臨凡解魘 Come Down To Undo A Spell
逐句解 Line by line
In his hand a fly-whisk of dragon-whisker; a silk cord wound round below his waist.
蠅帚 is a fly-whisk, the standard prop of a Daoist adept — the counterpart of the willow spray Guanyin was carrying two passages ago. 絲絛 is a woven silk cord worn as a belt.
Everywhere between heaven and earth he forms bonds with people; over the whole world he wanders free.
乾 is qián here, the trigram of heaven in 乾坤 — the FOURTH and last time this character appears in the chapter, and the only one that is not the gān of dryness. 處 doubled is everywhere.
This is none other than the Purple Cloud Immortal of the Great Canopy Heaven, come down among mortals today to undo an enchantment.
The verse names him only in its last line. 大羅天 is the highest of the Daoist heavens; 解魘 is to break a bewitchment — and 魘 is the same character the queen used when she begged Wukong not to put a spell on her, near the start of the chapter.
The verse withholds the name until its final six characters, which is how these portrait showcases usually work: robe, shoes, whisk, sash, and only then 此乃是, this is none other than. The reader is meant to be guessing from the props, and the props are all Daoist.
The fly-whisk is worth putting beside the willow spray. Guanyin arrived two passages ago with a pure vase and a willow branch and sprinkled sweet dew; this figure arrives with a dragon-whisker whisk and a silk cord. Two rescues, two iconographies, and the chapter has now had one of each.
解魘 in the last line is a character the chapter has used before. 魘寐 was what the queen accused Wukong of when a voice spoke to her out of nowhere — do not put a spell on me. She was wrong about him and, it turns out, right about her situation: there has been an enchantment on her the whole time.