Houtu

deity earth Chinese single tradition · 5

Houtu is the overlord of all the Tudigongs, Sheji, Shan Shen, City Gods, and dizhu shen worldwide. This deity holds supreme authority over various earth and territorial deities across Chinese religious traditions.

↻ synthesized from 5 sources

When

Historical notes
Serpent-like designs found in Neolithic period archeological sites.

Relationships

syncretized with
Four Heavenly Ministers, Bhumi
child of
Gonggong

Expand to full subgraph →

Sources

Source passages

“Houtu is the overlord of all the Tudigongs ("Lord of Local Land"), Sheji ("the State"), Shan Shen ("God of Mountains"), City Gods ("God of Local City"), and dizhu shen worldwide.”

#7791 · extracted by anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5

“Besides being a water deity, the Dragon God frequently also serves as a territorial tutelary deity, similarly to Tudigong "Lord of the Earth" and Houtu "Queen of the Earth".”

#9342 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001

“the highest land deity was the Houtu ("Queen of the Earth").”

#10597 · extracted by anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5

“He is a vassal under Houtu, but some scholars also suggest that he was the primordial overlord of the Diyu.”

#13838 · extracted by anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5

“Sacred Mother Houtu then made the Yellow River Map and sent one of her divine messenger birds to tell Yu what to do; specifically, that he should open a channel to the east, to allow the right drainage.”

#21301 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001