The Legend of Nuwa Mending Heaven (Detailed Explanation)

Nuwa, also known as Nuwa Maiden, was born in Chengji under the surname Feng, and it is said that her name was Feng Li Xi (or Feng Li ?ti). One of the three emperors at the beginning of the Chinese nation, she is the legendary founder of mankind, the descendants of her and her brother Fuxi. Legend has it that Fuxi made the stone to mend the sky, pinched the earth to create man, created things from the ground up, separated men and women, had marriages, and made pianos and reeds. The myth says that Fuxi and Nuwa are brother and sister, but also husband and wife. There are even images of Nuwa and Fuxi copulating on Chinese totems.

Nuwa created man

According to the legend, Nuwa, a goddess with the head of a man and the body of a snake, passed by the banks of the Yellow River one day and remembered that Pangu had opened up the heavens and created the earth, creating mountains, rivers, lakes, seas, birds and beasts, and transforming the world that had been silent all over again. However, Nuwa always felt that there was something missing in the world, but she could not remember what it was. When she looked down in contemplation and saw her own reflection in the waters of the Yellow River, she suddenly came to a realization. It turned out that the world was still missing a "human being" like herself. So Nuwa made a clay figure from the mud of the Yellow River, taking her own appearance into account, and then exerted her magic power to turn the clay figure into a human being.

[edit]? Nuwa Gao-requesting Sacrifice

Nuwa created man and woman and united them, thus there was marriage, so she is also the god of matchmaking.

[edit]? Nüwa makes music

Nüwa also created traditional Chinese musical instruments such as the serpent, the sheng-reed, and the ocarina.

[edit]? Nüwa Mending Heaven

According to the Records of the Grand Historian (史记-补三皇本纪), the god of water, ***Gong, rebelled and fought with the god of fire, Zhu Rong. Defeated by Zhu Rong, ***Gong was so angry that he hit his head against Buzhou Mountain, the pillar of the world in the west, causing the sky to collapse and the waters of the Heavenly River to pour into the earth. Nuwa could not bear to see mankind suffer, so she refined the five-colored stone to mend the sky, folded the foot of the divine turtle to support the four poles, calmed the flood and killed the fierce beasts, and mankind was able to live in peace.

Other ancient records differ. The Huainanzi Tianwenxun recorded the battle between *** Gong and Zhuanxu; the Huainanzi Yuandao recorded the battle between *** Gong and Gaoxin; the Carved Yuji Zhuangli recorded the battle between *** Gong and Shennong; and the Lushu Taiwu Ji recorded the battle between *** Gong and Nuwa.

Nuwa is a very famous legend. In the first chapter of Meng of the Red Chamber, the legend is quoted as saying that Nuwa made 36,500 and one stone to mend the sky, and used 36,500 of them, but left one unused. Some people believe that the Buzhou Mountain alludes to the pillar of a house, and that in fact mending the heavens means building a house. The story of Nuwa mending the heavens is actually about Nuwa, a person who was very smart and could refine stones to build a house.

[edit]? Aftermath

According to the Classic of Mountains and Seas, after Nüwa's physical death, her intestines were transformed into ten divine beings and went to the west to guard the wilds of the Great Wilderness of Guangsu.

Nuwa is also a compound surname in ancient China, where a famous tribal female leader also named Nuwa was Fu Xi's sister. It is Fu Xi's sister who is buried in Xihua County, Henan Province, in the present-day Central Plains.

The Nüwa myth has two lineages.? The first lineage is that of Nüwa as the goddess of creation, and this has to do with the fact that Nüwa is etymologically related to the word Nüwa, which originally meant goddess in ancient times. Nuwa is the main god of the Wiccan religion.

The second lineage is the ancient spirit Nuwa, the sister of Fu Xi. It should be noted that there was not only one woman named Nuwa in ancient times, but there was a more famous one. Just like Houyi, there are two more famous ones in ancient times, one from the era of Emperor Yao and one from one of the generations of the Xia Dynasty's sons of heaven. The evidence that the dual lineage Nuwa gods are not the same god is as follows.

Etymology, the character Nuwa, as a hieroglyphic character, itself means goddess, and this character existed before the birth of the second lineage Nuwa and was portrayed with a human head and a snake body.?

The era of Nuwa as the main god of the Witch God Cult was from ancient times, and in the era of the second lineage Nuwa, the Witch God Cult was already in its period of prevalence, and it is unlikely that the main god of a sect would have been born many hundreds of years after its existence.?

The evidence that Nuwa as a compound surname still exists in modern times and that the lineage can be traced back to antiquity suggests that in ancient times it was not unusual for ancient people to take the divine name of the main god and name their children after him.?

The possibility of the formation of a double lineage of goddesses, the first lineage: there is no need to question the status of Nuwa as the founding god because the word Nuwa is itself a goddess, in other words, the people of the ancient times created a hieroglyphic character to describe the main god of their mind, in other words, the word Nuwa, in the ancient times, is the meaning of goddesses in the Chinese characters of the present time. Whether a goddess is a goddess or not is a query that is meaningless in itself. Secondly, Nuwa's status as a goddess is perfectly logical, even if the girl named Nuwa, Fu Xi's sister, was born in an era that was legendary for the ancient world, and similarly, the Yellow Emperor and the Yan Emperor were deified, and so was Fu Xi, so there's nothing strange about having one more deified goddess.

Some people believe that the moral is that Nvwa's flesh was devoured after her death, and that primitive tribesmen felt that they would feel secure by eating their ancestors or respected members of their clans. According to another legend, Nuwa was buried after her death in Xihua County, Henan Province, in the present-day Central Plains. Therefore, Xihua County is also known as Nuwa City.

Legend has it that Nuwa's soul later ascended to heaven and was protected by the divine beasts, the white chi dragon and the teng snake, who went to the Heavenly Palace and became the God of Heaven.

[edit]? Beliefs and worship

Nuwa is the god of high heir sacrifice, i.e., the god of marriage and children. In the Book of Rites - The Monthly Orders:? On the day of the winter solstice, a large prison is dedicated to the High-requesting Sacrifice.

The Taoist religion has a goddess, Li Shan Lao Bu (骊山老姥), who is believed by some to be an incarnation of Nüwa. In southern China, the Miao and other ethnic groups honor her as a great god and have temples dedicated to her.

mons/6/63/NuwaFuxi.gif

Nuwa and Fuxi

mons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Nuwa?uselang=zh