Dianmu — Diànmů (電母), the Mother of Lightning — is the goddess of lightning in Chinese mythology: the deity who, flashing her two great mirrors, sends the lightning across the sky to illuminate the targets of Heaven’s justice, so that her partner Leigong the Thunder-God may strike the guilty accurately. The lightning-goddess of China, Dianmu is the flash before the thunder.
The Mother of Lightning
Dianmu (“Lightning Mother”) is the Chinese goddess of lightning — the consort or partner of Leigong the Thunder-God, and a member of the celestial Ministry of Thunder (the bureau of storm-gods). She is depicted as a beautiful (and sometimes fierce) goddess, often in colourful robes, holding aloft two great mirrors (or jade discs) — one in each hand — with which she makes the lightning. When she flashes or claps her two mirrors together, they send out the brilliant flash of lightning across the heavens.
The Light Before the Strike
Dianmu’s role expresses a charming and characteristically Chinese piece of moral and meteorological logic. In the celestial order of the storm, the lightning comes first, and the thunder follows — and there is a reason: Dianmu’s lightning illuminates and clearly reveals the target — the person or thing that Heaven has marked for punishment — before Leigong strikes with his thunder. The story goes that Leigong once, striking in darkness, accidentally killed an innocent and virtuous person (a devoted daughter-in-law) by mistake; thereafter Dianmu was appointed to flash her lightning first, lighting up the scene so that Leigong could see clearly and strike only the truly guilty, never an innocent by mistake. Thus Dianmu’s lightning is the light of divine discernment that ensures the justice of the thunder — the flash that reveals the guilty before the bolt falls.
The Goddess of the Storm-Flash
Dianmu works in close partnership with Leigong (thunder) and the other storm-deities — the wind-gods, the rain-gods, the cloud-gods — who together produce the storm at Heaven’s command. Her lightning is both a natural phenomenon (the flash of the storm) and a moral instrument (the light that reveals the targets of divine justice). Beautiful and brilliant, flashing her two mirrors to send the lightning across the sky, lighting up the guilty so that the thunder-god may strike them justly — Dianmu is the goddess of lightning in Chinese mythology, the Mother of Lightning, the flash before the thunder.
