Page 205 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols 198

A lion and cub

Li Tie-guai

‘Li with the iron crutch’ is one of the eight Immortals. Once when he was asleep he
let his spirit go off wandering by itself, and when his disciples found him they
thought he was dead and burned the body. When his spirit returned there was no body for
it to enter: so Li looked around for a suitable body and chose that of a sick beggar.
And that is how he came by his lame leg.

Another version of the story runs as follows. His sister-in-law wanted to see for herself
whether Li had really acquired any magic powers during his stay in the mountains.
He told her to say nothing about what she was going to see, then stretched a leg out under
the hearth and lit a fire to cook rice. His sister-in-law, unable to hold her tongue, asked
him about his leg – and ever since he has been lame. Li’s symbol is the calabash or
the bottle-gourd, from which a bat is seen escaping. It was said that no less a
divinity than Xi-wang-mu herself had cured a boil on his leg and had initiated him
into the art of acquiring immortality.