Nü Tofu
Deity in traditional Chinese belief
Nü Tofu (Chinese: 女土蝠; lit. 'The Earth Bat of Girl') is a deity or bat-spirit in traditional Chinese spiritual beliefs. She is considered to be one of the 28 Mansions, which are Chinese constellations. These constellations are the same as studied in Western astrology. Nü Tofu originated from the ancient Chinese worship of the constellations, a spiritual practice that combines Chinese mythology and astronomy. Th star ranked 3rd of the 7 stars in the Black Tortoise of the North, associated with bats and the element of earth.
Legend
In the novel General Yue Fei, when Nü Tofu listened to the Buddha's sermon on the Lotus Sutra at Leiyin Temple with other stars. The star was fascinated and accidentally broke wind which stained the Buddhists' pure land, which made Buddhist guardian Dapeng Jinchi Mingwang furious. As a result, Dapeng swooped down from the throne and snatched Nü Tofu up in his beak, killing her. The Buddha admonished Peng for transgressing Buddhist law and exiled him to earth.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nü Tofu” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.