AT THE VERY BEGINNING OF HER REGENCY as grand dowager in 684, Wu Zhao designated Luoyang her Divine Capital. Naturally, she sought to utilize the cultural and political currency vested in her new seat of power. This chapter examines the role of Consort Fu (Fufei 宓妃), the goddess of the Luo River (Luoshen nü 洛神女), in magnifying Wu Zhao’s political authority.
THE GODDESS OF THE LUO
“The waters of the Lo River,” Edward Schafer observed of the watercourse that meanders through Luoyang, “enjoyed a reputation as venerable as those of the great Ho itself, into which it ultimately empties. They appear prominently in the earliest Chinese literature and never lost their nostalgic fascination, which depended finally on the central position of the river in the ancient plains civilization of Shang.”1 Though sacrifices were made to the river from remote antiquity, the earliest textual appearance of an anthropomorphized Luo River goddess is in “Li Sao” 離騷, the famous lyric-poem of Qu Yuan. On his celestial ramblings, the protagonist in this verse encountered various goddesses and noblewomen before meeting the lovely Consort Fu:
I order Fenglong to ride a cloud,
and find the location of Fufei.
Loosening the girdle-band as my word of betrothal,
I order Jianxiu to be the go-between.
Numerous and confused are the separations and unions.
Obstinate and rebellious she is difficult to move.
In the evenings she returns to sojourn at Qiongshi.
In the mornings she washes her hair in Weipan stream.
She guards her beauty with arrogance.
She amuses herself every day with licentious wanderings.
Though indeed beautiful, she has no propriety.
Let us leave her and find someone else.2
Finding this poetic vision of the Luo River goddess too headstrong and flighty, the protagonist abandons his pursuit.3
Third-century commentator Ru Chun remarked that Consort Fu—in his mythic rendition the daughter of world creator Fuxi—drowned in the Luo River (Luoshui 洛水) and was resurrected as a goddess.4 Perhaps the most evocative depiction of the Luo goddess comes from Cao Zhi’s (192–232) famous “Rhapsody of the Luo Goddess” (Luoshen fu 洛神賦), written to honor his elder brother Cao Pi (r. 220–226), the first emperor of the Wei (220–265), and to exalt the sacred environs of Luoyang, where Cao Pi had fixed his capital. According to some traditions, Cao Zhi composed the poem to express his unrequited love for his elder brother’s wife, Empress Zhen.5 He describes the Luo River goddess as an arrestingly beautiful woman regally accoutered in a headdress of gold, pearls, and kingfisher feathers. “Fluttering like a swan, twisting and turning like a dragon,” she shimmered, “sparkling like the sun rising from morning mists . . . flaming like a lotus flower topping the green waves.” Clearly a goddess, she trails “airy trains of mistlike gauze” as she moves wreathed in a fragrant “haze of unseen orchids.”6 The ambience of Cao Zhi’s evocative verse left an enduring resonance, informing Tang-era depictions of women as elegant divinities; in Wu Zhao’s era, this image of the Luo River goddess as a transcendent beauty was still fresh in collective literary and poetic consciousness. Written late in Gaozong’s reign (or during Wu Zhao’s regency), Li Shan’s (d. 689) Selections of Refined Literature (Wenxuan 文選) contained Cao Zhi’s celebrated rhapsody with an accompanying commentary.7
Inspired by Cao Zhi’s poem, Emperor Ming of Jin (r. 323–325) is reputed to have painted a picture of this bewitching river deity.8 Originally painted by the “matchless painter” (hua jue 畫絕) Gu Kaizhi (345–409), a picture scroll of the Luo River goddess has been preserved in several extant Song-era reproductions. Patricia Karetzky describes the river goddess in one of these reproductions as “a court beauty in her aquatic domain—slender and petite, with discreetly dressed hair studded with adornments . . . swathed in a long silk robe with fluttering scarves.”9 This pictorial image further animated Cao Zhi’s literary rendering of the goddess. “From Gu Kaizhi on,” Susan Nelson has observed, “dream girls and river nymphs—filmy, sylph-like beings—have been pictured in wafting clothing and lightsome attitudes.”10 Though only Song-era reproductions remain, Zhang Mingxue, among other contemporary scholars, has remarked on the consummate skill and artistry with which Gu Kaizhi recreated Cao Zhi’s peerless riparian goddess.11 More pertinent to the present exploration, Wu Hong has noted that Gu Kaizhi’s invented iconographic tradition of the surpassing woman-goddess reached its zenith in the Tang.12
But the Luo River goddess was reckoned far more than an elegant beauty. With Luoyang as their capital, rulers of the Eastern Han and Jin (265–420) dynasties worshipped the Luo River, praying for rain, protection, and blessings. To relieve a protracted drought, an Eastern Han emperor sent an emissary to the Luo River to pray for rain.13 During the Jin, “in spring and autumn ministers and nobles on down to common folk went to the banks of the Luo River to perform the rite of apotropaic purification.”14 Under Jin Wudi (r. 265–290), an imperial concubine suffering from an illness went to the Luo seeking ritual purification.15 Long before Wu Zhao’s time, the waters of the Luo were believed to possess great healing and evil-warding powers.
