The story of Queen Mother of the West

The name of the Queen Mother appears in pre-Qin texts, where she is called the Queen Mother of the West and lives on the hill of Kunlun. Her earliest form is half human and half beast, with a leopard’s tail and tiger’s teeth, wild hair and a headdress, presiding over the calamities of heaven and the five destructions — very unlike the serene immortal of later ages.

The Classic of Mountains and Seas places the Queen Mother of the West in the Kunlun ranges, in a country holding the Jade Mountain and the Jade Pool, with a three-legged divine bird to fetch her food and carry her messages; this is among the earliest written material on her.

Hou Yi travelled west to Kunlun to ask for the elixir of deathlessness, and that story ties the Queen Mother of the West to the drug of long life and has been retold ever since — though the old texts say very little about how the asking went.

Between the Warring States and the Han her figure moved from half-beast god to stately female immortal, and Kunlun, the Jade Pool and the elixir of deathlessness were added and expanded again and again into a fuller body of tradition.

The Biography of King Mu of Zhou records that King Mu travelled west to Kunlun and met the Queen Mother of the West above the Jade Pool, where the two feasted and exchanged verses, and that at parting the king promised to return; this is often listed among the earliest meetings of a mortal with her.

After the Han her cult spread further, and she was widely regarded as the female immortal governing long life and good fortune, with Kunlun and the Jade Pool becoming holy ground for those seeking the Dao.

By the time of Journey to the West her dwelling is still beside the Jade Pool, with a peach garden of its own where the trees are graded in three classes by their flowering, so that eating them lengthens life, confers immortality, or gives a lifespan equal to heaven and earth.

Whenever the peaches ripened, the Queen Mother held an assembly at the Jade Pool and sent the seven fairy maidens into the garden with baskets to pick each of the three kinds by its years, and to carry the golden trays into the palace.

At the assembly the Queen Mother sat in the seat of honour above the Jade Pool and received the immortal ranks of heaven and the gods of sea and mountain. The scent of peaches mixed with the cloud-vapour, the maidens carried cups before the hall, and the pipes and flutes did not stop all night.

Another Han immortal-tale says that on the night of the seventh day of the seventh month the Queen Mother of the West came down to the Han palace in a carriage of purple cloud. A blue bird alighted before the hall first, and Emperor Wu, hearing of it, bathed, burned incense and went out to receive her himself.

The Queen Mother took her seat in the hall and had her attendants bring out several immortal peaches. They were smaller than the fruit of the human world, but their scent filled the room; when the emperor had eaten he quietly slipped the stone into his sleeve.

Seeing the emperor hide the stone, the Queen Mother told him that the peach bore fruit only once in three thousand years and that the soil of the human world was too thin for it to grow. The emperor had to take the stone out again, and asked her instead about the art of long life.

The Queen Mother spoke of guarding the body, of stillness and of cultivation, and left several rolls of heavenly writ behind. As it grew light the purple cloud rose again outside the palace gate; she mounted her carriage and returned to Kunlun, leaving only the scent of peaches in the courtyard.

Some Honghuang novels begin another story from the Jade Pool: Hongjun orders his boy Haotian to raise the Heavenly Court anew, and the Jade Pool too leaves Zixiao Palace and is honoured as the Golden Mother of the Jade Pool, governing the ranks of immortals with Haotian. This origin appears only in some Honghuang novels.

In that story the Queen Mother keeps in her palace by the Jade Pool a Plain Cloud-Realm Banner. Unfurled, it hangs white vapour in the air and throws out ten thousand rays of golden light, and answers several other immortal banners at a distance.

During the Investiture war, when Yin Jiao blocked the Western Qi army’s road with the Sky-Overturning Seal, Nanji Xianweng was sent to the Jade Pool to set out the reason for borrowing the banner. The Queen Mother allowed him to carry the Plain Cloud-Realm Banner away, and it was deployed with three other immortal banners to hem Yin Jiao in.

With the four banners unfurled, the Sky-Overturning Seal had nowhere to fall and Yin Jiao was driven onto Mount Qi. When the affair was over, Nanji Xianweng returned the Plain Cloud-Realm Banner to the Jade Pool and the Queen Mother took it back into her palace.

In later temples the tiger-toothed, leopard-tailed deity of Kunlun has become a female immortal in a phoenix crown and rainbow robes, seated by the Jade Pool. Those who seek long life bow before her table of incense and ask for peaches and elixir.

The feast at the Jade Pool is still held when the peaches ripen. The seven maidens carry their baskets through the trees, the Queen Mother looks over the list of guests in the hall, and only when the bells and chimes sound in the distance does she order the gates opened to receive them.

And in the older Kunlun story the Queen Mother of the West still keeps to her mountain. Three blue birds fly over the Jade Pool, whose surface is unbroken, and the elixir of deathlessness was long ago carried down into the human world by Hou Yi.