What's the origin of the four-beast map of Feng Shui?

In China, the phoenix is a symbol of happiness. There are many kinds of prototypes. Such as golden pheasants, peacocks, vultures, mandarin ducks, blackbirds (swallows), etc ... Some people say it is a Buddhist Dapeng golden winged bird. According to the phoenix myth, the phoenix has a chicken's head, a swallow's chin, a snake's neck, a fish's tail and five-color stripes. There are five kinds of phoenixes, divided by color: Red Phoenix, Lan Fenghuang, White Swan and Rayna Sue Phoenix, which can also be called Suzaku or Blackbird. Suzaku is one of the four spirits, and like the other three spirits, it comes from the stars, which is the general name of the seven nights in the south: well, ghost, willow, star, Zhang, wing and bird. Think of it as Suzaku. Scarlet, like fire, the south belongs to fire, hence the name Phoenix. It also has the characteristics of being far from fire, also called fire phoenix, just like the immortal birds in the west.

turtle

Xuanwu is a spiritual thing composed of turtles and snakes. Xuanwu originally meant Xuanming, and the ancient sounds of Wu and Ming are interlinked. Wu means black; Ghost means yin. At first, Xuan Ming described the tortoise divination as follows: the tortoise's back is black, and the tortoise divination is to let the tortoise go to the underworld to ask his ancestors, bring back the answers and show them to the world in the form of divination. Therefore, the earliest Xuanwu is the tortoise. Since then, the meaning of Xuanming has been expanding. Turtles live in rivers, lakes and seas (including turtles), so Xuan Ming became a water god; The tortoise lives long, and Xuan Ming has become a symbol of immortality; It turns out that the underworld is in the north, and Oracle Bone Inscriptions's divination in the Shang Dynasty is "divination must go north", so Xuan Ming became a northern god again.

White Tiger

In China, the white tiger is the god of war and war. Tigers have many magical powers, such as avoiding evil, praying and punishing evil, promoting good, getting rich and getting married, etc. And it is one of the four spirits, and of course it is also changed from the stars. Among these 28 stars, there are 7 in the west: osmium, building, stomach, ang, bi, Gou and Shen. Therefore, it is the representative of the west, and its whiteness is due to the west. The five elements belong to gold and the color is white. So it is called white tiger not because it is white, but because it comes from five elements.

Qinglong-the patron saint of the East in Taoism

Qinglong, also known as "Black Dragon", is the God of the East in ancient mythology. Dragon is the totem of the Chinese nation. Since the Yellow Emperor entrusted it to Tianhe and weiser, it has been a symbol of the Chinese nation and even the whole of China, and its stereotype was in the Han Dynasty. Since the Great Han Dynasty, it has been identified as the symbol and representative of the emperor. In oriental legend, the dragon looks like a long snake, the head of a unicorn, the tail of a carp, a long beard, horns like deer and five claws, which is frightening. In western mythology, the dragon is more like a lizard with wings.