The Four Spirit Beasts and the Four Fierce Beasts are well-known eight ancient beasts, almost everyone can say it all, the most accepted four spirit beasts are: Green Dragon, White Tiger, Suzaku, Xuanwu, and the four fierce beasts are: Chaos, Poor Qi, Han Zhuo, and Gluttony.
However, it should be known that there are far more than these eight kinds of ancient divine beasts, and reading ancient books such as the Classic of Mountains and Seas can find many kinds of divine beasts, almost all of which have great power, which can bring people a favorable side and can also bring disadvantages. For example, the four spirit beasts, they are the sacred beasts worshipped by the ancient ancestors, they are the symbol of auspiciousness, of which the dragon represents the supreme and is the symbol of the emperor; and the tiger symbolizes might and the army; and the suzaku is more noble, many people think that it is a phoenix or a kind of phoenix, but in fact, the suzaku and the phoenix are very different, and as one of the four spirits of the heavens and one of the four stars, the suzaku is more noble than the phoenix, one of the four spirits of the book; the original meaning of Xuanwu is Xuanxuan, and the ancient sounds of the phoenix are common. Xuan means black; meditation means yin. Xuan Di was originally a description of Gui Bu: the turtle's back is black, and Gui Bu is to invite the turtle to the underworld to ask the ancestors, bring the answer back, and show it to the world in the form of Bu Zhao, knowing that the Chinese ancients had a very great respect for divination.
Although the Four Spirit Beasts and the Four Fierce Beasts were quite powerful and had boundless mana, there was a slight gap compared to the ancient Two Spirits and Two Saints. The two instruments and two saints are little known, and they are almost never seen in modern mythology, which is a major regret in the Chinese mythological circles and our regret. The two instruments and two saints are rarely recorded in ancient books, and even only some inscriptions and some oracle bone inscriptions on a very small number of excavated bronzes are described, which is also one of the reasons why it is less known.
The two instruments and two saints are the sun candle illumination and the taiyin ghost, which are similar to twin myths such as Fuxi Nuwa, which are the products of the primitive religious nature of human society, and there are many similarities between the two, but the actual situation is very different. According to ancient texts, there are actually two theories about the origin of the two instruments and two saints, one is that the yin and yang in the two instruments that were transformed by the chaos after Pangu opened the world and the earth were combined with the two eyes of Pangu. The second theory, without Pangu's involvement, is considered to be the embodiment of the Dao, which is directly derived from the yang and yin changes in the "one yin and one yang" path. However, after the Qin and Han Dynasties, no matter what kind of sayings, they gradually disappeared.
More people believe that the origin of the sun candlelight is the nature worship after the early sun worship of the ancient Chinese ancestors combined with the ancient creation myth. "Dao Shu": In the ancient world of the flood, there are candles illuminated by the name of the Holy Spirit, and the light is all over the world. The Taiyin Ghost is the worship of the moon by the ancient ancestors. The two are in harmony with yin and yang, complementing each other, just as the "Su Qing Yin and Yang Should Be Like the Great Theory" says, "Yin and Yang, the way of heaven and earth, the outline of all things, the parent of change, the origin of life and death."
Ancient mythology is a manifestation of traditional Chinese culture, but also the ancient Chinese ancestors worshipped holy relics, out of the inheritance of Chinese culture, it is necessary to understand these.
The earliest recorded divine beast in ancient Chinese mythology is the two instruments and two saints, which is the earliest divine beast that can be found, but there are very few records, let alone the image of the divine beast, so the earliest divine beast may be invisible and exist in every place in the world.
The two saints are the sun candles, which are too yin and gloomy. There are more conjectures about the two instruments and two saints, one is the two instruments produced by Pangu's left and right eyes and the chaotic evolution, and the other is the embodiment of the yin and yang of the natural evolution of the Heavenly Dao, no matter how the two instruments and two saints come from, their strength is definitely the top existence.
And my more partial statement is that the two instruments and two saints evolved from the Heavenly Dao after the initial opening of chaos, because there are too few records of the two saints, and even the ontological image is a very abstract existence. Powerful in the flood but not remembered by other creatures, there is only one possibility that it is a more ancient existence, which is the same era as Pangu, not necessarily a creature in chaos, but indeed a creature that existed before Pangu died. The two instruments and two saints have been recorded in the records and objects of later generations, indicating that their existence will at least reach the time node when Nuwa created man, and from these coincidences, it can be seen that the time of the appearance of the two holy beasts is also tens of thousands of years.
The reason why there are so few records of the two saints is that they cannot be free, or that someone will not let them be free. The two instruments and two saints came from the laws of the Heavenly Dao, and they were also an important part of the Heavenly Dao, and their existence was to maintain the balance between heaven and earth. Pangu opened up chaos to form a flood world naturally will not let this world easily return to chaos, so the Law of Heavenly Dao naturally has the prohibition left by Pangu, and even does not trust Pangu to limit the two instruments and two saints evolved from the Heavenly Dao. Let them be the second line of defense to maintain heaven and earth.
After nuwa created people to become sanctified, the pattern of heaven and earth has been stabilized, and the flood world no longer needs two instruments and two saints to deliberately maintain, it can be said that they can achieve fame and prosperity, and they are at ease. But after all, they were too powerful, plus at that time, there were already two Western saints, four Taoist saints plus the newly sanctified Nuwa, seven saints, obviously they would not let the two two saints be free easily.
The final result can be imagined, the two instruments and two saints continue to restrict freedom, and may even be refined into the heavens and the earth to become a complete part of the laws of heaven and earth, as for the later records of the two instruments and two saints, it may be the last bloom of the last moment of their existence.