Qinglong
Qinglong is the Azure Dragon of the East, one of the four celestial animals (Si Xiang) that divide the sky and the year. Its quarter is the east, its season spring, its phase wood, its colour azure, and its mansion group the eastern twenty-eight of the Chinese lunar mansions.
A celestial animal, not a personal deity with a biography or a cult; the Daoist name Meng Zhang is a later personification. The Chinese phase is wood, which this corpus's Western element set cannot carry, so the element field is an overlay; the traditional associations are east, spring, wood, azure and rain.
Correspondences
Offerings
- Offerings
- IncenseGreen teaWaterJadeSpring flowers
Sacred timing
Symbols and forms
- Alternate Names
- Azure DragonBlue DragonQing LongMeng Zhang
- Gender Expression
- Neither
- Titles
- Azure Dragon of the EastGuardian of the EastMeng ZhangLord of the Spring
- Symbols
- Azure dragonEastSpringWoodRainThe 28 mansions
Practice
- Invocation Approach
- ToneDirectional reverentAddressAzure DragonQinglongMeng ZhangRelationshipThe power of the eastern quarter not a person to bargain withWarningIt is a direction before it is a deityResonanceThose who begin something those who keep a garden or a household those who need the rain
- Modern Practice
Used as a marker of beginning: the east wall, the spring, the first movement of a project. The practice is orientation — face the direction, name the season, and start.
Nature and meaning
- Domain
- EastSpringWoodRainBeginningsGrowthGuardianshipImperial favour
- Mythology Summary
Qinglong is the Azure Dragon of the East, one of the four celestial animals (Si Xiang) that divide the sky and the year. Its quarter is the east, its season spring, its phase wood, its colour azure, and its mansion group the eastern twenty-eight of the Chinese lunar mansions. It is a cosmological power rather than a narrative god, absorbed into Daoist cosmology as Meng Zhang, one of the four directional guardians, and into the imperial imagery of the dragon as the rain-bringer and the emperor's sign.
- Related Deities
- BaihuZhuqueXuanwuJade Emperor
Details
- Correspondences
- ColorsGreenBlueScentsSandalwoodCedarMetalsBronzeGoldAnimalsDragonCraneTiger
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