Longma

I never know where the day will take me...And today took me to China, to meet Longma...Longma is a fabled winged horse with dragon scales in Chinese mythology. The Chinese word longma combines long 龍 "dragon" and ma 馬 "horse"...

Longma is most famous for its connection with the mythical Hetu 河圖 "Yellow River chart; Yellow River map"...A magic document of extraordinary importance for Chinese culture...

The Yellow River is the second-longest river in Asia, following the Yangtze River, and the sixth-longest in the world. It is along the Yellow River that some of the earliest agricultural societies in China had developed...

The Yellow River has changed its course, settling in new beds, with different outlets to the ocean, many times in the past, causing death and devastation to the human population living along its banks...

The most devastating event of this type was in Chinese history recorded as The Great Flood of China. It was a major flood event which lasted for two generations and which resulted in great destruction, famine and population displacements...

According to mythological and historical sources, this flood is dated to the third millennium BCE, or about 2300-2200 BCE, during the reign of Emperor Yao. 

Interesting. 

Ever heard of The 4.2-kiloyear BP event?

This was one of the most severe climatic events of the last 10000 years. Starting around 2200 BC, it probably lasted the entire 22nd century BC. And probably caused the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt, the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley Civilisation...

What about China? Have a look at this. This is the map of the world showing the effects of this global weather event. The dotted areas by drought or dust storms. The hatched areas were affected by wet conditions or flooding...

Now have a look at this...You can see that the border between the area affected by aridity and the area affected by flooding goes right between Yellow river and Yangtze river...

Now if I know anything about climate, having such opposing forces so close together for so long can mean only one thing: the whole area was most likely thrown into a complete chaos of droughts followed by floods followed by droughts followed by floods followed by...

The story of the "Great Flood" and the heroic attempts to abate the disaster is a narrative fundamental to Chinese culture. It explains the founding of the first Chinese dynasties, whose main task was the provision of food for their people through control of the great rivers...

According to the tradition, the main river which went crazy during this period was the Yellow River, and one of the keys to the eventual successful efforts to control its waters was the Yellow River Map, Yellow River Chart...

The magic document which enabled people of China to understand the behavior of the Yellow River and to subdue and control it. The Yellow River Chart, Hetu 河圖, which was brought to people by Longma, the dragon-horse...

Which is why Yellow River Chart, Hetu 河圖 is alternately named longtu 龍圖 ("the Yellow River sent forth the dragon chart") and matu 馬圖 ("the Yellow River sent forth the horse chart")...

The fact that it is said that it was Yellow River which itself sent forth the chart that allowed people to subdue it and control it, is very interesting...

Is this the way to say that the observation of the erratic behavior of the Yellow River over the period of the "Great Flood" enabled people to figure out the natural laws which govern their environment...

The chart is directly linked to the most important Chinese natural concepts: 2 principals, 5 Elements, 8 trigrams...Basically, this "magical" document is at the root of the Chinese understanding of nature...

And this "magic" document was sent to people by the Yellow River itself and brought to people by horse-dragon...

Why horse dragon?

Well, because of the climate in the Yellow River valley, and the animal calendar markers that describe it...

TATATAAAA!!! 🙂

I talked about dragon as the symbol of sun's heat which is associated with drought and death in many of my articles, for instance "Dragon who stole rain", "Letnitsa treasure", "Pegasus and Chimera", "Angra Mainyu", "Lion radiating heat", "Seven headed dragon", "Bactrian snakes and dragons"...

In Europe, Levant, Middle East, Central Asia, Iran...There is an association between fire breathing dragons and the burning sun of the hottest, driest part of the year (Jul/Aug) which causes droughts and death...

But not in China, where dragon is bringer of water and life...

Why?

The reason why Chinese dragon is linked with water is because of the climate in the Yellow River valley. Here are climate charts from 4 places along Yellow River (Zhengzhou, Xian, Ordos, Jinan)...

You can clearly see that Jul/Aug, the hottest part of the year, the time of fire breathing dragons, is also the wettest part of the year...So dragon in China really does bring water...I talked about it in these articles: "Chinese dragon" and "Tiger and dragon"...

It is the harmony between the rain water (Yin) and sun's fire (Yang) that keeps the Yellow River in check. Too much Yang and not enough Yin and you have droughts. Too much Yin and not enough Yang, and you have floods...

And you know how dragon is always coiling, writhing, changing direction, jumping up and down during Chinese dragon dance...

I wonder what this represents? The ever changing, unpredictable behavior of the heavenly fire-water dragon which controls the climate in the Yellow River valley...And if so, how old is this? Does it date to the time of the Great Yellow River Madness?

That explains dragon bit in dragon-horse. But what about the horse bit? Believe or not, I already explained that bit and the whole dragon-horse concept in this article, "Mythical beast from Xian", without even knowing about the existence of Longma, which I only discovered today...

It's all in there. Important bit: The horse fertility is governed by the sun. So the natural horse mating season starts in Apr, peaks on summer solstice and finishes in Sep. 

Hence horse as a solar symbol in Eurasia. I talked about it in my article "Hayagriva"...

This also makes a horse a great animal calendar marker for the hot (and in China also wet) half of the year...Just like a dragon, horse also brings both sun's heat (Yang) and rain water (Yin)...

Which makes dragon and horse interchangeable animal calendar markers...

And so...Longma, Dragon-Horse...

"A being with a horse's body, and dragon scales". 

"A being who is the [qi 氣] vital spirit of Heaven and Earth"

Also the being that pulls the sun chariot of the sun goddess Xihe...Surprise surprise 🙂

But that's a story for another article...Soon...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...