Yue Lao, the Old Man under the Moon, is the Chinese god of marriage and predestined union. He keeps a marriage register recording every match destiny has already fixed, and binds the two future partners together with an invisible red thread tied around their ankles, a thread that legend holds can stretch, shrink or cross any distance but never break. He owes his identity to a Tang dynasty tale rather than to ancient myth: a young man named Wei Gu, travelling during the Yuanhe era, meets an old man reading a book by moonlight in the city of Songcheng and is told the book records every marriage yet to happen. Worshippers, most often unmarried men and women, visit his temple statues to pray for a spouse, tie a red thread of their own, or take a length of the red thread sold at his shrines home as a charm.
History & Origin
First told in a Tang dynasty tale of the Yuanhe era, later collected among the Extensive Records of the Taiping Era: travelling to Qinghe, Wei Gu stops at Songcheng and finds an old man sitting under the moon reading a book he cannot decipher, which the old man explains is the register of the world's marriages, and beside him a sack of red cord for binding the feet of a future husband and wife however far apart they may be.
Facts
Belief
TheologyPolytheistic: many gods 1 Origins
Origin of the Name"Yue Lao" reads literally as "old man of the moon," short for Yue Xia Lao Ren, "the old man under the moon," the figure Wei Gu meets reading the marriage register by moonlight in the Tang tale that first names him. 1 Function
Domain / FunctionMarriage and the household 1 Domain / Function Attestation
Veneration TodayActively venerated in a living tradition 1 HistoricityNot a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 2 Attributions
Mythic AssociationYue Lao's identity derives from a Tang dynasty tale in which the traveler Wei Gu meets an old man reading a marriage register by moonlight in the city of Songcheng. 1 Cult
Attributes and IconographyA smiling, white bearded old man leaning on a staff, holding the marriage register in one hand, with strands of red thread draped over an arm or wound around a wrist. 3 Correspondences & Relations
Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Source The Encyclopedia of TaoismFabrizio Pregadio (ed.)
Sources
1. The Encyclopedia of Taoism
Fabrizio Pregadio (ed.), Routledge, 2008Entry on marriage and fate deitiesView the Source 2. The Facts on File Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend
Anthony S. Mercatante, revised and expanded by James R. Dow, Facts on File
3. Taoism and the Arts of China
Stephen Little with Shawn Eichman, The Art Institute of Chicago, 2000
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