What are the legendary four great beasts and four great beasts?

Four Holy Beasts's four great beasts refer to the legendary dragon, white tiger, suzaku and Xuanwu in China.

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.

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.

In China, the phoenix is a symbol of happiness. There are many kinds of prototypes. Such as golden pheasant, peacock, vulture, mandarin fish, blackbird (swallow) and so on. And it is said to be 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.

Xuanwu is a spiritual thing composed of turtles and snakes. Xuanwu originally meant Xuanming, and Xuanyi meant 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. 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.

The ancient ancients divided the sky into four palaces, east, west, north and south, named after Qinglong (black dragon), white tiger, Suzaku and Xuanwu (a turtle-shaped god). In fact, the sky is divided into four parts, which are connected by seven main stars in each part and named after their shapes.

Oriental horn (wooden dumplings), dragon (dragon), raccoon (native raccoon), house (Japanese rabbit), heart (moon fox), tail (fire tiger) and scorpion (water leopard) are shaped like dragons, so the Eastern Palace is called Qinglong or Black Dragon.

The seven western stars, Kui (wooden wolf), Lou (golden dog), stomach (pheasant), Zan (Japanese chicken), Bi (moonlit monkey), tapir (fire monkey) and ginseng (water ape), look like tigers, and call the West Palace a white tiger.

In the south, wells (wooden tops), ghosts (golden sheep), willows (earth roes), stars (Japanese horses), Zhang (moon deer), wings (salamanders) and water worms are connected into a bird shape, which is called Suzaku;

The northern seven-star bucket (Mu Yi), ox (Taurus), female (native bat), virtual (Japanese rat), dangerous (moon swallow), house (fire pig) and wall (water book) are shaped like turtles, which is called Xuanwu.