In The Divine Woman, Edward Schafer observes that the goddess of the Luo River appears in Tang poetry as “a pert, contemporary belle, almost a courtesan . . . a metaphor for a secular charmer,” though on occasions she was also represented as “a gossamer, moonlit sylph.”16 He registers disappointment that in the usually capable hands of vaunted Tang poets the Luo River goddess is painted in a conventional manner with “tedious” strokes: slender-waisted, mothlike eyebrows, fragrant, and fragile, “tremulously white, like bleached silk, like a white lotus, like soft moonlight, like drifting snow.”17 Tang prose literature, not surprisingly, features trysts between gifted young scholars and the lovely river divinity. Du Mu’s (803–852) one-chapter Chronicle of Dragon Ladies (Longnüzhuan 龍女傳) recounts a liaison between the zither-strumming literatus Xiao Kuang and the Luo River goddess.18 In the late Tang, in poet-official Xu Ning’s “Peony,” the river divinity appears as one capable of generating natural beauty:
Who doesn’t adore the lovely peony?
Divinely blessed, of all the flowers in the city it most commands the gaze.
Seemingly, it was crafted by the goddess of the Luo River:
Who with boundless elegance and floral grace excels the roseate dawn.19
Luoyang is still known as the “City of Peonies” (Mudan cheng 牡丹城): the flower, like the river and the goddess, constitutes an iconic part of the image of the polis. Nonetheless, for the goddess to be a useful member of her pantheon, Wu Zhao needed something more vigorous and substantive than this evanescent poetic image.
In Daoist chronicler Du Guangting’s (850–933) description of the Luo River goddess in Register of the Assembled Transcendents of the Walled City (composed in the final years of the Tang), it is written that the goddess “achieved the dao becoming a water immortal, and thereupon became ruler of the Luo River.” She held floating banquets, hosting other female immortals.20 This later representation of the Luo River divinity as a potent goddess tallies more closely, perhaps, with Wu Zhao’s desired image.
ELEVATING LUOYANG, THE DIVINE CAPITAL
Luoyang, situated in the middle of the Yellow River valley in the northern part of modern-day Henan, was more proximate to the center of the Tang empire than Chang’an. With monumental architecture and elaborate symbols, Wu Zhao impressed her own distinctive ideological brand upon this city, making it her own capital.
