Green Dragon White Tiger Suzaku Xuanwu, which is the four elephants in ancient astronomy, but also the four spirits in totem culture and Taoist culture, there is a saying "Left Green Dragon, Right White Tiger, South Suzaku, North Xuanwu", but there are also words "Line, before the Vermilion Bird and then Xuanwu, Left Green Dragon and Right White Tiger, swaggering on the top, rushing to anger." ”
These two sentences both mention the four elephants, but they have different descriptions, they mean the same, but for people now, it does not matter whether they know the astronomical or cultural knowledge related to them, just the first time they hear the four spirits with a mighty momentum, it is enough to be shocked by the wisdom of the ancestors, but if you understand the things related to these four spirits again, you will admire the wisdom of the ancients even more.
The origin of the four spirits
The four spirits are the Eastern Dragon (or the Green Dragon), the Western White Tiger, the Southern Vermilion Bird (or Suzaku), and the Northern Xuanwu (or Turtle and Snake).
The four originated from the ancient animal totem belief, in ancient times, our ancestors themselves for animals and nature have a primitive worship and belief, many tribes are to take the shape of animals as their own tribal totem, and in the primitive animal worship, the four elephants in the dragon, tiger (lin), finches, turtles, snakes in it are regarded as psychic, and god-like gods, spiritual creatures, so many ethnic totems have chosen these sacred beasts.
The dragon, whose image comes from the totemic belief of the ancestors, the dragon itself is the protagonist of the totem worship of the ancient Chinese people, the god animal that our ancestors have been pursuing for a long time, and now there are many records about its legends.
The belief in the dragon gradually developed from the primitive natural and spiritual worship to the later totem worship, and then for a long time, people attributed many unexplained things to the gods, so the dragon, a mythical animal that our ancestors began to pursue for a long time, began to be deified.
Even later, many sorcerers, trigrams, and objects of inquiry had the presence of dragons. Sacrifice, not to mention, the mainland has had such a saying as "Dragon King Temple" since ancient times, and our ancestors even developed tricks for praying for rain on the Dragon King.
Since the Yellow Emperor, the dragon has not only summed up the content of the totem of the great clan, but also become the symbol of the Son of Heaven, the Yellow Emperor takes the dragon as the clan emblem, and other princes have gradually followed the footsteps of the Yellow Emperor, making a "dragon from the cloud", all the officials in the world are called the cloud master, and all the more brilliant of them are called the dragon master.
Later, due to the contrast between the Son of Heaven and the dragon, both were mythologized, such as the "Erya Wing" recorded: "The dragon has no direction of change, things cannot be controlled, so in the man than the king", saying that when the dragon is alive, "there is no way to change, things cannot be controlled", so the son of heaven is compared with the dragon, and the people of the world have concluded that the son of heaven is probably similar to the dragon, invincible before death, and cannot be speculated by common sense after death.
Xuanwu, whose image comes from the combination of a turtle and a snake, a turtle, in the worship of the four spirits of the ancient ancestors, the snake, the legend is that the Xi Emperor is the head of the snake body. For these two beliefs, it is not a patent of ancient times, even in the Northern Song Dynasty, there were still people who believed in turtles and snakes. In the eyes of ancient ancestors, turtles and snakes are symbols of longevity, in the ancient era when life expectancy was generally not long, longevity itself is a place worthy of belief, so there is the image of Xuanwu, about its image, Chu Ci Yuanyou Supplement explains: "Xuanwu is a turtle, a snake, located in the north, ancient Xuan, with scales, so it is known as Wu. ”
The White Tiger, the god of war and the god of killing, was once regarded as a fierce god, and the Book of The Concord Dialectic quoted the "Renyuan Secret Book": "The white tiger, the fierce god in the years, often lives in the fourth year of the year." Later, it was endowed with a variety of divine powers such as exorcism, disaster, prayer for abundance and punishment of evil, prosperity, and good fortune, and good fortune, and good fortune, and its image was that of a tiger.
The tiger is the king of the hundred beasts, and the white tiger is called the white tiger, which has a certain strangeness, such as "Baopuzi To the Customs", which says: "The tiger has a thousand years of life, and those who have reached five hundred years old have a white coat", and after the five elements, there is another theory that says: The white tiger is called a white tiger not because of its color white, but related to his own astrological meaning, the west is gold in the five elements, the color is white, or there is the meaning of the too white star, "Tianguan Zhan" said: "Too white, the essence of the Western gold, the son of the white emperor, the Shanggong, the elephant of the great general." ”
For the white tiger, its source of belief is mainly from the pre-Qin period chu land totem worship, the tiger is a symbol of justice, bravery, majesty, in other legends, there are legends of the white tiger town fierce ghost, such as the ghost gate before the god Yu Lei once fed the ghost ghost, so later there was a custom of "painting the tiger in the door".
