On the fifteenth day of the eight lunar
month, the moon over China is at its brightest and most brilliantly
glowing.
On this night, a grand festival is made
of offerings to the Goddess and her legions of the moon. They receive mooncakes, fruits, sweet meats and all things wonderful from the dinner
table in the midst of fluttering lanterns -- animals, automobiles,
airplanes made of bamboo and wire papered over in rainbow colors that
flicker and glow when held high on house pillars or nearby trees.
To Chinese children, this is their
Lantern Festival. Many friendships are made during this night of lights,
when new friends dare tread together to those previously dark places now
lit by lanterns and a full moon. If by chance they meet a phantom of the
night in this delightful time of lights, it’s time to ask what legends
presage the celebration of a world-wide community of Chinese people.
Around 2000 B.C., there ruled in Imperial
China, an emperor, Son of Heaven and Lord of Ten Thousand Years, who had
a peculiar talent for sensing by sight alone the phenomena we now called
"earth-warming." One fine summer afternoon, while
listening to one of his imperial concubines playing the PiPa (a pear
shaped mandolin), and gazing toward his Summer Palace Gazebo, he saw ten
suns overlapping each other, beating sharp rays never seen before.
Ever conscious of his role as protector of the community, he feared the
overpowering suns would scorch the people, dry up wells, rice paddies,
lakes and seas. The earth, be dreaded, would overheat and burn to its
horrific conclusion.
What was to be done? Quickly he summoned
his imperial presence, General Hou Yih, an officer guardsman of the
imperial household guards, who distinguished himself as his Lord
Protector by having been a very skilled archer of tremendous strength.
When he was told of the ten overlapping suns burning brightly at noon
and threatening to scorch all on earth, he immediately shot nine arrows
aimed at nine suns across the sky. They were reported to be on target,
and by the evening, only one sun was going down over the meadows.
Earthwarming was no longer a threat to life, limb, and agriculture.
His Imperial Majesty and his consort, the
Empress, were impressed. Soon, the Goddess of the Western Heavenly Realm
beard of General Hou's giant Leap for mankind. She commissioned him to
be architect and imperial builder of a multi-colored rainbow palace from
her imperial collection of jade, a gem stone valued highly by the
Chinese Imperial Dynasties and henceforth by Chinese people everywhere.
Naturally, as a General, he was able to
marshall the sinew of armed men for the building project. The Palace was
so well built and so appropriate as a fortress that Her Imperial Majesty
felt that it would be a tragedy that a man so gifted should die a
premature death, either in a battle or by accident. Therefore, she
decided to confer eternal life on him by offering as a reward the
"Elixir of Immortality-Life Eternal" in the form of the
"Pill of Life Eternally" on the singular condition that he was
not to swallow it until a full year of prayerful contemplation and
fasting at a local monastery. He took it home, but busy with imperial
duties, he had it hidden in a secret place without telling his Wife Lady
O-Chang about the potent power of the Pill.
While away on one of his imperial
missions, Lady O-Chang accidentally found the pill in its secret hiding
place and swallowed it. Lo and Behold! She was airborne within seconds
and bound for eternal banishment to the full brilliant moon above to
complement the divine natural beauty of the moon with her own beautiful
attributes of form and substance. As she was soaring like an eagle at
full flight, contrary to the earthly laws of gravity. General Hou saw
this totally unexpected turn of events and took arms in hot pursuit.
However, as if by divine intervention,
typhoon winds swept and turned him back to earth. His was the earth and
all therein to cherish and love till the end of his days Lady O-Chang,
on the other hand, became the divinely beautiful Moon Goddess whose
celestial realm was the Moon and stars that twinkle like a thousand
points of light in a heavenly dance, fluttering, flickering, to and for
across the skies at night, delighting one and all, especially during
this season of the mid-Autumn Moon, when the celestial Goddess of the
moon makes her appearance at the offerings put forward by earth people!
Children are asked to concentrate quietly
at these prayerful offerings, for deep thoughts and clear minds do
sometimes render the unexpected sighting of this phantom goddess of the
night. For some five thousand years now, during the August Moon
Festival, Chinese elders repeat this epic legend of magic for children
and to all who would listen of how, why, and when this Festive Day and
Night is celebrated. Lady O-Chang has reached the status of immortality
in the form and substance of the Goddess, as lovely as she ever was
while here on earth.
- the end
