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Chinese gods and immortals are beings in various Chinese religions seen in a variety of ways and mythological contexts.
Many are worshiped as deities because traditional Chinese religion is polytheistic, stemming from a pantheistic view that divinity is inherent in the world.[1]
The gods are energies or principles revealing, imitating, and propagating the way of heaven (天, Tian),[2] which is the supreme godhead manifesting in the northern culmen of the starry vault of the skies and its order.[citation needed] Many gods are ancestors or men who became deities for their heavenly achievements. Most gods are also identified with stars and constellations.[3] Ancestors are regarded as the equivalent of Heaven within human society,[4] and therefore, as the means of connecting back to Heaven, which is the "utmost ancestral father" (曾祖父, zēngzǔfù).[5]
There are a variety of immortals in Chinese thought, and one major type is the xian, which is thought in some religious Taoism movements to be a human given long or infinite life. Gods are innumerable, as every phenomenon has or is one or more gods, and they are organised in a complex celestial hierarchy.[6] Besides the traditional worship of these entities, Chinese folk religion, Chinese Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and formal thinkers in general give theological interpretations affirming a monistic essence of divinity.[7]
- ^ Lü & Gong (2014), p. 71.
- ^ "tian". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2023-04-28.
- ^ Didier (2009), passim.
- ^ Zhong (2014), pp. 76–77.
- ^ Zhong (2014), p. 84, note 282.
- ^ 民間信仰的神明概念 [Hierarchic organisation of the spiritual world]. web.sgjh.tn.edu.tw. Archived from the original on 2017-11-07. Retrieved 2017-11-01.
- ^ Zhong (2014), p. 98 ff.