The story of Pangu Axe

In the common account of the treasures left by the splitting of the sky, Pangu took shape within the chaos and woke with a great axe already at his hand. He gripped the haft and swung the first stroke into the boundless dark.

Where the axe-light passed, the chaos split. The light and clear rose, the heavy and turbid sank; and when the unsettled heaven and earth began several times to close again, Pangu stood between them, holding the sky on his shoulders and the earth beneath his feet.

His frame grew with heaven and earth, and again and again he swung the axe at the chaos that still clung together. The space between the clear and the turbid widened, and only then was there room for sun, moon and stars, for mountains and for the courses of water.

When heaven and earth were fixed, Pangu’s strength was spent and he fell. His eyes, his blood, his bones and his breath passed into the new world, and in this account the great axe that had opened it came apart with him.

The blade became the Pangu Banner, the body of the axe the Taiji Diagram, and the haft the Chaos Bell. The three left the place where the sky had been opened and fell towards Kunlun, the Bajing Palace and the line of the Yao Heavenly Court.

Taiqing Laozi later carried the Taiji Diagram into the Soul-Scattering Formation, and Chijingzi took Jiang Ziya’s soul back across the golden bridge the diagram made; Yuanshi Tianzun gave the Pangu Banner to Wenshu to hold down the Taiji station in the Ten Thousand Immortals Formation.

Donghuang Taiyi carried the Chaos Bell into the Yao Heavenly Court. When the Wu and Yao clans set out the Zhou-Heaven Star Formation and the Twelve Capital Gods and Demons Formation, the sound of the bell carried from the heavenly palace down to the world below.

The three treasures went afterwards into different wars with their different holders, and the Pangu Axe never appeared whole again.