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Fuxi or Fu Hsi (c=伏羲)Theobald, Ulrich. Fu Xi 伏羲 ChinaKnowledge.de - An Encyclopaedia on Chinese History, Literature and Art 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, (2025). 9780872207813, Hackett Publishing Company. ISBN 9780872207813 and cooking, as well as the Cangjie system of writing Chinese characters around 2900 BC (2025). 9781465429889, DK. ISBN 9781465429889 or 2000BC. He is also said to be the originator of bagua (the eight trigrams) after observing that there were eight fundamental building blocks in nature: heaven, earth, water, fire, thunder, wind, mountain, and lake. These eight are all made of different combinations of yin and yang, which are what came to be called bagua.
Fuxi was counted as the first mythical emperor of China, "a divine being with a serpent's body" who was miraculously born, a Taoism deity, and/or a member of the Three Sovereigns at the beginning of the Chinese dynastic period. Some representations show him as a human with snake-like characteristics, "a leaf-wreathed head growing out of a mountain", "or as a man clothed with animal skins."
However, in some myths, Fuxi was held to be the creator, not Pangu, who worked alone and not with Nüwa.
Fuxi was known as the "original god", and he was said to have been born in the lower-middle reaches of the Yellow River in a place called Chengji (成紀) (possibly modern Lantian County, Shaanxi province, or Tianshui, Gansu province). (2025). 9787119046358, Foreign Language Press. ISBN 9787119046358
A possible historical interpretation of the myth is that Huaxu (Fuxi's mother) was a leader during the matriarchal society (BC) as early Chinese developed language skill while Fuxi and Nüwa were leaders in the early patriarchal society (BC) while Chinese began the marriage rituals.
A divinity Taihao (太皞, "The Great Bright One") appears, vaguely, in sources before the Han dynasty, independent from Fuxi. Later, Fuxi is identified with Taihao, the latter being his Courtesy name or formal name. (1993). 9780801845956, Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 9780801845956
According to legend, the goddess of the Luo River, Luoshen, was the daughter of Fuxi. Additionally, some versions of the legend state that she is Fuxi's consort. She drowned in the Luo River while crossing it and became the spirit of the Luo River.
Fuxi taught his subjects to cook and various methods of hunting and fishing, including fishing with nets and hunting with weapons made of bone, wood, or bamboo. He instituted the basic family structure, as well as marriage, and offered the first open-air sacrifices to heaven. A stone tablet, dated AD 160, shows Fuxi with Nüwa.
Traditionally, Fuxi is considered the originator of the methods of divination that were passed down through the ages before the I Ching. In other versions of the story, he is credited to the writing of some of the I Ching itself. His divination powers are attributed to his reading of the He Map (or the Yellow River Map). According to this tradition, Fuxi had the arrangement of the trigrams of the I Ching revealed to him in the markings on the back of a mythical Longma (sometimes said to be a tortoise) that emerged from the Luo River. This arrangement precedes the compilation of the I Ching during the Zhou dynasty. This discovery is said to have been the origin of calligraphy. Fuxi is also credited with the invention of the Guqin musical instrument, though credit for this is also given to Shennong and Yellow Emperor.
The Figurism viewed Fuxi as Enoch, the Biblical patriarch. Alexander Catcott, a Hutchinsonian, identified Fuxi with the Biblical Noah ( A Treatise on the Deluge).
Fuxi and Nüwa were also thought to be gods of silk.
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