Protecting fictional heroes against misfortune and helping them defeat demonic enemies, the Mysterious Woman of the Nine Heavens proves to be a crucial figure in the Ming novel Water Margin. Her divine power and military wisdom pique our interest, inviting us to discover her true identity and investigate the process of her creation. This article shows how a set of related Daoist texts strengthens her role as a warrior protectress by giving prominence to her magic of concealing the body 隱身 (yinshen) and to magic concerning the worship of the Northern Dipper. The association of these two types of magic with the Mysterious Woman indicates the nature of this deity as a mixture of Daoist ideas that are in turn assimilated into the novel to serve narrative functions. In this process, the novel codes religious ideas into its own language and portrays the Mysterious Woman as an internal author who controls the knowledge of the characters' destinies. Her intervention in human affairs is restaged in a novel setting. The novel functions as part of a cultural mechanism that creates new stories about this ancient goddess.

中文翻译：

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“隐身护国”：道家水浒神秘女子的造化

保护虚构英雄免于不幸，帮助他们击败恶魔敌人，九天玄女被证明是明代小说水浒传中的关键人物。她的神力和军事智慧激起了我们的兴趣，邀请我们去发现她的真实身份并调查她的创作过程。这篇文章展示了一套相关的道教文本如何通过突出她隐藏身体（yinshen）的魔法和关于北斗七星崇拜的魔法来加强她作为武士保护者的角色。这两种魔法与神秘女子的联系表明了这个神的本质是道教思想的混合，而这些思想又被吸收到小说中以服务于叙事功能。在这个过程中，这部小说将宗教思想编码成自己的语言，并将神秘女人描绘成一个控制人物命运知识的内在作者。她对人类事务的干预在一个新的环境中重新上演。这部小说是一种文化机制的一部分，它创造了关于这位古代女神的新故事。