Chinese Pantheon
Fuxi
伏羲(Fúxī)
Also known as Paoxi, Baoxi
- culture-founding
- the Eight Trigrams
- fishing and hunting
- marriage
Legendary first of the Three Sovereigns and culture hero credited with devising the Eight Trigrams, inventing fishing nets, and teaching humanity domestication. Paired with his sister (and, in some traditions, wife) Nüwa, Fuxi is shown in Han-dynasty art with a serpent's tail intertwined with hers, holding a carpenter's square to her compass.
About Fuxi
First of the Three Sovereigns
Fuxi is remembered in Chinese tradition as the first of the Three Sovereigns (San Huang), legendary culture-founders credited with establishing the foundations of civilization before the age of the Five Emperors. Where Nüwa is chiefly a creator and repairer of the world, Fuxi's role centers on teaching humanity the skills and institutions of ordered life.
The Eight Trigrams
Fuxi's most celebrated achievement is the creation of the bagua, the Eight Trigrams that underlie the Yijing (I Ching, the Book of Changes). The "Xici" ("Appended Judgments"), a commentary section of the Yijing, describes Baoxi (an alternate name for Fuxi) looking upward to observe the patterns of the heavens and downward to observe the patterns of the earth, studying the markings of birds and beasts, and from these observations devising the eight trigrams to convey the virtues of the spiritual and to classify the qualities of the myriad things.
Teacher of Civilization
Beyond the trigrams, Fuxi is credited with teaching people to weave fishing nets and hunting snares, to domesticate animals, and, in several traditions, with establishing the institution of marriage, ordering the previously chaotic relations between men and women.
Paired with Nüwa
Fuxi is consistently linked with the goddess Nüwa, both in art and in narrative. Han-dynasty tomb reliefs across China depict the pair with human upper bodies and intertwined serpent tails, Fuxi typically holding a carpenter's square (symbolizing the earth) and Nüwa a compass (symbolizing the heavens), together representing the ordering of the cosmos. The 2nd-century CE rhapsody "Lu Ling Guang Dian Fu" by Wang Yanshou explicitly describes this paired serpent-bodied imagery. In most early sources the two are presented as brother and sister; a later tradition, attested in Tang-dynasty texts such as Li Rong's Duyi Zhi ("Records of Strange and Different Things"), recounts that after a great flood destroyed all other people, Fuxi and Nüwa married to repopulate the earth, a variant that should be understood as a distinct and later layer of the tradition rather than the earliest form of their pairing.
Origin story
Fuxi is counted as the first of the Three Sovereigns, legendary founders of Chinese civilization. Observing the patterns of heaven and earth, he devised the Eight Trigrams that underlie the Yijing, and he is further credited with teaching humanity fishing, hunting, animal domestication, and, in some traditions, the institution of marriage.
Across traditions
Parallel figures
Figures who play a role like Fuxi's in other traditions.
GreekPrometheusIllustrationBoth are culture-bringing figures credited with teaching humanity the foundational skills of civilized life
Compare Fuxi and Prometheus side by side
Worship and cult
Temples, festivals, and practices recorded for Fuxi
Fuxi is honored chiefly through the Huaiyang temple fair tradition and, together with Nüwa, through Han-dynasty tomb art depicting the paired serpent-bodied culture-founders. His cult is regional and commemorative rather than a major state religion.
Sacred sites
- Taihao Mausoleum and temple complex at Huaiyang, honored as Fuxi's traditional burial site
Festivals
- Annual temple fair at Huaiyang commemorating Fuxi
Family
Family tree
Fuxi's parents, consorts, children and rivals, as recorded in the atlas.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Yijing (I Ching), Xici II (Great Commentary), trans. after Legge/Wilhelm
Further reading
The Oxford Dictionary of World Mythology
Covers Fuxi's role as culture hero and his pairing with Nüwa
- Wilhelm, Richard (trans. Cary F. Baynes). The I Ching or Book of Changes (Princeton University Press, 1950): includes the Xici commentary crediting Fuxi with the trigrams.
- Yang, Lihui; An, Deming; and Turner, Jessica Anderson. Handbook of Chinese Mythology (Oxford University Press, 2005): on Fuxi's pairing with Nüwa and the Han-dynasty iconography.
Cite this page
No publication date is recorded for this page, so each citation uses n.d. and today's date as the access date.
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Parallels are editorial comparisons across traditions: a shared role does not, by itself, establish a shared origin.
Family relationships come from the atlas's kinship records. Ancient sources often disagree on divine genealogy.
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