Lore
The Fairy Foxes: A Chinese Legend
Period: 1895
Medium: Illustration
Collection: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Text appearing before image: Say went in with his mother to his sister-in-law’s room, and asked to see Chin. But poor Chin was delirious: “My son,” then said his old mother, “these mischievous Foxes have done us much harm, but I forgive them for having played you this trick and brought you back from the land of Cho. At least they are the cause that mother and son are reunited, and by this good deed alone their faults are atoned for! We must not be too hard upon the Foxes.
For two months Chin was in raging fever, then he began to get better. They called him in all the country round the “Robber,” because he had robbed the Foxes of their book that they loved above their life. The Serpent, creeps, the Tiger springs: each brute has his device; The Foxes sacred books possess, and hold beyond all price. Whilst houses fall and goods are lost, and the books too disappear; Yet will men laugh at poor Chin Wang for many a thousand year!
In folklore, the wild fox as a shape-shifting trickster is a multivalent, polysemic image that suggests either bewitchment, falsity, seduction, and illusion or the compassionate and edifying manifestation of an otherworldly entity, perhaps a bodhisattva or divine messenger.
—Steven Heine, Shifting Shape, Shaping Text, p. 30
The Fox Spirit is a complex figure woven throughout Chinese, Japanese, and Korean art, folklore, and ritual magic. From literature to card games, this shape-shifting figure has long been entwined with human affairs. This section will expand and evolve as I continue researching its multifaceted lore and sociocultural significance, adding insights and interpretations along the way. Stay tuned for ongoing updates as new discoveries shape our understanding.
Foundational Myth:
The wild fox kōan, also known as "Pai-chang's fox" and "Hyakujō and a Fox", is an influential kōan story in the Zen tradition dating back as early as 1036, when it appeared in the Chinese biographical history T'ien-sheng kuang-teng lu. It was also in The Gateless Gate (Mandarin: 無門關 Wúménguān; Japanese: 無門関 Mumonkan), a 13th-century collection of 48 kōans compiled by the Chinese monk Wumen, as case two.
The koan tells the story of a monk who, after denying that an enlightened person falls into cause and effect, was turned into a wild fox for five hundred lifetimes. He appears to Zen Master Baizhang (Wade-Giles: Pai-chang; Japanese: Hyakujō) and demands a "turning word," a phrase intended to prompt one to realization, to be freed from his animal form.
After Baizhang tells him not to ignore cause and effect, the monk confirms that he has been released from his wild fox body and asks to be given a monk's funeral rites. Later, when Baizhang's disciple Huangbo (Wade-Giles: Huang-po; Japanese: Ōbaku) asks what would have happened had the monk not denied cause and effect, Baizhang tells Huangbo to come close so he can answer him. Huangbo steps forward and slaps Baizhang, ostensibly in the awareness that Baizhang had intended to strike him. Baizhang laughs approvingly and compares Huangbo to the Indian monk and Zen patriarch Bodhidharma, who is credited with bringing Zen to China.
While others viewed Zen practice as a purification of the mind or a stage on the way to perfect enlightenment, Bodhidharma equated Zen with buddhahood and believed that it had a place in everyday life. Instead of telling his disciples to purify their minds, he pointed them to rock walls, to the movements of tigers and cranes, to a hollow reed floating across the Yangtze, to a man who became a fox…
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_fox_koan
Takeaways: The essence of Nonreading is paying attention to deconstructing the language of desire in pursuit of clarity, combining cartomancy and nonduality to explore the art of acceptance, which, in the form of cards, visualizes the mechanics of a query, whether we want to see them or not. It's no random act that the desirous monk was transformed into a fox so that he could learn how to accept the tricky nature of reality both within and without the structuralism of binary oppositions. By becoming aware of falling into the trap of displacement by attempting to be other, the monk became liberated. As a four-legged creature, he learned that we cannot fix or escape reality. But, we can change and flow accordingly. So, to be a fox is to be enlightened. To read like a fox is something close.