Page 130 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book
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A-Z 123
Some men let the nail of the little finger grow very long, and there was a superstition
that if this long nail snapped off, the man would shortly die.
Fire
huo
Fire is one of the five elements or ‘metamorphoses of being’. It is correlated with the
South, with the colour red, with a bitter taste, and a smell of burning; its associated
category in the five-creature series is ‘feathered’ and its domestic creature is the hen.
The god of fire with a fan
In Tibetan Tantrism, fire is a male symbol, while the fireplace is female.
‘Fire-walking’, i.e. walking over live coals, is a spring ritual, held on the 15th day of
the 1st month. It is still practised today in Shamanistic and other purification ceremonies.
Fire used to be taboo on the 105th day after the winter solstice, that is, on 4 April by the
Western calendar. This was a sort of New Year’s celebration: old fire was allowed to