The ancients called greater Luoyang, an area known for its rich natural bounty, the “Center of Heaven” (Tianzhong 天中). The legendary sage-kings of the Xia reputedly hailed from this region. Vestiges of Shang palaces have been excavated in the vicinity of Luoyang. In the Western Zhou, the vaunted Duke of Zhou, determined that Luoyang was a highly auspicious site upon which to build a new settlement.21 Subsequently, in the Eastern Zhou, Eastern Han, Wei, and Jin dynasties, Luoyang served as the capital. In 605, Sui Yangdi (r. 604–618) moved the capital from Chang’an back to Luoyang. In addition, by completing the Grand Canal, linking north to south, he elevated Luoyang’s role as a hub of commerce.22
Shortly after Wu Zhao rose to become empress in 655, the prominence of Luoyang was enhanced. In 658, Gaozong made an imperial progress eastward from Chang’an and proclaimed Luoyang the eastern capital (Dongdu 東都).23 Chang’an, the epicenter of Tang power, was in the Guanzhong region to the west. The imperial Li family shared long-standing ties with a bloc of powerful, entrenched Guanzhong families. There were other such powerful blocs in Shandong to the east and in southern China. The daughter of a Taiyuan lumber merchant, Wu Zhao could depend upon neither support nor sympathy from these powerful blocs. Luoyang offered a central locale, a neutral venue perfectly situated between the Guanzhong and Shandong.24
Immediately after Gaozong was buried outside Chang’an in 684, grand dowager Wu Zhao launched a campaign to build Luoyang into a city rivaling that great Tang cosmopolis. To superimpose her present administration upon the past golden age, she implemented a series of reforms. In assigning new names to bureaucratic offices, she drew upon archaic titles from the Rites of Zhou and the Book of History. And in late autumn of 684, Luoyang was elevated from eastern capital to Divine Capital.25
Rhetoricians worked to exalt Wu Zhao and her Divine Capital. The famous apocryphal Commentary on the Great Cloud Sutra, composed in 690 by the monk Xue Huaiyi, Wu Zhao’s reputed lover, and other Buddhist propagandists on the eve of her establishment of the Zhou dynasty, contains a series of prophecies geared to show her inevitable ascent as female ruler, bodhisattva, and cakravartin.26 The Commentary cites a passage from the Guangwu inscription, a river-borne stone purportedly found in the Si River in 68827 that contained the mystical words, “The King is at Luoyang.” The propagandists handily interpret the king to be “the Divine Sovereign [Shenhuang 神皇, part of the title Wu Zhao assumed in 688] who reigns at the Divine Capital.”28 Elsewhere in the Guangwu inscription, it is recorded, “[She] will not run away, [she] will not fly high: [she] will be composedly seated in the center with no need to move.” The propagandists analyze that “the center” refers to “the Divine Capital, which is at the ‘center of the territory’; once more the meaning of the Divine Sovereign reigning majestically over Luoyang is made clear.”29
In 690, atop Zetian Gate in Luoyang, Wu Zhao terminated the Tang and inaugurated the Zhou dynasty.30 The state altars of grain and soil were established in her Divine Capital, and she set up seven imperial temples for the Wu clan, a number befitting an imperial clan.31 In 691, thousands of families were moved from Guanzhong to fill Luoyang.32 In 693, city walls were erected.33
Wu Zhao filled her Divine Capital with a formidable panoply of her might.34 Completed in 694, the spectacular centerpiece of her dynastic capital was the Axis of the Sky (Tianshu 天樞), a hundred-foot pillar of bronze set on an iron mountain, surmounted by a scintillating fire pearl on a cloud canopy held aloft by a quartet of dragons. Surrounded by mysterious guardian beasts, it was deployed where all entering Luoyang could witness its splendor—outside the southern gate of the Imperial City next to Heaven’s Ford Bridge at the trifurcation of the Luo River.35 Her awe-inspiring Bright Hall complexes, joint ceremonial and administrative centers, towered over the city—elaborate ideological amalgams combining Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian elements.36 Arrayed before this new political and religious emblem of her authority, she set, on a monumental scale, her interpretation of the Nine Tripods (Jiu ding 九鼎), sacred vessels symbolizing moral authority and political legitimacy lifted from canonical lore.37 The aura of her Divine Capital spread beyond the city walls. She established nine prefectures in the Luoyang vicinity, including Zhengzhou and Bianzhou as imperial domains.38 Garrisons were set up in the surrounding area to fortify the new capital.39
SANCTIFYING THE LUO RIVER
