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The Sleeping Giant Under the Peach Tree: a Novel Explanation for the Prominence of the Peach in Daoist Iconography

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The Sleeping Giant Under the Peach Tree: a Novel Explanation for the Prominence of the Peach in Daoist Iconography The Sleeping Giant Under the Peach Tree: A novel explanation for the prominence of the peach in Daoist iconography. Will Ceurvels, China Medical University Department of Classics, Taiwan Abstract: This paper draws on chinese folklore, chinese medical theory, chinese materia medica and western ethnobotany and comparative religion to construct a theory of how the common infestation of ganoderma lucidum on peach trees in China would have led to an association of peach trees with immortality, daoist alchemy and the ability to vanquish ghosts and evil spirits. The author goes on to demonstrate how the importance of ganoderma lucidum with regard to immortality, alchemy and exorcism can be understood through an analysis of the pathophysiological basis of ghost haunting and daoist inner alchemy and the corresponding pharmacological benefit that the fungus confers in relation to these pathophysiologies. Keywords: materia medica, chinese medicine, daoist alchemy, peach tree, ganoderma lucidum, ling-zhi Tumid, pendulous fruit, swelling with nectarine juice. Branches bent under the heft of blood red ripened drupes, round and ruddied, suckling sap from the roots. To the ancients no doubt, the peach, whose flowers first burst forth from the hoary frost of winters past and usher in the new spring season, would have inspired intimations of the vast productive potential of the natural world recently awakened from its hibernal slumber. As many scholars have noted, this particular phenotypic display must have contributed in no small part to the singular importance of the peach in chinese symbolism. As with any early society, the ancient chinese were likely to have fetishized the fruit for its connection to the spring season and thus to notions of fertility, rich harvest and so on. Yet, the function of the peach in chinese semiology goes far beyond mere fertility: the peach, the peach tree and it’s wood confer magic powers connected to daoist ascetic, alchemical and shamanic traditions. The Song Dynasty Imperial Reader (太平御覽） cites the pre-Han script Dian-shu （典術）characterizing the peach tree as, “the greatest of the five woods, the immortal wood, which dispels evil spirits and vanquishes all ghosts. Today people make talismans from the wood to ward off evil spirits.”1 Peach tree wood is also known as “immortal wood” (仙 木）, “dragonslayer wood”（降龍木） or “ghostfright wood”（鬼怖木）. Swords carved from peach wood are utilized by daoist practitioners in exorcism ceremonies or placed in the household to protect its inhabitants. As early as the Han dynasty, the tradition of hanging a 1 《典術》云：『桃乃西方之木，五木之精，仙木也。味辛氣惡，故能厭伏邪氣， 制百鬼。今人門上用桃符，辟邪以此也。』 peach tree wood charm on the front door of the household to counteract the resurgence of “Yin” or dark, negative energy (traditionally associated with the ghostworld) following the vernal equinox was widespread. 2 In addition to its spirit-warding properties, the peach fruit is also associated with immortality, a primary conquest of the daoist adept. The Queen Mother of the West (西王母 or “Xi-wang-mu”) , one if not the highest ranking deity in the pantheon of daoist gods is most closely associated with her garden of Peach Trees, the fruit of which is said to confer immortality. Magu, (麻姑) the female goddess of longevity, is traditionally pictured carrying a peach tree branch and the Old Man of the South Pole (南極仙翁), the male god of longevity, is also nearly always seen carrying an outsized ripened peach. Given all this, one must wonder, can the mere fact of the peach tree’s phenotypic association with “fertility” and “spring” account for its apparently extensive magical and alchemic properties? daoist alchemy is fundamentally practical, it is concerned with the use of specific substances and practices to achieve the prolongation of life and the theoretical attainment of immortality. Thus, the centrality of the peach in daoist iconography would imply that the plant directly confers some medicinal benefit to the practitioner, but from a review of relevant literature it appears that only the sap of the peach was used by ascetics, and this only in a limited capacity. 3 The apparent lack of spagyric substances directly associated with the peach tree should not deter us from further investigation. For, a prominent feature of daoist texts is their extensive use of code words and secret language in the description of alchemic processes. As an example, the daoist classic The Scripture of the Inner Effulgence of the Yellow Court is a detailed manual of internal alchemy that contains specific meditation practices for promoting longevity, and yet the names of parts of the body are often coded and unascertainable from the text itself. For instance, “yellow court” is alternately interpreted as the stomach or middle burner（中焦）, as the upper elixir field (上丹田 ）or lower elixir field （下丹田）. That the main concept in this daoist classic is, as a result 2 《後漢書》仲夏之月，萬物方盛。