

          <THE GREAT GODDESS IN CHINA AND JAPAN>


									chinjap.txt
									Ben Blumenberg
									Reality Software
									P.O. Box 105
									Waldoboro, ME 04572
									February 8, 1992


          <Table of Contents>


        Mytho-poetics in China* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   i

        Mytho-poetics in Japan* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ii

	Did the Great Goddess Exist in China? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

        Goddess Fragments in Early Taoism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

	The Primordial Couple and the Goddess . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

	Nu-kua as Primal Creatress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6

	The Goddess in Chou Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8

	Goddesses in Shamanic Myths of the Manchu . . . . . . .  . .   12

	The Goddess Amaterasu in Japan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15

      <>The Temple of the Goddess of Orchid Fragrance . . . . . . . .  20

        Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21


          *See files chinmyth.dos & japmyth.dos for the flow charts which
          can be viewed/printed with any ASCII text editor.


          __<Did the Great Goddess Exist in China?>

	Yes, She does exist in China, but finding Her is difficult
          and involves questioning some basic assumptions about early
          Chinese philosophy and society.  My personal pursuit of the Great
          Goddess involves several assumptions, but the one that concerns
          us here goes as follows.  {If} her origins lie with Paleolithic era
          (30,000-12,000 B.C.) hunter-gatherers, and they certainly do
          (Gimbutas 1989), then she must have existed in the Neolithic of
          China (c.10,000 B.C.-c.2,000 B.C.) and the succeeding Mesolithic
          and Classic Dynastic Periods.  The presence of Paleolithic
          hunter-gatherers in China is beyond dispute.  There is a great
          deal of fossil and archeological evidence from numerous sites
          (Chang 1977).  Because she followed humanity into the
          Agricultural Revolution throughout Eurasia, there is no reason to
          suppose otherwise in East Asia.  I have no wish to entertain
          unusual hypotheses for her post-glacial extinction in China. 

	Nonetheless, this what many scholars and interested New Age
          adherents have done without realizing their unspoken assumptions.
          Some deny the very existence of mythology and the gods in China
          while others see the goddess everywhere in East Asia.  In their
          eyes, every Buddhist bodhisatava, every female, Taoist immortal
          or shamaness becomes a manifestation of the Goddess.  Either view
          is extreme.  In the latter case, which is the particular
          affliction of that portion of the New Age movement, which is
          feminist oriented, every contact with the sacred that involves a
          female becomes a manifestation of the goddess.  Hogwash!  Such a
          viewpoint speaks only to a lack of respect and integrity, as well
          as the historical and religious ignorance of those involved.  I
          leave the cartoon reinvention of tradition to those whose
          infatuation with their own egos precludes serious connections
          with the sacred in a manner that takes the multiple planes of
          human history {seriously.}  The former viewpoint has characterized
          the academic Western view of early Chinese religion for well over
          a century.  Impressed by the {_I} {Ching}_ and the philosophy of
          Confucius, as well as the absence of long mythological narrative
          so characteristic of post-Neolithic cvilizations in the West,
          Western scholars quickly identified the brilliance of the Chinese
          mind at creating succinct, abstract philosophy and finding the
          essential, secular truths in the world about us.  Granted, there
          is the prevalence of ancestor worship, but this became the model
          for a tightly woven system of ethics and morality that was
          applied both to the family and the society at large in the hands
          of Confucius.  Where were the Gods?   Where was the Goddess? 

	The evidence of gods, narrative myth and, more specifically,
          the Goddess herself is hard to find and is unlike the
          encyclopedic data that exists in the West.  Our eyes and
          perceptions are just beginning to become attuned to the search
          and the evidence is just beginning to come in.  Two discoveries


          laid the foundation for unveiling the Goddess in ancient China.
          Giradot's (1983) breakthrough study of mysticism in early Taoism
          has firmly established the existence of complex mythological
          fragments in one of the earliest surviving Chinese texts.  The
          gods are there, although in a disjointed and incomplete form.  We
          can assume, I think correctly, that the corpus of full-fledged
          mythological narrative has been lost because it existed only in
          oral form and antedated the first written texts of the first
          millenium B.C. (Chou Dynasty).  We will never know the 'flesh and
          blood' Great Goddess in China as we know her in the West.

	The second pioneering effort is Gimbutas' (1989) study of
          the iconography of the Goddess.  Drawing upon virtually all
          available materials for Europe and the Near East, she has
          systematically catalogued the pictorial symbolism of the Western
          Great Goddess and interwoven it with ritual, myth and folktale.
          Gimbutas' (1989) well organized schemata provides a 'field guide'
          with which to search elsewhere for the Goddess, assuming of
          course that her symbolism is archetypal and therefore a
          commonality worldwide.  That assumption may not be justified, but
          at least the search allows it to be tested.  All good scientific
          hypotheses must be subjected to scrutiny in the light of
          available and relevant data.  Such is one of the many objectives
          I have set myself.

	So let us begin. The discussion is at first abstract and
          difficult; it will then proceed along more concrete lines. 
          Taoism could not be more unlike Confucianism.  Taoism took form
          several centuries before Confucius lived (551-479 B.C.), the
          exact date is impossible to determine because it likely arose
          before 1000 B.C. when the Chinese script had not been created. 
          Taoism  believes in a single underlying cosmic unity of
          indescribable nature, yet endlessly creative (much like the Void
          or Great Bliss of Buddhism).  The goal of Taoist practice is
          mystical; it is to contact the 'One' and be thereby enriched.  As
          with Buddhism, the gods can be of great help in such an endeavor.


          <Goddess Fragments in Early Taoism>


          __	China often appears to be lacking in complete mythological
          narrative, especially in creation myths, but upon close
          examination this proves not to be true.  By the time of the
          Eastern Chou Dynasty (770-450 B.C.), a rich mythological lore is
          apparent and a central cosmogonic theme can be discerned.  In the
          beginning, the cosmos was dark and without boundary or structure. 
          Mythic themes cluster into two categories.  The first category is


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