Deifying the Luo River and worshipping its personification, the Luo River goddess, played important roles both in the sanctification of Luoyang as Divine Capital and the political ascent of Wu Zhao. The Luo River, a major tributary of the Yellow River, was at the very heart of early Chinese civilization—a major center of Peiligang (7000–5000 B.C.), Yangshao (5000–3000 B.C.), Longshan (3000–2000 B.C.), Erlitou (2000–1500 B.C.), and Shang culture.40 Naturally, as Luoyang grew into a national political capital and a commercial center, the river itself gained prominence. By the Tang, after Sui Yangdi’s completion of the Grand Canal, the Luo had developed into a vital artery that enabled Luoyang’s growth into a flourishing center of transport. Annals record the milling commerce of the willow-lined waterways of her prosperous capital: “Sculls and boats of the empire gathered, often more than ten thousand vessels filling the canals of Luoyang.”41
The Luo River flowed west to east, bisecting Luoyang, passing just south of the Meridian Gate to the Imperial City. Three separate bridges were constructed to span the trifurcating branches at the heart of the capital: Heaven’s Ford Bridge in the center; to the north, the Yellow Path Bridge; and to the south, the Star Ford Bridge.42
In the fourth lunar month of 688, Wu Zhao’s nephew Wu Chengsi, whose own lofty ambitions were tied to his aunt’s ascendancy, had an apocryphal inscription carved in a white stone. A man of obscure background named Tang Tongtai “discovered” the augural stone and presented it at court, claiming he had found it in the Luo River. Its inscription, rendered in royal purple, read: “When the Sage Mother appears among the people, the imperial cause will eternally prosper.”43 The delighted grand dowager designated the riverine stone her “Precious Diagram” (bao tu 寶圖). The following month, she issued an imperial proclamation announcing that she would personally worship the Luo River and formally receive the Precious Diagram. She would offer ritual thanks to the Supreme Thearch of Boundless Heaven (Haotian shangdi 昊天上帝)44 at the state altars in the southern suburb and hold an audience at her unfinished Bright Hall. Seven days later, on the summer solstice, she assumed the title “Sage Mother, Divine Sovereign,”45 which, while short of laying titular claim to emperorship, still marked unprecedented territory for a Chinese woman: Wu Zhao had proclaimed herself a sovereign (huang 皇) ruler. This marked a vital step in her ongoing endeavor to secure the support of the court and populace, while at the same time gathering a sufficient critical mass of credenda (things to be believed) and miranda (things that inspire awe and admiration),46 to take the unprecedented step of becoming a woman emperor.
Such a stone issuing from the Luo River evoked the Luo River Writing (Luoshu 洛書), a sacred and mysterious tablet of ancient lore. Like the Yellow River Chart (Hetu 河圖), the appearance of the Luo River Writing in many early texts (such as the Analects, the Mozi 墨子, the Huainanzi, and the Eastern Han Lunheng 論衡) indicated, as Mark Lewis points out, “a transfer of dynastic power and the imminent rise of a sage.”47 “The name and nature of the Luo River,” as Rebecca Doran asserts, “are culturally resonant. Auspicious mystical river designs are associated with the kingships of culture heroes.”48 In the midst of Wu Zhao’s lengthy and carefully engineered dynastic transition, the Luo River Writing was more apposite to the times—it depicted change while its complement, the Yellow River Chart, projected permanence.49
In the Book of Changes is the passage, “When the Yellow River disgorges the Chart and the Luo River issues the Writing, the Sage follows them.”50 In the Mozi, the Yellow River Chart surfaced “just prior to King Wu’s establishment of the Zhou as a royal line.”51 This sacred writing was connected with mythic sovereigns like Fuxi, who created the world with the help of Nüwa, and flood-queller Yu the Great.52 These foundational political myths were passed from one dynasty to the next. In the History of the Han Dynasty, it is recorded that, “When the empire is ruled in harmony with the Way, the Yellow River issues the Chart and the Luo gives forth the Writing.”53 Encoded on the Luo River Writing and the Yellow River Chart were the timeless blueprints to sage governance. The Luo River Writing was “a sacred document of remote antiquity supposedly guaranteeing the holder’s possession of the Mandate.”54 Only the charismatic presence, virtue, and majesty of a sage-ruler could recover these ancient writings from the watery depths. Once revealed, these cryptic charts could impart to the ascendant sage-king a preternatural, esoteric knowledge of the workings of the natural and human worlds, of the cosmos and of governance.55
Thus it had been established in the classical canon that the appearance of an inscribed stone betokened the arrival of a sage-king. In popular consciousness, coruling with husband Gaozong since the emperor suffered a stroke in 660, Wu Zhao had been one of the “Two Sages” (Ersheng 二聖).56 It remained for Wu Zhao to ceremonially reenact this powerful political myth, to draw on the lore of antiquity by discovering her own river-borne talisman that revealed her sage nature and foretold her imperial destiny. “In the Confucian ideology of the time,” Antonino Forte suggests, “it [her Precious Diagram] probably represented the mythical Luoshu because it was allegedly found in the River Luo.”57 With the “discovery” of this latter-day Luo River Writing in 688, the prophesied sage rose to become a Sage Mother and a Divine Sovereign.
