It’s #FourGodsFriday! Send me any questions you have about my upcoming historical fantasy novel, The Four Gods: Prince of the North and I’ll answer them!
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Hey, y’all! Last week I promised I’d go over the specific Four Gods and their abilities in relation to the qi and element posts. Let’s get started!
(Note: This post contains an addendum to the post about the trigrams. In that post I said that the east and Longwei’s posting was represented by Wind/Wood, when it is actually represented by Thunder. I mistakenly linked Thunder to the west and Chonglin’s posting, but the proper trigram is Lake, or Dui, as seen in the chart above.)
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 rest 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 cause shortness of breath, pain, and fatigue.
That’s all for this week! I may post a poll for the topic of next week, so stay tuned!
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It’s #FourGodsFriday! Send me any questions you have about my upcoming historical fantasy novel, The Four Gods: Prince of the North and I’ll answer them!
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Hey, all. I’m pushing this week’s #MysticalMonday segment back a week due to a change in my schedule. Thanks for understanding!
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It’s #FourGodsFriday! Send me any questions you have about my upcoming historical fantasy novel, The Four Gods: Prince of the North and I’ll answer them!
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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.
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It’s #FourGodsFriday!
Hey, all! It’s #FourGodsFriday! Send me any questions you have about my upcoming historical fantasy novel, The Four Gods: Prince of the North and I’ll answer them!
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It’s #FourGodsFriday!
Hey, all! It’s #FourGodsFriday! Send me any questions you have about my upcoming historical fantasy novel, The Four Gods: Prince of the North and I’ll answer them!
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