If you are familiar with how a Chinese coffin looks, you'll realise that it doesn't really resemble one, lol.

Never knew bout this before,reading slowly from the first page,just want to comment first to say thank you for sharing this stuff.

The least is that as a Malaysian,i can learn what my fellow Malaysian,a different religion/culture practice.

Being ignorant doesn't help in our Super Mix religion/culture.

Again,thanks for sharing,seems like i have a lot of pages to cover.if i dont understand any,ill post it up.

Another deities that we have neglected would be door gods
http://www.chinaculture.org/gb/en_chinaway...ntent_47393.htm

Another would be Taishan shi-gan-dang(泰山石敢当)
http://traditions.cultural-china.com/en/21...itions11956.htm

How do one pray to them?

Hi Nacht,

Thank you very much for opening this thread. Took me few days to finish reading up todate and it is really worth the time. The explanation is truly informative in a non biased context. I read minimal chinese so reading all this is English has increase my understanding and clarify some questions that always makes me wonder why.

You have mentioned that viewers of the show "Guai Tan" should take it with a pinch of salt and I couldn't agree more. I used to follow the show in the beginning where they showed a lot of "documentaries" about the supernatural world locally and more interestingly around Asia. The best materials were from Thailand in my opinion. But soon when ran out of ideas and going less abroad but started showing more on "staged" ghost visiting activities...i stopped watching them. And yes, I personally feel that sifu Szeto is most of the time "questionable". If only the show stay true to their objective which is to share what is happening around rather than making them up.

Anyway...please keep this thread going on...

Lord of Door is mostly seen on the door of temple around Malaysia.

First there were the YuYu 郁垒 and Shen Shu神荼 (dated back to Han dynasty). They were the immortal general appointed by Jade Emperor to guard the the Gate of Hell 鬼门 by the Blossom Tree 桃木 at Du Shuo Mountain 度朔山。They also depicted in two looking alike general, one pale(Shen Shu) one dark (Yu Yu) with similar weapon.

Most of the time, if you saw a pair of general (Either drawing or statue) they are: Qin Shubao秦琼(aka 秦叔宝) and Yuchi Jingde尉迟恭 (aka 尉迟敬德) from Tang Dynasty.
General Qin is the one with pale skin with calm face, General Yuchi is the one with dark skin with scary face. Most of the time, General Qin wields a sword while General Yuchi wields baton. They also often depict wielding mace, axe, Jian (a type of Chinese steel baton) etc.

Also, most other deities will also take up the job as Lord of the Door by many temple, palace and houses.

For Buddhist Temple,you will find Four Heavenly Kings, Skanda & Galan 伽藍护法, Heng Ha Generals哼哈二将 etc

For Taoist Temple, you will find 王天君/马天君, 孟章神君/监兵神君 and other deities

Some even have Lord of Door depicted by Zhong Kui the Ghost Banisher.



They is lot's of folklore and stories behind each Lord of Doors, where, when and why they become Lord of Doors. Most of the time, they are depicted as the guardian of the owner of the building, to protect them from the harm of evil spirits, devil beings and other denatured forms of soul wandering around earth.

Since most Sintua Temple is related with Hell and most of them uses creatures from hell to do erands, Sintua Temple do not necessarily have Lord of Doors.

This post has been edited by JunJun04035: Mar 5 2015, 11:54 AM

Who are the Door Gods?

There exist numerous deities, some named and famous, some anonymous, who serve as the guardians of temple doorways, regulating spiritual ingress/egress to such establishments. They can take different forms, mostly depending on the nature of the temples they protect. For instance, a temple to martial deities like Lord Guan or Na Zha may feature warrior-type door gods, a temple where a goddess such as Ma Zu is enshrined may feature handmaidens or ladies-in-waiting as door gods, and a Hell-associated temple may feature ghostly/undead soldiers as door gods.

That being said, the most well-known pair of Door Gods, whom most people refer to when Door Gods are being discussed, are named Qin Qiong/秦琼...



... and Wei Chi Gong/尉迟恭.



You can tell them apart by their complexions. Qin is fair-skinned; Wei is swarthy.

They were a pair of Tang Dynasty noblemen, esteemed generals in the service of Emperor Taizong. When hauntings occurred in the palace, disturbing Taizong's sleep and leaving him seriously ill, the two dukes stood guard every night outside his bedroom door in full armour and wielding their weapons. This put a lid on the haunting. The pair were therefore deified as dispellers of evil spirits thereafter, and their images hung to either side of home doors for this very purpose.

You can pray to the door gods by pasting consecrated pictures of them on the door of your home, and making regular offerings to them; a small incense urn placed near the doorstep will suffice for this.

The Tai Shan Shi Gan Dang I would not really classify as 'deities'; rather, they are warding devices.

These stones are fragments of the bedrock of Mount Tai, which is regarded as a sacred mountain.

The stones are placed at strategic or accident-prone areas to ward off evil and prevent mishaps or even natural disasters.

Skanda, the Four Heavenly Kings and so on are overall temple guardians/protectors, and not specifically in charge of regulating ingress/egress via the temple's doorways. They are security personnel, not dedicated doormen. I would therefore not classify them as 'Door Gods'.

As for 'most sintuas being related with Hell', this is not true at all. Heaven-associated sintuas outnumber Hell-associated ones by a considerable margin.

This post has been edited by nachtsider: Mar 7 2015, 06:39 AM

What i mean is where you can find them, most of them, at the doorway. I do not explicitly state that their job is to guard door.
Maybe mine temple visit experience differ from yours

Not a problem, my friend. It is important to know the whys and wherefores, lest prayer and worship de-evolve into 'monkey see, monkey do', and lest the rich heritage of Chinese folk religion go completely down the drain.