On the first day of the seventh lunar month of 688, to announce her advent as a sage for a new era, Wu Zhao offered a general amnesty and changed the name of the Precious Diagram to “Heaven-bestowed Diagram of the Sage” (Tianshou shengtu 天授聖圖). The Luo River was designated the Eternally Prospering Luo (Yongchang Luoshui 永昌洛水), and the Luo River goddess was given a special promotion, invested as the Marquise Who Reveals the Sage (Xiansheng hou 顯聖侯). Fishing in the sacred waters was forbidden. Wu Zhao declared that, henceforth, sacrifices to the Luo would match those offered the Four Great Rivers—the Yellow, the Yangzi, the Huai, and the Ji. The discovery site of the augural stone was honored as “Spring of the Sage Diagram,” and the surrounding administrative region was denominated the Eternally Prospering Prefecture. On nearby Mount Song was bestowed the appellation Divine Marchmount (Shenyue 神嶽); the mountain’s tutelary god was invested as King of the Center of Heaven (Tianzhong wang 天中王). Temples were built to honor both the river spirit and the mountain deity.58 Not only was the river running through Wu Zhao’s Divine Capital Luoyang deified, but the surrounding landscape, affixed with her labels, became part of a sacred topography.59
In grandiloquent verse, propagandists sought to drive home the point: the inscribed augural stone mystically arising from the Luo River presaged the coming of a new sage-ruler, Wu Zhao. In a congratulatory memorial, encomiast Chen Zi’ang gushed, “Humbly observing that Your Majesty’s absolute virtue matches that of heaven, transforming even the grass and wood, heaven dared not withhold its bounty. Therefore, the Luo gave forth the auspicious diagram. The earth did not conceal its treasures, and from the river issued the mysterious tablet.”60 Stephan Kory situates Chen Zi’ang’s memorial as part of a longer lineage of “panegyric memorials” written to congratulate rulers on the discovery of augural stones and other auspicious portents.61 Such memorials were not, of course, spontaneous poetic expressions of joy. Rather, as Kory puts it, they were “institutionalized, and the qualifications of the authors who composed them were recognized by the court and the throne.”62 While none of these commemorative verses explicitly linked Wu Zhao and the Luo River goddess, collectively they reinforced a deep, personal connection between the revealed Sage Mother and the Luo River, the yin waters that had delivered up the augural stone.
Another talented official in Wu Zhao’s court, Su Weidao (648–705)—a third member of the “literary quartet of friends” who eventually rose to become a chief minister under Wu Zhao—also wrote a verse to commemorate the “discovery” of the Precious Diagram:
Borne on green silk, the tablet of the river;
Atop the black altar, looking down on the banks of the Luo.
Heaven’s machinations have made manifest the imperial halting-place;
Where, with filial reverence, she presents the sacrifice.
Ascended to accompany the three illustrious ancestors;63
With compliant heart she presents herself to the Hundred Spirits.
As the mists lift, the sun follows the central path;
Snow accumulates over the dust of the carriages.
As she prepares the offering, all is eminent and exalted,
With a song of longevity for myriad springs to come.64
In Su Weidao’s memorial, he evokes both a numinous space shared by ruler, spirits, and ancestors, and conveys Wu Zhao’s unfailing sense of ceremonial decorum.