Suzaku, in ancient times, was often called the vermilion bird, and it also came from the "phoenix" of the four spirits, the phoenix, the male is the phoenix, and the female is the phoenix. The image is a chicken head, a snake neck, a swallow collar, a turtle's back, a fish tail, and five colors, and is six feet high. The phoenix is the totem of the Shang Zhou, and there is a saying in the "Book of Poetry and Shang Ode": "The Bird of Heavenly Destiny, descending to give birth to the Shang".
After the ancient ancestors created these totem images, these totem images gradually spread and became widely known, and then, later, these originally only mythical biological figures were used in more fields.
Second, the relationship between the four elephants and direction and feng shui
At the beginning of the article, there is actually a mention of a four spirits on the direction of the content, in fact, this is the four elephants, four elephants, that is, the four major star areas in the sky, east, west, south and north, because of their shape, they were given the name of the four spirits by ancient astronomers, and in their 4 major star areas, they planned their own 7 houses, each star represents a certain part of the original four spirit god beast.
Such as the Oriental Seven Horns, Kang, Krypton, Fang, Heart, Tail, And Lennon;
Western Seven Su Kui, Lou, Stomach, Pleiades, Bi, Qian, Ginseng;
Northern Seven Houses, Cow, Female, Void, Danger, Room, Wall;
Nanbu Seven Wells, Ghosts, Willows, Stars, Zhang, Wings, and Yi.
For the ancients, the matching of the 28 stars with the four elephants is partly because of the ancients' worship of animals, on the other hand, the ancients have a mysterious sense of the existence, operation and totem of the stars.
At the same time, in the process of observing these stars, the ancients did find many natural phenomena that were consistent with these mysteries in the process of summarizing the laws, so for the ancients, the formation of the four elephants can be said to be a continuation of the worship of nature, but the original invisible stars have a specific name.
In addition to the relationship with the four parties, the four elephants also have a certain relationship with feng shui, such as "it is better for the green dragon to be tall, not for the white tiger to look up" such a saying is from the feng shui aspect, such as the Jin Dynasty's "Burial Classic" has such a saying: "The earth has four potentials, the qi from the eight directions, so the burial is the left for the green dragon, the right is the white tiger, the front is the suzaku, and the back is Xuanwu." Xuanwu hangs its head, Suzaku xiang dances, green dragons sting, and white tigers swoop down. The situation is the opposite, and the law should be broken. ”
In the folk, the green dragon and white tiger always appear in pairs, and many feng shui masters see that the left side of the house (desk, bed) is called the green dragon square, and the right side is called the white tiger square, and believes that the green dragon should be high and the white tiger should be low.
But this itself is actually not much related to feng shui, but related to the balance of yin and yang, yin and yang theory in ancient China are reflected in the various schools of thought, people are dividing the world into yin and yang, of which, the left is yang, the right is yin, and the ancients implanted the concept of left green dragon and right white tiger here, forming the saying that the green dragon is yang and the white tiger is yin, and such a statement actually comes from a derivative of the feudal society for men and women.
In feng shui, if there is a tall building on the right hand side of the gate, and this building is higher than the left-hand side of one's own house, it is called the white tiger looking up and discussing the murder, but this statement is actually a feudal remnant and cannot stand up to examination.
The stories related to the four elephant beasts in history are not uncommon, and Taoism regards them as guardian gods, and has a clear direction of protection. Ge Hong's Baopuzi Neishu Zaying refers to him as the bodyguard of Taishang Laojun, saying that Laojun "has twelve green dragons on the left, twenty-six white tigers on the right, twenty-four suzaku in the front, and seventy-two Xuanwu in the back"; and said that "this matter is from the Immortal Scriptures".
The "Secret recipe of the Northern Emperor's Seven Yuan Ziting Yansheng" is even more named, saying that "on the left there is the green dragon name Meng Zhang, the right side has the white tiger name of the prisoner, the front has the Suzaku name Lingguang, the back has the Xuanwu name Zhiming, the jianjie holding the building, the negative back bell and drum, around the front and back of me." ”
In summary, after thousands of years of evolution, there is also the saying that we hear today as "left green dragon, right white tiger, former suzaku, and later Xuanwu".