Folklore Friday: The Eight Immortals

Hey guys, welcome to Learn Feng Shui, where you'll learn Feng Shui from a classical point of view, taking out the myths and superstition. If you like weekly tips as well as fun folklore tales, you'll enjoy learning Feng Shui with me. Hey guys, welcome to Folklore Friday. Today, we're going to be talking about the eight e-mortals. Hey guys, follow the link below and check out the event section on the website.

I have all sorts of events coming up and have the next few months of events that are coming up. So those are the Feng Shui workshop as well as information about the Feng Shui Club. So if you're interested in that, go to the website at Feng Shui by Candice.com linked below. Hey guys, let's jump right into today's tale. So I'm going to be talking about the eight e-mortals and this is from the book again, Chinese fairy tales and legends, which I'll link to below.

I've read from this a couple weeks ago and I like, you know, probably pulled this out every so often and read a few stories from it. This is actually a subject I already covered before so I told this story. I think when I first started doing the podcast and I was talking about some of the different deities and such, I wanted to kind of revisit it because I found the story to it and the Chinese folklore book that I talked about. So I just kind of wanted to read through it and there's a couple different stories here I wanted to read. So let's jump right into it.

Many of the 80 mortals, some of them are real historical characters while others are purely mythical, but there's no denying they all have an impressive set of superpowers. There is a legend that declares that 80 mortals dwell in the heavens. The first is named Lee Huang. He lived in the time of the Han Dynasty and discovered the wonderful magical golden cinnabar often called the philosophers Stone. He could melt Quicksilver and burn lead and turn them into gold and white silver.

He could fly through the air in his human form and he is the chief of the 80 mortals. The second is named Shango and in prime time he gained hidden knowledge. It's said that he was actually a white bat her turned into a man and in the first days of the Tang Dynasty an ancient with a white beard and a bamboo drum on his back was seen riding backwards on a black donkey through the town of Tisheng and he beat the drum and sang and called himself old Tisheng go. Another legend says that he had a white meal with him which would cover a thousand miles in a single day. When he reached his destination he would fold the animal up and put it in his trunk and when he needed it again he would sprinkle water into its mouth and the beast would regain its first shape.

That sounds pretty convenient. The third was named Lu Yan or Lu Dunbin. It says here the mountain guest so his real name was Lee and he belonged to the ruling Tang Dynasty. When the Empress Wu seized the throne and destroyed the Lee family to almost the last man he fled with his wife into the heart of the mountains. They changed her name to Lu and since they lived in hiding in the caverns in the rocks and you called himself the mountain guests or the guests of the rocks.

He lived in the air in Aidenobred yet he was fond of flowers and in the course of time he acquired hidden wisdom. In Lo yang the capital city the Pionis bloom to look surely and there it dwelt a flower fairy who changed herself into a lovely maiden. So whenever this guest of the rocks or guests of the mountain would go to Lo yang he liked to converse with her. Suddenly came a yellow dragon in the form of a handsome youth but he mocked the flower fairy. I'm having trouble saying that.

Guests of the rocks grew furiously and cast his flying sword at him cutting off his head. And that time onward he fell back into the world of the mundane pleasure and death. He sank down into the dust of daily life and was no longer able to wing his way into the upper regions. Later he met a Dishongli Kuan who delivered him and he was taken up in the ranks of the immortals. An individual named Willowif was his disciple so this was an older Willow tree which had drawn itself into the most ether-o-powers of the sun rays and moon beams and thus had been able to assume the shape of a human being.

His face was blue and he has red hair. The guests of the rocks or mountains as he called himself received him as a disciple. Improvers and kings of future times honor guests of the rocks as the ancestor and master of the pure sun. The people call him grandfather Lu. He was wise and powerful and so the people still stream into his temples to obtain oracle and pray for good luck.

If you want to know whether you'll be successful or not in undertaking go to the temple light incense bow your head to earth. On the altar is a bamboo goblet in which are some dozens of lottery sticks. Shake them all kneadling into one of the sticks fly out. On the lottery stick is an inscription number so you look up that number in the book of oracles. This is accompanied by a four line stanza.

It is said that fortune and misfortune occur just as foretold by the oracle. That's pretty cool I haven't heard that so apparently if you even to this day are able to go into the temple of this person you're actually able to pick up a oracle stick and I guess it'll shake out a number you'll read that line in the book and that is your destiny or your fortune. I'm going to try hard on these name guys. The fourth immortal is Sal Guoque or Sal the uncle of the state. So he's the younger brother of an emperor who ruled the land of the time and for this reason he was called uncle of the state.

