Hell’s bittersweet finish: Meng Po, goddess of forgetfulness

But we can be confident she arrived in China around the exact same time as Buddhism in the 1st century Ad, offered her job in reincarnation. There she stands, ready for all, with her ladle outstretched, that contains a soup which the Guidebook warns is at when sweet, bitter, acrid, sour, and salty. It is either geared up from a fountain of tears or with the h2o from a close by stream, stewed with a selection of distinctive herbs.

In the Guidebook she functions inside the forms, sitting enthroned on “The Terrace of Drunken Oblivion,” to whom demons usher souls a single by a single from a extended queue, cups at the all set. But in the most well known takes she’s a rogue freelancer: given that the late Qing, she’s been a lone determine parked beside the perilous Naihe Bridge (奈何桥 Nàihé qiáo). Journey to the West states, “The bridge is lots of miles extended, / And only a few fingers wide,” no railings to guard people crossing from a drop of a hundred toes into the foul-smelling river of blood down below. Those people who had been virtuous have been permitted to cross on a increased tier, even though the undesirable crossed lower down, harried by trolls, copper snakes, and iron pet dogs those people who fell would under no circumstances be reincarnated.

Navigating this kind of a bridge just after drinking a mind-erasing potion appears to be unwise. But Chinese cherish Meng Po’s capability to take out all the lousy reminiscences a soul could possibly have, supplying minimal thought to competencies wiped or expertise of cherished ones lost forever. Weibo customers converse of viewing her or ingesting the soup in the wake of a traumatic occasion (like preventing COVID on the entrance lines). No make a difference what happens in daily life, you are going to always close up back in entrance of the same lady, who’s kept a bowl of incredibly hot soup waiting for you. A sip is all it usually takes.

Is she good or negative? It relies upon on which tale you read through. In the Guidebook, woe betide individuals who refuse to drink, her demon helpers shackling them although a copper tube is thrust down their throat. But Qing author Shen Qifeng writes in The Harmonious Frontier that fans Ge Sheng and Lan Rui had their doses withheld so they could come across every single other in their up coming lives. This seems to have transpired additional than at the time: legends spoke of toddlers talking as soon as they left the womb, getting avoided their dose of Meng Po’s soup. Only she would know if this was by miscalculation or design and style.

Probably her recipe isn’t 100%. Some reveal instinctive attraction or hatred toward random strangers as repressed memories of them from a past lifestyle, straining to get via Meng Po’s oblivion. And moreover, netizens have labored out it would be quite uncomplicated to trick Meng Po with a style of her own medication. Just one on-line joke goes: “Meng Po ladled a spoonful of soup, tasted it and smiled with satisfaction…Meng Po ladled a spoonful of soup, tasted it and smiled with satisfaction…Meng Po ladled a spoonful of soup, tasted it and smiled with satisfaction…Meng Po ladled a spoonful of soup, tasted it and smiled with satisfaction…”

But alternatively, it is mortal souls who are without end tasting and re-tasting her bittersweet brew.

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