Xuanwu is one of Four Holy Beasts, why is it also called "Zhenwu Emperor"?

First of all, we know that Xuanwu is composed of turtles and snakes, not a single creature like the other three beasts. At the beginning of Xuanwu's creation, there were ideas of opposition and balance, and Taoism attached great importance to Taiji. Zhenwu Emperor, as the ancestor of Taoism, certainly has something in common with Xuanwu, including Taiji, so Zhenwu Emperor is often called Xuanwu, both of which are fictitious.

Zhenwu Emperor, also known as Tian Xuan God and Tian Xuan God, is a famous jade emperor among Taoist immortals. Zhenwu is the god of life, and the tortoise is a symbol of longevity and immortality because of its longevity. For the water god. According to the five elements of yin and yang, the north belongs to water, so the god of the north is the water god. Because rain is necessary for the survival of all things, Xuanwu's water god attribute is deeply believed by people.

In the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, the status of Xuanwu God was not high. The prosperity of Xuanwu belief and the improvement of Xuanwu God's status began in the Song Dynasty. At the beginning of the founding of the Northern Song Dynasty, Gaine was threatened by the northern foreign nationalities Qidan and Liao. In order to improve his self-confidence against invasion, he sought the protection of Xuanwu, a great god in the north.

In the battle of Jingnan in the Ming Dynasty, it was said that Zhenwu Emperor appeared to help the prince. In addition, Zhenwu the Great was the Northern Heaven Emperor, which confirmed Wang Qi's statement in the North. It was even praised by Cheng Zu, who claimed to be the Zhenwu Emperor. He ordered people to cast a statue of Zhenwu Emperor in his own image in Wudang Mountain. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Zhenwu Emperor was the most prosperous.

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. 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. So Xuanwu and Zhenwu are one.