ss, send pestilence and war, regulate rainfall and drought, and
command angels and demons; so every event in life is determined by the
'star-ruler' who at that time from the shining firmament manages the
destinies of men and nations. The worship is performed in the native
homes either by astrologers engaged for that purpose or by Taoist
priests. In times of sickness, ten paper star-gods are arranged,
five good on one side and five bad on the other; a feast is placed
before them, and it is supposed that when the bad have eaten enough
they will take their flight to the south-west; the propitiation of
the good star-gods is in the hope that they will expel the evil stars,
and happiness thus be obtained.

The practical effect of this worship is seen in the following
examples taken from the Chinese list of one hundred and twenty-nine
lucky and unlucky stars, which, with the sixty cycle-stars and the
twenty-eight constellations, besides a vast multitude of others, make
up the celestial galaxy worshipped by China's millions: the Orphan
Star enables a woman to become a man; the Star of Pleasure decides
on betrothals, binding the feet of those destined to be lovers with
silver cords; the Bonepiercing Star produces rheumatism; the Morning
Star, if not worshipped, kills the father or mother during the year;
the Balustrade Star promotes lawsuits; the Three-corpse Star controls
suicide, the Peach-blossom Star lunacy; and so on.

The Herdsman and the Weaver-girl

In the myths and legends which have clustered about the observations of
the stars by the Chinese there are subjects for pictorial illustration
without number. One of these stories is the fable of Aquila and Vega,
known in Chinese mythology as the Herdsman and the Weaver-girl. The
latter, the daughter of the Sun-god, was so constantly busied with her
loom that her father became worried at her close habits and thought
that by marrying her to a neighbour, who herded cattle on the banks
of the Silver Stream of Heaven (the Milky Way), she might awake to
a brighter manner of living.

No sooner did the maiden become wife than her habits and character
utterly changed for the worse. She became not only very merry and
lively, but quite forsook loom and needle, giving up her nights
and days to play and idleness; no silly lover could have been more
foolish than she. The Sun-king, in great wrath at all this, concluded
that the husband was the cause of it, and determined to separate