Changxi- Chinese GodDeity"Mother of the Moons"
Also known as: Chang Xi, Chángxī, 常羲, and 常曦
Titles & Epithets
Domains
Description
Wife of the sky god Di Jun, Changxi gave birth to the twelve moons — one for each month of the year — and bathes them as they cycle through waxing and waning. She mirrors Xihe, mother of the ten suns, the two goddesses together embodying the alternation of day and night in ancient Chinese cosmology.
Mythology & Lore
The Twelve Moons
The Shanhaijing names Changxi as a wife of Di Jun, the great sky god of primordial times, and mother of his twelve moons. Di Jun fathered both the sources of daylight and the sources of night: ten suns through Xihe and twelve moons through Changxi. Each of Changxi's moons corresponds to one month of the lunar year, rising in its appointed cycle to illuminate the darkness.
Like Xihe, who bathes her sun-children in the waters of the Gan Gulf each morning before they ride their chariot across the sky, Changxi tends her moons through their monthly transformations. She bathes them as they wax from slender crescents to full brilliance and wane back again, a maternal duty that repeats endlessly, month after month, sustaining the rhythm that governed planting, harvest, and ritual observance throughout the agricultural year.
The Two Mothers
Xihe's suns blazed with heat and light. Changxi's moons were cool and reflective. Together the two mothers' children accounted for the full alternation of day and night. The ten suns structured the ten-day week; the twelve moons structured the twelve months. Every unit of time in the Chinese calendar traced back to the offspring of these two goddesses and their shared husband.