The influence of nature worship on the formation of Chinese folk paper-cut symbols
In human childhood, due to the limited ability of human beings to understand and transform nature, it was difficult for humans to free themselves from the mysterious phenomena of nature. At the same time, it was difficult to transform nature quickly and effectively, so humans So he showed his kindness to nature and tried to get close to nature. Giving life and spirituality to natural objects gives rise to the image of natural gods. Marx said: "Any myth uses imagination and the help of imagination to conquer natural forces, dominate natural forces, and deify natural forces." This kind of natural phenomena and natural objects are used in paper-cutting. An image appears in the work, and this natural image is replaced by a symbol, so this symbol becomes a symbol of nature worship. Thunder is a natural phenomenon. When the east wind blows in the spring, a bolt of lightning in the east wind is followed by a rumble of thunder. Under the thunder, everything trembles and is full of vitality. So the ancients turned lightning and thunder into symbols and combined them to form the word "Thunder". In Shaanxi paper-cutting, Lei Gong has the image of a human face with an eagles beak and a human body with eagle claws to represent thunder soaring in the sky like an eagle. At the same time, its majestic image shows that it has divine magic power and is in charge of natural rain. In addition, the gifts and natural attributes of animals and plants in nature to humans are not only appreciated by humans, but also their properties, functions, temperaments, etc. are compared with the ideals, wishes and dispositions of life, thus making these animals and plants It also has a special symbolic meaning. For example, magpies and spiders symbolize happiness, pomegranates symbolize fertility, peonies symbolize wealth, chrysanthemums and peaches symbolize longevity, and so on. They are all the result of giving humanized spirituality to all things in nature, and thus have special meanings.
Although all natural things such as clouds, thunder, lightning, sun, moon and stars generally have their corresponding symbols, with the improvement of human ability to transform nature and the changes of society, there are not particularly many images of this kind of paper-cut patterns, and there are other The obscurity or overly mysterious meaning may have been widely circulated in the past, but now paper-cutting does not reflect much.
