with the clouds, but then remarked that the idea was very clever. Surprisingly, Aunt Wu freely admitted that she did not believe in any kind of predestination, claiming that her predictions would come true only if a person wished them to.[1]
A short time later, June, PrinceZuko, and Iroh visited Makapu Village in search of the Avatar. Aunt Wu thought Iroh was handsome, and asked if he wanted his fortune told.[4]
Wu may be written in Chinese as 巫, a surname meaning "shaman" or "sorceress". Shamanism was widespread in ancient China from the Shang dynasty until the Han. During the Shang and Zhou dynasties, their chosen divination technique was the reading of oracle bones, which Aunt Wu demonstrates in the show.
Wu has the same pronunciation as "woo", a slang term used by skeptics to describe topics they consider superstitious nonsense, such as astrology and fortune telling.
Aunt Wu's prediction of Katara marrying a powerful bender came true, since Aang and Katara ended up marrying and having three children.[5]
So far, all of Wu's predictions have come true, including those for her village, Aang, Sokka, and Katara.
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