Nuwa, the Goddess who made the Chinese People
NAME: Nuwa, But varies from region to region such as Nu Kua, Ku Gua, Neu Kwa, Cang Jing or NYwa (the Y has an umlaut over it.)
SYMBOLS: Chinese Dragon (ling), five stones, chariot drawn by two winged dragons and two green hornless dragons.
USUAL IMAGE: This too varies. She is said to have the upper body of a beautiful woman while below the waist she is ether a dragon, fish or serpent depending on the tale. She is also sometimes depicted as a human woman in regale robes.
RELATIVES: P'an Kun (father, though that is pushing it as everything was said to have come from P'an Ku, she just came from him sooner.) Fuxi (Brother / Husband. Pronounced Phu - She.)
SYNODEITIES: Ptah (Egyptian), Visnu (Hindu), Yahweh (Judeo-Christian), Prometheus (Greek),
DETAILS: Nuwa, or as she is known in other regions of China, Nu Kua, Cang Jing or Nu Gua is an example of a very old type of Goddess. One who takes a half human half animal form.
The form that Nuwa was said to take depending on the story was that of a beautiful woman with the lower body of ether a fish, serpent or dragon. However as the Chinese are known as the Lung Tik Chuan Ren or People of the Dragon I would say that dragon is our best bet.
Nuwa lived in a time shortly after the world had been formed from the remains of P'an Kun after he had split the original Egg of Chaos into Yin and Yang and spent 18,000 years growing the sky, the earth and himself.
However other then her brother Fuxi there were no other intelligent beings. As Nuwa loved to make things she decided to make people.
To do this she molded them from yellow clay, she built many of them, but this proved to be too too much work, even for a Goddess. So he sped things up by taking a rope and dipping in mud and slinging it so that drops of mud fell from it, and each drop became a man or woman. In this way nobles were formed from the clay models while peasants were formed from the mud droppings.
Later after the world was filled with men and women the foundations of the sky started to fall and it was Nuwa who saved the day by melting five different stones and repairing it.
From one area and another of Ancient China there are many different legends about Nuwa, as she and Fuxi create other things, defeat evil black dragons and other feats.
Sometimes she is depicted as half-dragon half woman, sometimes as an empress. But she remains form of the oldest and most powerful female deities from one of the Earth's oldest civilizations.
- Terry McCombs
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