When i was child, growing up in
the San Francisco Bay Area, a friend of mine's family ran a
grocery store. They were Chinese, and although almost
everything in their store was exactly like the stuff in all
the other small groceries in Berkeley, they also carried a few
Chinese specialty items up by the counter. One of these was
Hell Money. The word Hell was introduced to China, my friend's
parents told me, by Christian missionaries who claimed that
non-converted Chinese folks were all "going to Hell" when they
died -- and the Chinese, thinking "Hell" was the proper
English term for the afterlife, adopted the word. Thus, Hell
Bank Notes are simply Afterlife Monetary Offerings or Spirit
Money.
As they explained it to me, when
people die, their spirits or ghosts go to an afterlife where
they continue to live on, doing the same sort of things why
did while alive, eating, drinking, wearing clothes, playing
with their children, and so forth. In order to ensure that
they have lots of good things in the afterlife, their
relatives send them presents, and one of the best things to
send them is Hell Bank Notes -- money to spend in the
afterworld. In addition to Hell Bank Notes, some Chinese
grocery stores also sell elaborately-made and multi-coloured
paper watches, clothes, cars, Hell Credit Cards, and even
refrigerators for the purpose of burning in the belief that
doing so sends their essence to the afterlife world, where the
recipient will be glad to receive such material goods.
The Hell Money i used to buy as a
kid was always green, like the 10,000 dollar bill shown above,
because it was made for American Chinese people to use, and
American money is green. But in Hong Kong and Singapore, there
is no such drab restriction on the colour of money. There, as
witness the lovely Hell Bank Note for 5000,000,000 dollars,
Hell Money can be a real work of art. Hell Bank Notes are
printed on thin paper, and their designs change from year to
year, making them quite collectible. Like earthly notes, they
bear serial numbers, and the denominations vary, as do their
sizes. They are sold in packs of 30 to 50 bills, wrapped in
cellophane.
The images found on Hell Bank
notes printed in Asia convey quite a bit of symbolic
information that is missing in their American-Chinese
counterparts. On the front, they always feature the Lord of
Hell (better thought of as the Emperor of the Afterworld), a
middle-aged bearded man who wears a characteristic flat-topped
hat from which strings of beads dangle fore-and-aft. I am told
that he was once a living Emperor of China, and a great
leader, and thus was given dominion over the Underworld. The
backs of the bills usually show the Bank of Hell, an
old-fashioned tile-roofed temple-like building, presumably
where deposits of Hell Money are kept in the accounts of the
deceased; a few feature foo-dogs instead of the building. The
words "Hell Bank Note" always appear on the back in English as
well as Chinese.
Others symbols on the faces of the
Asian Hell Money deserve individual description: To the left
of the Emperor of Hell on the 500,000,000 dollar note there is
a golden bowl piled high with offerings -- slipper-shaped gold
bullion bars, polished branches of red coral, and peacock
feathers. To his right is a stylized lotus flower. At 4" by 7
1/2 ", this is the largest Hell Bank Note i have seen in terms
of size, although larger denominations do exist.
The 3 /1/2" x 7" bill from
Singapore for 500 dollars carries images of the Emperor of
Hell; a phoenix bird (feng huang). said to foretell good luck;
and a happy boy holding a large carp fish. The carp symbolizes
money in Chinese iconography because the Chinese words for
"fish" and "money" are homonyms. Pictures of children holding
a carp or of two carp leaping together are a common symbol of
monetary luck, found on Chinese key chains, fabrics, and
wall-hangings. Items imprinted with the double-carp image are
often given as New Year's gifts.
Both the 100 dollar and 50 dollar
Hell Bank Notes shown here feature the ch'i lin, a propitious
fire-horse-tiger figure from Chinese mythology said to grant
illustrious progeny. On the 100 dollar note the ch'i lin is
ridden by a young boy (the veritable illustrious progeny), who
holds a single blooming lotus stalk, with the additional image
of a luck-foretelling phoenix bird to the right. On the 50
dollar note the ch'i lin is prancing by himself, a vase of
flowers to the right. The vase of flowers also appears on one
of the 10 dollar bills shown here, along with a pair of
thistles and a junk-style boat with words written on the sail.
Another pretty 10 dollar Hell Bank
Note from Singapore depicts a baby holding a carp. Lotus
flowers bloom behind the lucky child and a stylized lotus also
appears to the far side of the Hell Emperor. The back side of
this bill, like most other Hell Bank Notes, features a
monotone picture of the Bank of Hell; this one is especially
nice -- it is rendered in delicate shades of blue and the bank
sits beside a small lake, unlike most of the bills, on which
the bank is rendered in the form of simple line-art and
located on a city street.
There are several ways to send
Spirit Money to one's departed relatives -- it can be thrown
to the winds during the funeral procession, left on a grave at
any time, or burned in ceremonial fires during the yearly
Hungry Ghost Festival.
In addition to its traditional use
as an offering among Chinese and Chinese-Americans, Hell Money
has also found a niche among practitioners of various forms of
eclectic magic in the United States. Some people employ it as
symbolic money when working money-drawing spells, using it to
decorate their altars, adding it to money-drawing mojo bags,
or money-drawing lodestone spells. Others utilize it as a form
of attractant or pay-off for benign or infernal spirits when
engaging in Black Arts such as necromancy, invocations,
crossroads work, or performing a ritual in a graveyard.
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