Wutong Shen

Wutong Shen (五通神) or Wulang Shen (五郎神) are a group of five sinister deities from Southern region of China. Their cult began on Tang Dynasty, and usually depicted as one legged demons. By nature wanton and lascivious, the Wutong often disguised themselves as handsome gentlemen to seduce unsuspecting and vulnerable women. Women who were ravished or possessed by these creatures lost consciousness and endured painful fits and convulsions lasting for days, even weeks, which often brought them to the brink of death

As Controversial Deity

Wutong are god of sudden and undeserved wealth, who granted money to husbands in exchange for their wives’ favors.^[1] However, the slightest offense would cause the spirits to repossess whatever largesse they had granted.

In 1685, Tang Bin 湯斌 (1627–1687), the governor of the province of Jiangsu, undertook the destruction of the Wutong temples at Suzhou, the provincial capital, and then throughout the entire province, with an aim to reform local customs and practices. The fact that women participated voluntarily or involuntarily (through possession) in these cults was a determining factor in these campaigns.^[2]

Aside from their diabolical nature, some regions in China worshiped them as benevolent deity, who bring relief from the scourge of plague

Legends

Based an episode recorded in Tales of the Listener (Yijian Zhi), there was a certain gentleman surnamed Wu, a former sandal maker who strikes it rich as a vegetable oil dealer, raises the suspicions of his neighbors. When thieves loot the houses of several local notables, people accuse Wu of the crimes. Under torture, Wu confesses that he had been visited by a one-legged spirit who offered him munificent rewards in exchange for sacrifices. After being released, Wu renovates a defunct one-legged Wutong shrine, where he holds nocturnal rites involving extravagant “bloody sacrifices,” during which his entire family sits, “heedless of rank,” naked in the dark. Such indecency, according to local lore, enabled the Wutong spirit to have his pleasure with Wu’s wife, who bore the deity’s offspring. Many years later, Wu’s eldest son marries an official’s daughter, but the well-bred wife refuses to participate in these rites. Denied this sexual conquest, the god angrily visits pestilence upon the Wu household. Only after Wu and his wife, along with the resolute daughter-in-law, fall ill and die, and their hoard of cash is scattered by violent winds, does the Wu family regret their blasphemous idolatry and halt their sacrifices to Wutong.

Another stories of Wutong were also included in Liaozhai Zhiyi (Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio) by Pu Songling (1679), According to chapter 408 of Liaozhai,^[3] The sinister Wutong (identified here as the fourth of the five spirits) forcibly imposes himself on the women, raping one and demanding the other in marriage in exchange for one hundred taels of silver. Finally the Wutong spirit is driven off by Wan the demon slayer, who cuts off one of his legs, leaving the spirit to hobble off encumbered by his trademark handicap

Based on chapter eight of Zibuyu (What The Master Would Not Discuss),^[4] a local man, disgusted by the fact that a statue of Wutong in a Buddhist monastery in Nanjing stood in a position superior to that of Guandi (Guan Yu), took the liberty of moving the statues to reverse their hierarchical order. That night the man was visited by an enraged spirit who identified himself as the “Great King Wutong.”The spirit said that although he was powerless against exalted and righteous officials like Tang Bin and Yin Jishan, he would not forgive this “petty town dweller” (shijing xiaoren) for his insolent act of desecration. The man collapsed, raving, and despite the efforts of his family members to appease the god with sacrifices, he died shortly afterward.

In Popular Cultures

Wu Tong became the main antagonist in 1991 Hong Kong movie Liaozhai yantan xu ji zhi Wutong shen (Erotic Ghost Story 2)^[5]

References

External links

• Richard Von Glahn (2004). The Sinister Way: The Divine and the Demonic in Chinese Religious Culture