#celestial horses

[totallypumpkin]

That moment you get a new job and it sounds so very ✨fancy✨ but it's not all it's cracked up to be-

I mean at least that's what I think sun wukong felt like when he found out he was a stable boy-

Close ups:

[journeytothewestresearch]

Bimawen, Keeper of the Heavenly Horses

I’ve been doing a lot of research on the etymology of various macaque monkey names in China as they relate to the origins of the four magic primates in Journey to the West (Xiyouji, 西遊記, 1592). In the process, I came across information explaining the origins of Sun Wukong’s time as the Bimawen (弼馬溫, “To assist horse temperament”), a minor post overseeing the imperial horse stables. To recap, he cares for nearly 1,000 horses day and night, making sure they are all well-fed, exercised, and rested. The novel calls them “dragon horses” (long ma, 龍馬) and suggests that they have the ability to gallop among the clouds.

The heavenly post is a homophonous pun on Bimawen (避馬瘟, lit: “avoid the horse plague”), an ancient superstition where people would place monkeys in stables to ward off equine sickness. For example, Essential Techniques for the Common People (Qimin yaoshu, 齊民要術, c. 544) states:

[Horses] are often associated with macaques [mihou, 猕猴] in the horse stable. This is in order to calm the horses, repel evil, and eliminate all diseases.

常系猕猴于马坊，令马不畏、辟恶、消百病也。

The later Compendium of Materia Medica (Bencao gangmu, 本草綱目, 1596) reads:

The Classic of Horses states: Domesticated macaques used in horse stables help avoid horse diseases [lit: bimawen]. Their monthly menstruation runs onto the grass, and once the horses it eat, they will never be sick.

《马经》言︰马厩畜母猴，辟马瘟疫。逐月有天癸流草上，马食之，永无疾病矣。

This is insanely comical as it directly links Sun Wukong, a powerful cosmic warrior, to menstruation! This then might explain why Monkey is so enraged when enemies call him a Bimawen. As noted by my friend Irwen Wong of the Journey to the West Library blog, it challenges the Great Sage’s masculinity.

[sauou]

So I had weird dream last night..

I was walking home when I stumbled across BryceMcQuaid doing a concert in an airport. (Can he even sing?) It was sold out, everyone was there and thrilled. I loved the performance so much I blushed my way to the stage and thanked him and the band for playing. (The band didn’t much care.)

But I got lost on the way home from there. I tried to follow him home, and ended up in some dusty abandoned building that no one should live in. So I went back to where I started from, and tried again. But it had gotten so late, that the only way home was by walking.

It was me, and a few other people from the show, and Bryce himself, heading out the doors and down the street. We were hopelessly lost in a bad part of town and no one knew what to do.

We walked to the edge of the map, where a wall was risen seperating the city we were in from the unknown surrounding it. (Where far off into the unknown was the abandoned building I saw before.)

‘Stay’, the people were told, and off I went along the wall. A wall so high it reached almost into the heavens.

But they followed, and caught the tail end of my conversation with a ball of light, standing right up there against the sky. We were in the sky itself. Up there a part of it.

Stars fell from the sky, and became Celestial Horses for the people to ride home. They merely had to let their heart’s desire guide them to their destination.

‘How’? Is asked.

‘A price was paid.’ Is answered.

(What did you give up?)

[goldeenherself]

Final stages of the Venus horse! Now, onwards to Gaia (Earth)!

[goldeenherself]

NEBULA • Personal work • 2015 • 11”x14” mixed media

Print available! 

Revisiting my Planet Horse series (now perhaps more accurately called the Celestial Horses), this is the latest and largest edition: Nebula.

Unlike the others, which were all modeled off existing horse breeds, Nebula sprung right out of my imagination—but she looks like some sort of warmblood. I used references from the Cat’s Eye and Helix nebulae and the Westerlund 2 cluster. Her sigil, in the lower left-hand corner, represents the rings of expanding gases found in many planetary nebulae.

Acrylic ink, colored pencils and metallic pen on 11”x14” watercolor paper. Original will be going to AnthroCon!

When complete, the Celestial Horses will include the four gas giants, with a re-worked Uranus (currently in progress), along with Nebula and the Sun & Moon. They are the stylistic siblings of my Elemental Horse series (Fire, Air, Water, Earth and Wood, Metal).

[completelyalien]

when the Chinese first discovered zebras they called them "celestial horses"

that's right these majestic creatures

are actually celestial beings