Folklore Friday: The Tale of The Oxen

Hey guys, welcome to Learn Feng Shui, where you'll learn Feng Shui from a classical point of view taken out the myth and superstition. If you like weekly tips as well as fun folklore tales, you'll enjoy learning Feng Shui with me. Hey guys, welcome to Folklore Friday. Today, since we're going to the year of the ox, I wanted to retell the story of how the ox became the second animal in the Chinese zodiac. I had an episode in which I kind of went over each of the animals and I talked about how each of them got their place in a Chinese zodiac and I kind of gave a little bit of folklore about them.

However, I listened to the episode and let's face it, it kind of sucked, right? You know, you get better sound quality and you have better inflection in your voice once you practice a little more. So I'm going to retell a tale about how the ox ranked second in the Chinese zodiac. This story is being brought to you from your Chinese astrology.com, which I will link to in the description. Why does the ox rank second in the Chinese zodiac?

In ancient times, the ox was the servant of the Jade Emperor and it often traveled back and forth between heaven and earth. One day, a farmer asked the ox to take a message to the Jade Emperor. The earth is barren and it is too ugly. Could you grant some seeds to the mortal world to make it beautiful? The Jade Emperor thought this was a reasonable request and so he asked the gods if there was someone who wanted to go to the mortal world to sow the grass seeds.

Your majesty, I will the ox volunteer, but you are careless. Can you finish the task? The Jade Emperor did not trust the ox. Don't worry if I kiss the rod if I cannot finish it and the ox was determined. So again, I explain this as I had to look this up, but kiss the rod actually means you will kiss the rod in which you are whipped with if you have to, you know, if you don't complete your task.

So he will kiss the rod that he is beaten with. The Jade Emperor agreed and he instructed the ox to sow one handful of grass seeds for every three steps he took. The ox took the seeds and went out of the heavenly palace. While crossing the southern gate, it accidentally fell down and it felt dizzy. It bestowed the Jade Emperor as will as sowing three handfuls of seed for every step.

Therefore a large amount of seeds were sowed on the earth and the next year the weeds over grew and the farmers couldn't grow crops. So to break the news to the Jade Emperor, the people had asked the kitchen god to tell this information to the Jade Emperor and after learning of this news the Jade Emperor asked the ox about the situation and he knew that what he had done he had sowed the three handfuls for every step instead of the other way around and he had really messed up. You careless ox, you made a world full of weeds. What did you promise me? From now on you and your offspring are only allowed to eat grass to weed out for the farmers.

Also you have to do the work for the farmers. The Jade Emperor was so angry that he kicked the ox out of heaven. The ox fell down to the earth with his mouth down and his upper teeth got knocked off. Since then the ox has worked for the farmer, his whole life had never stopped eating grass, his upper teeth never grabbed again even to this day. But the ox was a good animal and it corrected its mistake very quickly.

It bore the burden of hard work willingly and it was diligent and honest. It never slacked and it always did a lot of work for the farmer, winning the praise of people. Now ranking the zodiac signs, they human elected this as the top of the Chinese zodiac. However the trick you rat had hidden under the ox's horn during the race and jumped off right before the finish line. If this hadn't happened it said the ox would be on top of all the zodiac signs.

It said that somebody that's born under the zodiac animal sign of the ox is very stubborn and even hard to convince to do things hard to sway. As we know the Chinese zodiac signs are not actually animals and are not being converted to animals and they are just planetary and star positions. However somebody that is born under the animal sign of the ox tends to have a lot of earth in their jar and the earth element is associated with being very stubborn, hard to share your emotions, that sort of energy. If you are born under the zodiac animal sign of the ox you could have this trait. For free energy mapping of your floor plan please check the link in the show notes.

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