Harvest sacrifices for heaven.
The origin of the Double Ninth Festival can be traced back to ancient times. According to legend, Chongyang is the day of enlightenment in Yuan Di. The existing written records about the activities of the Double Ninth Festival can be found in Lu Chunqiu Qiu Ji Ji: "In September, order the family to slaughter, prepare for farming, and introduce five essentials. The Tibetan emperor's book is collected in the holy warehouse, and it is only respectful. It's the day, great emperor, and I'll taste the sacrifice and tell the son of heaven. " It can be seen that there was an activity of offering sacrifices to God and ancestors at the autumn harvest in September to thank them for their kindness. This is the primitive form of the ancient Double Ninth Festival as a sacrificial activity. At the same time, there are large-scale catering activities, which developed from the banquet to celebrate the harvest in the pre-Qin period. Worship of gods and ancestors, longevity, banquets, etc. , which constitutes the basic content of the Double Ninth Festival.
Sacrifice to "fire"
One of the prototypes of the Double Ninth Festival is the ancient ritual of offering sacrifices to "fire". "Fire" (Antares) is the time coordinate used by the ancients to determine the symbol of seasonal production and seasonal life. In ancient times, according to the orbit and position of the sun, the moon and the stars, people divided the stars near the ecliptic into 28 groups, commonly known as "twenty-eight hostages". In the East, horns, horns, houses, hearts, tails and dustpans form a complete dragon-shaped star (Seven Nights of the Black Dragon). At the beginning of spring ploughing, the seven nights in Black Dragon began to rise slowly in the eastern night sky, and the bright faucet, the horn beam, was first exposed; In summer, crops grow and the black dragon hangs high in the southern night sky for seven nights; In autumn, the crops are bumper, and the black dragon begins to retreat to the west in seven nights; Everything is hidden in winter, while Seven Nights of the Black Dragon is hidden under the northern horizon. In autumn and season, fire (Antares) retreats, and the dormancy of Vulcan means the arrival of a long winter. Therefore, in autumn and the season when the fire recedes, people should hold corresponding farewell ceremonies. With the development of society, people have a new understanding of the seasons, and the ritual of offering sacrifices to Vulcan in September gradually declined. Although the situation of ancient sacrificial ceremonies is unknown, we can still find some traces of ancient customs from the custom of offering sacrifices to stoves in Chongyang (home Vulcan) in some places in the south of the Yangtze River. According to the order of the twelve earthly branches, the main branch was generally used in the ancient times, and the shade was built in the first month, and the fire warehouse was in September, and the fire entered the warehouse. Northwest of the throne belongs to Luoshu Ganbu. The "fire" of the full moon in Qiu Qiu (Antares) retreated into the ground with several stars in front of the black dragon star in the northwest. "The Book of Changes, Gangua": With nine, what you see is leaderless, which is auspicious. In traditional culture, the Autumn Double Ninth Festival and the "Fire" retired, and it was auspicious that Gan De was vigorous and Kun De was soft.
The custom of Double Ninth Festival
In the process of historical continuation, the Double Ninth Festival is a traditional festival in China, which combines many folk customs and cultural connotations. Celebrating the Double Ninth Festival generally includes traveling to enjoy the scenery, climbing high and looking far, watching chrysanthemums, picking Chinese herbal medicines, holding banquets for the elderly, eating double ninth cake, keeping in good health with medicinal liquor, drinking chrysanthemum wine and other activities. The Double Ninth Festival is a season of "clear sky rising, turbid air sinking". The higher the terrain, the more clear the sky, so "climbing to enjoy the clear sky on the Double Ninth Festival" has become a folk custom. Autumn in September, the sky is crisp, this season, climbing high and looking far can achieve the purpose of refreshing, fitness and recuperation. There are many folk activities and rich cultural connotations in the Double Ninth Festival.
Autumn sun
The Double Ninth Festival is the best time to enjoy autumn, and some mountain villages in the south of China still retain the characteristics of "basking in autumn". Going to the countryside to appreciate the folk customs and watch the autumn sun has become a fashion in rural tourism. "Sunbathing in autumn" is a typical agricultural custom phenomenon with strong regional characteristics. Villagers living in mountainous areas such as Hunan, Guangxi, Anhui and Jiangxi. It has become a traditional agricultural custom to use the roof in front of the house and the window sill to hang crops. This special lifestyle and scene of villagers drying crops has gradually become the material pursued and created by painters and photographers, and created a poetic name "drying autumn".
Jiuhuanghui
In ancient times, in China, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Yunnan and other places, the custom of salute and gun battle prevailed for nine consecutive days from September 1 to 9 of the lunar calendar, which was called the Nine Emperors' Meeting. The Nine Emperors' Meeting originated from the worship of stars. As the old saying goes, "Nine Emperors' Double Ninth Festival will celebrate the birthday of Beidou". The Nine Emperors of Beidou are composed of Beidou, Zuo Fu and Youbi. "Jade Sagger" said: From the first day of September to the ninth day of September, Beidou nine planets became an immortal, and the world fasted. This day was better than ordinary days, and his merits were boundless. It had a great influence on the belief of the Nine Emperors, and this worship gradually evolved into a folk custom of ritual fighting. According to Hu Pu 'an's Records of Chinese National Customs, on September 9th, Guangdong established the Nine Emperors Society. In Yunnan, sacrificial fighting has become a custom in Yunnan, and it is held from September to September every year.
Enjoy a feast and pray for a long life
The Double Ninth Festival has the custom of holding a banquet to pray for longevity, which places people's blessings on the health and longevity of the elderly. In ancient times, the custom of praying for longevity in Chongyang was widely circulated in various places, and it was also recorded in some literary works, such as Miscellanies of Xijing in the Han Dynasty: "On September 9, Peidogwood ate Peng bait and drank chrysanthemum wine, and the clouds made people live longer." Another book, Jing Chu Sui Ji, said, "On September 9th, four people had a family dinner." In fact, the large-scale catering activities of the Double Ninth Festival developed from banquets held for harvest and sacrifice. On the basis of offering sacrifices to heaven and ancestors, longevity and catering are added to form the basis of the Double Ninth Festival. Today, in some places in southern China, it is still popular to pay homage to the elderly and pray for a long life.