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Fox spirit

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Template:Short description Template:Redirect Template:Infobox Chinese

Huli jing (Template:Zh) are Chinese mythological creatures usually capable of shapeshifting, who may either be benevolent or malevolent spirits. In Chinese mythology and folklore, the fox spirit takes variant forms with different meanings, powers, characteristics, and shapes, including Template:Zhp, Template:Zhp, Template:Zhp, Template:Zhp, Template:Zhp, Template:Zhp, and Template:Zhp.Template:SfnpTemplate:Page needed

Fox spirits and nine-tailed foxes appear frequently in Chinese folklore, literature, and mythology. Depending on the story, the fox spirit's presence may be a good or a bad omen.<ref>Template:Harvp</ref> The motif of nine-tailed foxes from Chinese culture was eventually transmitted and introduced to Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese cultures.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

DescriptionsEdit

File:Yanju's tomb, nine-tailed fox.jpg
Painting of a fox spirit from Yanju's tomb, Gansu Province. Older depictions of fox spirits depict the eight other tails as branching out from the main tail rather than being separate tails of their own.

The nine-tailed fox occurs in the Shanhaijing (Classic of Mountains and Seas), compiled from the Warring States period to the Western Han period (circa fourth to circa first century BC).<ref name=shanstr02/> The work states:

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The Land of Blue Hills lies to the north where the inhabitants consume the Five Grains, wear silk and worship foxes that have four legs and nine tails.{{#if:Shanhaijing|{{#if:|}}

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In chapter 14 of the Shanhaijing, Guo Pu, a scholar of the Eastern Jin dynasty, had commented that the "nine-tailed fox was an auspicious omen that appeared during times of peace."<ref name=shanstr02/> However, in chapter 1, another aspect of the nine-tailed fox is described:

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In one ancient myth, Yu the Great encountered a white nine-tailed fox, which he interpreted as an auspicious sign that he would marry Nüjiao.<ref name=shanstr02/> In Han iconography, the nine-tailed fox is sometimes depicted at Mount Kunlun and along with Xi Wangmu in her role as the goddess of immortality.<ref name=shanstr02/> According to the first-century Baihutong (Debates in the White Tiger Hall), the fox's nine tails symbolize abundant progeny.<ref name=shanstr02/>

During the Han dynasty (202 BC – 9 AD; 25–220 AD), the development of ideas about interspecies transformation had taken place in Chinese culture.<ref name=hunt3-9/> The idea that non-human creatures with advancing age could assume human form is presented in works such as the Lunheng by Wang Chong (27–91).<ref name=hunt3-9/> As these traditions developed, the fox's capacity for transformation was shaped.<ref name=hunt3-9>Template:Harvp</ref>

Describing the transformation and other features of the fox, Guo Pu (276–324) made the following comment:

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When a fox is fifty years old, it can transform itself into a woman; when a hundred years old, it becomes a beautiful woman, or a spirit medium, or an adult man who has sexual intercourse with women. Such beings are able to know things at more than a thousand miles' distance; they can poison men by sorcery, or possess and bewilder them, so that they lose their memory and knowledge; and when a fox is thousand years old, it ascends to heaven and becomes a celestial fox.<ref>Template:Harvp</ref>{{#if:|{{#if:|}}

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In Duìsúpiān (對俗篇) of the Baopuzi, it is written:

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Foxes and dholes both can be eight hundred years of age, and when they are five hundred years old, they become enlightened and are able to take up human form.

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In a Tang Dynasty story, foxes could become humans by wearing a skull and worshipping the Big Dipper. They would try multiple skulls until they found one that fit without falling off.<ref name="Kang no page">Template:HarvpTemplate:Pages needed</ref>

File:Imperial Encyclopaedia - Animal Kingdom - pic176 - 九尾狐圖.png
Qing Dynasty depiction of the fox spirit.

The Youyang Zazu made a connection between nine-tailed foxes and the divine:

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Among the arts of the Way, there is a specific doctrine of the celestial fox. [The doctrine] says that the celestial fox has nine tails and a golden color. It serves in the Palace of the Sun and Moon and has its own fu (talisman) and a jiao ritual. It can transcend yin and yang.<ref>Template:Harvp</ref>{{#if:|{{#if:|}}

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The fox spirits encountered in tales and legends are usually females and appear as young, beautiful women. One of the most infamous fox spirits in Chinese mythology was Daji, who is portrayed in the Ming Dynasty shenmo novel Fengshen Yanyi. A beautiful daughter of a general, she was married forcibly to the cruel tyrant King Zhou of Shang. A nine-tailed fox spirit who served Nüwa, whom King Zhou had offended, entered into and possessed her body, expelling the true Daji's soul. The spirit, as Daji, and her new husband schemed cruelly and invented many devices of torture, such as forcing righteous officials to hug red-hot metal pillars.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Because of such cruelties, many people, including King Zhou's own former generals, revolted and fought against the Shang dynasty. Finally, King Wen of Zhou, one of the vassals of Shang, founded a new dynasty named after his country. The fox spirit in Daji's body was later driven out by Jiang Ziya, the first Prime Minister of the Zhou dynasty, and her spirit condemned by Nüwa herself for excessive cruelty.

