[Editor’s Note: This series is included as a chapter in Goddesses in Culture, History and Myth .]
Goddess Gemu’s Influence on Mosou Traditions
Lugu Lake with the Goddess Gemu and her lover, Hu Zhau. Photo, K. Rodin
Children are thought to become adults at a ceremony when they turn thirteen, at which time they can participate in all adult activity, including choosing their own partners from other villages. They often stay with each other for two to three years, but may change partners at any time. Around age seventeen they are ready for an ahzu relationship. Ahzu courtship begins when a boy sends his chosen girl a special dress and scarf. If she accepts them, then she is interested in pursuing the relationship. Once they are ready to become seriously involved, the girl will tie a shawl waist belt around the boy’s middle. This means they have become an ahzu couple. Not all relationships end up as ahzu relationships. The partnering today involves the Mosuo boy leaving his home around midnight wearing a cowboy hat to spend time with his girlfriend. Before the visit he needs three things: a cowboy hat to hide his identity and to hang on the door as a “do not disturb” sign), pebbles to throw to the window (when she comes she opens the window or door for him, if she doesn’t want his advances he’ll get a bucket of water thrown on him. If allowed in he can climb up the side of the house and enter her room), he also needs a good relationship with the dog, so he brings meat for the dog to keep him quiet. Most Mosuo households have dogs as according to legend they traded their allotted time on earth with people, so keeping the dog happy is important to any budding relationship. By four or five in the morning the boy returns home and works in his own family’s fields.
The stories of the Goddess Gemu demonstrate some fairly typical aspects of many Asian goddess narratives. She is associated with the womb of mother earth through her presence in a cave high on a sacred mountain. She was been the object of desire and jealousy which led to a physical transformation. The threatening role of the Sky God and the subjugation of the goddess’s wishes to his power is seen in numerous narratives across Eurasia. Through her personal struggles, though, she became the protector of the people who worship her. In the Gemu stories, she is additionally merged with the ancestor worship traditions in China and in earlier Asian shamanic cultures, including forms of Mongolian shamanism, which also highlights the role of the Sky God as the main force in the cosmos. Ancestor worship is considered crucial to maintaining a harmonious relationship between the spirit and human worlds as the ancestors are the intercessors for the family/clan with the unseen spirits. Gemu, as the blended beautiful girl-mother figure for the Mosuo, is the ancestor of the clan and as such needs to be worshipped and respected. Failing to do so will bring not just the individual, but the entire clan into difficulties. Chinese and Mongolian ancestor spirits are known to cause havoc if they believe they have been neglected. Tibet, which was on the trade corridor with the people of the greater Lijiang and Lugu Lake region prior to the closing of the border in the late 19th century, had its own distinct indigenous forms of shamanism, Bön, which merged with the worship of the Goddess Gemu.
(To be continued.)
Meet Mago Contributor, Krista Rodin.