Recently, another TV series "Agarwood Like Crumbs" has been launched, this TV series mainly tells the story of the love story between Yan Tan, a celestial fairy whose body is a four-leaf han, and the emperor of the Eastern Pole Qingyuan who is highly powerful and powerful in the celestial realm, and their heroic deeds to save the world.
Although this drama is still a romance drama in the guise of a fairy in the author's opinion, the core of the story is still the love of men and women who love to die and live, but it does not hinder the fairy background of the story.
The literary theme of Xian Xia has been popular since ancient times, such as the well-known "Fengshen Yanyi", "Journey to the West", "Search for God", "Liaozhai Zhiyi", etc., which can be regarded as an ancient version of Xian Xia novels.
In addition, although works such as "The Classic of Mountains and Seas" and "Huainanzi" cannot be regarded as novels, they undoubtedly contain too many magic and strange factors, which can be said to be an important source of material for modern Xian xia novels.
In modern times, the "Legend of the Swordsman of Shushan Mountain" by the owner of the ZhuLou can be said to be a classic of the Xian Xia novel, entering the modern era, with the prevalence of online literature, the Xian Xia novel has become one of the important categories of online literature, in recent years, this category has been commissioned a lot of good works, and has been sought after by many people.
Under the impetus of the booming Xian Xia novel, the idle immortals do not know how many people's reverie has been touched, although many people know that xiu xian immortality is a flower in the mirror and a moon in the water, but the transcendent and immortal life cannot be envied by anyone.
It is said that literature comes from reality, although the things of the gods and immortals are illusory, but the circulation of these fairy stories reflects the strong "immortal" culture of the mainland, and the novels of the immortals are rooted in this, if you further investigate, these seemingly extraordinary and unreliable contents actually have a deep cultural connotation.
Immortals in history
A prominent manifestation of the "immortal" culture is that there are many immortal deeds circulated in the world, and since ancient times, almost all dynasties and dynasties have had several "immortals" appear in front of everyone's eyes.
Peng Zu in ancient times was such a world-famous immortal, he is most talked about is his longevity, it is said that he lived more than eight hundred years or even longer, but also proficient in the fangzhong technique and other health secrets, his deeds are mentioned in "Chu Ci", "Zhuangzi" and other works.
In addition, in ancient times, there were also famous immortals such as Ning Fengzi, Red Pine Zi, Guang Chengzi, etc., and even the human monarchs such as Fuxi, YanDi, and Yellow Emperor also had great supernatural divine powers in the circulation of later generations, and they were far more immortal figures than immortals.
It is not surprising that almost many of the myths and stories we circulate today are related to ancient times, that era is so old that we can only glimpse its figure in legends, and naturally there are more mysteries.
At the beginning of entering the feudal society, the secret affairs of the gods and immortals are still prosperous, Qin Shi Huang is a senior lover of mysterious activities, he not only likes to listen to mythical stories, but also prefers to practice personally, in order to achieve the immortality of myths and legends, he found a large number of alchemists such as Lu Sheng, Han Zhong, Hou Sheng, etc., and secretly experimented behind closed doors all day long, dreaming of being able to make his youth forever.
One of the most famous of these professional immortal cultivators of that era was Xu Fu, who thought that Qin Shi Huang was looking for the elixir of immortality, and had gone away with thousands of boys, girls, and a large amount of materials, leaving the First Emperor on the land to look through, not knowing how much speculation and legend this had caused.
During the Han Dynasty, the boom in xiu xian did not disappear, and there was also a "Biography of Fang Shu Lie" in the Book of Later Han, which specifically recorded these strange people and strange things, Ren Wengong, Guo Xian, Li Nan, Fei Changfang, Zuo Ci and other people were famous in the biography, they often could pinch and calculate, and the supernatural power was vast, and this biography read as if people were not reading orthodox historical books, but reading a certain zhiyi novel.
During the Eastern Han Dynasty, there was also a heavyweight immortal who came out of nowhere, he was Zhang Daoling Zhang Tianshi, the founder of the "Five Bucket Rice Dao", it is said that this taoist old immortal once fought fiercely against the eight ghosts and ghosts and ghosts in Qingcheng Mountain, and finally Zhang Tianshi easily pressed them all to the ground and rubbed them.
Since the beginning of the ancestral master Zhang Daoling, the Daoist system of the Zhang family has never been broken, and gradually formed a line of Longhu Mountain Tianshifu, which has a very highly respected position in Taoism, and has always been called together with the Northern Qufu Kongfu in Chinese history.
In addition to Zhang Laotianshi's family, the three Zhang Jiao brothers and the Taiping Dao to which they belonged were also on the cusp of the storm in the last years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and in addition to ordinary cultivation activities, they also engaged in rebellion, which directly made the lingering Han Dynasty breathe.