From his earliest youth he had been a lover of hidden wisdom. Riches and honor were no more to him than dust. It was Lee, a quan who helped him became an immoral. The sixth immortal is known as Lee and he's a different Lee because he's called Lee with the Aaron Crutch and he lost his parents when he was very young so he was brought up in his older brother's home and his sister-in-law treated him very badly and never gave him enough to eat because of this he fled into the hills and there he learned hidden wisdom. Once he returned in order to see his brother and he asked his sister-in-law to give him some to eat but she answered that there was no kindling on you know that she didn't have any kindling for the fire and he said to her you only need to prepare the rice and I can use my leg for kindling wood.

Just make sure not to say that the fire might hurt me and if you don't know harm will come. So wanting to see his skill assist your in lawport rice into the pot then least your two of his legs out underneath it and lit it the flames leaped high and his leg burned like cold. When the rice was nearly boiled his sister-in-law said won't your leg be injured. She sounds pretty mean to me and Lee answered angerly, die not, warn you not to say anything then no harm would have been done and now my leg is lame with these words he took out an iron poker and fascia into a crutch for himself and then he hung a bottle of gourd on his back and went into the hills to gather medicinal herbs and this is why Lee with the iron crutch or this is why he's known as Lee with the iron crutch and for my recollection he's also the person or like the the immortal that people were prey to or maybe put up a statue of because he holds that medicine gourd. So the medicine gourd is a wulu it's sometimes called a wulu gourd or a wulu bead and you've more than likely seen these if you've gone to any sort of like Asian store that sells these quote-unquote flung shui items and so the there is just a calabash gourd but really what would happen was practitioners would you know put the medicinal herbs in it just like it describes him doing and so sometimes they're associated with health but this is why he is the person that is associated with health.

It was also a told of him that he was in the habit of ascending into the heavens in the spirit to visit the master loutzi. So before he left he would order a disciple to watch his body and the soul within it so his soul did not escape. Should seven days have gone by without a spirit returning he would allow his soul to leave the empty room. However unfortunately after six days passed the disciple was called to the deathbed of his mother and when the master spirit returned on the evening of the seventh day the life had gone out of his body so since there's no place for his spirit in his own body he seized into spare upon the first handy body from which the vital spark was not yet extinguished so it was the body of a neighbor a lame cripple who had just died and so from that time on the master appeared in this form. So the seventh immortal is called hang and he's a nephew of the famous Confucian scholar Han from the Tang Dynasty.

From his earliest youth he cultivated the arts of the deathless gods. He left his home and became a teller and his grandfather Lou you know the original immortal awakened him and erased him to the heavenly world and it said that once he saved his uncle's life so his uncle had been driven from court after objecting when the Emperor sent for the bones of Buddha reaching the blue pass in his flight he discovered that a deep snowfall had made the road impassible so his horse got stuck in a snow drift and he himself was also frozen but suddenly hang appeared to him helped him and the horse out of the drift and brought them to safely to the nearest in along the blue pass. Han you also sang a verse to him that including these following lines. Siddling Hill mid-clouds doth lie and home is far beyond my sight. Around the blue pass snow towers high and who will lead the horse all right.

So suddenly it occurred to him that years before that hung had sang sorry he went to his house to congratulate him on his birthday and before leaving he had written these exact words on a slip of paper and his uncle read them without understanding what they met so it said now he was unconsciously singing the varied lines of that song that his nephew had written so it was said that hung um or he told him that he must be an immortal because he was able to tell the future. Three times hung assault deliver his wife from the bonds of earth and when he had left his home to seek hidden wisdom she sat there all day long yearning for his presence. Oh the poor wife was sad. Hong wished to release her to immortality but he feared that she was not capable of this transition. He appeared to her in various forms in order to test her once as a bager another time as a monk but his wife didn't grasp the opportunity.

So at last he took the shape of a lame Taoist who sat on a mat and beat a block of wood and read sutras before the house. So his wife said my husband is not home and I can give you nothing. The Taoist answered or this you know ruse of a Taoist answered I do you know what you're golden silver and I want you. So sit down on the mat beside me and we'll fly up into the air and you shall find your husband again. So the wife grew angry and actually struck him and then Hong turned himself back to his true form and stepped from the shining cloud and it said he was carried aloft.

