China’s wealth god spent 1,000 years spreading plague
 
The most worshipped wealth god in China spent his first thousand years spreading plague.
His name is Zhao Gongming. He first appears in the Soushen Ji, a fourth-century text by the writer Gan Bao. In that book he is a general. The Heavenly Emperor sends him to collect human souls.
Not coins. Souls.
Today he sits on a black tiger in storefronts from Shanghai to San Francisco. He holds a golden ingot in one hand and an iron whip in the other.
If you have ever set a coin by a candle and asked for more, you were reaching for the same door he guards.
 01 
 
A thousand-year shift
 
The Soushen Ji was written around 350 CE, during the Jin dynasty. In it, Zhao Gongming is one of three generals. Their assignment: collect human souls. That is the whole job.
A thousand years later, something changed. A religious compendium from the Ming dynasty called the Sanjiao Soushen Daquan describes a different Zhao. Dark skin. Thick beard. Seated on a tiger. Wearing a crown.
This version does not bring disease. He stops it. He protects people who trade fairly. The same face carried a new purpose.
The final turn came in the 1500s. A Ming dynasty novel called Fengshen Yanyi, or Investiture of the Gods, retells the fall of the Shang dynasty. Zhao appears as a Taoist hermit with great power. He fights for the losing side. He dies in battle. After death, he is promoted to Lord of the Dark Altar. He is given four subordinates whose titles involve treasure and profit.
The novel gave those five gods one more role: chasing down fugitives. The scholar Luan Baoqun has argued that this included collecting debts. Debt collection is how most people dealt with money in practice. That link may be what sealed Zhao’s place as a wealth god in the popular mind.
One novel. One dead character. One promotion that changed Chinese religion.
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 02 
 
What the welcoming looks like
 
Every Lunar New Year, on the fifth day of the first month, the firecrackers start before dawn. And they do not start politely.
Doors and windows are thrown open. Incense is lit. Food is set on the table. The ritual is called jie caishen, welcoming the God of Wealth. Many families start on the fourth night, before their neighbors wake.
The logic is physical: you make space, you make noise, you leave every opening wide. Then you wait. He is not a god who rewards silence.
Zhao is not the only Caishen. The title belongs to several figures. Fan Li, also called Tao Zhugong, was a strategist from around 500 BCE. He built three separate fortunes during his life. Each time, he gave everything away and started over. He is worshipped as a Civil God of Wealth, not for the accumulating, but for the letting go.
In a 16th-century story collection called the Gengsi Bian, a gambler prayed to Zhao Gongming for rescue. The god answered. He turned his own black tiger into a fighting cricket. The gambler bet on it and won back twice his fortune in ten days.
Even the god of wealth worked with what he already had.
 03 
 
Where it goes wrong
 
Treating it as decoration
Buying a gold cat or a jade frog is not the practice. The practice starts with the open door. In jie caishen, the door is physically open. You cannot invite wealth while keeping your life closed to change. New money means new decisions, new people seeing your numbers, new reasons to say yes. If that thought tightens your chest, the work is there. Not in the candle.
Skipping the giving-away part
Fan Li built three fortunes and released each one. The tradition honors the release, not the grip. When you hold what you have too tightly, you are not protecting wealth. You are squeezing it. The savings you will not touch. The raise you will not enjoy. The gift you send back.
Asking from fear
In the late Qing dynasty, the writer Xue Fucheng recorded that northerners worshipped five animals as wealth gods: snakes, foxes, hedgehogs, rats, and weasels. Not out of love. Out of fear. The offering was a bribe, not an invitation. If you are asking for money because you are terrified of what happens without it, the ask carries the terror. The tradition is built on open doors and noise. Fear closes the door.
 04 
 
What we’re seeing
 
The money bowl keeps cycling back
The money bowl — a dish of rice, cinnamon sticks, coins, and bay leaves — resurfaces on TikTok every few months. A version appeared in Llewellyn’s Witches’ Spell-A-Day Almanac on January 12, 2006. It called for a brass bowl and cinquefoil herb, not rice. The logic traces further back, to hoodoo money-drawing practice, where a lodestone and a coin are used together. A magnet pulls. A coin stands for money. Put them together.
Source: Witches’ Spell-A-Day Almanac, Llewellyn, January 12, 2006
China’s spiritual economy reached $12.4 billion
Temple visits among young Chinese adults surged in 2023. The market for temple goods and visits hit RMB 90 billion, roughly $12.4 billion. On Xiaohongshu, the hashtag for xuanxue, or spiritual mysticism, passed 5 billion views.
Source: The Spiritual Economy in China, Daxue Consulting, 2025
South Korea’s gwansang found a second life on screen
Gwansang, Korean face reading, pairs with saju birth charts to read fortune and character. The 2013 film The Face Reader drew 9.1 million viewers in South Korea. Today gwansang consultations show up in hiring, matchmaking, and plastic surgery decisions.
Source: Gwansang: Korean Face Reading Basics, and What a Reader Actually Looks At, SAJUBY Journal, 2026
 05 
 
What the universe is doing this week
 
Mercury and Venus are both retrograde, both near Scorpio. Both station direct on November 13, ten days from now.
The Scorpio new moon arrives November 9. New moons are for planting the ask. This one falls while both planets are still retracing steps. Write the number before the 9th.
Lidong, the Chinese solar term for Start of Winter, falls November 7. The 11/11 portal date is eight days away. The Leonid meteor shower peaks the night of November 17–18. The Beaver Supermoon closes the month on November 24.
Write the money ask before the new moon on the 9th.
Both planets go forward on the 13th.
Leave the door open.
Your next step:
Open one door tonight. The savings app you have not checked. The envelope you have not opened. The money conversation you keep pushing to next week. Write the number down before the Scorpio new moon on November 9.
Remember, abundance is your birthright.