I CHING The Oracle: The Living Sutra of the Queen Mother of the West

I CHING The Oracle

Xi Wang Mu, Goddess of the Wū

IN TAOIST MYSTICISM, THE QUEEN MOTHER OF THE WEST, Xi Wang Mu, is one of the most important goddess figures in the pantheon. Taoist fangshi invoke the Queen Mother to help them cultivate the Tao. Fangshi, translated as "methods master," can refer to occultists, ceremonial magicians, alchemists, diviners, exorcists, astrologers, holistic healers, and every variety of mystic. First and foremost, Xi Wang Mu was the goddess shamans called upon, and she chooses shamans and fangshi as her medium for communicating with humanity.

The earliest records we have of a Western Mother dates back to the Bronze Age, when a Western Mother and her counterpart, the Eastern Mother, were invoked together for divination. These records were first found on oracle bone inscriptions from the matriarchal societies of the early Shang, sixteen hundred to one thousand forty-six before Christ. According to these inscriptions, offerings were being made to the Western Mother and Eastern Mother in hopes that prayers would be answered. One of the earliest mentions of Xī Mu was an invocation inscribed upon oracle bone: "We divined: if we make offerings to the Eastern Mother and Western Mother, there will be approval."

Mu) were invoked together for divination. These records were first found on oracle bone inscriptions ( , yin xu buci) from the matriarchal societies of the early Shang (1600- 1046 BC).2 According to these inscriptions, offerings were being made to the Western Mother and Eastern Mother in hopes that prayers would be answered. One of the earliest mentions of Xī Mu was an invocation inscribed upon oracle bone: "We divined: if we make offerings to the Eastern Mother and Western Mother, there will be approval."3

Over the next several millennia, oral tradition would maintain that the Western Mother, a Queen Mother, as found in the I Ching, and the Queen Mother of the West were one and the same goddess. Twenty-first-century historians have their doubts, though I'll honor tradition and continue to view them as an unbroken lineage of veneration. In the southern regions of Taiwan, the Queen Mother and the Golden Mother, through their astrological connection to Venus, are venerated as one and the same goddess.

She is also known as Lady Queen Mother, though this is a later evolution of the goddess, and Lady Queen Mother is nearly always depicted as younger, beautiful, and elegant. Meanwhile, Xi Wáng Mu's depictions have greater range, from a crone with wild, untamed hair and a tail to a fuller-bodied stern woman wearing an ornate feng guan or phoenix headdress.

Within the time period of her early veneration, the western region that she ruled would have been west of China's central plains. The west was where the sun set and thus became associated with the unknown, with mysteries, death, and the afterlife. Due to her connection with death and the underworld, she works closely with the Black Tortoise of the north, a guardian spirit over our ancestors.

Xi Wang Mu, Goddess of the Wū

Popular myth today has her residing on celestial Kunlun Mountain, though earlier accounts had her residing on Jade Mountain. Kunlun is the pillar that connects heaven, earth, and the underworld, the axis mundi of Taoist mythology. Xi Wang Mu is sovereign over the axis mundi. At the peak of the axis in heaven is a tree that grows the peaches of immortality, an ambrosia. The peaches on the world tree only bloom once every three thousand years. Ritual swords and the magical tools of Taoist fangshi are crafted from peach wood to connect their craft to the goddess. The Queen Mother's palace is the most opulent and lavish imperial palace a mortal has ever seen, where the Queen is attended to by beautiful Jade Maidens.

On the peak of Mount Kunlun adjoining the Queen Mother's residence is a paradise reserved for shamans, the wu. Go there and you'll meet Wuxian, the great ancestor of the shamans and the many notable wu and witches through the ages. There they tend to their gardens of numerous medicines. Through these canons, Xi Wang Mu is associated as a patron goddess of the wu. She is invoked for every form of sorcery, from love spells to curses. Taoist fangshi study the scriptures of the Queen Mother to cultivate stronger qi specific to spiritual cultivation.

The earliest depictions of Xi Wang Mu showed her as a demon of plagues and a dark goddess of destruction. The West Mountain Sutra from the Classic of Mountains and Seas, circa three hundred before Christ, describes the Queen Mother as a human with a leopard's tail and tiger's teeth. Her hair is long and wild, and upon her head she wears an ornate sheng, a regal crown with detailing that resembles the plumage of a rare bird. The Classic of Mountains and Seas also describes the nine-tailed fox as one of the Queen

Mother's close companions, along with a winged wolf-like beast with the horns of an ox, and a mythical crimson-feathered pheasant.

