page_title: Wufang Shangdi
section_title: Huangdi—Yellow Deity
hierarchical_section_title: Wufang Shangdi / Names and meanings / Huangdi—Yellow Deity
caption_attribution_description: 河南登封中岳庙
context_page_description: The Wǔfāng Shàngdì, or simply Wǔdì or Wǔshén are, in Chinese canonical texts and common Chinese religion, the fivefold manifestation of the supreme God of Heaven. This theology harkens back at least to the Shang dynasty. Described as the "five changeable faces of Heaven", they represent Heaven's cosmic activity which shapes worlds as tán 壇, "altars", imitating its order which is visible in the starry vault, the north celestial pole and its spinning constellations. The Five Deities themselves represent these constellations. In accordance with the Three Powers they have a celestial, a terrestrial and a chthonic form. The Han Chinese identify themselves as the descendants of the Red and Yellow Deities.
  They are associated with the five colors, the five phases of the continuous creation, the five key planets of the Solar System and the five constellations rotating around the celestial pole, the five sacred mountains and five directions of space, and the five Dragon Gods who represent their mounts, that is to say the material forces they preside over.
context_section_description: Huángdì (黄帝 "Yellow Emperor" or "Yellow Deity"), also called Huángshén (黄神 "Yellow God"), is another name of the supreme God in Chinese traditions, associated to the northern culmen of the sky and the Big Dipper (or Great Chariot, or Ursa Major) in particular, and with the power of the wu (巫 shamans). He is also known, as a human culture hero and progenitor, as Xuānyuán (轩辕 "Chariot Shaft"), Xuānyuánshì (轩辕氏 "Master of the Chariot Shaft"), or Xuānyuán Huángdì (轩辕黄帝 "Yellow Deity of the Chariot Shaft"), and as a cosmological symbol as Zhōngyuèdàdì (中岳大帝 "Great Deity of the Central Peak"). He represents the essence of earth and the Yellow Dragon (黄龙 Huánglóng). The character 黄 huáng, for "yellow", also means, by homophony and shared etymology with 皇 huáng, "august", "creator" and "radiant", attributes of the supreme God.
  He is the deity who shapes the material world (地 Dì), the creator of the Huaxia civility, of marriage and morality, language and lineage, and primal ancestor of all the Chinese. In the cosmology of the Wufang Shangdi his astral body is Saturn, but he is also identified as the Sun God, and with the star Regulus (α Leonis) and constellations Leo and Lynx, of which the latter is said to represent the body of the Yellow Dragon.
  He corresponds to the Huángshén Běidǒu (黄神北斗 "Yellow God of the Northern Dipper"), of whom in certain historical sources he is described as the human form making an ontological distinction between the two. For instance, according to a definition given by apocryphal texts related to the Hétú 河圖, the Yellow Emperor "proceeds from the essence of the Yellow God of the Northern Dipper", is born to "a daughter of a chthonic deity", and as such he is "a cosmic product of the conflation of Heaven and Earth". The Yellow God is in turn described as the "spirit father and astral double" of the Yellow Emperor.
  As a human being, the Yellow Emperor is said to have been the fruit of a virginal birth, as his mother Fubao was impregnated by a radiance (yuanqi, "primordial pneuma"), a lightning, which she saw encircling the Northern Dipper (Great Chariot, or Ursa Major), or the celestial pole, while she was walking in the countryside. She delivered her son after twenty-four months on the mount of Shou (Longevity) or mount Xuanyuan, after which he was named. Through his human side, he was a descendant of 有熊氏 Yǒuxióng, the lineage of the Bear—another reference to the Ursa Major. Scholar John C. Didier has studied the parallels that the Yellow Emperor's mythology has in other cultures, deducing a plausible ancient origin of the myth in Siberia or in north Asia.
  In older accounts, the Yellow Emperor is identified as a deity of light (and his name is explained in the Shuowen Jiezi to derive from guāng 光, "light") and thunder, and as one and the same with the "Thunder God" (雷神 Léishén), who in turn, as a later mythological character, is distinguished as the Yellow Emperor's foremost pupil, such as in the Huangdi Neijing.
  Huangdi represents the hub of creation, the axis mundi (Kunlun) that is the manifestation of the divine order in physical reality, opening the way to immortality. As the deity of the centre of the four directions, in the Shizi he is described as "Yellow Emperor with Four Faces" (黄帝四面 Huángdì Sìmiàn). The "Four-Faced God" or "Ubiquitous God" (四面神 Sìmiànshén) is also the Chinese name of Brahma. Huangdi is the model of those who merge their self with the self of the universal God, of the ascetics who reach enlightenment or immortality.
  In Sima Qian's description of the Five Deities it is important to note that the Yellow Emperor was portrayed as the grandfather of the Black Emperor of the north who personifies as well the pole stars, and as the tamer of the Red Emperor, his half-brother, who is the spirit of the southern populations known collectively as Chu in the Zhou dynasty.
caption: Temple of the Central Peak, Mount Song, in Henan.
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