Fu Xi

Fu Xi, first mythical emperor of China. His miraculous birth, as a divine being with a serpent’s body, is said to have occurred in the 29th century bce. Some representations show him as a leaf-wreathed head growing out of a mountain or as a man clothed with animal skins. Fu Xi is said to have discovered the famous Chinese trigrams (bagua) used in divination (notably in the Yijing) and thus to have contributed, in some...