The statue of Zhenwu and the statue of Lei Zun enshrined in the main hall of the Nine Heavenly Palace. In the center of the lower photo is a bronze statue of Zhenwu, the golden statue of the god is tall, the law is solemn, and the person who crosses the unicorn is the statue of Lei Zun. The two statues of the gods are still and moving, and the weather is extraordinary.
The upper is the statue of the god Tao Tianjun of the heavenly doctor. The statue is extremely vivid, with three eyes, slightly open flesh wings, auspicious clouds stacked under the feet, distinct textured friezes, and a very high artistic standard. Below is the statue of Yue Tianjun. Yue Tianjun, also known as Yue Fei, is a deity evolved from the famous general of the Southern Song Dynasty, derived from folk beliefs.
Thor worship is a very common cultural phenomenon around the world, Zeus in Greek mythology and Thor in Norse mythology are all thunder gods. In China, the image of the thunder god is diverse, and with the development of Taoism, it has gradually become a system, deriving a thunder department with many gods. Although there are many thunder gods in Taoism, they are all ruled by the "Nine Heavens Yingyuan Thunder Puhua Tianzun" (referred to as Lei Zun).
So, what do Lei Zun and the Thunder God under him look like? Due to the decline of Thor's beliefs, the people's understanding of them has gradually blurred. In my work, the author found a set of old photos of the Nine Heavenly Palace taken in the thirties and forties of the last century, which can just solve this mystery and take us to get a glimpse of Thor's "true face".
Jiutian Puhua Palace (referred to as Jiutian Palace), located outside the Chaoyang Gate, separated from the Dongyue Temple by a wall, is a Taoist temple dedicated to the god of thunder. Today, there are only five main halls in the Nine Heavens Palace, and stone monuments are erected on the east and west sides of the hall, and its internal furnishings and statues are gone. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Nine Heavenly Palace, together with Dongyue Temple and Eighteen Prisons Temple (Cizun Temple), were also known as the three most lively temples on Chaowai Street. During the Republican period, although it was adjacent to the prestigious Dongyue Temple, the Jiutian Palace fell into disrepair and gradually broke off the incense.
Full view of the southeast side of Chaoyangmen Urn City (1906)
The statue of the gods of the thunder department on the hanging sculpture of the Nine Heavens Palace. The statue on the left is Deng Tianjun Deng Bowen, one of the three marshals of Thunder, and the image of Deng Bowen as the Marshal of Thunder in the Ming and Qing dynasties is relatively fixed, all with three-eyed sharp mouths, left-handed thunder drills, and right-handed thunder hammers, which are consistent with this statue.
Dongyue Temple Festival during the Republic of China
According to the 1935 "Peiping Travel Guide": "The main hall (of the Nine Heavenly Palace) has two floors of hanging mountains, and the statues of gods are strange, and those with four arms and four eyes are called heavenly descent." All imitate Tang Yanghui's plastic method, and the plastic craftsmanship is exquisite. In the middle of the real martial statue, in the middle of the hanging mountain, there is the statue of the Heavenly Venerable God of the Nine Heavens Yingyuan Thunder. "The "hanging mountain" here is "hanging sculpture", which is based on the building wall or wooden components, and the statue is painted on the keel, creating various characters, scenes and decorations, forming the effect of overlapping layers above and below. The hanging art of the Nine Heavenly Palace is complex and gorgeous, and the artistic conception is far-reaching, even if you look at the whole country, it is very rare. Perhaps, because of its beauty, it attracted the photographer's lens and was lucky enough to leave a set of photos.
Judging from the photos, the sculptors of that year relied on beams, walls, columns, and purlins to shape countless characters and decorations in a limited space, forming a complete scene and artistic conception, and the statues looked at the sky and overlooked the Nether, and the sense of space and vividness were far from being comparable to ordinary sculptures. The method of wall sculpture and hanging sculpture was pioneered by the Tang Dynasty sculptor Yang Huizhi, and the "Beiping Travel Guide" said that the Nine Heavens Palace has Yang Hui's legacy, which is not an exaggeration.
In the hanging sculpture of the main hall, Lei Zun is in the center, straddling the unicorn, with three eyes on a golden face, a golden whip in his right hand, and a thunder god trick in his left hand. Around him, the gods of the thunder tribe, under the background of auspicious clouds, held magic objects, arched the main god, and encircled the dragon on top, forming a strict and mysterious god realm.
Nanwang Liuli Archway in the gate cave of Dongyue Temple (1908)
Another angle of the main hall of the Nine Heavens Palace shows the scale of the façade hanging sculpture.
There are several different theories about the origin of Lei Zun, one is that it is the Yellow Emperor of Xuanyuan, the other is the Shenxiao True King, and the other is the Shang Feng Wang Taishi Wen Zhong in the "Romance of the Gods". Although "Romance of the Gods" is a novel, it has a wide influence among the people, and it portrays Wen Zhong "with three eyes, riding a black unicorn, and holding a double whip between male and female", and the Nine Heavenly Palace adopted this image.
The Emperor Zhenwu and the gods of the Thunder Department enshrined in the Nine Heavenly Palace represent the Taoist belief in the god of thunder, which gradually became a scale in the Ming Dynasty and was once very prosperous. The official reverence of Taoism in the Qing Dynasty was not as good as that of the Ming Dynasty, and the status of the Thunder God also declined, and the Jiutiangong gradually lost its independent status, enjoying incense only as a subordinate temple of Dongyue Temple.
In the early years of the Republic of China, the Nine Heavens Palace was still holding temple fairs, but in people's impressions, the adjacent Eighteen Prisons Temple represented hell, Dongyue Temple was the judicial organ, and the Nine Heavens Palace represented heaven.
Xiao Qian once wrote an article recalling: "Every time I visit the Dongyue Temple, I will inevitably climb to the top of the Nine Heavens Palace, climb to the top of it with difficulty, and suddenly stand on the Nine Heavens to overlook the world." These two adjacent buildings represent two very different realms, and the rewards and punishments are really clear and immediate. It was in the fear of the Seventy-Two Division and the longing for the Nine Heavenly Palace that I spent my youth in confusion. "Obviously, at this time, very few people can recognize the gods of the Thunder Division, let alone the functions of your members.
Photo: Capital Library, Liu Wending
Source: Beijing Daily Text/Wang Xuan
Process Editor: U022