Zhong Kui
Chinese · deity · mythic · Recorded classification
The standard story makes him a scholar who took the imperial examination, came first, was refused the honour because he was too ugly to present at court, killed himself on the palace steps, and was appointed by the emperor of the dead to hunt ghosts — a bureaucratic grievance turned into a divine office, which is a very Chinese sort of apotheosis. He does not appear in the registry's Chinese records at all, though his image is on more doors in the Chinese world than almost any other god's.
Domains
- exorcism
- protection
Sources
- Zhong Kui is the Daoist demon-queller, a large wrathful figure with a black beard and bulging eyes who commands eighty thousand demons and whose image protects houses against ghosts.: Reference treatments of Zhong Kui and of his iconography. (secondary)