The pantheon · Folk Deities (民間信仰)
The Eight Immortals
八仙 · Ba Xian (Wade-Giles: Pa-hsien)
Folk religion
Eight legendary Daoist immortals, each a mortal who attained the Dao.
A band of eight Daoist transcendents beloved across Chinese folklore. Each was once an ordinary mortal, old and young, rich and poor, male and female, who found the Dao, so between them they stand for every kind of person.
- Portfolio
- Immortality and the Dao · Blessing of longevity and celebration · Patronage of trades and conditions of life
- Observance
- The Eight Immortals are woven into celebration more than into a cult of their own. Their images cluster at birthdays — especially milestone ones — and at weddings, as wishes for longevity and joy, and the motif of their eight emblems (the anba xian, or hidden eight immortals) decorates furniture, porcelain and textiles. Individually, some do have devoted followings: Lü Dongbin in particular is widely worshipped in his own right, with major temples, as a patron of scholars, barbers and the sick. As legendary Daoist immortals rather than a fixed liturgical pantheon, they attract very different practices in different places and trades.
How to recognise them
Rarely shown as a solemn pantheon; they are a lively, mismatched group, usually crossing the sea on clouds or feasting. Each is known by an attribute — Li Tieguai's iron crutch and gourd, Zhongli Quan's fan, Lü Dongbin's sword, Zhang Guolao's fish-drum and backwards donkey, Han Xiangzi's flute, Lan Caihe's flower basket, He Xiangu's lotus, and Cao Guojiu's jade court tablet. The eight attributes alone, without any figures, are themselves a common good-luck motif.
The Eight Immortals are the friendliest corner of the Daoist heavens — not remote sages but a raffish troupe with earthy personalities. Among them are Li Tieguai, a lame beggar with an iron crutch whose spirit returned to the wrong body; Zhongli Quan, a fat, cheerful ex-general; Lü Dongbin, a scholar-swordsman who is the group's unofficial leader; and Zhang Guolao, an ancient recluse who rode a paper donkey he could fold into his pocket. Their charm is that they are so plainly human.
The other four complete a deliberate cross-section of society. Han Xiangzi is a young flute-playing poet; Cao Guojiu, in court robes, a repentant imperial relation; Lan Caihe, an androgynous wandering minstrel of uncertain sex; and He Xiangu, the one clearly female immortal, a woman who ate a magic peach or mother-of-pearl and needed no ordinary food. Old and young, high-born and low, male and female, sound and crippled — together they say that the Dao is closed to no type of person.
Their most famous exploit gives Chinese a common saying. Crossing the sea to a celestial banquet, they refuse to ride the clouds and each instead uses their own magic implement to cross the water — hence the proverb, the Eight Immortals cross the sea, each showing their own powers, meaning everyone has a particular gift. Because they promise long life and merry good fortune, their image is a favourite at birthdays and weddings, painted on bowls and screens far more often than it is prayed to in temples. They are less objects of petition than emblems of a happy, well-lived length of days.
Nearby
Written from
- Dongyou Ji (The Journey to the East) — Wu Yuantai
- Images of the Immortal: The Cult of Lü Dongbin at the Palace of Eternal Joy — Paul R. Katz, 1999
These pages are written from published scholarship and primary texts, and each figure lists what it was written from. Where sources disagree, we say so rather than picking one and presenting it as settled. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or speaking for any temple, monastery, lineage, or religious organisation. Nothing here is a substitute for a tradition’s own teachers. We describe what practitioners have believed and done. Describing a belief is not asserting it is true.