#nine tailed fox

[its-an-art]

minato break dancing to distract the nine tails?

I can do that. LOL. Look at him go!

My art

[karamellisokeri]

Fox lady bday art 🦊

I have the idea of art nouveau sujue in the back of my head for a while now, its not quite the same but this is it for now xD

Also yes i love mixing art nouveau and hanfu (surprisingly this is like second time i draw someone wearing hanfu in this style haha)

Anyway textless version cause im not sure how to feel towards the typography...

[tanuki-kimono]

Ghostly photoshoot staring silver-haired model Eriko, staring a yukata by Iroca posted on this blog ages ago with kyubi no kistune (nine tailed fox) and kitsune no kamisori (foxes’ razor blades, a type of lycoris).

It's so fun to see this design back after all this time!

[works-of-heart]

Lucien week Day 2- Fox

My submission for @lucienweekofficial

My take on 'fox' making Lucien the fabled 9 tailed fox!

This is technically my 2nd attempt at this! I had my first iteration almost finished and when I went to open the file last night for finishing touches, the file was corrupt and would not open anymore. So I had to start from scratch last night and just finished! Please excuse the obvious flaws haha!

[shirii]

himawari and kurama 💤💞

[chipper-smol]

ok so when i was like 12-13 I really really liked Kurama from Naruto but had no idea how to draw foxes

THAT AINT THE CASE ANYMORE!

[jvnart]

their first apocalypse

(just a quick 1 for today yesterday)

@kakagaievents day 2

[ryin-silverfish]

I understood that Fox spirits with gold and white fur are normally heavenly foxes. But Su Daji in the versions we know, killed people before the events of the story. So, will any type of fox spirit get this color when it already has its nine tails? even if they are already foxes that killed people?

I am kinda confused by the wording of this question. Correct me if I'm wrong:

-Heavenly foxes = foxes with gold/white fur and 9 tails

-Heavenly foxes are "good", or at least work for the establishment

-Su Daji of the Pinghua version is a heavenly fox, judging by her appearance

-But she kills people and isn't good

-Does that mean gold/white fur color and 9 tails is merely a signifier of power in fox spirits, and has nothing to do with their alignment or allegiance?

Well...time to dive into some fox spirit lore.

In the oldest Chinese legends, nine-tailed foxes are very much divine beasts. The Girl of Tushan, for example. Nine-tailed foxes also appeared in Han dynasty grave reliefs and paintings as part of Queen Mother of the West's worship:

They were very much auspicious beasts, like Qilins or Phoenixs. Same goes for white foxes.

The exact point in time where "Auspicious Foxes" started shifting into "Demonic Foxes" is unclear, but it probably had something to do with the change in ways people conceive of yaoguais: namely, the idea that anything that grow old enough can become a yaoguai.

Foxes seemed like a prime candidate for that kind of stuff, because unlike dragons or phoenixs, they were just too common, mundane, and eerie. Divine beasts don't sneak into your chicken coop under the cover of darkness.

By the Northern and Southern dynasty, in Ge Hong's Baopuzi, there was already the idea that animals that reached a certain age could transform into humans, and he cited foxes, wolves and jackals as an example:

"...They can live up to 800 years old, and when they reached 500 years old, these beasts transform into human shapes."

Around the same time period, Guo Pu's Xuanzhong Ji gave an even more elaborate account of fox spirits' transformation:

"Upon reaching 50 years of age, foxes can transform into women. 100 years, beautiful women, divine shaman, or men in order to charm women. They can know things from thousands of miles away, are masters of the arts of charms, able to make people lose their minds...at 1000 years old, they can commune with Heaven, and are known as heavenly foxes."

This concept of heavenly foxes had a renaissance in the Tang dynasty, where folk worship of foxes were very popular, and Daoist influences meant that many foxes in Tang folklore were practitioners of the Daoist arts.

If foxes could cultivate, it was only natural that the best cultivators among them could become immortals, just like human Daoists, and get a job in the Celestial Bureaucracy.