What made me write Szeto off completely was the episode where he challenged a Thai occultist to a magical duel. Instead of facing the Thai occultist directly, Szeto used the show's host, Rachel, as his proxy - a human shield, really. It was a cowardly, foolish and unethical thing to do. She could have come to serious harm, or even died.

yeah u are right....i'm not the religious type but always fascinated by Chinese folk religion. You and others are doing great work to share what you guys know.

hm....i think i miss that episode because i will skip episodes where they feature master szeto

haha...in fact the hosts of the show most of the time are overacting...and i find the show sexists as well when they often use girls to attract ghost and film the girls screaming their lungs out..

Who is Zhong Kui?

Zhong Kui/钟馗 was once a handsome and brilliant scholar. A demon by the name of Gan Shu Hao was jealous of him, and disfigured his face after befriending Zhong Kui while disguised as a human and getting him drunk.

Zhong Kui was determined not to let this setback deter him, and sat for the Imperial examinations anyway. He made first place, but the wicked Prime Minister disqualified him on account of his looks. Heartbroken and outraged, Zhong Kui committed suicide in front of the Emperor and the entire Imperial Court.

The shocked Emperor exiled his Prime Minister and ordered that Zhong Kui be posthumously honoured as the top Imperial Scholar. The second-placed Imperial Scholar would perform the duties that Zhong Kui would have performed - becoming a personal adviser to the Emperor. The second-placed scholar happened to be Gan Shu Hao in disguise. This was his plan all along - to gain access to the Emperor and assassinate him.

Gan haunted the Emperor night after night, causing him to fall seriously ill. On the night that the Emperor would have finally succumbed to the haunting, Gan found himself faced by none other than Zhong Kui, who had been assigned the post of Hell's Chief Exorcist and Demon-Hunter by the Ten Judges, masterfully trained in the art of exorcism and dispatched to Earth to rescue the Emperor and exact his revenge. Zhong Kui destroyed Gan after an epic fight, and saved the Emperor's life.

The grateful Emperor decreed that Zhong Kui be worshipped on a widespread basis. He continues to be worshipped to this day as a dispeller of evil.

Why is bamboo often associated with Hell deities?

One often sees Hell deities wearing garments with bamboo or bamboo leaf motifs; you can see similar imagery decorating the Hell sections of temples and sintuas, too.

Bamboo is a plant that, according to myth, has evil-dispelling properties. Other myths associate it with death, on account of how the bamboo plant's massive root systems impoverish the soil and prevent anything else from growing nearby.

So there you go - associated with death, and capable of warding evil. Sounds like a pretty apt plant for the Hell deities, don't you think?

But I thought bamboo is also associated with Guan Yin and many Buddhist temples also have bamboo plants within their compound.

Within the Buddhist context, which is different from the Hellish context that I've outlined above, the bamboo symbolises perseverance and the ability to withstand tribulations - good qualities for a monk or nun.

At any rate, however, the plant classically associated with Guan Yin is not the bamboo, but the lotus - a bloom that represents purity.



This post has been edited by nachtsider: Mar 9 2015, 08:04 AM

I think the lotus is commonly used by all Buddhist deities/bodhisatvas as it symbolises purity, not just specific to Guan Yin alone. If you noticed, she's also usually holding a stalk of bamboo.

That's supposed to be a willow branch, lol.

Oh sheesh..I always thought it was bamboo..lol.

Hi Natch, i have experienced and happened alot of things for the past year ago. A lot of things remain question unanswerable due to i have shallow knowledge and no one to ask. One more thing is i'm a christian.

I hope you can guide me becoz i have too much questions. Is not happen to me but is about my friend. I can't vomit out all the question in one posting. Maybe some q need to PM you.
Let me start with this 1st.

Izzit true that one cannot simply pray to white tiger?
If my memory serve me right, this is where the unlucky chapter start after praying the tiger.

One of my friend always seeking advise from a sifu. So after cny, sifu advise my friend to pray tiger at nearby temple. Went to the genting klang that one. I remember bought the pork and rub the meat on the tiger mouth 3 times. So interesting. After finish praying then sun bian ask god loh, a guy duno possessed by what god. There is a man beside the god which i believe is an assistant/translator told my fren doesn't look well and by chance comeby another day where they will held the tiger ceremony.

That tiger ceremony i remember only a few people came which i believe only selected/advised to come.
I remember a guy possessed by the god tiger, walking on the ground and act like a tiger. Then he grab the snake head pointing here and there and do the whipping. Lastly, a chop at the back shirt.
Months after month passed by a lot of unlucky event happened. Sifu took a sword point here and there at my friend. Then confiscate the shirt which got the chop to burn i guess.

After that, luck still bad and worsen.

The sifu asked your friend to go and pray to the tiger, then decided to get rid of what the tiger did for your friend.

Okay.

I can think of several possibilities as to what might be happening:

1. The ritual was not properly conducted, possibly due to the medium being questionable (if the temple is an old and established place with a good reputation, this is unlikely).
2. Your friend did not adhere properly to whatever instructions the tiger gave him.
3. Your friend is being punished for making a frivolous request of the tiger.
4. The tiger is revoking whatever help he gave your friend, or otherwise punishing your friend, due to your friend being no angel.

Why did you not go to the temple and ask for an explanation instead of coming here? Or ask the sifu for an explanation, for that matter?