Tag: Mystical Monday

Mystical Mondays: The Four Gods

December 17th, 2018

Xuanwu (Dark Warrior)– Represented by a Black Snake twisting around a Tortoise, Xuanwu is associated with all things water. In The Four Gods, Gen struggles with mastering his qi, especially because he learns that using too much to manifest his powers leads to exhaustion. The center of his powers rest in his endocrine system, and using too much causes him pain, fatigue, and confusion. Once he gets the hang of things, his powers manifest in the forms of ice and sea plants.

Zhuque (Red Bird)– Represented by a red bird, Zhuque is represented by the passionate element of fire. Fengge is often caught using his powers when he needs them least, such as starting fires for cooking or warmth. Fengge however, has mastered the use of his qi, though becoming too reckless with it causes him heart palpitations, shortness of breath, and weakness, as the center of his powers rest in his circulatory system. Fengge also possesses clairvoyance and minor psychic abilities such as future sight and telekinesis.

Qinglong (Green/Azure Dragon)-Represented by a teal dragon, the element of this god is actually wood, not water as it is often mistaken for. Longwei is an interesting case, in that he is actually a storm dragon, not strictly a water dragon, but his qi manifests mainly in the use of sea plants, vines, and thorns. His center for his powers rest in his digestive system, and he becomes lucky in that overuse only causes pain and fatigue. He shares many of his abilities with Gen, and their qi manifestations are eerily similar, only because Longwei lends many of his powers to Gen as the leader of the Si Ling Organization.

Baihu (White Tiger)- And lastly, we come to the enigmatic god of the four. Chonglin is a Qilin, not a white tiger as shown in most of the astrological charts, mainly because the Qilin is not only a member of the four sacred beasts but also, it was a more ancient symbol for the western direction before the white tiger became the symbol. Despite this difference, Chonglin’s element of metal is the same, and he also shares the Lake trigram with Baihu. Like Baihu, the center of his powers rests in his lungs, as the lungs provide the tiger’s power when it roars and provides the Qilin power when it blows its fiery breath. Chonglin’s qi manifests as metal shards, gems, and thunder/lightning, as metal is a conductor for electricity. Like Fengge, Chonglin possesses clairvoyance, future sight, and telekinetic abilities, though he has much more mastery over his abilities than Fengge. Overuse of his powers causes shortness of breath, pain, and fatigue.
Mystical Mondays: The Mid-Autumn Festival

September 24th, 2018

After what seems like an eternity, I’m back! This week’s segment falls on a very auspicious day: today is the Mid-Autumn Festival! Called Zhongqiu Jie in Mainland China, Jungchau Jit in Hong Kong, Tiong Chiu Jiet in Taiwan, Chuseok in Korea, and Tet Trung Tu in Vietnam, this holiday is probably the most important aside from the lunar new year. On this day, people gather to celebrate the harvest, family, and lunar deities. Break out your mooncakes, and let’s dive into the mythical elements of one of my favorite festivals!

The Mid-Autumn Festival began as early as the Shang Dynasty in China as a celebration of a successful harvest. In The Four Gods, Gen would only have known this holiday as a festival celebrating mountain gods, rain dragons, ancestors, and the autumn equinox. It wasn’t until the Tang Dynasty, over 500 years after the end of the first book of The Four Gods, that the Mid-Autumn Festival became known more as a lunar celebration in relation to ancient myths. The reason for this is due to the goddess Chang’e.

The legend goes that in ancient times, cultural hero Houyi and his wife, Chang’e, lived on earth. At this time, instead of one sun, there were ten, and each sun was a three-legged crow that were the sons of a powerful god. Usually, only one sun rose and set at a time, but one day, all ten of them decided to rise in the sky at once to play together. The heat scorched crops and people died in droves, so the gods sought a solution, since no one could manage to get the suns to cooperate. Houyi was a renowned archer, so Xi-Wangmu asked him to shoot down nine of the suns. As a reward, she would give him an elixir of immortality. Half would be for him and half would be for his wife. Agreeing to save his people and the gods alike, Houyi successfully shot down nine of the suns, and received the elixir from the gods.

