page_title: Chinese folk religion
section_title: Deities and immortals
hierarchical_section_title: Chinese folk religion / Features / Theory of hierarchy and divinity / Deities and immortals
caption_attribution_description: Doumu altar with statue at the Doumugong (Temple of Doumu) of Butterworth, Penang, Malaysia.
context_page_description: Chinese folk religion also known as popular religion, is a polyphyletic term used to describe the diversity of practices in areas generally termed "religion," of persons of Chinese heritage, including the Chinese diaspora. Vivienne Wee described it as "an empty bowl, which can variously be filled with the contents of institutionalized religions such as Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, the Chinese syncretic religions, or even Christianity and Hinduism." This may include the veneration of forces of nature and ancestors, exorcism of harmful forces, and a belief in the rational order of nature, the universe and reality that can be influenced by human beings and their rulers, as well as spirits and gods. Worship is devoted to a multiplicity of gods and immortals, who can be deities of phenomena, of human behaviour, or progenitors of lineages. Stories regarding some of these gods are collected into the body of Chinese mythology. By the 11th century, these practices had been blended with Buddhist ideas of karma and rebirth, and Taoist teachings about hierarchies of gods, to form the popular religious system which has lasted in many ways until the present day.
context_section_description: Gods and immortals (collectively 神仙 shénxiān) in the Chinese cultural tradition reflect a hierarchical, multiperspective experience of divinity. In Chinese language there is a terminological distinction between 神 shén, 帝 dì and 仙 xiān. Although the usage of the former two is sometimes blurred, it corresponds to the distinction in Western cultures between "god" and "deity", Latin genius (meaning a generative principle, "spirit") and deus or divus; dì, sometimes translated as "thearch", implies a manifested or incarnate "godly" power. It is etymologically and figuratively analogous to the concept of di as the base of a fruit, which falls and produces other fruits. This analogy is attested in the Shuowen jiezi explaining "deity" as "what faces the base of a melon fruit". The latter term 仙 xiān unambiguously means a man who has reached immortality, similarly to the Western idea of "hero".
  Many classical books have lists and hierarchies of gods and immortals, among which the "Completed Record of Deities and Immortals" (神仙通鑒 Shénxiān tōngjiàn) of the Ming dynasty, and the "Biographies of Deities and Immortals" (神仙傳 Shénxiān zhuán) by Ge Hong (284-343). There's also the older Liexian zhuan (列仙傳 "Collected Biographies of Immortals").
  There are the great cosmic gods representing the first principle in its unmanifested state or its creative order—Yudi (玉帝 "Jade Deity") and Doumu (斗母 "Mother of the Meaning" or "Great Chariot"), Pangu (盤古, the macranthropic metaphor of the cosmos), Xiwangmu (西王母 "Queen Mother of the West") and Dongwanggong (東王公 "King Duke of the East") who personificate respectively the yin and the yang, as well as the dimensional Three Patrons and the Five Deities; then there are the sky and weather gods, the scenery gods,  the vegetal and animal gods, and gods of human virtues and crafts. These are interpreted in different ways in Taoism and folk sects, the former conferring them long kataphatic names. Below the great deities, there is the unquantifiable number of gods of nature, as every phenomena have or are gods.
  The Three Patrons (三皇 Sānhuáng)—Fuxi, Nüwa and Shennong—are the "vertical" manifestation of the primordial God corresponding to the Three Realms (三界 Sānjiè), representing the yin and yang and the medium between them, that is the human being.
  The Five Deities (五帝 Wǔdì) or "Five Forms of the Highest Deity" (五方上帝 Wǔfāng Shàngdì)—the Yellow, Green or Blue, Black, Red and White Deities—are the five "horizontal" manifestations of the primordial God and according with the Three Realms they have a celestial, a terrestrial and a chthonic form. They correspond to the five phases of creation, the five constellations rotating around the celestial pole, the five sacred mountains and the five directions of space (the four cardinal directions and the centre), and the five Dragon Gods (龍神 Lóngshén) which represent their mounts, that is to say the chthonic forces they preside over.
  The Yellow God (黃神 Huángshén) or "Yellow God of the Northern Dipper" (黃神北斗 Huángshén Běidǒu) is of peculiar importance, as he is a form of the universal God (Tian or Shangdi) symbolising the axis mundi (Kunlun), or the intersection between the Three Patrons and the Five Deities, that is the center of the cosmos. He is therefore described in the Shizi as the "Yellow Emperor with Four Faces" (黃帝四面 Huángdì Sìmiàn). His human incarnation, the "Yellow Emperor (or Deity) of the Mysterious Origin" (軒轅黃帝 Xuānyuán Huángdì), is said to be the creator of the Huaxia civility, of marriage and morality, language and lineage, and patriarch of all the Chinese together with the Red Deity. Xuanyuan was the fruit of virginal birth, as his mother Fubao conceived him as she was aroused, while walking in the country, by a lightning from the Big Dipper.
caption: Main altar and statue of Doumu inside the Temple of Doumu in Butterworth, Penang, Malaysia.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSC-WX1", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2012:08:21 16:45:06", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "228", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Make": "SONY", "Thumbnail Model": "DSC-WX1", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail DateTime": "2012:08:21 16:45:06", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "10884", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "18107", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/40", "EXIF FNumber": "12/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "160", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2012:08:21 16:45:06", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2012:08:21 16:45:06", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "5/2", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "17/4", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2048", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1536", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "10650", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "-16"}