Li Qiao, too, offered a verse to commemorate the diagram and pay homage to the Luo River, including the lines: “with an inscription like that carried on the tortoise’s back, with a diagram like that carried in the phoenix’s beak.”65 Reputedly, the Luo River Writing emerged on the back of a turtle and revealed its mystical design to Yu the Great.66 The auspicious phoenix was also associated with other sage-rulers. When a phoenix arrived during the halcyon reign of the mythic Yellow Emperor in the third millennium B.C., the ruler performed a sacrifice on the banks of the Luo.67
Li Qiao also wrote another verse about the Luo River goddess and the augural stone disgorged by the river:
The nine branches of the Luo flow resplendent, scintillating in their beauty;
the creatures of this trifurcated river await renewal.
Flowers illuminate the riverside roost of the vermilion phoenix,
as the sun reflects on Jade Rooster Ford.
The original rites sought meetings with immortal guests,
just so, the Prince of Chen gazed on the lovely one.
The divine tortoise has just bestowed the auspicious [chart],
and the green writing has again been attained.68
Such poems functioned to buttress Wu Zhao’s concurrent purposeful political reenactment of one of the most powerful Chinese myths: the delivery of an inscribed token that symbolizes heaven’s recognition and approval of a newly arrived sage-ruler. To this end, Li Qiao conjures the familiar mythic bestiary and aviary associated with the Luo Writing and the River Chart—the vermilion phoenix and the divine tortoise are present. Joining them are Cao Zhi, the prince of Chen, and, of course, the transcendently lovely goddess of the Luo River herself.
In a celebratory memorial written on behalf of the court, Li Qiao connected the Precious Diagram to the chelonian-borne Luo River Writing, calling it the “turtle writing” (gui shu 龜書), thereby linking Wu Zhao to Yu the Great.69 Kory, who has translated the entire memorial, remarks that it “begins by establishing a resonant relationship between Heaven and the mandated ruler,” a recurring theme that Li Qiao weaves “in and out of the piece, continually emphasizing that it is Empress Wu who possesses the mandate of Heaven.”70 Fellow member of the “literary quartet” Cui Rong chimed in as well, praising Wu Zhao’s “sagely illustriousness and abundant virtue” that had brought forth the Precious Diagram.71
Another courtier, Niu Fengji, also presented a poem to commemorate Wu Zhao receiving the Diagram:
The imperial diagram from the opened casket of the Luo;
This inscribed stone is the equal of heaven.
On an auspicious day it rose on the waves;
Immortals and birds looked down from the mists and beheld.
This insignificant official wishes that he might have wings,
as the perfect ritual drum-cadence receives the phoenix.72
Evoking an otherworldly ambience, Niu describes the extraordinary circumstances under which this latter-day Luo River Writing was revealed. His verse catalogues all of the signs auguring the appearance of a sage-ruler: the miraculous river-borne inscribed stone, a host of approving immortals, and the phoenix.
Following Wu Zhao’s imperial proclamation, a massive ten-day celebration was staged in the final month of the fourth year of Chuigong (28 December 688 to 26 January 689) for her to worship the Luo and receive the Precious Diagram, coinciding with the completion of the Bright Hall complex.73 In its original architectural conception, the Bright Hall, a traditional emblem of the Chinese ruler as a “cosmic man” (linking heaven and earth, securing harmony between man and the celestial and terrestrial realms), was patterned on the mystic principles of the Luo River Writing.74 In January 689, in an magnificent ceremony the likes of which the Tang dynasty had never seen, Wu Zhao presided over a host of imperial kinsmen, civil and military officials, and foreign chieftains. Arrayed before a newly constructed altar next to the Luo River, these dignitaries beheld a magnificent pageant of strange birds, miraculous beasts, and curious treasures.75
To a score composed for the occasion, “Music to Honor the Luo River with a Grand Sacrifice,” the assembly paraded before the altar. The score included the following fourteen verses, choreographed to match stages of the elaborate rite: three preparatory hymns; one verse for the embarkment of Wu Zhao’s carriage; another called “Harmony of Revelation” to honor Wu Zhao receiving the Precious Diagram; one for her ascent of the altar; a pair of verses to commemorate meat sacrifices and wine libations; another to mark the removal of the sacrificial meat stand; a verse to accompany the martial dance that ushered the audience to the altar and another for the civil dance to send them off; and, finally, three verses to see off the Luo River goddess (song shen 送神).76
To cite a single example, “Reverent Harmony,” the ceremonial verse for setting out the ritual meat offerings, featured a quatrain with the following lyrics:
Her divine merit beyond measure sets in motion yin and yang,
Containing the myriad realms, enwombing (yun 孕) the eight distant reaches.
