The mysterious tortoise among the eight beasts

The mysterious tortoise, the mythical god beast Xuanwu, is a kind of spiritual thing composed of tortoise and snake in ancient myths and legends of China. Xuanwu first described the tortoise's divination: the tortoise's back is black, and the tortoise's divination is to invite the tortoise to the underworld to ask questions, bring back the answers and show them to the world in the form of divination. Therefore, the earliest Xuanwu is the tortoise, and its meaning has been expanding since then.

Xuanwu originally meant Xuanming, and the ancient sounds of Wu and Ming are interlinked. Xuan means black; Ghost means yin. 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; The first underworld was in the north. In the Yin and Shang Dynasties, Oracle Bone Inscriptions divined that "divination will point to the north", so Xuan Ming became a northern god again.