page_title: Chinese theology
section_title: Huangdi
hierarchical_section_title: Chinese theology / Names and attributes of the God of Heaven in the tradition / Qin-Han theology / Huangdi
caption_attribution_description: 仙都美景黄帝陵1
context_page_description: Chinese theology, which comes in different interpretations according to the classic texts and the common religion, and specifically Confucian, Taoist and other philosophical formulations, is fundamentally monistic, that is to say it sees the world and the gods of its phenomena as an organic whole, or cosmos, which continuously emerges from a simple principle. This is expressed by the concept that "all things have one and the same principle". This principle is commonly referred to as Tiān 天, a concept generally translated as "Heaven", referring to the northern culmen and starry vault of the skies and its natural laws which regulate earthly phenomena and generate beings as their progenitors. Ancestors are therefore regarded as the equivalent of Heaven within human society, and therefore as the means connecting back to Heaven which is the "utmost ancestral father". Chinese theology may be also called Tiānxué 天學, a term already in use in the 17th and 18th century.
  [In contrast to the God of Western religions who is outside space and time] the God of Fuxi, Xuanyuan and Wang Yangming is in our space and time. ... To Chinese thought, ancestor is creator.
context_section_description: Huángdì (黄帝 "Yellow Emperor" or "Yellow Deity") is another name of the God of Heaven, associated with the celestial pole and with the power of the wu (shamans). In the older cosmological tradition of the Wufang Shangdi, the Yellow Deity is the main one, associated with the centre of the cosmos. He is also called Huángshén 黄神 ("Yellow God"), Xuānyuán (轩辕 "Chariot Shaft"), which is said to have been his personal name as a human incarnation, Xuānyuánshì (轩辕氏 "Master of the Chariot Shaft") or Xuanyuan Huangdi ("Yellow Deity of the Chariot Shaft").
  In Chinese religion he is the deity who shapes the material world (地 Dì), the creator of the Huaxia civilisation, of marriage and morality, language and lineage, and progenitor of all 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, his serpentine form. 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.
  As a progenitor, Huangdi is portrayed as the historical incarnation of the Yellow God of the Northern Dipper. 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".
  As a human being, the Yellow Emperor was conceived by a virgin mother, Fubao, who was impregnated by Taiyi's radiance (yuanqi, "primordial pneuma"), a lightning, which she saw encircling the Northern Dipper (Great Chariot, or broader Ursa Major), or the celestial pole, while 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. 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.
  As the deity of the centre, the Yellow Emperor is the Zhongyuedadi (中岳大帝 "Great Deity of the Central Peak") and he represents the essence of earth and the Yellow Dragon. He 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 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 supreme God, of the ascetics who reach enlightenment or immortality. He is the god of nobility, the patron of Taoism and medicine. In the Shiji, as well as in the Taoist book Zhuangzi, he is also described as the perfect king. There are records of dialogues in which Huangdi took the advice of wise counselors, contained in the Huangdi Neijing ("Inner Scripture of the Yellow Emperor") as well as in the Shiwen ("Ten Questions"). In the Huang–Lao tradition he is the model of a king turned immortal, and is associated with the transmission of various mantic and medical techniques. Besides the Inner Scripture of the Yellow Emperor, Huangdi is also associated to other textual bodies of knowledge including the Huangdi Sijing ("Four Scriptures of the Yellow Emperor") and the Huangdi zhaijing ("Scripture of the Dwellin
caption: Temple of the Yellow Deity in Jinyun, Lishui, Zhejiang.
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