The Chinese term zhī () commonly means "fungi; mushroom", best exemplified by the medicinal Lingzhi mushroom, but in Daoism it referred to a class of supernatural plant, animal, and mineral substances that were said to confer instantaneous immortality when ingested. In the absence of a semantically better English word, scholars have translated the wide-ranging meaning of as "excrescences", "exudations", and "cryptogams".
Terminology Translating Chinese is problematic. For instance, a 2017 Chinese–English dictionary says: mushroom, in general ... an object shaped like a mushroom, e.g., a chariot canopy. [singular] and in [compounds] ~ , "numinous mushroom" and ~ , "purple mushroom" (), a type of polypore mushroom that grows on wood, especially rotting logs; particularly striking examples sometimes regarded as auspicious celestial omens for having qualities conducing to long life > an entheogenic plant, wondergrowth. fragrant plant often equated with , Chinese angelica; in combination with [orchid] represents a person of high morality and integrity. ~ , sesame () or sesame seeds. has synonyms of , , and , and is often associated with jade.
Several scholars have described the semantic range of .
"It certainly had a reference wider than anything we should call a fungus today, for it could include mineral excrescences recalling the shape of mushrooms, all kinds of cryptogams, and doubtless some fictitious plants." "The term , which has no equivalent in Western languages, refers to a variety of supermundane substances often described as plants, fungi, or 'excrescences.'" "Other translations that preserve the inflection of hidden or asexual reproduction include 'excrescence' or 'exudation', but 'cryptogam' is perhaps the most fitting as it applies not only to mushrooms but also to algae, lichens, mosses, liverworts, and ferns."
Early Chinese dictionaries provide insight into the semantics of . The c. 4th or 3rd century BCE book of glossary , in the chapter (), defines as : " is a numinous mushroom". Guo Pu's c. 310 commentary says he was unfamiliar with the , and glosses, "The flowers three times in one year, it is a felicitous plant" (). The c. 1822 subcommentary of Hao Yixing () says is a copyist's error for (see below), which is another synonym of . The 121 CE (Plant Radical section ) defines as "divine plants" ().
The Chinese character for is classified as a typical radical-phonetic compound character combining the "plant" radical and a phonetic element. In ancient oracle bone script and bronze inscription script, < Old Chinese (, "to stop; stop in", originally a "foot" pictograph) was used as a phonetic loan character for < OC (). The ( with the "plant radical", also written ) refers to the fragrant "Chinese angelica".
Classical texts
The Chinese classics first recorded during the Warring States period (475–221 BCE) and the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE). Occurrences in early Chinese histories, such as the (91 BCE) "Records of the Grand Historian" and (82 CE) "Book of Han", predominantly refers to the "Mushroom of Immortality; elixir of life". They record that fangshi "masters of esoterica; alchemists; magicians", supposedly followers of Zou Yan (305–240 BCE), claimed to know secret locations like Mount Penglai where the magic mushroom grew. Some sinologists propose that the mythical derived from Indian legends about soma that reached China around the 3rd century BCE. courtiers convinced Qin and Han emperors, most notably Qin Shi Huang (r. 221–210 BCE) and Emperor Wu of Han (r. 141–87 BCE), to dispatch large expeditions (e.g., Xu Fu in 219 BCE) seeking the Plant of Immortality, but none produced tangible results. occurrences in other classical texts often refer to an edible fungus.
The "Record of Ritual" lists "lichens" as a type of condiment. The (Song of the South) metaphorically mentions, "The holy herb is weeded out". The (Philosophers of Huainan) records a aphorism, "The fungus grows on mountains, but it cannot grow on barren boulders".
Baopuzi The Jin dynasty Daoist scholar Ge Hong's c. 320 CE (Master Who Embraces Simplicity) is the earliest surviving source of information about excrescences.
Based upon no longer extant texts and illustrations, Chapter 11 () outlines folklore and knowledge about , and elucidates the classification system. The chapter begins with quoting from the lost that rates among "medicines of highest type", "The various (five) excrescences [mushrooms, lichens, etc.] may be nibbled, and cinnabar, jade flakes, laminar malachite, realgar, orpiment, mica, and brown hematite may be taken singly, and any of them can enable a man to fly and to enjoy Fullness of Life.".
Ge Hong then explains the five numinous classes based on their appearance and habitat, each said to have over 100 varieties: , , , , and , see above), which are translated as: "stone, wood, grass, flesh, and champignon chih" "rock, wood, herb, flesh, and tiny excrescences" "stone, tree, plant, meat, and mushroom look like rocks, and grow from craggy cliffs or at the foot of lofty peaks. grow from the roots or congealed sap of ancient trees, usually evergreens. grow either among vegetation or in complete isolation from it, and appear morphologically identical to conventional plants, complete with stems, leaves, flowers, and fruit. include some exceedingly rare creatures, such as a 10,000-year-old horned toad, a 1,000-year-old white bat (which when eaten will extend one's lifespan to 40,000 or 1,000 years, respectively), and a 7-inch tall humanoid figure riding in a miniature horse-drawn carriage (which grants immediate -hood when consumed). flourish where standard fungal growths proliferate, and can look like dragons, tigers, human beings, palaces, or flying birds.
