Xingtian
Chinese · deity · mythic prehistory · deity
The whole myth is four lines in the Shanhaijing and it has outlasted almost everything around it, because the image is unimprovable. Tao Yuanming's poem — Xingtian brandishes his axe, his fierce will remains — made him the standing Chinese figure for refusing a defeat that has already happened, and the line is still quoted. He is one of the two or three most recognisable figures in Chinese myth and was absent from the registry entirely.
Domains
- defiance
- war
Sources
- Reference treatments of Xingtian and of his place in later mythography.