Leigong — Léigōng (雷公), the Duke of Thunder (also Leishen, the Thunder God) — is the god of thunder in Chinese mythology: a fearsome, beak-faced, winged deity who, with his hammer and drums, makes the thunder and strikes down the wicked, executing Heaven’s punishment on the guilty. The thunder-god of China, Leigong is the punisher of secret sins.
The Duke of Thunder
Leigong (“Lord/Duke of Thunder”) is the Chinese god of thunder — a fearsome and grotesque deity, typically depicted with a fierce, blue-skinned body, the beak and talons (and sometimes wings) of a bird (an eagle or a bat-like creature), a monkey-like or demonic face, and muscular arms, naked to the waist, carrying his instruments of thunder: a mallet (hammer) and a string of drums. He makes the thunder by beating his drums with his mallet — the rolling thunder of the storm is the sound of Leigong’s drumming. He flies through the storm-clouds, wreathed in the tempest, an awe-inspiring and terrifying figure.
The Executioner of Heaven's Justice
Leigong’s great office is divine punishment. He is the executioner of Heaven’s justice — it is Leigong who, at Heaven’s command, strikes down the wicked with his thunderbolts. In particular, he punishes secret crimes and hidden sins that have escaped human justice — the unfilial, the cruel, those who waste food or grain, those who commit crimes no earthly court has caught, and evil spirits and demons. A person struck by lightning was, in Chinese folk-belief, often assumed to have been secretly guilty of some terrible hidden sin and to have been executed by Leigong as a punishment from Heaven. Thus the thunder-god is a moral force — the dread enforcer who sees and punishes the secret wickedness that men conceal.
Leigong and Dianmu
Leigong works in concert with the other storm-deities, above all his consort or partner Dianmu, the “Mother of Lightning” — for there is a famous division of labour: Dianmu makes the lightning (flashing her two mirrors to send the lightning-flash) first, to light up and clearly reveal the target, so that Leigong can then strike accurately with his thunder and not, by mistake, kill an innocent person in the dark. (The lightning shows the way; the thunder strikes the guilty.) Together with the wind-gods, rain-gods, and cloud-gods, they form the celestial Ministry of Thunder, the bureau of the storm. Fierce, beak-faced, beating his thunder-drums with his mallet, striking down the secretly wicked with Heaven’s thunderbolts — Leigong is the thunder-god of Chinese mythology, the dread executioner of divine justice.
