Siming (deity)

Siming (Chinese: 司命; pinyin: Sīmìng) refers to a Chinese deity or deified functionary of that title who makes fine adjustments to human fate, with various English translations (such as, the Master of Fate, Controller of Fate, Deified Judge of Life, Arbiter of Fate, Director of Allotted Life Spans, and Director of Destinies). Siming is both an abstract deity (or more rather title thereof) and a celestial asterism.

Siming, as Director of Destinies, has the bureaucratic function of human lifespan allocation. Siming seems to have roots in the shamanic traditions, then later to have somewhat assimilated with the Kitchen God, as in the Daoist case of the Three Worms, in which Siming becomes a deity to whom home household activities are periodically reported,

As an asterism, or apparent stellar constellation, Siming is associated both with the Wenchang Wang star pattern, near the Big Dipper, in what is more or less Aquarius.

Sometimes the term Siming is qualified by 大 (da, meaning "big" or "greater") or by 少 (shao, meaning "small" or "lesser").

The Siming deity has the bureaucratic function of human lifespan allocation. In bureaucratic terms, Si () is a common term, meaning "in charge of", "a person or department which is in charge of something", often translated as "secretary". Commonly, in real life or in imagined bureaucracies, there were Chief and Assistant Secretaries (Dasi and Shaosi). Ming () is a complicated word with a long folk and technical history, basically meaning "life" or "the balance of fate or destiny", personified as Siming. Often, a deified entity such as Siming receives increased sanctity over time, signified by additional official titles.

As a deity Siming takes his, her, or their place in a complex cosmological system of Chinese religion and mythology. Over time, this system became a visualization of a complex cosmology including the elaboration of a heavenly bureaucracy, somewhat parallel to the earthly bureaucracy of the Chinese state, and invoking the same sort of explicit hierarchy.

Siming's special concern (and power) is the balancing of yin and yang (Hawkes, 109). Of particular relevance here is the relation between yin and yang balance and human health, and the importance to individual human health of such balance, as articulated in traditional Chinese medicine. Siming has the power to balance or unbalance yin and yang, and thus to lengthen or shorten human lifespans, or to provide health or prolong illness.

...
Wikipedia