Stories
One story says that Xuan Wu was originally a prince of Jing Le State in northern Hebei during the time of the Yellow Emperor. As he grew up, he felt the sorrow and pain of the life of ordinary people and wanted to retire to a remote mountain for cultivation of the Tao.
Another says that Xuan Wu was originally a butcher who had killed many animals unremorsefully. As days passed, he felt remorse for his sins and repented immediately by giving up butchery and retired to a remote mountain for cultivation of the Tao.
One day while he was assisting a woman in labor, while cleaning the woman’s blood stained clothes along a river, the words "Xuan Tian Shang Di" appeared before him. The woman in labor turned out to be a manifestation of the goddess Guan Yin. To redeem his sins, he dug out his own stomach and intestines and washed it in the river. The river turned into a dark, murky water. After a while, it turned into pure water.
Unfortunately, Xuan Wu did indeed lose his own stomach and intestines while he washing them in the river. The Jade Emperor was moved by his sincerity and determination to clear his sins; hence he became an Immortal known with the title of Xuan Tian Shang Ti.
After he became an immortal, his stomach and intestines after absorbing the essences of the earth, it was transformed into a demonic turtle and snake which harmed people and no one could subdue them. Eventually Xuan Wu returned back to earth to subdue them and later uses them as his means for transportation.
Read more about this topic: Xuan Wu (god)
Famous quotes containing the word stories:
“We live in a highly industrialized society and every member of the Black nation must be as academically and technologically developed as possible. To wage a revolution, we need competent teachers, doctors, nurses, electronics experts, chemists, biologists, physicists, political scientists, and so on and so forth. Black women sitting at home reading bedtime stories to their children are just not going to make it.”
—Frances Beale, African American feminist and civil rights activist. The Black Woman, ch. 14 (1970)
“Every one of my friends had a bad day somewhere in her history she wished she could forget but couldn’t. A very bad mother day changes you forever. Those were the hardest stories to tell. . . . “I could still see the red imprint of his little bum when I changed his diaper that night. I stared at my hand, as if they were alien parts of myself . . . as if they had betrayed me. From that day on, I never hit him again.””
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“Though Margery is stricken dumb
If thrown in Madge’s way,
We three make up a solitude;
For none alive to-day
Can know the stories that we know
Or say the things we say....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)