Marici, in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, is a deva or bodhisattva associated with light and the sun. She is known as Molizhitian (摩利支天) or Molizhitian Pusa (摩利支天菩萨) in China, Marishi-ten (摩利支天) in Japan, and ozer Chenma (Wylie: od zer can ma) in Tibet. She is one of the 20 (or 24) Celestials (二十/二十四諸天). In Taoism and Chinese folk religion, Marici is known under the epithet Doumu (Chinese: 斗母元君; pinyin: Dǒumǔ Yuanjūn), a name sometimes used by Buddhists.
Marici is usually depicted in one of the following ways:
As a beautiful woman on an open lotus, the lotus itself sometimes perched on the back of seven sows.
As a ferocious wrathful deity perched on the back of a boar.
Riding a fiery chariot pulled by seven savage boars or sows.
As a multi-armed woman with a different weapon in each hand standing or sitting on the back of a boar.
She has been depicted with one, three, five or six faces and two, six, eight, ten or twelve arms; three eyes; in her many-faced manifestations one of her faces is that of a sow.
Marici in China is worshiped as both a Buddhist and Taoist deity. She is highly revered in Esoteric Buddhism. Most often, she is depicted with three eyes in each of her four faces; with four arms on each side of her body. Two of her hands are held together, and the other six hold a sun, moon, bell, golden seal, bow, and halberd. She is either standing/sitting on top of a lotus or pig, or on a Lotus on top of seven pigs. She is celebrated on the 9th day of the 9th lunar month.
Due to similar iconography, she is often confused with the Bodhisattva Cundī. Among Chinese Buddhists, she is worshiped as the goddess of light and as the guardian of all nations, whom she protects from the fury of war.
In Taoism, Doumu remains a popular deity and is often referred to as Queen of Heaven (Chinese: 天后; pinyin: Tiān Hòu) and is widely worshiped as the Goddess of Beidou (the Chinese equivalent of Ursa Major except that it also includes 2 "attendant" stars). She is also revered as the mother of the Nine Emperor Gods who are represented by the nine stars in the Beidou constellation. Legend has it that one spring day a queen went to bath in a pond. Upon entering she suddenly felt "moved" and nine lotus buds rose from the pond. Each of these lotus buds opened to reveal a star which then became the Beidou constellation.
She is worshiped today in Taoist temples like the White Cloud Temple and the Tou Mu Kung Temple which has both Taoist and Buddhist influences.
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Marici | Marichi painted 1600-1699, Central Tibet. Ground mineral pigment on silk. "The Fifth Dalai Lama instructed Choying Dorje to go to Drak, a remote region south of Lhasa. There at Ngakdrak Monastery he produced some of his last works of art, a sculpture of Vajrapani and a drawing of the goddess Marichi | Marici with eight-arms & four faces riding on a boar - Hongfashan Temple, Hong Kong | Multi-armed Marici on one boar. |
Doumu is chronicled in three scriptural Daozang texts, from which the above stories have been extracted. The three texts in Daoist Canon were compiled during the Song Yuan, according to the each entry’s preface in the Zhengtong daozang (Numbered according to Schipper, 1975). They are Dz 45: 'Yuqing wushang lingbao ziran bei dou ben sheng jing' 玉清無上靈寶自然北斗本生經, True and Unsurpassed Lingbao Scripture from the Yuqing Heaven on the Spontaneous Origin of the Northern Dipper; Dz 621: Taishang xuanling doumu da sheng yuanchun benming yansheng xinjing 太上玄靈斗姆大聖元君本命延生心經, Heart Scripture of Original Destiny and Extending Life of the Great Sagely Goddess Dipper Mother; and Dz 1452: Xiantian doumu qingao xuanke 先天斗姆秦告玄科, Mysterious Rite for Petitioning the Dipper Mother of Former Heavens.