Chinese gods and immortals
Chinese gods and immortals are beings in various Chinese religions seen in a variety of ways and mythological contexts.
Many are worshiped as deities because traditional Chinese religion is polytheistic, stemming from a pantheistic view that divinity is inherent in the world.
The gods are energies or principles revealing, imitating, and propagating the way of heaven, which is the supreme godhead manifesting in the northern culmen of the starry vault of the skies and its order. Many gods are ancestors or men who became deities for their heavenly achievements. Most gods are also identified with stars and constellations. Ancestors are regarded as the equivalent of Heaven within human society, and therefore, as the means of connecting back to Heaven, which is the "utmost ancestral father".
There are a variety of immortals in Chinese thought, and one major type is the xian, which is thought in some religious Taoism movements to be a human given long or infinite life. In China, "gods" are often referred to together with "xian". Gods are innumerable, as every phenomenon has or is one or more gods, and they are organised in a complex celestial hierarchy. Besides the traditional worship of these entities, Chinese folk religion, Chinese Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and formal thinkers in general give theological interpretations affirming a monistic essence of divinity.
Overview
"Polytheism" and "monotheism" are categories derived from Western religion and do not fit Chinese religion, which has never conceived the two things as opposites. Tian bridges the gap between supernatural phenomena and many kinds of beings, giving them a single source from spiritual energy in some Chinese belief systems. However, there is a significant belief in Taoism which differentiates tian from the forces of earth and water, which are held to be equally powerful.Since all gods are considered manifestations of qì, the "power" or pneuma of Heaven, in some views of tian, some scholars have employed the term "polypneumatism" or "pneumatolatry", first coined by Walter Medhurst, to describe the practice of Chinese polytheism. Some Taoists consider deities the manifestation of the Tao.
In the theology of the classic texts and Confucianism, "Heaven is the lord of the hundreds of deities".
Modern Confucian theology sometimes compares them to substantial forms or entelechies as described by Leibniz as a force that generates all types of beings, so that "even mountains and rivers are worshipped as something capable of enjoying sacrificial offerings".
Unlike in Hinduism, the deification of historical persons and ancestors is not traditionally the duty of Confucians or Taoists. Rather, it depends on the choices of common people; persons are deified when they have made extraordinary deeds and have left an efficacious legacy. Yet, Confucians and Taoists traditionally may demand that state honours be granted to a particular deity. Each deity has a cult centre and ancestral temple where he or she, or the parents, lived their mortal life. There are frequently disputes over which is the original place and source temple of the cult of a deity.
The gods and immortals believed in by Taoism and Chinese mythology can be roughly divided into two categories, namely "gods" and "xian". "Gods" are also called deities and there are many kinds, that is, god of heaven, god of ground, wuling, god of netherworld, god of human body, god of human ghost, etc. Among these "gods" such as god of heaven, god of ground, god of netherworld, god of human body are innate beings. "Xian" is acquired the cultivation of the Tao，persons with vast supernatural powers, unpredictable changes and immortality.
God of Heaven
Chinese traditional theology, which comes in different interpretations according to the classic texts, and specifically Confucian, Taoist, and other philosophical formulations, is fundamentally monistic, that is to say, it sees the world and the gods who produce it as an organic whole, or cosmos. The universal principle that gives origin to the world is conceived as transcendent and immanent to creation, at the same time. The Chinese idea of the universal God is expressed in different ways. There are many names of God from the different sources of Chinese tradition.The radical Chinese terms for the universal God are Tian and Shangdi or simply, . There is also the concept of . ' is a title expressing dominance over the all-under-Heaven, that is, all things generated by Heaven and ordered by its cycles and by the stars. Tian is usually translated as "Heaven", but by graphical etymology, it means "Great One" and a number of scholars relate it to the same ' through phonetic etymology and trace their common root, through their archaic forms, respectively *Teeŋ and *Tees, to the symbols of the squared north celestial pole godhead. These names are combined in different ways in Chinese theological literature, often interchanged in the same paragraph, if not in the same sentence.
Names of the God of Heaven
Besides and, other names include Yudi and who, in mythical imagery, holds the ladle of the Big Dipper, providing the movement of life to the world. As the hub of the skies, the north celestial pole constellations are known, among various names, as and .Other names of the God of Heaven are attested in the vast Chinese religio-philosophical literary tradition:
- ', "Deity of Heaven" or "Emperor of Heaven": "On Rectification" of the Xunzi uses this term to refer to the active God of Heaven setting creation in motion.
