|
Zigu
Zigu (), also known as Maogu, is a goddess representing toilets in Chinese folk religion. She was believed to be the spirit of a concubine who had been physically abused by a vengeful wife and died in the latrine. It is believed that her cult originated in the Shanxi region and spread across China by the Tang period. According to the legend, the true identity of Zigu is Consort Qi of the Han dynasty, who was tortured and killed in the toilet by Empress Lü. The earliest record of Zigu is in the fifth volume of "Yiyuan" by Liu Jingshu or Liu Song of the Southern dynasties (420–479). Other legends say that her real name is He Mingmei, and the word is Liqing, from Laiyang, Shandong. During the period of Empress Wu Zetian, the governor of Shouyang Li Jing killed He Mei's husband and regarded her as a concubine, which made He Mei jealous of Li Jing's chief wife. On the night of the fifteenth day of the first lunar month during the Lantern Festival, Li Jing's legitimate wife kille ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toilet God
A toilet god is a deity associated with latrines and toilets. Belief in toilet gods – a type of household deity – has been known from both modern and ancient cultures, ranging from Japan to ancient Rome. Such deities have been associated with health, well-being and fertility (because of the association between human waste and agriculture) and have been propitiated in a wide variety of ways, including making offerings, invoking and appeasing them through prayers, meditating and carrying out ritual actions such as clearing one's throat before entering or even biting the latrine to transfer spiritual forces back to the god. Modern cultures In Japan, belief in the toilet god or ''kawaya kami'', most often depicted in the form of ''Ususama-myō-ō'' (烏枢沙摩明王), served a dual purpose. Most bodily wastes were collected and used as fertilizers, ensuring a higher overall level of sanitation than in other countries where wastes were stored in cesspits or otherwise disposed of. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Goddesses
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 Chinese folk religion, traditional Chinese religion is Polytheism, polytheistic, stemming from a Pantheism, pantheistic view that divinity is inherent in the world. The gods are energies or principles revealing, imitating, and propagating the way of heaven (, ''Tian''), which is the supreme godhead manifesting in the celestial pole, 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 (Taoism), xian'', which is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lantern Festival
The Lantern Festival ( zh, t=wikt:元宵節, 元宵節, s=wikt:元宵节, 元宵节, first=t, hp=Yuánxiāo jié), also called Shangyuan Festival ( zh, t=上元節, s=上元节, first=t, hp=Shàngyuán jié) and Cap Go Meh ( zh, t=十五暝, poj=Cha̍p-gō͘-mê), is a List of observances set by the Chinese calendar , Chinese traditional festival celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month in the lunisolar calendar, lunisolar Chinese calendar, during the full moon. Usually falling in February or early March on the Gregorian calendar, it marks the final day of the traditional Chinese New Year celebrations. As early as the Western Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 25), it had become a festival with great significance. During the Lantern Festival, children go out at night carrying paper lanterns and solving riddles written on them (). In ancient times, lanterns were fairly simple, and only the Emperor of China, emperor and Chinese nobility , noblemen had large, ornate ones. In m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ming Period
The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of China ruled by the Han people, the majority ethnic group in China. Although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng (who established the short-lived Shun dynasty), numerous rump regimes ruled by remnants of the Ming imperial family, collectively called the Southern Ming, survived until 1662. The Ming dynasty's founder, the Hongwu Emperor (1368–1398), attempted to create a society of self-sufficient rural communities ordered in a rigid, immobile system that would guarantee and support a permanent class of soldiers for his dynasty: the empire's standing army exceeded one million troops and the navy's dockyards in Nanjing were the largest in the world. He also took great care breaking the power of the court eunuchs and unrelated magn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fortune Telling
Fortune telling is the spiritual practice of prediction, predicting information about a person's life.J. Gordon Melton, Melton, J. Gordon. (2008). ''The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena''. Visible Ink Press. pp. 115–116. The scope of fortune telling is in principle identical with the practice of divination. The difference is that divination is the term used for predictions considered part of a religion, religious ritual, invoking deities or spirits, while the term fortune telling implies a less serious or formal setting, even one of popular culture, where belief in occult workings behind the prediction is less prominent than the concept of suggestion, spiritual or practical Advice (opinion), advisory or Affirmations (New Age), affirmation. Historically, Pliny the Elder describes use of the crystal ball in the 1st century Common Era, CE by soothsayers (''"crystallum orbis"'', later written in Medieval Latin by scribes as ''orbuculum''). Contemporary Western images of fort ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Automatic Writing
Automatic writing, also called psychography, is a claimed psychic ability allowing a person to produce written words without consciously writing. Practitioners engage in automatic writing by holding a writing instrument and allowing alleged spirits to manipulate the practitioner's hand. The instrument may be a standard writing instrument, or it may be one specially designed for automatic writing, such as a planchette or a ouija board. Religious and spiritual traditions have incorporated automatic writing, including Fuji in Chinese folk religion and the Enochian language associated with Enochian magic. In the modern era, it is associated with Spiritualism and the occult, with notable practitioners including W. B. Yeats and Arthur Conan Doyle. There is no evidence supporting the existence of automatic writing, and claims associated with it are unfalsifiable. Documented examples are considered to be the result of the ideomotor phenomenon. History Early history Spirit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yunxiao Niangniang