His wife looked at him and wept loudly and by then he had disappeared and wasn't seen again. That's kind of sad. The eighth immortal is a girl called a whole Siong Goup. So she was a peasants daughter and although her stepmother treated her very harshly she remained respectful and industrious to her. So she loved to give alms though her stepmother tried to prevent her I'm not sure what that means.

And she was never angry even under stepmother when she hit her. So she swore on to Mary and at last her stepmother didn't know what to do with her. So one day while she was cooking rice her grandfather do came and delivered her. So she was still holding the rice upon her spoon in her hand when she ascended into the air in the heavens and she was appointed to sweep up the fallen flowers at the southern gate of heaven. One of the reasons I really like this book is because it has little notes in the end of it and it'll kind of provide a little bit of context sometimes to the story or some historic information to it which is I think it's pretty cool.

So here it says some of the immortals like Han, Sian, Z or historic personages. Well others are purely mythical. So in the present day they play an important part in arts of course in crafts and cultural depictions you know and their emblems also occur frequently. So again I went into each of the immortals I think I did like eight part series when I first started doing the podcast when I started including some of these historic and folklore tales and I talked about each of the 80 mortals. So if you're interested you can go back and listen to those shows although I don't like to listen to my old episodes.

But basically Lee has a fan. Go has the bamboo drum or two drumsticks and sometimes it's depicted on the donkey. Lou Ben has a sword and a flower basket that he carries on his back. Guil Quai has two small boards which can be thrown into the air. Lee carries the bottle gourd and says sometimes a bat's coming out of it.

Lon Ho is sometimes pictured as a woman and this one too I remember him being kind of androgynous. So sometimes it's depicted as a young boy and sometimes as a woman and usually has a flute. Han usually has a flower basket and Ho then when we just talk about he usually has a spoon and sometimes it's shaped in the form of a lotus flower. And I wanted to read the second story today it's right the story right after the 80 moral story in this book. It's tale number 31 it's called the 80 mortals number two and it's just a tale about a man who had an encounter with the 80 mortals.

Let's see what happened. Once upon a time there was a poor man who had no roof to shelter him and not a bite to eat. So we were in war he laid down besides a little temple of the field god standing by the roadside and fell asleep. So here on the nose it does say the little field god temple is actually a miniature stone chapel that stands before every village. He had a dream that an old white bearded field god came out of the shrine and said to him, I know a way that I can help you.

Tomorrow the 80 mortals will pass along this road. Cast yourself down before them and plead to them. So when the man awoke he seated himself beneath a great tree beside the field god's little temple and waited along for his dream to come true. So all day long sorry for his dream to come true. So at last when the sun nearly sunk eight figures started coming down the road.

The Baker clearly recognized them as the eight immortals. Seven of them were hurrying as fast as they could but one of them who had the lame leg remember him, limped along after the rest. Before him stood the man Lee or leave with iron crutch. The man cast himself down to the earth but the lame immortal didn't want to bother with him and told him to go away. Yet the poor man wouldn't give a pleading with him and begging that he might go with them.

So he too could be one of the immortals. That would be impossible so the cripple yet as the poor man did not see his prayers and wouldn't leave. He had last said to him, very well take a hold of my coat. So this is when Hedman did and off they went and says in a flying haste of a passing field on and on and even further. Suddenly they stood together high on the tower.

It's called the ghost mountain tower by the eastern sea and low. There's still the rest of the immortals as well but they were actually very displeased by their companion Lee who had brought this man along. So yet since the poor man was so earnest they too allowed themselves to be moved by his story and said to him very well we will leap down into the sea. If you follow us you may become an immortal and one after another the seven left into the sea. But when it came time for the man's turn he was so frightened he wouldn't dare leap.

Then the cripple said to him, if you are afraid you cannot become an immortal. What shall I do now so the man I'm far from my home and have no money. The cripple broke off a fragment of the battlement of the tower and thrust it into the man's hand. Then he also leapt from the tower and disappeared into the sea with the seven companions. When the man examined the stone in his hand more closely he thought it was the purist of silver.

This provided him with traveling money during the many weeks it took room to reach his home. But by that time the silver was completely used up and he found himself just as poor as he had been before. Well I thought the 80 morals were supposed to help people that prayed to them. I don't know. So anyway I hope you guys enjoyed today's folklore Friday.

I'm really enjoying doing you know some random ratings from the book. You guys have a wonderful weekend and again look at that events part on the website. Look at everything that's coming up. I invite you to join me for a fun trade workshop and check out that website. So follow the link below.

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