Nine-Tailed Fox Meaning: From Lucky Omen to Fox Spirit

Round pale green jade pendant with a nine-tailed fox carved inside the ring

The nine-tailed fox, jiuweihu (九尾狐), is a fox with nine tails from Chinese myth. Over its long history it has been a wild beast, a sign of good fortune and a dangerous seductress. Today people pray at fox shrines in Hong Kong and Taiwan for love.

First seen at Qingqiu

The oldest record is the Classic of Mountains and Seas, the Shanhaijing, compiled between the Warring States period and the early Han dynasty. It places a fox with nine tails on Qingqiu Mountain, rich in jade on its southern slope. The beast cries like a baby and eats people, yet whoever eats its flesh is protected from gu, an insect poison.

A lucky sign in the Han dynasty

An old legend says Yu the Great met a white nine-tailed fox and took it as a sign that he would marry. By the Han dynasty the fox was counted among the auspicious omens. The Baihu tong, a record of court debates held in 79 CE, explains it this way: a dying fox turns its head toward the hill where it was born, so it never forgets its roots, and its nine tails stand for many descendants.

Han artists placed the fox beside the Queen Mother of the West, Xiwangmu, the goddess who held the secret of immortality. An Eastern Han lamp at the Yale University Art Gallery shows her enthroned and attended by a rabbit pounding the elixir of immortality, a three-legged bird and a nine-tailed fox.

From omen to fox spirit

Later writers turned the fox darker. The Jin dynasty scholar Guo Pu wrote that a fox of fifty can take the form of a woman and that an old fox can bewitch people. The huli jing (狐狸精), a fox spirit disguised as a beautiful woman, became a stock figure of Chinese tales.

The most famous is Daji in Investiture of the Gods, a sixteenth-century Ming novel. There a nine-tailed fox sent by the goddess Nüwa takes over the body of Daji, consort of the last Shang king, and helps bring the dynasty down. In modern Chinese, huli jing is still an insult for a mistress.

Kitsune and gumiho

The nine-tailed fox traveled to Japan and Korea. In Japanese folklore the kitsune grows stronger with age and can have up to nine tails, an idea drawn from the Chinese classics. Later Japanese tellings even make Daji and the court lady Tamamo-no-mae the same fox. Good kitsune serve Inari, the Shinto god of rice, as messengers, and fox statues guard Inari shrines.

Korea's gumiho is darker still. Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism describes it as usually a bloodthirsty creature that takes the form of a beautiful woman to lure men to their death.

Fox charms and peach blossom luck

In modern Chinese folk belief the fox's charm is put to gentler use. People visit fox immortal shrines in Hong Kong and Taiwan to ask for love and a good match. A 2017 study of 64 worshippers at Hong Kong fox shrines found that a good match in love was the wish named most often.

Our fox pendants and bracelets carry the same wish for peach blossom luck, taohua yun (桃花运), luck in love. Our rose quartz guide explains the term. It is a folk belief, not a promise.

Fox charms at Buddha.store

More are in our necklaces and pendants.

See every piece in our Fox collection.

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