From Lord Hu Gong to the Enshrinement of Incense Worship into Godhood
The ancient principle of canonically sealing gods follows the Li Ji·Ji Fa: “When sage kings established sacrifice, those whose laws were applied to the people were enshrined; those who died in public service were enshrined; those whose labor settled the state were enshrined; those who could ward off great calamity were enshrined; those who could defend against great disaster were enshrined.”
Lord Hu Gong is Hu Ze, a man of the Song, with a biography in the History of Song.
Folklore holds that he once “memorialized to exempt the poll tax of the Qu and Wu people,” so had great merit in the world; after death temples were built and he was worshipped with incense and veneration. Later monks of Guanghui Temple built Hu Gong temples, using his fame to proclaim everywhere that Hu Gong believed in Buddhism and ate vegetarian and the like; later monks and temples everywhere likewise borrowed his fame, fabricating stories of Hu Gong’s affinities with their own temples to raise incense offerings—so the circulation further expanded; and still later they said he became a Bodhisattva, so Buddhism also calls him Lord Hu Gong Bodhisattva.
Historically Hu Gong temples had enormous fame. According to the Jinhua Prefectural Gazetteer: “The county people served the shrine with the utmost reverence; each year in mid-autumn, those from east and west Zhejiang who came to worship at the shrine numbered several million.”
From the founding of the modern state until before the end of the Cultural Revolution, religious management was relatively strict and these beliefs were branded feudal superstition; but after the state relaxed policy, those coming from all quarters to worship Hu Gong increased daily—most from the urban areas of Wenzhou (Lucheng, Ouhai, Longwan) and the Wenzhou-administered Dongtou County, Ruian City, and Yueqing City; next also from Qingtian, Yuhuan, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Xinjiang, the Northeast, and even abroad.
Lord Hu Gong’s fame historically was itself mainly because Buddhist temple propagation made him more widely known; once famous, other temples again fabricated all manner of stories on that fame—under repeated iteration, Hu Gong’s fame further expanded.
Yet here there is a great error: the matter of Hu Ze “memorializing to exempt the poll tax of the Qu and Wu people” is historically actually unrelated—because after Hu Ze held office at the silver-copper foundries of the Jiangnan Circuit mint, he was transferred to Jiang-Huai Pacification and Transport Commissioner; holding that post, and later transferred to Jingxi Transport Commissioner, he had no authority to memorialize on Zhejiang affairs.
And why Zhejiang’s Wu Prefecture was actually exempted from the poll tax in the first year of Mingdao (1032) was in fact prompted by a memorial from the Liangzhe Circuit Transport Commission.
In other words, the exemption of the poll tax had little to do with Hu Ze; and while Hu Ze’s character was not exactly bad, he was a small-time embezzler. At the time the Censor-in-Chief of Miscellaneous Affairs Ju Yong memorized in suggestion: “Ze is of Ding Wei’s faction, greedy and corrupt by nature—he must not again be entrusted with profit and power.”
There is evidence of his corruption: when Hu Ze served in Hebei, Palace Censor Wang Yan once borrowed an official boat from Hu Ze to sell salt, then requested a wine-station in his son’s name. Later Zhang Zonghui exposed these matters; upon investigation they were verified. The solution then was to let Hu Ze go out as prefect of Chenzhou. Liu Sui memorialized: “This man Hu Ze is treacherous and his reputation for corruption is known throughout the realm; originally when he was to be made prefect of Chizhou he refused to go, and now because of a conviction they suddenly give him a fine post—by what does the court intend to admonish officials in office?”
If so, Hu Ze’s political achievement may be called mediocre; why did he receive incense worship after death? If it were only Buddhist propaganda, it would only have spread as superstition among the lower people—but in fact Hu Gong’s influence covered the entire region.
This is because the scholar-gentry class also promoted Hu Ze. First, Hu Ze had corruption; in fact under the Song, though salaries were extremely high, honest officials were still rare—so when Song officials are generally mentioned, people usually speak of their governing achievements, and as for honesty or not, basically no one raises it.
Because the Hu Gong faith already had a quite large popular foundation, the people of Yongkang County regarded Hu Ze as a representative figure of the local gentry; so all the literati of Yongkang jointly memorialized the relevant departments, asking the court to recognize “Marquis Youshun” as Hu Ze’s divine title.
But back in the Song the sealing of “Marquis Youshun” was actually granted to the mountain spirit of Fangyan—because legend held that mountain spirit once manifested to assist the royal army in pacifying rebellion—yet the Yongkang people conflated it onto Hu Ze, saying the Fangyan spirit was Hu Ze.
Because petitions were so many, the court approved, saying the title “Marquis Youshun” was given to Hu Ze; from then Hu Ze had an official divine title, and later the court continuously added seals of Jiaying, Fuze, and Lingxian, becoming an eight-character title; in the Chunyou era of the Southern Song the “Eight-Character Marquis” rose to “Duke Xianying,” and later “Zhenghui” and “Zhongyou” were added.
