The Zodiac, also known as the Zodiac, refers to the twelve animals in China that match their birth years, including rats, cows, tigers, rabbits, dragons, snakes, horses, sheep, monkeys, chickens, dogs and pigs. The origin of the zodiac is related to animal worship. According to the Qin bamboo slips unearthed in Yunmeng Shuihudi, Hubei Province and Fangmatan, Tianshui, Gansu Province, there was a relatively complete zodiac system in the pre-Qin period.
The zodiac is an intuitive representation of the twelve earthly branches, namely, Zi (mouse), Ugly (ox), Yin (tiger), Mao (rabbit), Chen (dragon), Si (snake), Wu (horse), Wei (sheep), Shen (monkey), You (chicken) and Xu (chicken).
Zodiac dragon:
There are many stories about the origin of dragons. Inferred from Wen Yiduo, the clan with snake as totem has successively merged many other totem clans, forming a dragon totem with snake as the main body, horse head, raccoon tail, antlers, dog claws, fish scales and whiskers mixed.
The dragon in ancient mythology is not sacred and inviolable. Nu Wa made up the sky by refining stones, and "killed the black dragon to help Jizhou". After the Han Dynasty, the dragon became a symbol of imperial power. The emperor wears a dragon robe, sits in a dragon chair, rides a dragon boat and sits on a dragon boat. After the emperor died, he was called Yulong Tian Bin. In the Qing Dynasty, the dragon robe combined with nine golden dragons as the "Ninth Five-Year Plan", and there are countless dragon patterns in the Forbidden City in Beijing. People will suffer if they use dragon patterns.
Dragon is the god of clouds and rain. "Huai Nan Zi said Xun Lin" said that "drought requires earth dragons" and "On the Chaos of Dragons" said that "crouching can't make wind, but earth dragons can make rain". Since the Song Dynasty, almost every village has the Longwang Temple. Whenever there are floods and droughts, people will offer sacrifices to the Dragon King to control the rain and pray for good weather. It is also said that the dragon can't decide the rainfall by himself. In the Journey to the West, the dragon king of Zhongjing River was beheaded for violating the jade emperor's rain.
The dragon symbolizes getting ahead and being different. The auspicious patterns of dragons and phoenixes were widely spread after the Tang Dynasty, which not only symbolized the power of the queen, the happy combination of husband and wife, but also symbolized the harmony of yin and yang of spirit and material. Dragon and phoenix patterns are the most representative image symbols of the Chinese nation.