China in the East and Greece in the West have their own characteristics in creating images of gods and heroes. In Greek mythology, gods and heroes are the same as gods and people, while in China mythology, gods are mostly half man and half beast.
The gods in Greek mythology have human form, human character and human emotion. The ancient Greeks created gods in the image of human beings. They think that gods and heroes are the most beautiful, strong, intelligent and powerful people. Greek gods, especially the main gods, experienced a thorough humanization in hershey's Divine Spectrum and Homer's Iliad, or in the works of later tragic writers. God, like people, has joys and sorrows, as well as life needs such as eating, drinking, having fun, falling in love and having children. Some people are honest and brave, while others are treacherous and timid. The gods of Olympus are not only the symbol of natural forces, but also the dramatic expression of human nature. For example, Ares had an affair with Aphrodite, the god of war. When her husband Vulcan found out, he put them in a net and sent them to the gods, which caused them to burst into laughter. Then Aphrodite, the goddess of love, fell in love with adonis, a beautiful teenager. This was not a juvenile crime, but Ares, the lover of the goddess of love, was greatly jealous and killed the teenager with magic. Later, the gods took pity on the young man's misfortune and let him be resurrected for six months every year to reunite with God. It reflects that Greek mythology is based on the desires, loves and dislikes of real people in social life, and uses these imaginations to explain nature, so it has a particularly strong flavor of life and is more intimate and moving.
The characteristic of China myth is that man and beast are the same, and gods are mostly half man and half beast. According to statistics, among more than 450 gods in Shan Hai Jing, the ratio of humanoid gods and non-humanoid gods is about 1: 4. For example, Bingxu, Tianwu, Yujing, Jade, and Great Wall, the god of the river, are all human-faced beasts, human-faced birds' tails or snakes' heads. In addition, Yan Di Shennong, who teaches people to sow grains and taste herbs for the people, is also an ox head. Chiyou, who fought against the Yellow Emperor, was a bull's hoof with four eyes and six hands. The status of Fuxi and Nu Wa in China mythology, though different from Zeus and Hera, is at least close to human ancestors. By the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, when civilization was highly developed, these two gods, who were closely related to human beings, still maintained a semi-animal image: people above the waist, wearing robes and crowns; Below the waist, there is a snake or E Long trunk. 2. God-oriented and people-oriented
Greek mythology is based on God, while China mythology is based on people.
In Greek mythology, God is the center of the whole huge ideological system, and everything revolves around God. In the eyes of the ancient Greeks, God ruled everything, even irresistible phenomena such as wind, rain, thunder and lightning, the movement of the sun and the moon, the alternation of day and night, and the cycle of the four seasons were manipulated by God. God is omnipotent, ubiquitous and immortal, that is, when the universe exists, God exists. Therefore, God affects people's lives and even dominates people's emotional world. Man is just a puppet held in his hand with a thread. The joys and sorrows of the world and the coincidence of events are just a puppet show they staged. For example, the balance in Zeus' hand and the two jars containing happiness and disaster in front of his door, the upside-down balance determines a person's life and death, and only a little person from the altar of disaster "lets him travel all over the world and have worries everywhere." Odysseus's "victory" is nothing more than a compromise between human beings and God. In a word, God is independent. They dominate everything and control everything, regardless of people's will and needs.
China's myth is different. People's will and spiritual strength dominate. Everything in the universe exists for human beings, and even God serves human beings. Pangu created the world for mankind and supported it for eighteen thousand years. After the composition of heaven and earth is firm, it collapses and becomes everything on earth. Nu Wa created human beings, filled the sky and drained water, eliminated dragons and beasts, and turned the world into a carefree paradise. Fuxi invented the note symbol gossip for human beings; Emperor Yan taught people to sow grains and distinguish herbs; The yellow emperor taught human beings to build houses to keep warm ... all the conveniences of human beings were taken into account by these gods, and they were also done for human beings. They are self-cultivation, self-cultivation and career-building. They are neither lustful nor good at fighting, nor are they omnipotent or invulnerable. Emperor Yan tasted money and died. After Zhuan Xu's death, his body became a fish ... God did not manipulate, rule and dominate mankind, but lived in harmony with others, serving and benefiting mankind.
Step 3 be clear and vague
Greece has a clear network of inter-gods-Olympus system with Zeus as the core, with twelve great gods and countless small and medium-sized gods. Almost all famous gods are related to Zeus, such as Athena, the patron saint of Athens, the god of war and the goddess of wisdom. According to myth, she was the daughter of Zeus' first wife. Apollo was the son of Zeus' sixth wife. Zeus had seven formal wives in his life, and each wife had descendants, all of whom were important gods in Greek mythology. For example, the goddess of time sequence was born by Zeus and his second wife; Persephone was born to Zeus and his third wife, and nine muses were born to Zeus and his fourth wife. Through this kind of marriage and consanguineous reproduction, Greek mythology brought together many unrelated gods and formed a huge genealogy of gods with Zeus as the core.