Yunxiao Niangniang (), also known as Zhao Yunxiao, is a character in the classic 16th-century Chinese novel ''Fengshen Yanyi''. She is worshipped as a goddess of childbirth in Chinese folk religion. She is the oldest of the Sanxiao Shengmu (Holy mothers of three skies, 三霄聖母) or Sanxiao Niangniang (Ladies of three stars, 三霄娘娘). Legends In ''Fengshen Yanyi'' According to ''Fengshen Yanyi'', she is one of the first-generation disciples of the Jie Sect, apprenticed to Tongtian Jiaozhu. Among the Three Celestial Maidens, she is the eldest and is renowned for her kindness. Among the disciples of both the Chan and Jie sects, she stands out as the one with the deepest cultivation and the greatest power, having reached a quasi-saint level. Even Randeng Daoren, the high Immortal of the Chan Sect, dares not provoke her. Her Nine Bends Yellow River Formation is immensely powerful, necessitating the combined efforts of Moral Heavenly Venerable and Primordial Heavenly Venerabl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Six Dynasties
Six Dynasties (; 220–589 or 222–589) is a collective term for six Han-ruled Chinese dynasties that existed from the early 3rd century AD to the late 6th century AD, between the end of the Eastern Han dynasty and the beginning of the Sui dynasty. The Six Dynasties period overlapped with the era of the Sixteen Kingdoms, a chaotic warring period in northern China after the collapse of the Western Jin dynasty, as well as the Northern and Southern dynasties period. The terms " Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern dynasties" (魏晉南北朝) and "Three Kingdoms, Two Jins, Southern and Northern dynasties" (三國兩晉南北朝) are also used by Chinese historians to refer to the same historical era as the Six Dynasties, although the three terms do not refer to the same group of dynasties. Six Dynasties with capital in Jiankang The six dynasties based in Jiankang (modern-day Nanjing) were: # Eastern Wu dynasty (222–280) # Eastern Jin dynasty (317–420) # Liu Song dynasty ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Door Gods
''Menshen'', or door gods, are divine guardians of doors and gates in Chinese folk religions, used to protect against evil influences or to encourage the entrance of positive ones. They began as the divine pair Shenshu () and Yulü () under the Han, but the deified generals Qin Shubao () and Yuchi Gong () have been more popular since the Tang. In cases where a door god is affixed to a single door, Wei Zheng or Zhong Kui is commonly used. History The gates and doors of Chinese houses have long received special ritual attention. Sacrifices to a door spirit are recorded as early as the ''Book of Rites''.. By the Han, this spirit had become the two gods Shenshu and Yulü, whose names or images were painted into peachwood and attached to doors. When the Emperor Taizong of the Tang was being plagued by nightmares, he ordered portraits of his generals Qin Shubao and Yuchi Gong to be affixed to gates. They eventually came to be considered divine protectors, replacing Shent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jade Emperor
In the Chinese mythology, myths and Chinese folk religion, folk religion of Chinese culture, the Jade Emperor or Yudi is one of the representations of the Primordial Divinity (Tai Di), primordial god. In Taoist theology, he is the assistant of Yuanshi Tianzun, who is one of the Three Pure Ones, the three primordial emanations of the Tao. However, some Taoists in history were skeptical of his benevolence because his buildings and infrastructure in heaven and earth were sometimes seen as interfering with the many natural laws or Tao, dao. He is often identified with Śakra (Buddhism), Śakra in Chinese Buddhist cosmology and identified with Yu the Great in Chinese mythology. The Jade Emperor is known by many names, including Yu, Heavenly Grandfather (, '), which originally meant "Heavenly Duke", which is used by commoners; the Jade Lord; the Highest Emperor; Great Emperor of Jade ( , or ). Chinese mythology There are many stories in Chinese mythology involving the Jade Empe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zi Gu Shen 1909
Zi or ZI may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Zi'' (album), a 2016 album by Negură Bunget * Zi (Zoids), a fictional planet in the ''Zoids'' franchise Language * Zi (cuneiform), a sign * Chinese characters, known as ''zi'' (字) * Thracian word derived from '' *Dyēus'' People * Zi (surname) (子), a surname used by Shang kings * Zi (title) (子), a Chinese honorific used for ancient viscounts and for master philosophers * Zi (name) (字), an alternate term for East Asian courtesy names Science, technology and transport * Zi Corporation, a Canadian software company * Zi (prefix symbol), for digital data size * Zona incerta, a brain region * Aigle Azur Aigle Azur was a French airline based and headquartered at Paris Orly Airport. The airline operated scheduled flights from France to 21 destinations across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, with a fleet of Airbus A320 family and A330 aircr ... French airline (1946–1955; IATA:ZI) {{disambiguation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Folk Religion
Chinese folk religion comprises a range of traditional religious practices of Han Chinese, including the Chinese diaspora. This includes the veneration of ''Shen (Chinese folk religion), shen'' ('spirits') and Chinese ancestor worship, ancestors, and worship devoted to Chinese deities and immortals, deities and immortals, who can be deities of places or natural phenomena, of human behaviour, or progenitors of Chinese kin, family lineages. Stories surrounding these gods form a loose canon of Chinese mythology. By the Song dynasty (960–1279), these practices had been Religious syncretism, blended with Buddhist, Confucian, and Taoist teachings to form the popular religious system which has lasted in many ways until the present day. The government of China, government of modern China generally tolerates popular religious organizations, but has suppressed or persecuted those that they fear would undermine social stability. After the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, governments ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