Heaven-sent tokens have shown her imperium is eternal:
Omens and portents descend from on high, illumining this grand sacrifice.77
The lyricists employ a language that celebrates rather than conceals the biological sex of the Sage Mother. Wu Zhao’s motherhood is amplified to the point that within herself she contains, she enwombs, the entire realm. She is the sagely ur-mother and the subjects are her children.
These events were staged at a pivotal moment of grand dowager Wu Zhao’s patient preparation to establish her own dynasty. Rebecca Doran observes that the veneration of the Luo River and the diagram were staged to broadcast to the widest possible audience “cosmic approval of Empress Wu’s rule”; these grand ceremonies were a “part of the founding myth of the Zhou state.”78 The Luo River divinity’s revelation of the augural stone was a vital element in Wu Zhao’s effort to show that heaven had transferred its mandate to her. For the revered Luo River—the object of worship—was a current that ran through time, connecting present and past, linking Wu Zhao to Fuxi, Yu the Great, and the Luo River goddess.
The altar that served to stage these grand rites was constructed in the heart of Luoyang, on the north bank of the Luo River next to Heaven’s Ford Bridge. There, the elders of Luoyang erected a stele called the “Record of the Heaven-bestowed Diagram of the Sage.” Xuanzong razed both altar and stele in 717,79 part of his campaign to destroy monuments like the Axis of the Sky that marked Luoyang as his grandmother’s Divine Capital and the hub of her Zhou empire.80
FURTHER AFFIRMATIONS OF THE CONNECTION IN TEXT AND RHETORIC
The earliest example connecting Wu Zhao to the goddess of the Luo River can be found when she was still Celestial Empress (Tianhou 天后).81 Between 680 and 683, Cui Rong wrote a memorial on behalf of Crown Prince Li Xiǎn congratulating Wu Zhao on the discovery of an auspicious omen, a purple-stalked mushroom (zhi 芝) growing beneath the reliquary stupa of Taiyuan temple in Luoyang.82 In this effusive memorial, he writes:
The flowery purple-stalked zhi entwines the basilicas,
So that it seems as if the place has become the terrace of the Queen Mother [of the West].
Fronds of purple-stalked zhi grow in the fields,
Matching those in the dwellings of Consort Fu.83
The dwelling of the Luo River goddess was a site where the numinous zhi appeared. Han Confucian scholar Dong Zhongshu called auspicious omens like the zhi plant “tablets bearing the Heavenly Mandate,” evidence of heaven’s endorsement of a worthy sage-ruler. “When a king is about to rise to power,” he remarks, “beautiful signs of good omen will first appear.”84
Consort Fu, the Luo River Goddess, appears in the preface to the “Stele Inscription for Little Auntie Temple of the Lesser Room,”85 written by literary genius Yang Jiong (650–693), one of the “four outstanding talents” (si jie 四杰) of the early Tang.86 Yang nimbly connected Wu Zhao to a series of female divinities. Textually intertwining the world of men with the realm of immortals, he wonders:
How is it that the cowry gates of the Yellow River court
Gaze down on the capital of Feng Yi?87
And the jasper altar on the river Luo
Is set next to the dwelling of Consort Fu?88
Though the directive to compose the inscription for the stele came late in Gaozong’s reign, the timing of the actual composition and the erection of the stele is ambiguous. Seemingly, this verse was written after the construction of the altar on the banks of the Luo. In any event, it consciously associates Wu Zhao with the river divinity.
Further evidence of the connection appears in the Buddhist Commentary. To justify Wu Zhao’s ultimate ascent to Emperor in 690, the clever rhetoricians compiling the Commentary cite the prophetic Record of Master Yitong:
In the Capital City (Chang’an), the Way is lofty,
In the City of Luoyang the light is bright;
Brilliancy pervades the Luo River,
The dragon’s flight responds to Shangtian.
