Quick Takeaways: Let’s be honest about what we’re looking for here. An OP MC in the cultivation world isn’t just a strong protagonist. It’s a specific reading experience, the satisfaction of watching a character operate at a level that makes the cultivation world’s normal hierarchy feel inadequate to contain them. Done badly, it’s wish fulfillment […]
Quick Takeaways: Here’s what nobody told me when I first encountered the Eight Trigrams in my study of Chinese mythology: they’re not mysterious. They feel mysterious. They look like ancient symbols with secret meanings. The trigram arrangement on a Bagua mirror or a Daoist talisman has an aura of impenetrable antiquity. But the underlying logic […]
Quick Takeaways: Here’s something that hit me about ten years into studying Chinese mythology. The Chinese Heavenly Court isn’t just a collection of interesting divine figures. It’s a complete bureaucratic system. And I mean that in the most specific, administrative sense. It has departments. It has ranks. It has performance reviews. It has a minister […]
Quick Takeaways: If you’ve spent any time around Chinese art, porcelain, temple decoration, or traditional textiles, you’ve almost certainly encountered the Eight Immortals, even if you didn’t know that’s what you were looking at. They appear on blue-and-white Ming Dynasty porcelain, on carved jade pendants, on temple murals, on birthday gifts, on the carved wooden […]
Quick Takeaways: Let me start with the thing that took me an embarrassingly long time to fully appreciate. For years after I first encountered the Fenghuang in Chinese mythology and in my novel readings, I kept processing it through the Western phoenix lens, fire, rebirth, the dramatic cycle of destruction and renewal. And it kept […]
Quick Takeaways: Here’s the assumption I want to challenge right at the start. Most people, if you ask them why Daoist masters pursued immortality, will give you some version of it. They didn’t want to die. They were afraid. They wanted more time. And while that’s not entirely wrong, it’s about as accurate as saying […]
Quick Takeaways: Here’s something that took me years to fully appreciate. When people talk about the Daoist cultivation tradition, the practices that ancient Chinese practitioners developed to pursue immortality, spiritual transcendence, and alignment with the Dao, they often focus on the visible external elements. The herbs and elixirs. The physical exercises. The dietary practices. The […]
Quick Takeaways: I’ll start with a confession that might surprise you coming from someone who’s spent twenty years studying mythology. The phoenix as most people picture it, burning dramatically, collapsing into ash, rising reborn, is actually one of mythology’s most successfully simplified figures. Not falsified. Simplified. The rebirth-from-fire narrative is genuinely present in ancient sources. […]
Quick Takeaways: Here’s the question that’s sat at the back of my mind for most of my mythological quest for the last 20 years. Why are there dragons everywhere? Not just in China, where the Long is a divine rain-bringer. Not just in medieval Europe, where it’s a fire-breathing adversary for heroes to overcome. Everywhere. […]
This article explores Daoist immortality as mythology and religious scholarship, not medical advice. Some historical practices were harmful. Consult qualified professionals before trying any new practice. Quick Takeaways: I’ll be honest about what drew me to this topic. I have been a fan of the fantasy and sci-fi genre, being a curious person myself, I […]