The gourd that saved humanity

This is Lei Kung/Lei Gong, The Lord of Thunder from Chinese folk mythology...Again...

Did you know that he was the guy who caused "The flood"? You can read about it in "Chinese mythology A to Z"... 

The one that killed all the people except Fuxi and Nüwa, brother and sister who then became the progenitors of the new human race...

BTW, did you notice that they are holding a square and a compass...I wrote talked about this in my post about Father Sky and Mother Earth...And square and compasses, their symbols...I talked about them in my post "Square and compasses"...

Apparently the father of Fuxi and Nüwa, who is in some legends identified as Lei Gong himself, decided to catch Lei Gong and pickle him 🙂 And catch him he did, using a pitchfork, and he put him in a metal cage that hang under the roof...

The father then went to town to buy spices for pickling 🙂 and he told his kids not to give Lei Gong any food or water...Remember Lei Gong was a "bat like monster"...So the whole thing to me looks like something from Gremlins 🙂

Anyway, after Lei Gong begged them and begged them, the kids eventually did give him one drop of water. As soon as the water touched his lips, Lei Gong burst out of the cage with a terrifying bellow. See, Gremlins 🙂 Or Baš Čelik from Serbian fairytales...

The kids cowered in fear, but the god, instead of harming them, thank them for freeing him. Then he took out one of his teeth and gave it to the kids saying that if they plant it "it will grow into a gourd". And then he went off thundering and the rain started to fall...

The kids of course planted the tooth immediately to see what happens. And lo and behold, it immediately started to grown and soon turned into a giant gourd...

When their father came home, the place was already a swamp. WTF happened here? asked the father, and the kids told him everything. After hearing what happened, their father built a boat, got the kids and the gourd into the boat, put the kids into the gourd, and began to row...

The waters rose and rose and soon reached the heaven. The father of Fuxi and Nüwa started to bang on the heavenly door, begging the Lord of Heaven to end the rain and flood before they all drowned...

The Lord of Heaven, fearing that the flood will submerge the heaven itself, ordered the water god to get rid of the water...And so he did...But too fast. And so the boat fell to the ground, the father died from impact, and only Fuxi and Nüwa survived protected inside the gourd...

The rest is X-rated history...To me the interesting bit here is "the gourd"...Look, 18th c. Chinese white jade gourd-shaped vase with bats and clouds, Qianlong...

 

Hmmm...Bats, symbol of the peak of the rain season in China, and (rain) clouds...Maybe here would be a good place for you to take a detour and read through my earlier post about "Lei Kung (Lei Gong)", and all his mad animal and plant calendar markers...The important bit about bats:

What is the link between thunder (god) and bats? Temperate zone bat year is divided into two halves: active (Apr/May-Oct/Nov) and hibernation (Oct/Nov-Apr/May). The most noticeable event during the active period, bat swarming, starts in the middle of the active period, in Aug.

This is climatic year in China in Xian, Hunan, Sechuan...

And this is the thunderstorm frequency chart...

We can see that this is also the peak of the thunderstorm and rain season...So no wonder Thunder God was seen as the "bat like demon"...

But this post is about gourds...The bottle gourd, has a long history in China. Describing the way of life among Chinese farmers 3,000 years ago, the Pinfeng chapter of the Book of Odes relates: "In July, the gourds are in abundant supply, but by August, the season is over"

HA!!! When are gourds harvested? Jul/Aug. Right bang at the peak of the rain, thunderstorm and flood season in China...Caused by Lei Gong/Lei Kung, The Bat Dude...

Pickled bats? 🤮

That's it folks, that's all I have to say about The Lord of Thunder...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...