Precisely because of gentry influence, the official-post problem mentioned above was in fact a huge loophole—directly leading to the Kangxi-era Yongkang County Gazetteer secretly altering Hu Gong’s official title to try to fill that loophole.
From this process one can see that Hu Ze becoming Lord Hu Gong had a highly dramatic arc; the later-venerated Lord Hu Gong in fact already differed greatly from Hu Ze himself, and in some folktales many fabricated stories were grafted onto Hu Ze—much of it completely baseless.
Yet if one asks people within the sphere of Lord Hu Gong’s faith, they all with one voice say Lord Hu Gong is extremely efficacious, and as orthodox divine faith—even those who do not believe in gods or Buddhas do not deny that Hu Gong deserves enshrinement in the Sages’ Shrine of the locality.
In earlier essays it was pointed out that in traditional understanding, once canonically sealed by the court and the people make incense worship, the departed soul leaves Fengdu, transforms from a yin spirit into a bright god, and comes under Dongyue’s jurisdiction as an earth deity. And the feature of earth deities is free movement between the human world—so whether an earth deity is efficacious depends on the interaction between the deity and the believing people.
Lord Hu Gong on one hand has a human prototype; on the other, in the course of historical transmission has gradually been packaged with a new image. Though Hu Ze had no great achievements in life, he was still very positive in doing things of public and popular benefit; so after his death, though enshrined through misunderstanding, he could still shade a region with grace.
Things in incense worship are largely like this—much is illusion; yet this illusion is not nihility—for the boundary between being and non-being can be understood not only from the material side but also the idea side. For example:
1. There is an apple
2. Imagine there is an apple
3. There is any imagination
When comparing the former two 1 and 2, from the material angle one can distinguish existence and non-being; when comparing the latter two 2 and 3, from the idea angle one can distinguish their existence and non-being. From the material angle, relative to 1, both 2 and 3 do not exist; from the idea angle, 1 and 2 both exist.
So even if imagined, once it becomes a recognition and turns into thought, even if illusory it will potentially drive human behavior—and so it is not completely illusory.
Of course this explanation is not fully comprehensive, for from the idea side alone one can only explain influence on people, and it is hard to explain matters beyond that influence; yet in reality one often sees events clearly influenced by something beyond mere humans.
For example, rain: theoretically human action is hard to influence climate; yet ancient records show rain-prayers often verified—and shrines where prayer for rain is effective are usually concentrated at fixed spots and work year after year. This is not explainable by mere survivorship bias.
Ancient people praying to gods for good harvests—timely wind and rain and abundant grain—was in fact an extravagant hope, for there are too many uncontrollable factors. Though ghosts and gods possess abilities ordinary people lack, this does not mean such power can be infinitely exaggerated. The simplest example: natural disasters or large-scale seasonal shifts caused by celestial body motion, or tsunamis and earthquakes from crustal movement—all are helpless matters.
In some myths such heaven-and-earth disasters are called divine punishment of the human world—this is merely sophistry to maintain faith. For in such myths one must on one hand constantly boast of ghost-god power, and on the other explain the domain of their helplessness—usually because the human world is too decadent, so gods stand by or deliberately punish.
This practice of strengthening faith’s unity by using fear of nature actually does not bring ghosts and gods more power. As Christianity was once a famous monotheism with believers across the West, even such a vast believing body could not make God more efficacious or manifest in the world in some material way.
For example those who worship Guanyin Bodhisattva in China are the most numerous—far more than those who worship Shakyamuni—yet the power these faiths provide cannot make Guanyin more efficacious; at least the boast in the scriptures that merely calling the Bodhisattva’s name can immediately disperse lawsuits and free one on the execution ground cannot in reality be done.
This is because any ghost-god power is actually limited; in the initial stage providing enough faith can strengthen them. From the ghost-god world of incense worship: if a god has a divine title, under them likewise assemble many ghosts and gods; and most incense worship amounts to providing food and stipend to those subordinate ghosts and gods.
So at first when believers increase, the gods of a temple seem more efficacious; but once the crowd grows to a certain point new temples must be established. Temples keep multiplying, yet efficacy differs among them—for though the same god is worshipped, in each temple the subordinate ghosts and gods are not identical.
Indians have been quite pioneering in this incense sector: they joined lifetime cultivation with posthumous worship, proposing that during life there must also be popular support; after death, if cultivation succeeds one can leave samsara and in turn protect the supporting people—linking life and death, and conceptually not valuing the individual but the organized body. For example early Buddhism’s sangha system; Mahayana later began accepting offerings—though in one point it did well: when accepting offerings it proclaimed the beneficiary was the sangha, not some particular monk or individual.
This neatly answers a doubt: what if the supporter ultimately does not succeed? Since the offering is to the body, there is always someone in the body who has succeeded (though perhaps not really), and the benefit is shared. On the other hand, these organizations also commonly proclaim that offerings bring great benefit and merit—and from their religious meaning this is indeed not wrong.