Curiously enough, all Tang dynasty heavenly foxes were male foxes, and the troubles they got into often stemmed from their own lust and entitlement to human women.

Heavenly fox status also offered them protection from death sentences: when they were subdued by Daoist masters or immortals, the punishments were either beating with a rod or exile.

However, only one Tang text connected heavenly foxes with nine-tailed foxes and a specific fur color: You Yang Za Zu, which I cited in a previous answer.

In a sense, this fusion of nine-tailed foxes with heavenly foxes was really going back to the roots of "Nine-tailed Foxes as Auspicious Beasts".

But it didn't last, and by the Song dynasty, nine-tailed foxes had undergone full yaoguai-fication like the rest of their kind.

This is just my speculation, but "Nine-tailed Foxes as Demonic Spirits" could perhaps be traced back as far as their more auspicious associations: the nine-tailed foxes of the Book of Mountains and Seas were just another type of man-eating fantastic beasts, after all.

Anyways, it is at this point that the idea of Daji being a nine-tailed fox first appeared, and FSYY Pinghua went a step further by merging Daji with the "heavenly nine-tailed fox" of You Yang Za Zu, turning the auspicious divine beast back into the demonic.

But, back to your question: a white/golden fox, or a nine-tailed fox, is not necessarily a heavenly fox. In the Qin-Han era, that's just an auspicious beast.

By Guo Pu's definition, a heavenly fox is just an incredibly powerful 1000 years old fox. By the Tang dynasty definition, a heavenly fox is a long-lived master of the Daoist arts who managed to get a job in the Celestial Bureaucracy.

They absolutely can be assholes (though shielded from the worst punishment). The idea that a heavenly fox is also a nine-tailed fox of unusual fur color is specific to that one passage in You Yang Za Zu and FSYY Pinghua.

Having nine tails/white or golden fur doesn't say anything about a fox's alignment or morality either. Rather, it says more about people's general conception of foxes during that specific era, and what was auspicious in one dynasty could easily become markers of the demonic in another.

[kelogsloops]

Prints of ‘Nine’ drop tomorrow, Thurs 24th Nov at 12PM (PT) on my store! I wanted to depict the nine-tailed fox spirit, an East-Asian myth. To this day, I think it’s one of the coolest pieces I’ve done, so I’m excited about releasing it as a print! More details here: https://kelogsloops.com/prints

It’s believed the demon (known as kyubi in Japan or huli jng in China) is a shapeshifting entity that shifts between a charming woman and a demonic fox spirit that feeds on spirits of the living. I think of foxes as elegant animals, but the myth has this dark twist to them, so I was really drawn to this ‘two-faced’ notion. This idea of a creature exists along a fine line between something so beautiful, and yet something so evil. So, trying to portray the fine duality between its charming and its sinister nature was probably the most fun part!

[alexidoesart]

The Fox Fairy/Spirit has a lot of variations throughout East Asia. I chose to base mine off the Huli Jing, and Tang dynasty dress. The shapeshifting, predominately female nine tailed fox also takes the form of a Kistune in Japan and Kumiho in Korea.

One of my favourite interpretations of this being is Good Hunting, the short story by Ken Liu (though not the Love, Death, and Robots inspired short animation! :( )

Original art by me! More phenakistoscopes on my page.

[sushibarton]

[procrasticus]

Re-watched the most awesome episode of Naruto ever

[megatonslater]

Nine Tails...

[yorellvc]

A Fox's Dilemma (TangleGang/COMMS OPEN @TangleTheMangle)

I recently found out about its existence and I already want it to be Canon! or at least someone make an animation of it. I love it!

[citrussushii]

erm whipped up some kind of nine tales vale idea i had in mind where apollo plays a role as the nine tales vale guardian/god/diety/spirit and can transform into a fox at will very similar to Nimoma (I NEVER WATCHED IT BEAR WITH ME) anyway i havent been able to design simon as tenma taro yet but ill be sure to with time lmao

[shirii]

hinata & mini kurama doodle 🦊💜