In China mythology, the genealogy of gods is incomplete, especially there are few cross-regional connections between gods, so it is impossible to draw a clear genealogy of gods. There are at least three gods in China mythology: (1) Fuxi, (2) Huangdi, (3) Emperor ⑧ But only Nu Wa is associated with Fuxi, just a "glamorous" and "peerless" god ⑨; There are not many records about the emperor, which shows that his position is particularly important; The people after the emperor mentioned in Shan Hai Jing are also seen elsewhere, but they all belong to the descendants of others. Attending that is to say, none of them can obtain the status of Zeus in ancient Greek mythology and become the link between the gods or protoss.
4. Secular and sublime
In ancient Greek mythology, all the gods, big and small, we saw were secular and smelled of fireworks: Zeus, the king of the gods, was bohemian and made love with people, leaving a string of romantic debts between the gods and the world. What's more, he acted arbitrarily and unprincipled, full of jealousy and personal hobbies; Hera, the queen of God, is a model of gods and a goddess on earth, but she often loses her nature because of jealousy and hatred, and makes some cruel and godless stupid things, showing no respect for human beings. The Lord God is like this, and their gods have very similar characteristics. For example, when Apollo failed to play the flute in a match with Marsh, he cruelly skinned Marsh and hung it on a tree. Another example is the brother and sister of Luna and Apollo. Because Niobe laughed at their mother Titan Leto for giving birth to only one son and one daughter, and forbade Thebes women to sacrifice to Leto, they shot and killed many of Niobe's children. It can be seen that in Greek mythology, apart from the difference in strength, God and man are emotionally consistent. The gods took off their coats and became secular mortals.
Open the ancient myth of China, and a world of sages will come to us. "No earthly fireworks, no mortal lust" is an important feature of the divinity of the major gods in ancient China mythology. In many classics of China, the main gods in ancient China, such as Fuxi, Nuwa, Huangdi, Zhuan Xu, Yao, Shun and Yu, are noble and sacred. They are unsmiling, never make fun of human beings, nor are they jealous of hurting human beings. In their personal lives, they have always been very self-disciplined, pay great attention to details, pay attention to the cultivation of conduct and morality, and respect talents and abilities. Almost every god king has no "affair" or "sowing seeds of love". In them, there are only sacred aura, pure character and noble sentiment. Humans used to look at them, only looking up and worshiping, without any disrespect.
5. Chongli and Suntech
The formation of Greek mythology and national spirit is due to the cohesion of economy, strength and technology. Greece is a city-state civilization, and the typical origin of its city-state is: first, a military fortress appeared, then around the fortress, a market gradually appeared and formed, and finally the two merged into a complete city. This city is both a military town and an economic center, but its goal is to pursue material strength, which can only be effectively obtained through technology. It can be seen that "knowledge is power". This city-state culture emphasizes that only by defeating other city-states in their own economic and technological strength can they survive and prosper. Therefore, in the whole Greek mythology, it advocates the powerful, magical and meticulous division of labor of Olympus, reveals a strong non-ethical tendency, and praises those who have the "power" to turn the tide and reverse Gankun. This spirit of attaching importance to individuality and supremacy of strength has been freely expressed to the maximum extent in the complete and clear fantasy picture of Greek mythology.
The formation of China myth and national spirit is due to the cohesion of etiquette and ethics. The formation of this national spirit has a profound historical background: when the Zhou people replaced the Yin people to rule the Central Plains, they were faced with a fundamental question: whether the Zhou people's "business suspension" war was just and whether the new ruling order of the Zhou people was reasonable. In order to solve this problem, the rulers of Zhou Dynasty reformed the religion of Yin and Shang Dynasties, emphasizing "matching heaven with virtue" and giving way to the inheritance of blood. In this way, in China's ancient social consciousness, it is not "force" that is worthy of worship, but the moral essence embodied in "force". "Knowledge is power" invisibly gave way to "Morality is power". Therefore, in the ancient myths of China, or more precisely, in the myths of China influenced by historians' culture, the noble "saints" who advocated saving the people with the wind of three emperors and five emperors and strict laws should be the rulers of a huge and stable political entity linked by cultural centripetal force, governing the country and uniting the people with courtesy, virtue and benevolence. This spirit of paying attention to harmony and putting ethics first is fully and naturally expressed in China's mythology.