The Yellow

Dragon A dragon is a Magic (supernatural), magical legendary creature that appears in the folklore of multiple cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but European dragon, dragons in Western cultures since the Hi ...

() is the zoomorphic incarnation of the

Yellow Emperor The Yellow Emperor, also known as the Yellow Thearch, or Huangdi ( zh, t=黃帝, s=黄帝, first=t) in Chinese, is a mythical Chinese sovereign and culture hero included among the legendary Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. He is revered as ...

of the center of the universe in Chinese religion and

mythology Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...

. The Yellow Emperor or Yellow Deity was conceived by Fubao, who became pregnant after seeing a yellow ray of light turning around the Northern Dipper (in

Chinese theology Chinese theology, which comes in different interpretations according to the Chinese classics and Chinese folk religion, and specifically Confucian, Taoist, and other philosophical formulations, is fundamentally monistic, that is to say it sees t ...

the principal symbol of

God In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the un ...

). Twenty-four months later, the Yellow Emperor was born and was associated with the color yellow because it is the color of the earth (), the material substance in which he incarnated. The Yellow Dragon is a part of ''Wuxing'' and the

Four Symbols The Four Symbols are mythological creatures appearing among the Chinese constellations along the ecliptic, and viewed as the guardians of the four cardinal directions. These four creatures are also referred to by a variety of other names, in ...

as the embodiment of the element of earth.

Myths of Fuxi and Huangdi

According to legends, the Yellow Dragon already manifested hornless to

Fuxi Fuxi or Fu Hsi ( zh, c=伏羲) is a culture hero in Chinese mythology, credited along with his sister and wife Nüwa with creating humanity and the invention of music, hunting, fishing, domestication, and cooking, as well as the Cangjie syste ...

, emerging from the River Luo, and instructed him with the elements of

writing Writing is the act of creating a persistent representation of language. A writing system includes a particular set of symbols called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which they encode a particular spoken language. Every written language ...

. When he appeared before Fuxi, he filled a hole in the sky made by the monster

Gonggong Gonggong () is a Chinese water god who is depicted in Chinese mythology and folktales as having a copper human head with an iron forehead, red hair, and the body of a serpent, or sometimes the head and torso are human, with the tail of a serpen ...

. The

was said to have turned into the form of the Yellow Dragon at the end of his life to ascend to

Heaven Heaven, or the Heavens, is a common Religious cosmology, religious cosmological or supernatural place where beings such as deity, deities, angels, souls, saints, or Veneration of the dead, venerated ancestors are said to originate, be throne, ...

. Since the Chinese consider him to be their ancestor, they sometimes refer to themselves as "children of the dragon" (also see: Nine sons of the dragon). This legend also contributed towards the use of the

Chinese dragon The Chinese dragon or loong is a legendary creature in Chinese mythology, Chinese folklore, and Chinese culture generally. Chinese dragons have many animal-like forms, such as Bixi (mythology), turtles and Chiwen, fish, but are most commonly ...

as a symbol of imperial power. The Chinese national flag from 1889–1912 is also called the ''Yellow Dragon Flag'' ().

Other uses

In East Asian culture, the Yellow Dragon is the fifth symbol completing the Sixiang (Four Symbols). This deity is the center of the cosmos and it represents the element

earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

, the Chinese quintessence, as well as the changing of the

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's axial tilt, tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperat ...

s. The Yellow Dragon does not appear in

Japanese mythology Japanese mythology is a collection of traditional stories, folktales, and beliefs that emerged in the islands of the Japanese archipelago. Shinto traditions are the cornerstones of Japanese mythology. The history of thousands of years of contac ...

: the fifth element in the Japanese elemental system is the void, so there cannot be an animal representing it. However, some consider the ''Ōryū'' as the Japanese counterpart of the Yellow Dragon since they share some similarities.

References

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* {{Chinese constellation Chinese dragons Four Symbols

Myths of Fuxi and Huangdi

Other uses

See also

References

Citations

Sources