Domina Tempora

Thunderstorms were one of the most powerful and frightening natural phenomena encountered by the ancients. However, it paradoxically also brought life-giving rain. The universal experience of thunder and lightning shared by cultures around the world gave rise to many similar legends which explain these phenomena as caused by gods and spirits in the sky. Many similarities are found in the figures of the thunder gods or the personifications of the forces of thunder in different cultures around the world.

Thunder gods such as Indra in Hindu mythology and Zeus in Greek mythology are so powerful that they were also known as the king of the gods. Inscriptions on the Boghazkoi clay tablets dated to about 1400 BC mentioned Indra reverentially as a deity as well as three other names. The names are Mitra (the god of light), Varuna (the god of sky and water) and Nasatya-Asvin (the youthful divine twin horsemen who travelled in a chariot drawn by horses that are never weary). With Indra, they are revered deities of the Vedic pantheon. Indra is the king of svarga (heaven) and the devas (deities). He is the god of the heavens, lightning, thunder, storms, rain, river flows and war. He is also celebrated as the one who kills the great symbolic evil named Vritra who obstructs human prosperity and happiness. Indra’s iconography shows him riding a white elephant and wielding a thunderbolt known as Vajra, riding on a white elephant known as Airvata. Indra’s heavenly home is on Mount Meru.

Zeus stories and powers are similar, though not identical as Indra. Living in Mount Olympus, Zeus was respected as an allfather, chief of the gods. Pausanias observes that “…Zeus is king in heaven is a saying common to all men”. Zeus is also often depicted as carrying a thunderbolt. Despite not being the king of the gods, Norse mythology’s hammer-wielding Thor, with his power over lightning and thunder,  was also described as a heroic leader and protector of mankind. Although Indra, Thor and Zeus are probably the most well-known, they are of course not the only thunder gods. A slightly more modest thunder god from Chinese mythology is Lei Gong who carries a drum and a mallet to create thunder, and a chisel to punish any humans who have done wrong.

Deities and Never-Ending Reports: Understanding the Chinese Pantheon

Lei Gong is different from the other, more well-known, thunder gods as he is not as clearly defined as an individual god. To understand the reason for this, it is useful for us to first understand how the Chinese pantheon is presented. The Chinese religion recognizes three domains in the cosmos – heaven, earth and the underworld. Each domain is populated by a host of gods and goddesses. It also is helpful to understand that the social organization of the human government is the essential model that the ancient Chinese use when imagining the gods. Therefore, the ancient Chinese conception of gods is based on the Chinese bureaucracy. The heavenly domain is ruled by the Yu Huang (the Jade Emperor) who presides over a court of deities worshipped throughout China. The Jade Emperor in heaven corresponds to Tianzi (the Son of Heaven), the sacred imperial title of the Chinese emperor who is believed to rule over the earth. The title originated with the ancient Zhou dynasty (c. 1046 BC–256 BC). The Jade Emperor is in charge of a heavenly administration which are divided into bureaus and each god working under his leadership takes responsibility for a clearly defined function.

The local officials of the celestial administration are the city gods, or the gods of walls and moats who are each responsible for one locality. Working under them are the kitchen gods, also known as the gods of the hearth. Each family are assigned one kitchen god who would generate an eternal flow of reports on the people under their jurisdiction. The kitchen gods are in turn assisted by gods believed to dwell inside each person’s body. These bodily gods accompany people through life and into death, also carrying with them the records of good and evil deeds committed by their charges. The officers of the underworld, the Ten Magistrates of Hell, are those who administer punishment to deceased spirits passing through the Underworld. Each magistrate had control over a specific “hell”. They also have a never-ending flow of reports to fill out and jails to manage.

Important gods at the Jade Emperor’s Court included Mazu, the Tian Hou (the Empress of Heaven). She was a sea goddess protector of fishermen, and Guan Yu, who was linked to warfare and military valor. Both Mazu and Guan Yu were mortals who had led exemplary lives and became gods after death. Mazu is said to have been a young woman named Lin Moniang who lived during the 10th century while Guan Yu was a famous warrior of the late Han dynasty (206 BC-220 CE).

The Early Lives of Lei Gong, the Duke of Thunder and Lei Chen-tzu, the Spirit of Thunder

When ordered by the Jade Emperor, Lei Gong (the Duke of Thunder) the god of thunder, punishes both earthly mortals guilty of secret crimes and evil spirits who have harmed human beings. Lei Gong is an official in the Ministry of Thunder and Storms which forms a part of the celestial administration.

Lei Gong has been described as having the shape of the Indian divine bird Garuda. However, Wang Ch’ung’s Lun Heng (variously translated as ”Balanced Enquiries”, ”Fair Discussions”, or just ”Critical Essays”) says that in the first century BC, when Buddhism was not yet introduced into China, Lei Gong was represented as a strong man with one hand dragging a cluster of drums and with the other brandishing a hammer. Thus Lei Gong already existed even before the arrival of Indian influence in China. His later image as Garuda may have been due to the influence of the Indian rain-god Vajrapani who, in one of his forms, appears with Garuda wings.

