Fox Spirit Guides in American-Indian Cultures

The Fox as a Guide

• The Fox has a highly developed sense of smell. As an animal spirit guide, the Fox will help you to recognize subtle things in life and make you alert to unpleasant situations.
• A Fox is very quite and blends into its surroundings becoming almost invisible. Being in harmony with ones surroundings is important to people who carry this medicine. For those with this animal spirit guide, try being very quiet and practice blending in without notice - especially if you have a powerful presence around others.  
• The Fox has super-sensitive hearing - so you may also be able to hear Spirit. Listening is often more important than speaking - a good lesson to remember.
• Mr. Fox comes out of hiding at dusk-twilight the time and often hunts under the cover of darkness. His keen eyesight is a gift that may teach you too see beyond your present situation and to be able to see Spirit.
• By living between light and darkness, the Fox looks into both worlds.
• The Fox is physically and mental quick and extremely agile which can teach you ways to respond quickly to situations by using the power of inner instincts and knowing.
• A Fox teaches good eating habits - not from what it eats, but from the way it eats. The fox eats small amounts frequently. The Fox is not a picky eater and readily accepts whatever is available.

Origins?

Foxes are seen as power animals / totems throughout the world. The Chinese believed foxes could take human form. In Egypt the fox brought favour from the gods. There was a fox god in Peru. Foxes aid the dead get to the next life in Persia. The Cherokees, Hopi and various other Native American Indian tribes believed in its healing power, the Apache credited the fox with giving man fire.

Earliest Records?

The earliest surviving collections of supernatural tales were written from the 3rd century through the 6th A.D. These collections are crude, compared to later accounts, and serve simply to record miraculous occurances that have been witnessed or told of to the writer. The tales deal with immortals, local gods, ghosts, and animal spirits, characters and situations that would be returned to again and again throughout the development of supernatural literature in China.

Origins?

It is widely agreed that many fox myths in Japan can be traced to China, Korean, or India. Many of the earliest surviving stories are recorded in the Konjaku Monogatari, an 11th-century collection of Chinese, Indian, and Japanese narratives.

There is debate whether the kitsune myths originated entirely from foreign sources or are in part an indigenous Japanese concept dating as far back as the fifth century BC. Japanese folklorist Kiyoshi Nozaki argues that the Japanese regarded kitsune positively as early as the 4th century A.D.; the only things imported from China or Korea were the kitsune's negative attributes

Pu Song-Ling

  The best known Chinese stories written about fox-spirits are those written by Pu Song-ling [蒲 松 齡], in a collection known as 'Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio' or 'Laozhai zhiyi' [聊 齋 誌 異] made in the late 17th century.


His overriding interest was in tales about the supernatural. Many of his stories in the Liaozhai collection are retelling of old tales from the Tang Dynasty or earlier.
 
The Liaozhai Zhiyi, or 'Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio', contains around 491 tales. His book circulated only in manuscript form for many years, before finally being published posthumously by his grandson in 1740. An alternate title was 'History of Foxes and Ghosts'.


It is actually quite an interesting read, and I recommend this if you have a preference for those things that go bump in the night. 




....(Apparently I was told many of his stories during my childhood years though i have no recollection of this whatsoever).

Huli Jing

húli jīng ( 狐狸精 ) is a mythological Chinese monster that has the ability to transform into humans when they have sufficient energy, obtained in forms such as human breath or the essence of the moon and sun. 


Huli Jing in Chinese mythology are mostly female, though they can be on the side of evil or good. One of the most infamous fox spirits in Chinese mythology was Daji (妲己), who is portrayed in the Ming novel Fengshen Yanyi. 


And here's a completely irrelevant picture of a nine-tailed fox just because i can  (:

What is a Kumiho?

Kumiho ( or sometimes alternatively spelt "Gumiho" )


Anybody ever watch the Korean drama "My Girlfriend is a Gumiho?" Well if not, I definitely recommend it. But bear with me a little longer and I'll clear up this Gumiho business.


What is it?

Like it's Japanese and Chinese counterparts, a fox that has lived for a thousand years turns into a Kumiho. It has the ability to transform into humans, but its preferred shape is that of a beautiful girl who sets out to seduce men in order to eat their hearts and livers (gruesome.....). 


Unlike its Japanese and Chinese counterparts, the Gumiho is seen as purely evil. Some tales say that if a Kumiho abstains from killing and eating humans for a thousand days, it can become human. Others, like the drama Gumiho: Tale of the Fox’s Child (this one is a bit scary guise), say that a Kumiho can become human if the man who sees her true nature keeps it a secret for ten years.


Stories on this malignant figure can be found in the encyclopedic Compendium of Korean Oral Literature (한국 구비문학 대계).  ( Yay bedtime reading! )