Of particular note, pottery unearthed in the Qinghai province at the Lajia archaeological site, where archaeologists have excavated artifacts from the early Bronze Age, two thousand three hundred to one thousand five hundred before Christ, bears illustrations depicting dancing figures that are part human and part animal. These figures had human faces and torsos, a leopard tail, and sharpened tiger's teeth. Whether there are any connections between Xi Wang Mu and these Bronze Age depictions of ritual are unclear, but the specificity of the details might suggest that there are.

The white tiger is the totemic animal spirit associated with the west, and thus is also associated with the Queen Mother. Other animal spirits associated with her range from wildcats and foxes to three-legged crows and scorpions. The scorpion association is what connects her as a key divinity in wu shamanism.

In Taoist and Chinese shamanic lore, Heaven is subdivided into nine regions, just as Yu the Great subdivided his kingdom into nine regions, with nine tripod cauldrons as the emblem of an emperor's divine right to rule. While the Queen Mother resides in the western region of Heaven, it's nevertheless understood that she rules over all nine of them. Thus, her most well-known protégé, Jiu Tian Xuan Nu, is referred to as the Lady of the Nine Heavens. Jiu Tian is a reference to the zenith point in the sky. In Taoist cosmology, Jiu Tian is also a reference to the nine tiers of Heaven.

In the I Ching, the second line of Hexagram thirty-five references a Queen Mother: tù qí Wang Mu, meaning in honor of Grandmother or to be blessed by the Queen Mother.

There is progress, and there is sorrow. May I now receive Her blessings. All Hail the Queen Mother. yú qí Wáng Mũ

晉 如 愁 如 受 兹 介 福 于 其 王 母

In antiquity "Queen Mother" was the title for a deceased paternal grandmother and thus signifies one's ancestor. Likewise, the Wang Mu in Xi Wang Mu is a reference to our ancestral grandmother spirits.

Recall the creation myth of Nuwa we covered in chapter two. Nuwa had to remake humans from clay after an apocalyptic flood wiped out the first humans that populated earth. Those first humans were created by Xi Wang Mu, one of the first divinities to arise from the Taiji numinous omnipresence and Wuji numinous nothingness.

The “Inner Chapters” 內 篇 (“Nei Pian”) from the Zhuangzi 莊 子 (three hundred fifty to two hundred fifty BCE) describes Xī Wang Mu as an immortal spirit dwelling in the far west, one of the first and primordial gods birthed from the Tao. "Nobody knows her beginning, and nobody will know her end."

She is considered a dark goddess because she was created from a pure form of divine yin. "Queen Mother" isn't just a reference to a powerful goddess; she is a creator goddess whom we honor as an ancestor spirit.

Xi Wang Mu is the ruler of Heaven's wrath (, tian zhi lì), the bringer of calamities, and the Wu Can (hz, wu cán), meaning Five Destructions, a star (or multiple star system) observed in ancient times believed to be malefic, similar to the Demon Star (Algol) of ancient Egyptian astronomy. The star's name translates to the Five Destructions. " appears in the I Ching several dozen times.

Whether the malefic star referenced as the Five Destructions is the same as or even related to Algol, a multiple-star system in the constellation Perseus, is unclear. However, we do know that in Eastern astrology, Perseus is - (da ling) and Algol is counted as the fifth star of the constellation, or seven (dà ling wu). Algol is in the western mansion (a similar concept to a horoscopic house) of the White Tiger. Thus, the Demon Star is still under the purview of Xī Wang Mu.

In Songs of the Eminent Ones 大 人 賦 (Da Rén Fù) by Sima Xiangru 司 馬 相 如 (one hundred seventy-nine to one hundred seventeen BCE), an Eminent One journeys through astral worlds of dragons, spirits, and other mythical beings. The world is subdivided into four directions. In the west is Xi Wang Mu's imperial palace on Kunlun Mountain, where an Eminent One can only enter guided by a Jade Maiden, one of the Queen Mother's celestial attendants. Xi Wang Mu is described as having white or silver hair, wearing an ornate crown, with three-legged blackbirds as her companions.