Modernly a circle with equal curving teardrops of black and white with circles of the opposite color within those teardrops. This Daoist (Taoist) symbol traces its meaning back to its theoretical origins as two separate characters side by side on oracle bones in 14 BCE and represents balance. The practices and teachings associated with the symbol are much older (over 2500 years older) and the modern symbol seems to be hard to pin down when it was created, but quite possibly in the "I Ching". The Wuji (a circle representing the universe) becomes Taiji (that circle divided into two parts), which in turn becomes the modern Yin-Yang. The modern symbol also shows the interconnection between the two polarities with a spot of the other in itself. The Taiji then becomes the Four Guardians and then the Bagua, or eight trigrams (as seen around the Yin-Yang for this blog. So essentially the Yin-Yang represents a stage in universal development as well as the duality of nature.
It represents dark and light, ebb and flow, absorption and penetration, female and male, pretty much any opposite forces may be used to form a yin yang. Oddly enough in the traditional description of a Shinto dragon there are many more yang scales than yin, which is said to represent that it actually takes much more good to balance out a little evil, or much more peace to balance out chaos....I think that you get the idea.
Others feel that the entire good vs evil idea is a modern or Western ideology. All things are nature in one form or another, which is neither good nor evil; they just are. This idea does seem to be at odds with the negative/positive attributes still associated with the halves of the symbol but these may also refer to subtraction/addition rather than evil/good. Obviously a forest fire can bring forth new life from its ashes though the fire may feel evil to something trapped within it.
There's a little more information and some tattoo designs here.
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