Bird gods

[SirPalomides]

Are there any Taoist gods or goddesses specifically in charge of birds? I know the fenghuang is sort of king of the birds but I don’t think it is directly worshiped. Also I read that Jiutian Xuannü originated as a bird -like goddess but I’m not sure if she is closely associated with that nowadays. 
 

I like to feed the birds where I live and would like to focus it as an offering to whoever looks after them.

[Taomeow]

On 12/7/2019 at 6:23 AM, SirPalomides said:

Are there any Taoist gods or goddesses specifically in charge of birds? I know the fenghuang is sort of king of the birds but I don’t think it is directly worshiped. Also I read that Jiutian Xuannü originated as a bird -like goddess but I’m not sure if she is closely associated with that nowadays. 
 

I like to feed the birds where I live and would like to focus it as an offering to whoever looks after them.

 

Not necessarily deities, since these are older than fully personified religious taoist gods and can be understood primarily as forces of nature, but the Red Phoenix of the South is one of the five main players of the wuxing philosophy and the Rooster of the Twelve Animals represents one of the twelve Earthly Branches of xuan kong (of Flying Stars or space-time-matter) feng shui.  You don't so much worship them as handle them the way they require.  E.g. the Red Phoenix flies South, its "fractal" as-above-so-below counterpart is one of the Inner Gods and is supposed to be let loose to fly freely at night when the person sleeps.  If you block its path, it can hurt itself running into an obstacle (because it's impatient yang energy that tends to rush headlong into things) or even break its wing.  It is believed that the space at the foot of one's bed should therefore be open, especially in the case of a child, whose phoenix is a young and inexperienced chick.  Placing a tall piece of furniture in that direction may cause the child, in her waking life, to break an arm.  (I nodded with grim satisfaction when I first came across this information because that's exactly what happened when I was 6.  A tall-ass cabinet that went almost up to the ceiling, and a very nasty fracture.)

 

There's also the Crane who usually hangs out with the Eight Immortals.  Another one, with Shouxing 寿星, one of the three Star Gods.  Shou (壽) is the star of the South Pole in Chinese astronomy, which is believed to control the life spans of humans.  Shou is associated with wisdom, longevity and immortality, so is the Crane.  This is also older than formalized taoism and probably goes all the way to the earilest "folk religions" of China as Western sources like to refer to them, although I'm not sure "folk astronomers" were ever a thing, and this stuff is all related to celestial observations.  

 

Feeding birds for whatever reason is good.  I think they're always in need of food everywhere, they are such high energy things, so yang, with such hunger in their bellies.  And life can't be easy for any of them these days. 

 

And they are so smart.  I often see seagulls steal lunches from people on the beach -- they have developed a routine that is specifically aimed at hunting for the human lunch.   I've seen them spot a lunch box eaten from or not yet left unattended and start interacting with the little kid of the owner, coming very close -- just reach out your little hand and you can stroke me.  The kid starts moving toward the seagull with her arm outstretched, the seagull retreats a couple of steps, and again, moving more and more toward water.  Eventually mom has to run after the kid and the seagull will grab the lunch box and drag it aside and have lunch, or fly away with a bag of chips.  

Edited December 9, 2019 by Taomeow

[Rocky Lionmouth]

I dont get along with gulls, but they are organized and way more clever than they get credit for! 

I’ve seen magpies tag-team-harassing cats pretty often. One taunts their visual field while the other flanks around and pecks at kittys tail and haunches. Kitty turns and the magpies either reverse role or do a fast bait and switch to get kitty to move in a certain direction. Hilarious show.

[Walker]

On 12/7/2019 at 10:23 PM, SirPalomides said:

Are there any Taoist gods or goddesses specifically in charge of birds? I know the fenghuang is sort of king of the birds but I don’t think it is directly worshiped. Also I read that Jiutian Xuannü originated as a bird -like goddess but I’m not sure if she is closely associated with that nowadays. 
 

I like to feed the birds where I live and would like to focus it as an offering to whoever looks after them.

 

I'm pretty sure lots of (most? all?) immortals could be depicted as having bird features like feathers, wings, and bird legs in the period when Jiutian Xuannü came on the (human) scene. A lot of what we see of these early depictions comes from Han dynasty tomb art, which is quite different from what later depictions of Daoist deities show. Back then they also often had huge bat-like ears. I'm really not sure what it was all about. Might've been symbolic; might've been they visited earth and they really looked like that. Personally I hope it was the latter!

 

I might be wrong but don't think there is much "patron immortal of ______" belief in Daoism that would closely parallel Catholicism's "patron saint of ______" custom. I do know that, for example, Qiu Chuji is/was honored by jade artisans following the Yuan dynasty due to a specific story in which he saved some jade artisans from arbitrary execution, but this sort of thing seems to be more an exception than a norm, and one could read/hear an awful lot about Qiu Chuji without ever hearing that story get mentioned. 

 

Still, if you feed them the birds will surely thank you, as will the cats who look on watching them get plump and too full of their own tryptophan to play their little magpie games!

[SirPalomides]

I wasn’t thinking of Catholic  patronage so much as gods and their departments. There is, after all, an insect god, a horse god, a wolf god, tree gods, a bunch of fox gods, as well as gods in charge of thunder, rain, rivers, etc.

[Rocky Lionmouth]

8 hours ago, SirPalomides said:

There is, after all, an insect god, a horse god, a wolf god, tree gods, a bunch of fox gods, as well as gods in charge of thunder, rain, rivers, etc.

 

Just to muddle the waters further it seems those departments and appointed areas of responsibility are mutable with time, at least in part. 

I’m not versed in this but i have read references to shifts and promotions in the Celestial Dynastic Government and its operative and beaurocratic branches. Some gods recieve expansion of responsibilities and increased titles, some immortals move up the ladder and closer to a godlike status and of course, humans arent unanimously agreeing on who is best, boss or servant.

Again this falls out of my memory-core slightly fragmented, but perhaps some with a fresher software version can offer a more orderly description?