The great affairs of a nation lie in sacrifice and war.
·-- "Zuo Zhuan, Year 13 of Duke Cheng"
When I was in elementary school, I read a fragment from Romance of the Three Kingdoms that left a deep impression on me. It was when Dong Zhuo was about to die, and there were children singing a nursery rhyme:
Then Dong Zhuo was killed by Lu Bu.
What struck me was that everyone in the novel firmly believed in this prophecy.
When I reached fifth or sixth grade and read Historical Records and Zizhi Tongjian, I was even more shocked by the countless prophecies recorded in them.
There were two points that shocked me. First, why were these seemingly absurd stories like the White Snake Uprising included in official historical records? Shouldn't they be recorded in unofficial histories?
Second, I could vaguely sense that everyone took these prophecies very seriously and believed in their accuracy. I couldn't understand it.
Even a child playing with sand knows that there is a layer of window paper here.
But now, the question might be the opposite: why didn't I, as an eleven or twelve-year-old, believe in these prophecies?
The judgment of an eleven or twelve-year-old in the Han Dynasty is no different from mine. Where did my skepticism come from? Where did this subconscious, taken-for-granted thing come from?
What a modern person considers as mythology or imagination, ancient people might have regarded as something happening in reality. For example, "The fall of Qin was caused by the Hu people," or "The rise of Chu, King Chen Sheng," or the White Snake Uprising.
When Wang Mang usurped the Han Dynasty, signs and auspicious omens were unquestionably believed by ordinary people, taken for granted, and beyond doubt. Those who didn't believe in these prophecies were either the creators of prophecies or were not accepted by society.
Emperor Guangwu of Han also ascended to the throne with the help of the "Red Crouching Talisman." Because of the prophecies written on the talisman, many people actually came to join him.
Many words in the Chinese language have lost their context and become incomprehensible.
These words are the accumulation of civilization, but also antiques.
For example: "The great affairs of a nation lie in sacrifice and war" - "Zuo Zhuan, Year 13 of Duke Cheng."
A modern person cannot understand the importance of sacrifice to ancient people. This common knowledge gradually crumbles into ashes, becoming the dark undertone of understanding the world.
An untrained crowd cannot understand these light and dark tones; they can only understand the people depicted in the paintings, not the squares of Mondrian. Only trained individuals or artists can understand the similarities and differences between the squares and the Mona Lisa.