Cheng-huang Ye: The Lord of Wall & Moat.

NAME: Ch'eng Huang Ye (Lord of Wall and Moat). Usually with the name of the City such as Xien added to the end.

SYMBOLS: Items used by a city magistrate.

USUAL IMAGE: Depends on which one you are talking about. While most are seen as elderly men some have very distinctive appearances.

One City God who died from drowning because his superior told him to say in a certain area, which he did even when rains brought rains and the water was over his head is depicted as dark skinned and somewhat bloated.

While the official who told him to stay there and is also a City God is shown with a long neck and a protruding tongue due to his hanging himself when he found the result of his orders being followed. Sometimes it ain't easy even being a god I guess.

HOLY DAYS: Depends on the City God in question. Each of which is different. Though most are held during the seventh lunar month which is the Ghost Month.

PLACE OF WORSHIP: Always within the walls of the city he protects.

MAJOR TABOOS: Injustice, harm coming to the people or city under his protection, or at least that injustice going unavenged.

RELATIVES: Whomever the relatives of the City God were before his death. Though I am not sure they get to live with the promoted human in the realms Celestial.

FORM OF WORSHIP: While a temple is built for the City God where prayers and incense can be offered, and petitions written to there is a type of worship common to them.

The main form of worship was a yearly festival (from the Chinese festive Re-Nao which means `hot and noisy') where the image of the city's Ch'eng Huang Ye is paraded around the perimeter city under his protection to the accompaniment of fireworks, noise, and much food and merriment.

SYNODEITIES: Geniuses & Junoes (Greek) While the genius and the juno were thought of as sort of "guardian angels" of individuals (men had Geniuses, women had Junoes) which was drawn from the person's ancestors and protected him their whole life. It was also thought that whole cities had Geniuses that looked after them. While the individual Genius or Juno was thought to look like a winged youth, a cities' was seen as a serpent. / Kan-u-Uayeyab (Mayan) The Mayan considered cities living beings, so much so that they did not like to tear down and remove buildings when one had out lived it usefulness, but instead would just flatten it and then build the new building on top of the old one.

DETAILS: Every city in China had a Chang-huang Ye which meant Lord of Wall and Moat. That is not to say that this was a diety who was worshipped throughout the land, but a group of gods who all did the same thing.

Think of them being like a local post master or chief of police. The job was the same, it is just held by a different god in each city.

More notable is that these City Gods were always called from the ranks of ordinary humans. Usually from come city official or solder who had distinguished himself.

After his death the Gods would pick him to fill the office and let this appointment known via dreams.

It was the Chang-huang Ye's job to watch over the city and see to it that it had plentiful rain and a good harvest. He was also assigned to see that justice was done and injustices reported both to gods higher up and to humans in their dreams.

The City Gods were seen as just doing their job in a huge and powerful bureaucracy that stretched from the Jade Emperor at the top down to the smallest spirits who saw to it that the stove in someone's home did it's assigned task.

Heaven & the Universe a vast bureaucracy, and it's a good thing..... To each his own I guess.