Hsi Wang Mu’s palace is situated in the high mountains of the snowy K’un-lun.  It is 1000 li (about 333 miles) in circuit; a rampart of massive gold surrounds its battlements of precious stones.  Its right wing rises on the edge of the Kingfishers’ River.  It is the usual abode of the Immortals, who are divided into seven special categories according to the colour of their garments—­red, blue, black, violet, yellow, green, and ‘nature-colour.’  There is a marvellous fountain built of precious stones, where the periodical banquet of the Immortals is held.  This feast is called P’an-t’ao Hui, ’the Feast of Peaches.’  It takes place on the borders of the Yao Ch’ih, Lake of Gems, and is attended by both male and female Immortals.  Besides several superfine meats, they are served with bears’ paws, monkeys’ lips, dragons’ liver, phoenix marrow, and peaches gathered in the orchard, endowed with the mystic virtue of conferring longevity on all who have the good luck to taste them.  It was by these peaches that the date of the banquet was fixed.  The tree put forth leaves once every three thousand years, and it required three thousand years after that for the fruit to ripen.  These were Hsi Wang Mu’s birthdays, when all the Immortals assembled for the great feast, “the occasion being more festive than solemn, for there was music on invisible instruments, and songs not from mortal tongues.”

The First Taoist Pope

Chang Tao-ling, the first Taoist pope, was born in A.D. 35, in the reign of the Emperor Kuang Wu Ti of the Han dynasty.  His birthplace is variously given as the T’ien-mu Shan, ‘Eye of Heaven Mountain,’ in Lin-an Hsien, in Chekiang, and Feng-yang Fu, in Anhui.  He devoted himself wholly to study and meditation, declining all offers to enter the service of the State.  He preferred to take up his abode in the mountains of Western China, where he persevered in the study of alchemy and in cultivating the virtues of purity and mental abstraction.  From the hands of Lao Tzu he received supernaturally a mystic treatise, by following the instructions in which he was successful in his search for the elixir of life.

One day when he was engaged in experimenting with the ’Dragon-tiger elixir’ a spiritual being appeared to him and said:  “On Po-sung Mountain is a stone house in which are concealed the writings of the Three Emperors of antiquity and a canonical work.  By obtaining these you may ascend to Heaven, if you undergo the course of discipline they prescribe.”

Chang Tao-ling found these works, and by means of them obtained the power of flying, of hearing distant sounds, and of leaving his body.  After going through a thousand days of discipline, and receiving instruction from a goddess, who taught him to walk about among the stars, he proceeded to fight with the king of the demons, to divide mountains and seas, and to command the wind and thunder.  All the demons fled before him.  On account of the prodigious slaughter of demons by this hero the wind and thunder were reduced to subjection, and various divinities came with eager haste to acknowledge their faults.  In nine years he gained the power to ascend to Heaven.