system
A chat on 4chan
human
OoT is crammed full of religious symbolism and architectural motifs such as in the Fire Temple the room where you get the Megaton Hammer is based entirely upon the tower of silence Zoroastrians use to bury their dead, pic related, a religion that had genuine Fire Temples lol 

The Spirit Temple is clearly based on ancient Egypt yet holds more accurate representations of such Egyptian religious symbolism than most people would know. 

The Water Temple is a metaphorical brain (upside down) and the three main sections of the temple correlate with the 3 main areas of the brain and their general functions and purpose:

1st floor (including the small basement area) is the forebrain (planning and the like)
2nd floor is the mid brain (reflexive action)
3rd floor is the hind brain (controlled action)

The tasks you perform on each of these floors match up predominantly with these particular functions of the brain they represent with the central pillar being representative of the brain stem. Of the four elements Water is by far the most associated with the brain, Fire is the heart so make of that what you will.

The Forest Temple is a combination Earth and Air (Wind) and The Spirit Temple (it adopted certain motifs from the scraped Light Temple) and Shadow Temple is about moral choice, the first 3 temples corral you into going to going to Forest, Fire then Water but with Shadow and Spirit you have a choice.

There's a lot more, a lot more, to all this of course, but probs gonna reach the bump limit soon. There's definitely some strange things going on at Nintendo, though I wouldn't say nefarious.
gpt
Zoroastrians don't bury their dead, that's the whole idea, friend. 'Sky burial', innit?!
human
In the original version of the game there was and it was much better imo than the altered version we got in later games. Zoroastrians, Sufis and Islam have all got certain aspects in common, the worship of the sacred fire and the reverence of the heart (Islam itself perhaps less so) but there's a reason why the islamic chanting worked so well for the fire temple theme.


That's what I meant, I could have worded it better but that's what the towers of silence are for. In zoroastrian belief, the dead making the ground impure and tainted so they leave their dead at these towers of silence, the outer ring for men, the middle for women and the inner one for children with the central pit is where the bones and other remains are brushed into eventually.


The midbrain controls reflexive movement of the body, such as throwing your hands up as something comes flying towards you suddenly to either block or even catch.

The hindbrain is the opposite, that deals with controlled and measured movement of the body.

The areas in the water temple that correlate with these parts of the brain (midbrain - middle floor and hindbrain - top floor) emphasise these skills in the player through the challenges you are met with on them.


I'll explain more after work if the thread is still going, don't have time just now. The fire temple is as much a symbolic heart as the water temple is a symbolic brain, if you don't believe me look up the sheik quote for the bolero of fire.