The purpose of this study is to broaden the understanding of traditional art and to draw the implications for traditional art appreciation by investigating the symbolic meanings of moonlight through oriental philosophy, literatures, and paintings. In oriental art, there had been a long tradition of searching ways to reveal the artist's thoughts and spirituality. The light as an art element was used to uncover the essence of the object and to reflect the artist's inner self. Especially, moonlight was defined as ‘transluscent Gi(氣)’. This philosophical approach to light surpasses the notion of light as a mere art and design elements. The implications of this study for art education are two-fold. First, as visual culture art education emphasizes, in traditional art symbolic images are understood as an important medium which embodies thoughts, sensitivity, and spirituality of the artist. The examination of moonlight represented in traditional paintings could be a good example that illustrates how we can interpret and understand symbols in traditional art. Second, the understanding of the meaning of moonlight shows that integrated and interdisciplinary nature of traditional philosophy, literature, and art. The multi-dimensional study on the various meanings of moonlight expressed in oriental philosophy, poetry, and paintings leads us to see those fields are interconnected in terms of human perception and understanding.