TraditionsEdit

Popular fox worship during the Tang dynasty has been mentioned in a text entitled Hu Shen (Fox gods):

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Since the beginning of the Tang, many commoners have worshiped fox spirits. They make offerings in their bedchambers to beg for their favor. The foxes share people's food and drink. They do not serve a single master. At the time there was a figure of speech saying, "Where there is no fox demon, no village can be established."<ref>Template:Harvp</ref>{{#if:|{{#if:|}}

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In the Song dynasty, fox spirit cults, such as those dedicated to Daji, became outlawed, but their suppression was unsuccessful.<ref>Template:Harvp</ref> For example, in 1111, an imperial edict was issued for the destruction of many spirit shrines within Kaifeng, including those of Daji.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

On the eve of the Jurchen invasion, a fox went to the throne of Emperor Huizong of Song. So Huizong ordered the destruction of all fox temples in Kaifeng. The city was invaded the next day, and the dynasty fell after five months.<ref name="Kang no page" />

In late imperial China, during the Ming and Qing dynasties, disruptions in the domestic environment could be attributed to the mischief of fox spirits, which could throw or tear apart objects in a manner similar to a poltergeist.Template:Sfnp "Hauntings" by foxes were often regarded as both commonplace and essentially harmless, with one seventeenth-century author commenting that "Out of every ten houses in the capital, six or seven have fox demons, but they do no harm and people are used to them".Template:Sfnp

Typically, fox spirits were seen as dangerous, but some of the stories in the Qing dynasty book Liaozhai Zhiyi by Pu Songling are love stories between a young boy and a fox appearing as a beautiful girl. In the fantasy novel The Three Sui Quash the Demons' Revolt, a huli jing teaches a young girl magic, enabling her to conjure armies with her spells.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Belief in fox spirits has also been implicated as an explanatory factor in the incidence of attacks of koro, a culture-bound syndrome found in southern China and Malaysia in particular.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

There is mention of the fox spirit in Chinese Chán Buddhism, when Linji Yixuan compares them to voices that speak of the Dharma, stating "the immature young monks, not understanding this, believe in these fox-spirits..."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Fox spirits were thought to be able to disguise themselves as women.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref> In this guise, they seduced young men who were scholars or merely intelligent to absorb "life essence through their semen".<ref name=":0" /> This allowed them to actually turn into humans, then huxian, and then, after 1,000 years, a nine-tailed fox god which was able to navigate through higher realms of tiān.<ref name=":0" />

A handful of Huli jing also appear in Wu Cheng'en's late 16th-century novel, the Journey to the West:

  • A brother-sister pair appear in the story arc covering the demon brothers, Golden-Horn and Silver-Horn, introduced as the demon brother's venerable mother and maternal uncle, respectively.
  • In the story arc covering Princess Iron Fan, it is revealed that Princess Iron Fan's husband, the Bull Demon King, has left her for Princess Jade Countenance, a Huli jing demoness, who lured the Bull Demon King away from Princess Iron Fan with her massive dowry.
  • In the story arc concerning Pilgrims while they are passing through the Kingdom of Biqiu, the White Deer Spirit and his adopted daughter, the White-Faced Vixen Spirit (also a Huli jing demoness), are plaguing the unwitting king, who had married the White-Faced Vixen Spirit while she posed as a mortal woman and the White Deer Spirit as her mortal father; the White-Faced Vixen Spirit is later slain by Zhu Bajie.

The fox cult survived in northern China in the 20th century, but was suppressed during the anti-superstition Socialist Education Campaign.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In popular cultureEdit

Anime/MangaEdit

FilmEdit

TV seriesEdit

BooksEdit

  • Shanghai Immortal by A.Y. Chao (2023)
  • The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin (2004)
  • “The Fox Wife” by Yangsze Choo (2024)
  • Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen (2024)

MusicEdit

  • The Good Kid and the Fox Spirit {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, a song by Kikuo (2023)

GamesEdit

See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

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LiteratureEdit

External linksEdit

Template:Chinese mythology Template:Inari Faith

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