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Zigu
Zigu (), also known as Maogu, is a goddess representing toilets in Chinese folk religion. She was believed to be the spirit of a concubine who had been physically abused by a vengeful wife and died in the latrine. It is believed that her cult originated in the Shanxi region and spread across China by the Tang period. According to the legend, the true identity of Zigu is Consort Qi of the Han Dynasty, who was tortured and killed in the toilet by Empress Lü. The earliest record of Zigu is in the fifth volume of "Yiyuan" by Liu Jingshu or Liu Song of the Southern Dynasties (420-479). Other legends say that her real name is He Mingmei, and the word is Liqing, from Laiyang, Shandong. During the period of Empress Wu Zetian, the governor of Shouyang Li Jing killed He Mei's husband and regarded her as a concubine, which made He Mei jealous of Li Jing's chief wife. On the night of the fifteenth day of the first lunar month during the Lantern Festival, Li Jing's legitimate wife killed her ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toilet God
A toilet god is a deity associated with latrines and toilets. Belief in toilet gods – a type of household deity – has been known from both modern and ancient cultures, ranging from Japan to ancient Rome. Such deities have been associated with health, well-being and fertility (because of the association between human waste and agriculture) and have been propitiated in a wide variety of ways, including making offerings, invoking and appeasing them through prayers, meditating and carrying out ritual actions such as clearing one's throat before entering or even biting the latrine to transfer spiritual forces back to the god. Modern cultures In Japan, belief in the toilet god or ''kawaya kami'', most often depicted in the form of ''Ususama-myō-ō'' (烏枢沙摩明王), served a dual purpose. Most bodily wastes were collected and used as fertilizers, ensuring a higher overall level of sanitation than in other countries where wastes were stored in cesspits or otherwise disposed of. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shouyang
Shouyang County () is a county in the east-central part of Shanxi province, China. It is under the administration of Jinzhong Jinzhong, formerly Yuci, is a prefecture-level city in east central Shanxi province of the People's Republic of China, bordering Hebei province to the east. As of the 2020 census, its total population was 3,379,498 inhabitants whom 1,226,617 ... city.- Climate References www.xzqh.org County-level divisions of Shanxi Jinzhong {{Shanxi-geo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ming Period
The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last orthodox dynasty of China ruled by the Han people, the majority ethnic group in China. Although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng (who established the short-lived Shun dynasty), numerous rump regimes ruled by remnants of the Ming imperial family—collectively called the Southern Ming—survived until 1662. The Ming dynasty's founder, the Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368–1398), attempted to create a society of self-sufficient rural communities ordered in a rigid, immobile system that would guarantee and support a permanent class of soldiers for his dynasty: the empire's standing army exceeded one million troops and the navy's dockyards in Nanjing were the largest in the world. He also took great care breaking the power of the court eunuchs and unr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fortune Telling
Fortune telling is the practice of predicting information about a person's life. Melton, J. Gordon. (2008). ''The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena''. Visible Ink Press. pp. 115-116. The scope of fortune telling is in principle identical with the practice of divination. The difference is that divination is the term used for predictions considered part of a religious ritual, invoking deities or spirits, while the term fortune telling implies a less serious or formal setting, even one of popular culture, where belief in occult workings behind the prediction is less prominent than the concept of suggestion, spiritual or practical advisory or affirmation. Historically, Pliny the Elder describes use of the crystal ball in the 1st century CE by soothsayers (''"crystallum orbis"'', later written in Medieval Latin by scribes as ''orbuculum''). Contemporary Western images of fortune telling grow out of folkloristic reception of Renaissance magic, specifically associated with Ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
