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Key Details
Type
MountainMythology
Chinese Pantheon
Coordinates
36°N, 84°E
About This Location
Queen Mother's western mountain
Kunlun in the Shan Hai Jing and Huainanzi is a western axis: hanging gardens, the Queen Mother of the West (Xiwangmu), and later the peaches of immortality. It is a direction more than a surveyed range. Han poets send emperors and adepts there. Journey to the West still uses it as a celestial address. There is no single canonical peak with a dated cult foundation in the early texts. The mountain is where immortality is stored out west.
Primary Sources
“The Queen Mother of the West lives on Kunlun. Her title is Queen Mother; she has a human face, a leopard's tail, and tiger's teeth.”
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