- Tianzhu, the "Lord of Heaven": In "The Document of Offering Sacrifices to Heaven and Earth on the Mountain Tai" of the Records of the Grand Historian, it is used as the title of the first God from whom all the other gods derive.
- ', the "August Personage of Heaven": In the "Poem of Fathoming Profundity", transcribed in "The History of the Later Han Dynasty", Zhang Heng ornately writes: «I ask the superintendent of the Heavenly Gate to open the door and let me visit the King of Heaven at the Jade Palace».
- Tianwang, the "King of Heaven" or "Monarch of Heaven".
- ', the "Duke of Heaven" or "General of Heaven".
- ', the "Prince of Heaven" or "Lord of Heaven".
- ', the "Heavenly Venerable", also a title for high gods in Taoist theologies.
- ', the "God of Heaven", interpreted in the Shuowen Jiezi as "the being that gives birth to all things".
- ', "God the August", attested in Taihong.
- ', the "Olden Heavenly Father".
- Huáng Tiān, "August Heaven" or "Imperial Heaven", when it is venerated as the lord of creation.
- ', "Vast Heaven", with regard to the vastness of its vital breath.
- ', "Compassionate Heaven", for it hears and corresponds with justice to the all-under-Heaven.
- , "Highest Heaven" or "First Heaven", for it is the primordial being supervising all-under-Heaven.
- Cāng Tiān, "Deep-Green Heaven", for it being unfathomably deep.
Lists of gods, deities and immortals
Many classical books have lists and hierarchies of gods and immortals, among which are the "Completed Record of Deities and Immortals" of the Ming dynasty, and the Biographies of the Deities and Immortals by Ge Hong. The older Collected Biographies of the Immortals also serves the same purpose.Couplets or polarities, such as Fuxi and Nuwa, Xiwangmu and Dongwanggong, and the highest couple of Heaven and Earth, all embody yin and yang and are at once the originators and maintainers of the ordering process of space and time.
Immortals, or xian, are seen as a variety of different types of beings, including the souls of virtuous Taoists, gods, zhenren, and/or a type of supernatural spiritual being who understood heaven. Taoists historically worshiped them the most and Chinese folk religion practitioners during the Tang dynasty also worshiped them, although there was more skepticism about the goodness, and even the existence, of xian among them.
Chinese folk religion that incorporates elements of the three teachings in modern times and prior eras sometimes viewed Confucius and the Buddha as immortals or beings synonymous to them.
In Taoism and Chinese folk religion, gods and xian are often seen as embodiments of water. Water gods and xian were often thought to ensure good grain harvests, mild weather and seas, and rivers with abundant water. Some xian were thought to be humans who gained power by drinking "charmed water".
Some gods were based on previously existing Taoist immortals, bodhisattvas, or historical figures.
Cosmic gods
- Yudi or Yuhuang, is the popular human-like representation of the God of Heaven. Jade traditionally represents purity, so it is a metaphor for the unfathomable source of creation.
- Doumu, often entitled with the honorific Tianhou is the heavenly goddess portrayed as the mother of the Big Dipper, whose seven stars, in addition to two invisible ones, are conceived as her sons, the Jiuhuangshen, themselves regarded as the ninefold manifestation of Jiuhuangdadi or Doufu, another name of the God of Heaven. She is, therefore, both wife and mother of the God of Heaven.
- Pangu, a macranthropic metaphor of the cosmos. He separated yin and yang, creating the earth and the sky. All things were made from his body after he died.
- Xiwangmu, identified with the Kunlun Mountain, shamanic inspiration, death, and immortality. She is the dark, chthonic goddess, pure yin, at the same time terrifying and benign, both creation and destruction, associated with the tiger and weaving. Her male counterpart is Dongwanggong, who represents the yang principle.
- * Hòuyì, was a man who sought for immortality, reaching Xiwangmu on her mountain, Kunlun.
- Yanwang the ruler of the underworld, assisted by the Heibai Wuchang, representing the alternation of yin and yang principles, alongside Ox-Head and Horse-Face, who escort spirits to his realm.
- Yinyanggong or Yinyangsi, the personification of the union of yin and yang.