Chinese PantheonMountain
Flaming Mountains
A range of scorching mountains created when Sun Wukong kicked over Laozi's alchemical furnace during his rampage in Heaven. The monk Tang Sanzang and his disciples had to obtain the Banana Leaf Fan from Princess Iron Fan to extinguish the flames and pass through.
About Flaming Mountains
Furnace slag on the road west
In Journey to the West the Flaming Mountains burn because Sun Wukong kicked over Laozi's alchemical furnace; the pilgrims cannot pass until they borrow Princess Iron Fan's banana-leaf fan. The Turpan hills are a geographic joke the novel exploits. There is no independent ancient scripture of this range as a god's home. The episode is late, comic, and specific: three borrowings, a bull-demon husband, and a fan that raises wind.
On the map
Flaming Mountains among other places of the Chinese Pantheon.
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.
- Wu Cheng'en, Journey to the West, ch. 59–61
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.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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