Page 187 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols 180
In village temples the altar is covered with a length of fabric on which the Immortals
are shown as a group. In pictures they often appear in their role of well-wishers; or they
are shown crossing the sea to the feast given by the Queen Mother of the West ( Xi-
wang-mu), the feast of the gods and of longevity. Then again they are shown
standing on a terrace or in a small pavilion, greeting the god of longevity who is flying
past on a crane.

The Feast of the Immortals

According to the texts, they can also come back to earth where they meet, for

example, a poor man at a bridge, who holds out his hand for alms. One of the Immortals
scrapes a little of the dirt off his skin, fashions it into a pill and offers it to the
beggar – who refuses it in disgust! In another version of this tale, the beggar has the wit
to try the pill first on dead fish: when they come to life, he too swallows the pill and
becomes an Immortal.
The Taoist group of the eight Immortals is sometimes combined with the more
Buddhist grouping of the eighteen Luo-han.