However, not all was good. Houyi’s apprentice, Peng Meng, knew of Houyi’s secret elixir. One day while Houyi was out hunting, Peng Meng broke into his master’s house and demanded that Chang’e hand him the elxiri so that he could achieve immortality. Rather than give it over to her husband’s greedy student, Chang’e quickly drank all of it, and the magic of the drink caused her to float skyward, never to touch the ground again. When Houyi returned and discovered what happened, he was overcome with sadness and every year on that day, offered fruits and cakes to his wife, who had to watch her husband from her new home on the moon.

Another version of the myth describes Houyi becoming king of the people, but soon becomes greedy with conceit and power. Not wanting her husband to gain the power of immortality on top of this, Chang’e steals the elixir and drinks it, saving the people from having to be ruled by a tyrannical, immortal king. In both myths, Chang’e is commemorated for her actions of saving the elixir from falling into the wrong hands.

The myth of Chang’e continues. After ascending to the moon, she finds herself isolated and lonely. Today, she is known to be accompanied by a white rabbit called the Jade Rabbit. This bun can be seen in the full moon, grinding down ingredients to make medicine in his mortar and pestle, similar to the Man in the Moon we see in the West. But how did he get on the moon? This short video from Off The Great Wall explains.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is a holiday of thanksgiving, family, and moon worship today and is also accompanied by the lighting of lanterns. Across East Asia, gardens full of elaborate lanterns is a favorite outing during the festival. Most families that can, get together and feast under the full moon. Those that cannot be together go moon gazing with friends or alone, knowing that their loved ones see the same moon wherever in the world that they are. An abundance of fruit, wine, and mooncakes flow in the days leading up to and following the day of the festival. Mooncakes are mainly given or made as gifts for family members and friends, as this is a time of gratitude and giving to celebrate the sacrifice Chang’e made.

That’s all for this week! See you next Monday with another addition to Mystical Mondays! 中秋節快樂！
May 7th, 2018

Hey, all. I’m pushing this week’s #MysticalMonday segment back a week due to a change in my schedule. Thanks for understanding!
Mystical Mondays: Qi and Magic in The Four Gods

April 30th, 2018

Last week I introduced you to the elements and trigrams that form the foundation of magic within The Four Gods, this week, I’m going to talk about the importance of qi in Chinese medicine and metaphysics, as well as its use in the universe of The Four Gods. Let’s get started!

The definition of qi can be vague depending on your Chinese source that you consult, but in general, qi can be translated to “energy.” In The Four Gods: The Prince of the North, Gen notes that his best understanding of qi is “life force,” and that everything on Earth, even things we consider inanimate, have qi. Humans, animals, the wind, water, fire, the weather, and even stones have qi. Without it, nature itself wouldn’t function. Like the elements we reviewed last week, qi also has different reactions. The feeling of wind against your face is a qi reaction, the heat that fire releases is a qi reaction, rushing water is a qi reaction, even our emotions are reactions of qi. Qi also plays a part in illness, as with yin and yang, too much or too little qi in our bodies makes us sick, and there are certain activities we can do and foods we can eat to get our qi back where it needs to be.

As you see with this chart, our bodies are constructed like the five elements, with certain elements ruling over certain parts of our bodies, creating different reactions. When this gets out of sync or we are too stressed, that’s when it’s bad news for us. But what about gods? Let’s turn to our good friend Chonglin and his teachings to Gen about how the gods utilize this qi to create reactions we human folk would see as magic.

As with the trigrams and their representations with divination, the elements are important to forming magical reactions and releasing this qi to get a certain outcome. Chonglin cautions Gen not to use his qi for magic for simple daily tasks, because if you use it to boil your water for tea or to bring an item to you without getting up, you’ll not only lose valuable stored qi, but you’ll create an imbalanced system that can drain your life force for nothing. Gen catches Fengge using his qi to create fire for his cooking, and Chonglin scolds him for being reckless and correlates Fengge’s oversight to his constant bad moods (notice how fire is related to the heart and the nervous system.) Gen later learns that qi flows through every inch of his body and using his confidence in his divinity, his qi manifests into elemental magic outside his body, mainly ice and water. But using this does come at the cost of energy depletion, which by learning more about the elements and qigong, or qi control, he can master his qi like his divine colleagues.

