Protective Chicken Talisman        2008-5-30 16:00:29

In old days the Chinese had the habit of pasting or painting chicken talismans on the doors of their dwellings on the lunar New Year's Day. This habit is still very much alive today in rural areas in Shaanxi Province in northwest China.
    An ancient Chinese belief regards the chicken as the variant or emblem of the sun. Thus to paste a talisman in the image of a chicken is like having the sun on the door. The habit gives indirect expression to people's longing for the advent of spring. Chinese ancients also believed that the chicken talisman can help ward off the dismal impact of demons.
    From this connection between the chicken and the sun, the ancients gave wings to imagination and invented the image of the Heavenly Chicken that is always the first to announce the sunrise on a daily basis. The lunar New Year's Day is known as "yuandan", or the "first sunrise of the year", and it goes without saying that only the Heavenly Chicken is capable of knowing when the sun rises for the first time of the year and reporting the news to the mundane world. Pasting the chicken talisman on the door is actually a symbolism of the chicken and sun worship.
   

The chicken talisman is pasted up on the lunar New Year's Day because it is also the Day of the Chicken. As the classic The Book of Divination puts it, "The first day is the day of the chicken, the second day is devoted to the dog, the third day to the pig, the fourth day to the goat, the fifth day to the cattle, the sixth day to the horse and the seventh day to man." This matchup between animals and time was derived from people's understanding of space. Seven is the number of the universe to indicate the east, south, west, north, middle, upper and lower directions. East takes the number one position because it is the direction in which the sun rises and because it is also in accord with the first day of the week. Wood is the symbol for east, where the divine Hibiscus rosa-sinensis and peach trees grow. While
the sun rises over the top of the Hibiscus rosa-sinensis tree, the chicken perches in the peach tree. This is why east is matched up with the chicken and becomes the symbol of the day of the first sunrise of the year. In that sense, the chicken talisman entails our remote ancestors' imagination of the universe and their way of keeping time.