Hello, my name is Biya Fujin (Lady Biya). My religious title is "sama." The year is 1185 here in the Jin dynasty, Year of the Wood Snake. I was born in 1148, Year of the Metal Dragon, in Liaodong province near the city of Mukdan (Chinese, Shengyang). I am Jurchen and my family has lived in our villiage for centuries. We have survived in our little village despite first the Korean Balhae (Bohai is how the Chinese pronounce that kingdom name) kingdom conquering our people, then those nomadic Khitans (Qidans) who, like their Korean predessors, brutalized we Jurchens with a viciousness few clanal societies have ever endured--though I have heard from the westerner or two that I have met some strange tales of a people called "Celts" who also suffered greatly under some people called Romans once? I do not understand these tales at all. What is "England?" and where is "Ireland?" Such strange words you have in the West!
I lived in our little village until the age of around 5 years old when a great sama (shamaness) came to our village, drawn to it by stories of a little girl doing strange things. Ever since I was little, I have fallen suddenly into strange trances where I saw strange things and had disturbing dreams of people, places, and events far away from me. Eventually these dreams and trance-dreams would make sense--when reports would come in from far away or when something would happen in my own life, my family, or the village that matched my visions exactly. And when they did, my family would look at me very strange, as if I made these things happen. I even, in one trance, took apart my older brother's hunting bow, right before he was summoned by our local beile. My mother nearly whipped me to death for it. But I quickly fell into another trance and put it back together, same as new, as if I were the one who made the bow originally. If not for that trance, I think my mother would have truly killed me!
Drawn by these stories, the Sama came and asked me a lot of questions. Somehow I must have pleased her, because her next instruction was to pack up everything I owned. She put me on her tall white horse and hired a second horse for my belongings. We then went to my beile and she talked with him and his wife, our fujin, for a full day. Then we travelled for days together to the gemun hecen of Yanjing. There I spent the rest of my childhood, being educated in the ways of a proper Jurchen shamaness, in the greatest capital in all the world. Yanjing is a center of religious learning, for not only Jurchen shamanism, but Buddhism, Daoism, Kongzi studies (it is said that you of the west call Kongzi something else...Confucious?), Hinduism, and many more. There are even temples for the westerners who come to our great capital. For long have there been people who worship only one, male diety here (how strange is that??!). Largest of all of these with one diety are those who call themselves "Jews" and use some sort of strange candlabra a couple months before Chun Jie (Spring festival, our lunar New Year) for their festival of lights, I think it is. There is a large population of these people throughout not only our Jin empire, but the Southern Song empire as well. But there are also those who carry a cross in their temples--what do you call yourselves? Christians? And of course, the Arabs who pray to some place odd called Mecca?
All are welcome in Yanjing, even if I, as a Jurchen, find your western ways very strange! I have even over heard someone say that his one religion was the actual true and only true religion on earth! How naive does one get?! For all paths are equal under the Divine and no one is allowed to make a window into another's soul! If one believes in one true and correct belief then does not it mean those in the West seek to impose that one idea on all people? What happens to those who must, by nature of free minds, disagree? And where are your holy women of the west? I see no peers with white skin to greet. Men conducting services without the help of women to guide them? What are you westerners? Patriarchs? Every Jurchen knows that women are wiser than men and better suited to religious work than men can ever be!
Perhaps worse of all in my immediate life, westerners in Yanjing seem unable to understand that gift of mine from Abka Hehe, Lady of the Sky...my Sight and Empathy. We Jurchens understand that some must See and hear spirits. Some must walk to the eeries of our sacred gyrs and speak with them. Yet these westerners see our manchurian gyrs and do not see Abka Hehe in their eyes--only profit! How Khitan of them!
Is it any wonder I prefer to walk and minister in my own country? To walk in Liaodong and Jilin among my own kindred?
And yet, by the grace of Feng Huang, the great dragonness herself, one day I found a strange portal to another place!
Through some sort of strange work of magic, this portal appeared, in the sacred mountains to the north, where our cousins in Hei Long Jiang live, near the Amur river. Through this portal I sometimes am able to walk into a strange land they call the "East Kingdom" where I interact with westerners of different time and places. The dragons tell me that there is this huge other world--places like "Midrealms" and the "West Kingdom" where this also happens--bringing together people from many places in times to teach us how to get along with each other! They call this grand experiment the "Society for Creative Anachronism"
On this website you will learn all about me and my descendant by the same name who lives in the 16th century. You will explore the many arts and sciences I do. And you will read articles and learn from the many lessons I have learned while on this dragon-induced journey! For I have been travelling back and forth through this portal most of my life. It has been a long time and I have seen and done many things!
Bright blessings to you! For as you might guess from a far easterner...I am no Christian! I am a true "sama"...a shaman priestess. I cannot help but to speak of our many goddesses! Be not offended! But learn, oh people of the west! We easterners have much to teach!
My heraldry, though in your western style, reflects a shaman's heart: "Per pale azure and purpure, two cockatoos respectant and in chief a roundel between an increscent and a decrescent argent"
My cockatoos, drawn as the two precious cockatoos of this shaman's life, Mithril and Aragorn, face each other in love under the waxing, full, and waning moon. My name, Biya, means "the Moon" and this lunar image is meant to both remind you of my name while reminding us all that we are under divine grace. For to we Jurchens, the Moon is a great and powerful goddess, to be honored and respected, adored.
May you always adore the women in your life...with chivalry and grace in this new Year of the Metal Rabbit. Chun Jie kuai le! Happy Chinese New Year to you all!
--Biya