That’s all for this week! Next week I’ll go in depth with our gods’ specific magical abilities and what their qi mastery can actually do.
Mystical Mondays: Trigrams and the Elements

April 23rd, 2018

It’s Mystical Monday time! This week I promised I’d be going over the trigrams of the I Ching. These and the natural elements are crucial in understanding how the world works in the universe of The Four Gods. Let’s get started!

Firstly, the world is made up of five elements. These elements are fire, earth, metal, water, and wood. These elements react with one another in different ways to create reactions (for example: fire burns trees to make earth-> earth produces metals-> condensation can form to metal to become water->and water makes trees made of wood grow, etc.) Elements also have reactions that can destroy one another (another example, water puts out fire, metal chops down wood, fire melts metal, and earth absorbs water). This is the general relationship of the elements that is important for understanding the trigrams and relationships between the gods of the Si Ling. Let’s move on, shall we?

In The Four Gods: Prince of the North, Gen notices a series of trigrams above each of the gods’ workstations. In the I Ching, these trigrams combine to form hexagrams for divination. When combined, each hexagram has a meaning that can signal the diviner to a possible outcome. Each root of a trigram is a yang line (or a solid line) and a yin line (a broken line), which represents a trait, a situation, and an element of the natural world. These are a little different than the five elements I talked about above, but they have significance in the practical magic used by the gods of the Si Ling. Chonglin introduces Gen to the meaning of the trigrams, and I’ll go into more detail below on the main four used in The Four Gods lore.

1. Water, or Kan. This is the trigram for the northern direction, as the element for Xuanwu is water. While water represents darkness, this isn’t the darkness of western thought that we’re familiar with. Darkness here doesn’t mean evil, it means mystery or the unknown. Kan also represents risk taking in forging ahead into that unknown, which is useful when this is present in a divining or for the guidance of a certain protagonist. Note also how water has mostly yin lines. This trigram is also considered a minor yin trigram, rather than a major one.

2. Fire, or Li. This is for the southern direction and is the polar opposite of Kan. Radiant, passionate, and burning, Li is the powerhouse of the trigrams and represents knowledge and awareness, making it useful to remind us to be more aware of our surroundings, but also that in this journey of learning the future, there may be many things we don’t yet know. Signifying Fengge’s role, it mostly fits him trying his hardest to be Gen’s opposite. This is considered a minor yang trigram.

3. Thunder, or Zhen. (EDIT) This is used in the Si Ling for the eastern direction, and is Longwei’s domain. Zhen is used to put ideas or situations in motion, and rolls forward as initiative or an action. In The Four Gods, Longwei is the leader and head of all operations, and thunder represents his initiative to keep the organization alive; this is also a homage to Longwei being a storm dragon. This is considered a minor yin trigram like water, despite the dragon always being a depiction of yang.

4. (EDIT) Lake, or Dui. This is the trigram for the western direction. Notice how like fire and water, thunder and lake are opposites. While thunder has more yin lines and lake has more yang lines, the western god is actually a representation of yin. Lake represents joy, sensibility, and feeling and denotes Chonglin’s role as not only the voice of reason within the Si Ling organization, but the joy that he puts into his work as the organization’s teacher and the stillness he brings to an otherwise very passionate and rambunctious group. This trigram is actually a major yang trigram.

Two minor yin and one minor and major yang trigrams together balance out to become the force of yin and yang, the essence that exists in everything. Also take notice of how these trigrams are shown being grouped together on the yang side of the taiji symbol, notifying the gods’ role as mainly yang beings. Confused yet? I hope not, but this is crucial in not only understanding the world of The Four Gods, but also in how the ancient Chinese saw the world.

That’s all for this week! Next week I’ll move on to qi and how these elements, trigrams, and relationships add up to make magic in The Four Gods’ universe. See you then!

Tag: Mystical Monday

Mystical Mondays: The Four Gods

Mystical Mondays: The Mid-Autumn Festival

Mystical Mondays: Qi and Magic in The Four Gods

Mystical Mondays: Trigrams and the Elements