Gods constructed in incense must keep certain rules: first the prototype person must be kind, upright, and helpful (otherwise why enshrine them). Though there is no perfect personality in the world, at least the life story must have plasticity. For instance insisting that Qin Hui was loyal and patriotic—in some sense he was loyal to the sovereign, but the masses absolutely cannot accept it, for his public image is too foul.
This principle is important—especially forbidding construction of evil gods, for evil gods only bring greater destruction and are hard to root out. A typical case is the pre-Song folk cult of the Five-Tong evil god: because it proclaimed “able to make one suddenly rich,” opportunists seeking immediate profit were extremely many; though worshippers were many, it still could not be regularized and was still treated as illicit worship and forbidden. So it is not as some believe that once many believe, one becomes a court candidate for canonization.
Evil gods are not so easily forbidden—for there have always been many who ignore long-term interest and favor opportunism, so secret worship continued, repeatedly forbidden yet unending. Two methods were once used against this, both essentially substitution: the first was to switch to the Five Manifests instead—because the image and concept of Wuxian Huaguang Great Emperor differs utterly from original Five-Tong, the direction of incense was changed. The second was a Daoist who tried to reverse Five-Tong’s image, replacing evil god with orthodox god—once quite influential, though limited in geographic range; yet it formed regions where the worshipped Five-Tong image completely differed from elsewhere, no longer the original evil god.
Similarly Guan Yu shows the same feature: early Guan Yu belief was a form of fierce-spirit worship—because Guan Yu died violently on the battlefield, and later Buddhism introduced him to frighten believers, early Guan Yu himself existed as an evil fierce ghost; one worshipped to avoid harm by ghosts. This image only changed in the Song.
At the time a disaster occurred in Guan Yu’s hometown of Jiezhou, Shanxi: the Jiezhou salt pond produced no grain of salt for eight years. This was no small matter—for the profits of Jiezhou pond salt in the Northern Song reached half the realm’s tax revenue; later the share was lower but still a sixth—eight years without salt was extremely serious.
According to high antiquity legend, Chiyou after losing battle with the Yellow Emperor fell and transformed into the salt pond, so the water of the Jiezhou salt pond has always been red; that the pond stopped producing salt was thought to be Chiyou’s mischief—actually a later novelist’s addition.
The true situation then was that the Jiezhou pond water overflowed and thus production stopped; it was said the Industry Dragon caused it, and only a Heavenly Master could cure it—so they summoned the Xujing Heavenly Master, who cast an iron talisman and shocked the Industry Dragon to death, and the Jiezhou pond again produced salt.
(In the fourth year of Chongning, eighth month, an edict ordered Transport Commissioner Hu Shiwen to escort him to the capital with ritual. When he arrived the Jiezhou pond water had overflowed. The emperor asked; he replied: “The Industry Dragon is the head; only the Heavenly Master can cure it.” Zhang Jixian was summoned; an iron talisman was cast and the dragon was shocked dead, and the pond was restored.)
Because this record is very vague—what the iron talisman bore is also unclear—but according to Daoist internal accounts the Xujing Heavenly Master used Fengdu methods to summon Guan Yu, who won in battle with Chiyou, and then the Jiezhou salt pond began producing salt again.
As for whether it was truly Chiyou causing trouble then, that is probably later novelists’ addition—for however famous a Three Kingdoms general Guan Yu was, he was not on the same level as Chiyou; yet legend has no proof. Still, that after the Xujing Heavenly Master’s ritual the Jiezhou pond again produced salt is historical fact.
In fact, dynastic court seals always required merit before sealing—otherwise they could not seal. According to American scholar Valérie Hansen’s research on Southern Song folk belief, gods who received official titles by the Song did so through efficacy; and Chinese scholar Bao Weimin summarized her saying: “The more efficacious the deity, the higher the rank of the fief granted.”
The resolution of Jiezhou salt production was such a merit, so Song Huizong began sealing him as “Chongning Zhidao True Lord.” After this Guan Yu’s image was utterly transformed—from fierce ghost into an orthodox god of merit to the state—and later in the Song alone he received six seals; the Ming reached ten, and the Qing also over ten.
After later ages when Romance of the Three Kingdoms appeared, Guan Yu’s deeds became still more widely known, reaching a peak in the Ming and Qing.
Yet one must note that though the earlier Guan Yu might be called only a reckless fellow, and at first was introduced into worship as a fearsome fierce ghost, this must not be confused with later Guandi.
For whether Lord Hu Gong or Guandi, in the beginning both may have been enshrined for accidental reasons, and then by coincidence received seals; but the many later additions of seals were built on their efficacy—and this efficacy is itself the manifestation of popular feeling.
Not only these regional efficacious deeds, but also the excellent image packaged and constructed by popular devotion over many years—containing many principles of how to be human—and these things are worthy of reverence.
So whenever cultivators pass places of divine worship—provided they are not illicit shrines—they should approach with full reverence, fix their attention on the mystery, silently feel the qi field, and comprehend the spirit within.