A trickster who respects only someone who keeps their word
Warning
He will test the terms of any bargain
Resonance
The stubborn the restless those who need out of a cage
Symbols
Ruyi jingu bangGolden headbandCloud somersaultPeachStone eggFive elements mountain
Mythology Summary
Sun Wukong is the stone-born monkey of Wu Cheng'en's sixteenth-century novel Xiyou ji (Journey to the West), built on earlier Tang and Song storytelling and on older monkey and water-demon figures. He learns immortality, takes the Ruyi Jingu Bang from the Dragon King, erases his name from the registers of death, is pinned under the Five Elements Mountain by the Buddha after wrecking heaven, and becomes the Victorious Fighting Buddha at the end of the pilgrimage. The novel is fiction, but the cult of Qitian Dasheng, the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, is a real and living one in Fujian, Taiwan and Chinese communities across Southeast Asia.
Modern Practice
Temples to the Great Sage are kept with fruit, tea and firecrackers, and he is asked for the things a trickster can give: a way out, a broken seal, the nerve to refuse. Practitioners also use him as a figure for the untrained mind, the monkey of the mind that the pilgrimage is meant to tame.