Talk:Magu (deity)

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Little problems

Wonderful work, but: should 麻姑獻壽 be translated into something like "Ma Gu gives her birthday greetings"? and why does the motif has to do with Journey to the West? Cheers.--K.C. Tang 08:58, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

K.C. Thanks for the compliment and corrections. I don't remember where I found the Xiyouji reference, so I deleted it. Your help is always appreciated. Best wishes. Keahapana Keahapana 02:08, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Excessive quoting

There's way too much quoting in this article... I understand the need of quoting translations of historical text, but quoting modern conclusion by modern authors is really stretching it (especially as much as it is now, that is, about half of the article). I would be very inclined to say that it's tip-toeing on the edge of close paraphrasing. --Cold Season (talk) 19:20, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Cold Season. If memory serves, I added most of these quotes. Are you concerned about copyright infringement or narrative style? Please provide some examples of which half of the article. Also, why did you change blockquotes to pull quotes, and can we put wikilinks within quotations? Thanks, Keahapana (talk) 22:56, 26 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, I don't think it's a copyright infringement, because I can clearly see the attribution. I find it unnecessary quoting. This information (table below) could as easily be paraphrased rather than be quoted to such an extend (occasional inline and short quotations, sure... but whole paragraphs is a bit too much). I put them in the format with quotation marks for clarity, because it didn't look like quotes at first glance [1] but rather random jumps in the text. Cheers. --Cold Season (talk) 18:58, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This ascent to heaven, typical of Taoists, connects her with the immortal saints, and indeed she is regarded as a symbol of long life and rebirth, and therefore in the Chinese drama, appears a good omen during birthday celebrations.	Eberhard 1968:124
The third gives a version of the incident of Cai Jing's inappropriate fantasy concerning Maid Ma and her luxuriant four-inch nails. Here, Cai Jing's home is located in Dongyang; he is not whipped but rather flung to the ground, his eyes running blood; and Maid Ma herself, identified as "a divine transcendent" (shenxian), is the one who reads his thoughts and does the punishing.	Campany 2002:268
This story hints at an even older stratum of legend behind the Maid Ma cult: like other territorial gods known to Chinese religious history, she may have begun as a theriomorphic deity (perhaps snake-headed) who gradually metamorphosed into a human being and finally – the process culminating in Ge Hong's Traditions narrative – into a full-fledged transcendent. Seen in this light, several details of the Traditions hagiography might be read as betraying these chthonic origins. Among these are Maid Ma's long nails, the featuring of meat dishes among the fantastic foods served by the travelling canteen, and the scene describing the "summoning" of Maid Ma, which is reminiscent of shamanic invocations of deities to attend spirit-writing sessions.	Campany 2002:269-270
I have no indication that the goddess ever was a goddess of the hemp plant (ma) as H. Wilhelm surmised (Monumenta Serica vol. 9, p. 213 note 9). She often wears aboriginal attire, a dress with a collar made of leaves, but not of hemp, which only sometimes has developed, according to a late fashion into a cape of cloth.	Eberhard 1968:125
(Note also her shimmering, multicolored gown, "not of this world"; but we are told that it was not woven, at least not in an ordinary way.) I know of no attempt to explain the name Ma gu (literally, "the Hemp Maiden").	Campany 2002:267, fn. 487
Thus all in all there is much reason for thinking that the ancient Taoists experimented systematically with hallucinogenic smokes, using techniques which arose directly out of liturgical observance. … At all events the incense-burner remained the centre of changes and transformations associated with worship, sacrifice, ascending perfume of sweet savour, fire, combustion, disintegration, transformation, vision, communication with spiritual beings, and assurances of immortality. Wai tan and nei tan met around the incense-burner. Might one not indeed think of it as their point of origin?	Needham 1974:154

Thanks. It's surprising that you thought blockquotes looked like random jumps, I mistakenly assumed that nearly everyone was familiar with block quotation formatting. However, your format changes will have to be reverted. WP:BQ conventions prohibit using decorative pull quotes and cutesy quotation marks, and WP:LINKSTYLE says, "items within quotations should not generally be linked; instead, consider placing the relevant links in the surrounding text or in the "See also" section of the article". We can disagree about whether there is excessive quoting, but I'm willing to compromise. How about if you close paraphrase several of the first five quotes in the table and we leave the sixth (Needham 154) block quote? The reason I tend to prefer direct quotes is that they accurately represent the original source, which is frequently not the case when one checks WP paraphrasing. Cheers, Keahapana (talk) 23:34, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's acceptable. I'll follow your suggestion and do it in the future unless someone does it before me. --Cold Season (talk) 05:33, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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Helen Hwang

The work of Helen Hwang is being given undue weight on this page, including a very long block quote at the beginning.[2] I'll delete the big quote after posting this, but I thought I'd flag this issue up now so people are aware of it. Retinalsummer (talk) 11:28, 20 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]