Why are Xuanwu, the four great beasts in China, turtles and snakes?

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 turtle divination as follows: the turtle's back is black, and the turtle divination first invited the turtle to ask questions in the underworld, brought back the answers and showed 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 turned out that the underworld was in the north, and the divination of Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty was' its divination will be in the north', so Xuan Ming became a northern god again. Xuanwu, like other three spirits, is also derived from the 28 stars on earth: bucket, ox, female, air, danger, house and wall. However, people after ancient times have the following explanations for Xuanwu. Xuanwu' is a tortoise. "Book of Rites. "Quli Shang" says:' Zhu bird before departure, then Xuanwu ...'' Xuanwu' is a tortoise and snake. Supplementary Notes on Hong Xingzu's Songs of the South. Travel far:' Xuanwu is called tortoise and snake. Located in the north, it is called Xuan. With a scale, it is called martial arts. Xuanwu is a combination of snakes, turtles and snakes.

The earliest legend about the origin of Xuanwu comes from Xia Dynasty. According to legend, the father of Yu, the founder of the Xia Dynasty in China, was called "Gun", or Xuanwu, and helped Shun control water before the famous Dayu. Because it only uses blocking instead of dredging, it has not succeeded despite the help of the gods. Generally speaking, guns are the embodiment of turtles, while Tu Shanshi, a Xia clan member, thinks snakes are his ancestors.

Xuanwu changed its name to Zhenwu to avoid the taboo of Zhao Xianzu. Song Zhenzong instructed his minions to realize the myth that "the gobbledygook keeps falling". During this period, countless Cao Zhi, Jiahe and Ruishou were worshipped all over the country, which set off a rare frenzy of worshipping Taoism. A few years later, under the guise of dreaming that the God man passed on the jade emperor's life, Zhenzong claimed that Emperor Xuanyuan was the ancestor of Zhao, thus creating Zhao, who saved the emperor by God, and announced the matter to the world, respecting the Yellow Emperor as the "holy father", respecting him as the "emperor who saved nine days by God" and respecting the holy grandmother as the "queen of Yuan". Since then, Taoism has another god, Zhao, second only to the Jade Emperor.