From Sacred Animals to Divine Messengers:A New Exploration on the Origin and Transformation of the Chinese Loong Image
The origin of Loong image still keeps in dispute in academia,in recent years there was even a tendency of categorizing it into agnosticism.From the perspective of functionalism,the final image of Loong is obviously a token of the mandate of heaven,a symbol of divine will.This function is the root of the image of Loong in Chinese culture.Based on this,an analysis on the history of ideas of the image of Loong could find out that:in the early and middle Neolithic period,when people constructed zoolatrous objects,which was closely related to production and life,part of the animals'body was deified and abstracted into a soaring shape,which could be depicted as"animal head and serpent body".This kind of image began to become a fixed pattern for the construction of the sacred animal.From the Late Neolithic to the Bronze Age,in the context of shamanic beliefs,these sacred animals,which possessed the ability to fly,became the mounts and divine messengers that guided the shaman(da wu;大巫)to heaven to communicate with deities.Since the Warring States period,the belief of immortality and Daoism inherited this tradition.Due to its ability to ascend to the heaven and communicate with deities,as well as its symbolic meaning of divine will and the mandate of heaven,the image of Loong was used as a sacred symbol and a carrier of power in the Han Dynasty.It was integrated into the emperor's sacred image,even became synonymous with the emperor.
the Image of LoongSacred AnimalsDivine MessengerTotem Worshipthe Sanctification of AnimalsSacred Image
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