Time into the Wei and Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties period, the class of celebrities at that time prevailed in metaphysics and qing talk, were extremely enthusiastic about Taoist immortals, this period of Taoism is also a great power, Lady Wei, Ge Hong, Guo Pu, Tao Hongjing and other people in the history of Taoism have a pivotal position, they themselves are proficient in the cultivation of immortals, alchemy, feng shui and other immortal things among the gods and immortals, but also founded the sect, wrote books and theory, and made outstanding contributions to the development of Taoism and "immortal" culture.
During the Sui and Tang dynasties, Yuan Tiangang and Li Chunfeng were both famous prophets, both of whom had their own strengths, knew the future well, and were famous immortals in the early Tang Dynasty.
Yuan Tiangang has written works such as "Yi Jing XuanJiao" and "Nine Heavenly Xuan Daughters Six Lessons", and Li Chunfeng's most famous work is the famous "Push Back Map", but there is still a lot of controversy about the author of this book, in addition, he also has "Yi Wei Zhan", "Hanging Mirror" and other works. And they also leave a lot of legends and unsolved mysteries for the newcomers.
In the early years of the Song Dynasty, Chen Zhuo's ancestors were at large, and it was said that this Mr. Xiyi was extremely capable of sleeping, and could sleep for more than a hundred days in one sleep, so he was also revered as a "sleeping immortal". The Emperor of the Northern Song Dynasty had many good Taoists, such as Song Zhenzong and Song Huizong, which also led to the prosperity of the "immortal" culture of the Song Dynasty.
In the three generations of Jin Yuanming, the Quanzhen Sect and the Wudang Sect were founded successively, and Wang Chongyang and Zhang Sanfeng, as the ancestors of the founding school, were worshipped as gods and immortals by Taoism and the world, and were greatly respected and respected, of which Wang Chongyang wrote "Fifteen Treatises on Chongyang Lijiao", "Chongyang Quanzhen Collection", "Chongyang Enlightenment Collection" and other works. Zhang Sanfeng, on the other hand, pioneered Taijiquan and wrote works such as "Xuan ji zhi zhi", "Meditation Song", and "Rootless Tree".
Look at the "immortal" culture from the ancient characters
The above-mentioned people are only the tip of the iceberg of the ancient Chinese immortal group, in addition to the legends of the immortals that have been passed down to the world, which shows the profound heritage of the "immortal" culture in China. It is also important to note that although we generally refer to "god" and "immortal", in ancient Chinese traditional culture, there is a huge difference between "god" and "immortal".
This can be seen from the glyphs of the Chinese characters of the two, specifically the ancient seal of the word "god" is composed of a "show" character representing the altar and a "person" character that is being sacrificed, and it is obvious that in the thinking of the ancients, "god" and sacrifice have a very close relationship.
So what was it that made the ancients sacrifice? There are two kinds of existence, one is natural phenomena, such as wind and rain, thunder, mountains and rivers, the ancients did not understand modern science, and were in awe of various natural phenomena, so natural phenomena often became an important object of ancient sacrifices.
The second is the dead people, including the dead relatives and the deceased hero Haojie, which is also a form of ancestor worship in ancient China.
Therefore, in specific myths, "gods" often come from the anthropomorphism and deification of natural phenomena and the respect for the dead, the former is manifested as "fire gods", "water gods", "wood gods", "wind bo", "rain masters" and other gods, and the latter such as related gods such as Yu, Zhong Kui, Wei Chigong, Qin Qiong and so on.
The word "xian" in the ancient seal text has two interpretations from the glyph point of view, one of which is to rise into the sky, which is manifested in the glyph is the state of people holding up with their hands, as if to raise up some kind of existence.
The second is that people enter the mountains and combine the two glyphs of "man" and "mountain", including the meaning of the word "xian" that we use today.
It can be seen that in the impression of the ancients, "immortals" are closely related to daytime ascension and mountain cultivation, and no matter what kind of interpretation, the two have one thing in common, that is, "immortals" are made by living people.
In other words, in the eyes of the ancients, "immortals" were basically cultivated by mortals.
This is very different from Western mythology, whether it is Greek mythology, Egyptian mythology or Norse mythology, those gods with great powers basically have an extraordinary origin, or the combination of gods and gods, or the natural birth of heaven and earth, always saying that they are born to be extraordinary, they are not mortals at all.
In China, not only do "immortals" come from mortals, but even "gods" can be done by mortals, which is actually the cultural connotation of some Parts of China and the external manifestations of some of the personality characteristics of Chinese.
Chinese is indomitable, upward, Chinese although fear heaven and earth, reverence for nature, but will not succumb to the natural feet of heaven and earth, such cultural and character characteristics in the field of mythology naturally formed the concept of "immortals are originally done by mortals, but mortals refuse to cultivate", which is why "immortals" only exist in China.
Epilogue:
In the movie "Peak Explosion", there is a line that can touch people's hearts, to the effect that when faced with disasters, Westerners have "Noah's Ark", while Chinese is "Dayu ZhiShui", "Jingwei Reclamation", "Yugong Moving Mountains", we are always fighting indomitably, the fairy story may be illusory, but the Chinese tenacious and indomitable spiritual character it reflects is real and timeless.