The Revealed Saint89 holds the regency and addresses the ten thousand countries,
Composedly seated [she] will rise to kingship and receive a thousand years.90
This prognostication helps clarify the title Wu Zhao bestowed upon the Luo River goddess in 688, “Marquise who Reveals the Saint.” Sheng (聖), meaning “saint” or “sage,” was not an attribute unique to any of the three faiths. In Confucian and Daoist terms, it meant sage; in a Buddhist context, it generally indicated a “saint.”91 In essence, Consort Fu bore the tablet, the sacred tally, to the surface of the Luo River, effectively passing the baton to her political heir, Wu Zhao. The saint/sage revealed by the Luo River goddess was none other than Wu Zhao herself!
Just as the precious treasure hidden beneath the cold yin surface of the waters of the Luo was made manifest to the world, so now the sagely sovereign presence of Wu Zhao, long concealed from public view, was revealed with sublime pomp and fanfare. When Li Qiao says in his memorial, “the hidden has been revealed in an auspicious sign,”92 he refers not only to the omen, but to the sage-king that its presence augurs, Wu Zhao.
CONCLUSION
There is a long history in imperial China of emperors bestowing honors and titles upon gods and nature spirits (feng shen 封神) in conjunction with rites such as suburban sacrifices (jiao si 郊祀) or the sacrosanct feng and shan ceremonies. While superficially construed as a gesture of humility and homage, this act of self-exaltation effectively served to affiliate the ruler with the divinity that he or she venerated. The celebration of the Precious Diagram and the elevation of the Luo River spirit all were calculated political events staged to persuade the court and wider populace that Wu Zhao’s political ascent conformed to the will of heaven and the spirits.
The ceremonial occasion upon which Wu Zhao invested the spirit of the Luo River with the title Marquise Who Reveals the Sage also served to magnify her own person. The unprecedented act of bestowing a title on the river goddess in 688 coalesced the earthly sovereign and riparian divinity into a single entity. This fusion must be understood in the context of Wu Zhao’s period of incubation, her preparation to assume the throne and establish her Zhou dynasty. In performing these rites to sanctify the Luo, Wu Zhao effectively styled herself a latter-day incarnation of the Luo River goddess.
The lore surrounding the Luo River goddess sanctified Wu Zhao’s Divine Capital and helped the female ruler distinctively imprint her political authority upon Luoyang. Both the goddess and the river played a central role in Wu Zhao’s reenactment of a sacrosanct Chinese political myth—the emergence of an inscribed stone that presaged the advent of a sage-king. This myth was most closely connected to time-honored male political ancestors like the Fuxi, the Yellow Emperor, and King Wu of Zhou. In Wu Zhao’s transmogrified performance of this canonical lore, however, the goddess of the Luo River came to the forefront. The invented act of the goddess transferring the augural tablet to Wu Zhao helped identify the grand dowager as a “Sage Mother,” a ruling mother of the empire. This clever amalgamation of tradition played an instrumental role in her protracted campaign—a lengthy, carefully calculated campaign of omens and rites, of titles and apocrypha—to establish herself as emperor.
Wu Zhao never repeated the grand ceremonies staged in 688 and 689 to celebrate the revelation of the Sage Diagram and to honor the Luo River goddess. Fulfilling the augury of the inscribed stone, she took the throne as emperor in 690. In 694, ritual officials petitioned Wu Zhao to stop making offerings and cease performing sacrifices to the Luo:
The Emperor is the father of heaven and the mother of the earth, elder brother of the sun and elder sister of the moon. Ritual matters must be reverently undertaken and decorum must be observed. According to ceremonial protocol, the Five Marchmounts are equal in status to the Three Dukes.93 The Four Waterways are equal to the various lords. There are no rites in which an emperor makes offerings to dukes and lords.
By this juncture, Luoyang, the heart of her sacred geography, had been built into a pan-Asian metropolis. Wu Zhao’s status as emperor was secure. The Luo River goddess and the augural stone had served their respective purposes. Magnanimously, Wu Zhao assented to the request.94
