Chinese Pantheonrelic
Peach of Immortality
- Longevity
- Immortality
- Divine Vitality
Sacred peaches from the garden of Xi Wangmu that ripen only once every few thousand years. Eating one grants longevity approaching immortality.
About Peach of Immortality
Xi Wangmu's orchard, then a theft in a novel
Han and later tradition place the Queen Mother of the West (Xi Wangmu) at Kunlun with peaches that ripen on a long cycle and confer long life. Journey to the West has Sun Wukong steal them, Ming vernacular fiction using the older orchard. Daoist lives and festival imagery spread the peach. The fruit is a literary and religious image of longevity, not a botanical cultivar with a surviving tree. Admit the gap between early Queen Mother myth and the novel's comic raid.
Origin
Grown in the Queen Mother of the West's orchard; famously stolen in Journey to the West.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Han and later Xi Wangmu tradition
- Journey to the West (Xiyouji)
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
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