At one point in , Ge Hong mentions nine excrescences which are apparently especially important to the diet of the immortal (also known as "genies)": "Those that have acquired geniehood often mount to Paradise; or soar in the purple firmament; or travel to Dark Isle; or nest a while in Pan-t’ung. They listen to God’s (Creator Sky) music, and enjoy dishes of the nine sorts of excrescences….", quoting James R. Ware, Alchemy, Medicine and Religion in the China of A.D. 320: The Nei P’ien of Ko Hung (Pao-p’u tzu) (New York: Dover Publications, 1981)
Based upon later accounts of Five classes, Lu Di tentatively identifies the three natural types. is described as a shapeless and colorless thing, sometimes looking like a mass of fat, perhaps some underground stem species, such as Tuber sinense and Rhizopogon piceus. is compared "tiny trees" on , which may refer to the fruiting bodies that grow out of the sclerotia. can refer to the orchid , the "root" of which is actually a stem tuber.
Ge Hong also gives detailed Daoist purification and ritual instructions for gathering excrescences, such as an adept walking with Yu's Pace when approaching, and using a bone knife to harvest them. Anyone who wants to gather must wait for a calendrically auspicious day and can only enter the sacred mountains on the third or ninth lunar month, when the mountains are open to access and the with miraculous curative power come forth. The Daoist adept is advised to have a Lingbao amulet, a white dog, and a white chicken before making sacrificial offerings to the mountain gods. Ultimately, whether or not adepts can find depends upon their character and intelligence. Mediocre practitioners "do not know the art of entering mountains. One may have pictures, but if the shapes are not known it is utterly impossible to find the excrescences. All mountains, whether large or small, contain ghosts and gods which withhold these things from people, so it would be possible to be walking right over them without seeing them."
Another chapter uses ordinary and numinous as an analogy for natural and alchemical gold. "Mushrooms grow naturally, but some genii classics speak of five sorts of "stone" and five sorts of "wood" excrescences [], which are gathered and taken after they appear, and are no different from the mushrooms which occur in nature [], for all of them will bring a man to Fullness of Life." From this statement, Pregadio says although there may be no better translation than "mushrooms" or "excrescences", they "pertain to an intermediate dimension between mundane and transcendent reality".
Kristofer Schipper says that for Ge Hong, mushrooms had "immortalizing properties" because they are produced from the sublimation of alchemical minerals lying under the ground, notably gold and the divine cinnabar (cf. below). Mushrooms are, so to speak "natural alchemical products, comparable to the great elixir, the quintessence derived from the transmutation of these very minerals".
Two of Ge Hong's descriptions are found in the below.
Taishang lingbao wufu xu The 3rd or 4th century is sometimes cited as another early source that mentions numinous mushrooms—a misunderstanding that is owing to the usage of () to mean "five plants" rather than "five excrescences". The text has a section titled , meaning "plants" since they are pine-resin (), sesame (), fagara (), ginger (), and calamus (). Steavu translates Five Plants and notes this as one of the unambiguous and relatively rare occasions when the term should be taken more generically as "plant" rather than "(numinous) mushroom".
However, the mentions an otherwise unattested text named , which scholars associate with the five lost texts listed in the bibliographic chapter: , , , , and .
Jiuzhuan huandan jing yaojue
The second earliest reliable source of information is the section of the 4th or 5th century Daoist Shangqing School classic . The text's three sections comprise an alchemical recipe for the famous Elixir of the Nine Cycles, two methods for compounding minor drugs, and a brief account of the Shangqing saint Mao Ying () planting five sacred varieties of . These sections were first appended to Lord Mao's revealed biography from earlier sources, and then separated from it to form the present text.
According to Shangqing traditions, the Queen Mother of the West gave numinous mushrooms to Lord Mao, who planted five kinds on the Shangqing center in Jiangsu, which is the site of , one of the ten greater Grotto-Heavens, and , one of the seventy-two Blissful Lands (or Paradises, ). The Daoist scholar and alchemist Tao Hongjing (456–536), who compiled the Shangqing canon, recorded that the hidden mushrooms Lord Mao planted on Maoshan were still found during his lifetime.
The describes Lord Mao's five types of fungi, recommends searching for them in the third or ninth month, gives instructions for consumption, and accounts their expected benefits. Two of these five descriptions closely correspond, almost verbatim, to passages from the "plant mushrooms" and "wood mushrooms" sub-headings in the , underscoring the text's "status as a locus classicus of all things at once Daoist and fungal".
Concerning the uniting two sections about alchemical elixirs with one about excrescences, Strickmann says the "juxtaposition of alchemy and occult horticulture is very suggestive", and provides two other parallels for the Daoist fusion of plants and minerals. The alchemical , which is prepared through an "extraordinary amalgam" of vegetable and mineral processes, may have come into being through a conscious fusion of the two types of instructions, originally discretely mineral and vegetable, in the life of Lord Mao. Tao Hongjing's disciple Zhou Ziliang (, 497–516) was commanded by Shangqing deities to commit ritual suicide with an elixir of poisonous mushrooms and cinnabar, which in one sense, indicated the "mortal-immortal's comprehensive power over the elements". The lethal ingredients in Zhou's were and jade-infused vermillion.
Mingjian yaojing