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Liber XXXI · Taoism & Chinese Religion

Liber XXXI · Taoism & Chinese Religion · Chapter II: Chinese Gods & Immortals

Xiwangmu: The Queen Mother of the West in Chinese Religion

Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the West: from the Classic of Mountains and Seas and Han tomb art to the peaches of immortality, Taoist scripture and folk cult.

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Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the West, is the great goddess of immortality in Chinese religion: ruler of the paradise of Mount Kunlun, keeper of the peaches of immortality and, in Taoism, the head of all female immortals. Her image changed over two thousand years, from a fierce, tiger-toothed being in ancient geography to a crowned queen in Han tomb art and a radiant divine mother in Taoist scripture and popular worship.

The Earliest Sources: Oracle Bones and the Classic of Mountains and Seas§

Some scholars have connected Xiwangmu with a "Western Mother" (ximu) who, together with an "Eastern Mother", received offerings in the Shang dynasty oracle-bone inscriptions of the late second millennium BCE. The link is possible but uncertain, since the inscriptions say almost nothing about these figures.

The first clear portraits come in the Classic of Mountains and Seas (Shanhai jing), a compilation of mythical geography assembled between roughly the fourth century BCE and the early Han. There the Queen Mother of the West lives on a jade mountain in the far west. She looks human but has a leopard's tail and a tiger's teeth, wears a headdress called sheng on her dishevelled hair, and is good at whistling or howling. She is said to preside over the calamities of heaven and the "five punishments". Three green birds fetch her food. These passages, which the fourth-century scholar Guo Pu annotated, present a powerful and somewhat terrifying being of the mountain wilderness rather than a gentle mother.

At about the same time, the Zhuangzi lists the Queen Mother among those who have attained the Tao, saying that she sits on her mountain and that no one knows her beginning or her end.

King Mu's Visit to the Jasper Pool§

A different picture appears in the Account of Mu, Son of Heaven (Mu tianzi zhuan), a romance found around 280 CE among bamboo-slip texts in an ancient tomb at Ji commandery, in modern Henan. It tells how King Mu of Zhou, a historical ruler of about the tenth century BCE, drove his eight famous horses west to the land of the Queen Mother. She received him by the Jasper Pool (Yaochi), they feasted and exchanged songs, and she asked whether he would return; he promised to come back in three years, once his people were at peace.

The story turned the Queen Mother into a cultivated queen who could host a king as an equal. The Jasper Pool became her standard residence in later literature, and the theme of a royal meeting with a goddess, tinged with longing, became a favourite of poets. The Liezi retells King Mu's journey in its chapter on dreams and illusions (see the Liezi).

Goddess of Immortality in Han Religion and Tomb Art§

During the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) the Queen Mother became the most important deity of immortality. In 3 BCE, during a drought, the official histories record a mass movement in which people carried tokens of straw or hemp from village to village toward the capital, singing and worshipping the Queen Mother and expecting her coming. The episode shows that her cult had spread far beyond the court.

Han tombs give the richest evidence. On carved stones from Shandong and Henan, on bronze mirrors, and on the bronze "money trees" of Sichuan, the Queen Mother sits enthroned, often on the pillar-like summit of Kunlun, wearing the sheng headdress. Around her gather the creatures of her paradise: the hare who pounds the elixir of immortality, the three-legged crow, the nine-tailed fox, the toad, and winged immortals. From the second century CE she was frequently paired with a male counterpart, the King Father of the East (Dongwanggong), so that the two represented yin and yang.

Michael Loewe argued that these images reflect hopes that the soul of the deceased would reach her paradise. The Queen Mother thus stands at the centre of early Chinese ideas of the afterlife and of the Taoist immortal.

The Peaches of Immortality and Emperor Wu§

The Queen Mother's most famous attribute, the peaches of immortality, comes from later legend. The Inner Biography of Emperor Wu of Han (Han Wudi neizhuan), a Taoist work probably composed between the fourth and sixth centuries, describes how she descended to the palace of Emperor Wu on the seventh night of the seventh month in a procession of immortals. She gave him peaches from a tree that fruited only once in three thousand years and instructed him in the methods of long life. The emperor, unable to master his desires, failed to benefit. The witty courtier Dongfang Shuo, who had stolen her peaches three times, appears in the same cycle.

The peaches became a lasting symbol. Paintings and porcelain of the Ming and Qing show the Queen Mother or her attendants with peaches, often as birthday gifts wishing long life. In the novel Journey to the West the Monkey King, set to guard her orchard, eats the ripest peaches and ruins her Peach Banquet, to which all the gods of heaven, including the Eight Immortals, had been invited.

Xiwangmu in Shangqing Taoism and Tang Poetry§

In religious Taoism the Queen Mother rose to the highest ranks of the pantheon. In the Shangqing revelations of the fourth century she appears as a revealer of scriptures and teacher of the Perfected, and Taoist works came to call her the Golden Mother of the Turtle Terrace (Jinmu). The Taoist scholar Du Guangting (850–933) wrote a long biography of her as the first of the female immortals, mistress of all women who attain the Tao, in his collection on immortal women.

Suzanne Cahill's study of Tang poetry shows how widely she appeared in the literature of the eighth and ninth centuries, where poets wrote of her visits to emperors, of Taoist nuns as her attendants, and of lovers parted like King Mu and the goddess. She was at once a cosmic deity, a patron of Taoist women, and a figure of romantic longing.

In later popular religion the Queen Mother is usually called Wangmu Niangniang, "Lady Queen Mother", and is often imagined as the consort of the Jade Emperor. Her birthday, celebrated with a Peach Banquet, is widely observed on the third day of the third lunar month. In a popular version of the legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, it is she who draws the Milky Way across the sky with her hairpin to separate the lovers, who may meet only once a year on the seventh night of the seventh month.

From the Ming dynasty, sectarian scriptures spoke of an Eternal Venerable Mother (Wusheng laomu) who longs to gather her lost children home, a figure related to but distinct from Xiwangmu. In Taiwan, the Compassion Society (Cihui tang) movement, founded in Hualien in 1949, worships the Golden Mother of the Jasper Pool (Yaochi jinmu) through spirit mediums and has spread across Taiwan and the Chinese diaspora. Her temples stand beside those of other goddesses such as Mazu, within the wider world of Chinese popular religion.

Frequently asked questions§

Who is the Queen Mother of the West?§

Xiwangmu is a Chinese goddess who rules the paradise of Mount Kunlun in the far west and grants immortality. She is one of the oldest deities of Chinese religion and is honoured in Taoism as the head of female immortals.

Why did she change from a fierce figure to a gentle mother?§

The earliest descriptions come from a book of mythical geography that portrays wild beings of the mountains. As her cult grew in the Han dynasty and was adopted by Taoists and poets, she was reimagined as a crowned queen and benevolent mother, though she always kept her power over life and death.

What are the peaches of immortality?§

They are fruits from the Queen Mother's orchard, said to ripen once in thousands of years and to confer long life. The legend is told of her visit to Emperor Wu of Han and became famous through Journey to the West.

Is Wangmu Niangniang the wife of the Jade Emperor?§

In much popular belief and fiction she is treated as his consort, presiding with him over the heavenly court. In Taoist scripture and earlier tradition she is an independent goddess of great antiquity.

Sources and further reading§