Religious Monkey King Flag
I recently acquired this 50-plus-year-old command flag (lingqi, 令旗), which symbolizes a given ritual specialist's mandate from heaven to exorcise evil. Reading from right to left, the exorcist deities listed are:
Great Sage Equaling Heaven (Qitian dasheng, 齊天大聖), a.k.a. Sun Wukong. A very, very faint chop seal print of his name also graces the bottom right of the flag.
Third Prince Nezha (Nezha San taizi, 哪吒三太子)
Lord Zhu (Zhufu qiansui, 朱府千歲)
Lord Li (Lifu qiansui, 李府千歲)
Supreme Emperor of the Dark Heavens (Xuantian shangdi, 玄天上帝). This deity is the highest exorcist in the Daoist pantheon. Most command flags carry his name or at least a seven-star big dipper pattern, which alludes to his role as a representation of the northern sky.
The symbol on the far end is "command" (ling, 令).
What's neat is that this flag is possibly written in blood, likely produced from the self-mortification of spirit-mediums (Chinese: Jitong, 乩童; Hokkien: Tangki, 童乩; literally: “Divining Child”).
I plan to have the flag framed behind glass to protect it from the ravages of time.