Like Mazu and Guan Yu, Lei Gong began his life as a mortal. While on earth, he encountered a heavenly peach tree during the struggle between the fox demon and one of the celestial warriors. When Lei Gong took a bite out of one of its fruit he was transformed into his godly form and received a hammer which had the power to create thunder.

Other versions of Lei Gong’s life before his deification were a bit more sensational.  Lei Gong’s father was a hunter named Chen Gong who lived in Leizhou. Although Chen Gong lived alone, he had an unusual dog which had nine ears. The ears of the dog helped him predict how many animals he would catch each day. If five of the dog’s ears moved, Chen Gong would catch five animals that day.

One day, all nine ears of his dog moved as the dog saw an egg in the middle of the forest and brought it back to his master’s house. The egg hatched on the way and out came a baby boy. He had the character Lei (thunder) on his left palm. Chen Gong adopted the baby as his own and gave him the name Lei Gong. When he grew up, Lei Gong became the appointed governor of his city and worshipped as the god of thunder when he died.

Lei Gong’s origin story is often conflated by that of another mythological figure Lei Chen-tzu, the Spirit of Thunder. Lei Chen-Tzu took on the form of a dragon to save his adoptive father Wen Wang (1112 – 1050 BC) who was taken prisoner. As a child, Lei Chen-tzu was known as Wen Yu. Wen Yu was hatched from an egg after a clap of thunder. He was then found by the soldiers of Wen Wang, a count of Zhou during the late Shang dynasty in ancient China, in a bush near an old tomb. Wen Wang, who already had ninety-nine children, adopted the baby as his hundredth and gave him the name Wen Yu, but gave it to a hermit named Yun Chung-tzu to rear as his disciple. It was the hermit who later showed Wen Yu the way to rescue his adopted father from the tyrant who held him prisoner. In his journey to look for some powerful weapons to help him rescue his father, Wen Yu found two fruits on the hillside and ate them. He then noticed that wings had grown on his shoulders and was too ashamed to return home.

But the hermit, who intuitively knew what had happened to his charge, sent a servant to look for him. When he saw Wen Yu, the servant cried in fear as the mysterious fruit had caused Wen Yu’s face to become green, his nose long and pointed, and two tusks protruded horizontally from each side of his mouth, while his eyes shone like mirrors. In short, Wen Yu had become a dragon. In his dragon form, Wen Yu rescued Wen Wang. After bringing his father home safely, Wen Yu then left to seek enlightenment.

In his iconography, Lei Chen-Tzu is often represented as a bat-winged demon, with clawed feet, monkey’s head and eagle’s beak. He holds a steel chisel in one hand and a spiritual hammer in the other with which he beats numerous drums strung around his body, thus producing the terrific sound of thunder.

Lei Tsu and the Ministry of Thunder and Storms

Lei Gong was not the king of the gods, or even the leader of the Ministry of Thunder and Storms of which he forms a part. The principal official of the ministry was Lei Tsu, the Ancestor of Thunder. Other gods in the ministry included Lei Gong, the Duke of Thunder himself, Tien Mu, the Mother of Lightning as well as Lei Gong’s wife, who uses flashing mirrors to send bolts of lightning across the sky. Another official was Feng Po, the Count of the Wind, who was depicted as a grotesque deity with the body of a deer, the head of a bird, the tail of a snake and the patterns of a leopard. However, in the Ming dynasty, he was depicted as a simple old man with a white beard carrying a fan. The last official was Y’u Shih, the Master of Rain who causes downpours by dipping his sword into a pot. Although they are not evil, the four gods roughly correspond to the Buddhist Asuras, the mightiest of all demonic enemies of the devas and the Vedic Maruta (storm-demons). In the temples, Lei Tsu is placed in the centre with the other four gods to his right and left.

Lei Tsu has three eyes. One of his eyes is in the middle of his forehead. When this eye is opened, a ray of white light proceeded to a distance of more than two feet. Mounted on a black unicorn, Lei Tsu could travel millions of miles in a blink of an eye. His origin is ascribed to a man named Wen Chung, a minister of the tyrant king Chou (1154–1122 BC), and fought against the armies of the Chou dynasty. When he was defeated, Wen Chung escaped of the mountains of Chueh-lung Ling, where another marshal, Yun Chung-tzu, stood in his way. Yun’s hands had the power of producing lightning, and he conjured eight columns of mysterious fire out of the earth to completely envelope Wen Chung. Ninety fiery dragons came out of each coloumns and flew away up into the air. The sky was blood red and the earth shook with claps of thunder. Wen Chung died in this fiery prison.

When the new dynasty was victorious, by order of Yuan-shih T’ien-tsun, the first principal god under the Jade Emperor himself, Chiang Tzu-ya, a Zhou minister, conferred the supreme direction of the Ministry of Thunder to Wen Chung, thus appointing him celestial prince and defender of the laws governing the distribution of clouds and rain.