日夏至，陰氣萌作，恐物不楙。其禮：以朱索連 葷菜，彌牟蠱鍾。以桃印長六寸，方三寸，五色書文如法，以施門戶。代以所尚為飾。 夏后氏金行，作葦茭，言氣交也。殷人水德，以螺首，慎其閉塞，使如螺也。周人木 德，以桃為更，言氣相更也。漢兼用之，故以五月五日，朱索五色印為門戶飾，以難 止惡氣。 3 The daoist classic Baopuzi claims that peach sap fermented in mulberry ash could make the body light and radiant and improve night vision, but there is no mention of longevity or immortality.《抱朴 子．內篇．仙藥》：「桃膠，以桑灰汁漬服之，百病愈。久服之，身輕有光明，在晦夜之地， 如月出也。」Peach sap is also not included in the list of the great immortal herbs, which includes even some very basic medicinal herbs such as poria. “仙藥之上者丹砂，次則黃金，次則白銀，次 則諸芝，次則五玉，次則云母，次則明珠，次則雄黃，次則太乙禹餘糧，次則石中黃子，次則 石桂，次則石英，次則石腦，次則石硫黃，次則石臺，次則曾青，次則鬆柏脂、茯苓、地黃、 麥門冬、木巨勝、重樓、黃連、石韋、楮實、象柴，一名托盧是也。” of the intentional vagueness of the term, open for wide interpretation, speaks to the central importance of coding and secrecy in daoist symbolism. Could it be, that the peach tree is in fact a stand-in for some other object with direct ties to daoist alchemy? One of the oldest and most well-known legends regarding the peach tree might just offer an unexpected answer to this question. The Han dynasty classic book of legends Illustrations of the Motherland (括地圖) contains the following story, “On Tao-du Mountain there grew a Peach tree so tall that its high branches spiralled into the heavens for thousands of miles. Atop the tree stood a golden cock that announced the break of dawn and at its trunk two gods named Yu-lü and Shen-shu who carried whips made of reeds to slay inauspicious spirits and ghosts stood guard.” The centrality of this story in the lore of the peach tree cannot be overstated. The Han dynasty use of peach-wood talismans decorated with the figures of “door god” guardians is attributed directly to this story. Though the talismans are no longer made from peach wood, the door guardians are still a highly prominent decorative feature of the chinese household to this day. Despite the fact that the “door gods” are one of the most enduring and widespread symbols in all of chinese culture, the identity of these two Gods and their association with the peach tree is not well understood mainly because the contents of Illustrations of the Motherland survive only in fragmented references found in later tomes. The most popular current theory, based on etymological analysis of the gods’ names along with historical inference holds that the two gods represent the whip of reeds and the tiger god of early China, both of which were associated with spirit-warding and exorcism. 4 However, the whip of reeds is already a separate element in the original story, so it would seem odd that one of the gods would also additionally represent the whip of reeds. A more enticing interpretation comes from an etymological analysis offered by the Song dynasty scholar Luo Mi who claimed that the names Shen-shu and Yu-lü （神荼，鬱壘） were homonyms for two opposing physical states: Yu-lü (鬱律）is an old poetic term which alternately refers to a powerful volatile force that is being suppressed, the echoes of a deep and muffled rumbling, or the state of being coiled and twisted, Shen-shu (伸舒) by contrast refers to expansion, release, and unfurling. Taken together, he concluded that the two gods represented thunder and lightning. This inference is in keeping with the traditional chinese understanding of thunder as the outward manifestation of the inward conflict of the opposing forces of yin and yang. The neo-confucian classic of metaphysics Zhang-zi’s Correction of the Ignorant describes thunder as such, “Yin” accumulates and suppresses the natural flow of dynamic Yang energy, the outward-bearing tension of Yang against suppressing Yin eventually 4 王寧. 釋《莊子·在宥》的“炊累”——兼釋神名“鬱壘”的含義 culminates in a sudden climacteric dispersion of Yin which outwardly manifests as thunder. 5 Given this description, it seems fairly feasible that the paired concepts of “release” and “suppressed force” could indeed be a coded representation of thunder and lightning. Indeed, Luo Mi’s theory was dominant from the Song dynasty onward until all but very recently when the Song scholar’s theory was criticized because there seemed to be no apparent connection between thunder and the Peach Tree. Yet, the connection between the peach tree and thunder extends beyond this one legend. In the making of the peach-wood swords mentioned earlier, the most valuable and purportedly most potent swords are made from peach-wood that has been struck by thunder. Thus, the notion that thunder somehow imbues the peach tree with magic potency seems to be a consistent and widespread belief in Chinese culture. What then is the magical connection between thunder and the peach tree? For students of western ethnobotany, the combination of trees and thunder in the setting of an alchemical or magical context should immediately trigger certain associations.
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