208 stephan peter bumbacher
streets amounted to several thousands. Some had dishevelled hair and
went barefoot, broke down the barriers of gates by night, clambered
over walls to make their way into the houses. Some ascended carriages,
mounted [horses], and hastened to set up relay stations to pass on [the
tally]. Having [thus] crossed 26 commanderies and principalities, they
went westward, entered the pass and reached the capital.
That summer people gathered in meetings in the capital as well as in the
commanderies and principalities. In the village settlements, in the lanes
and paths across the elds, they prepared [offerings], set up the imple-
ments for divination boards ( ), sang, danced and worshipped the
Queen Mother of the West. They also transmitted a letter, saying: “The
Queen Mother of the West informs the Hundred Families: Those who
wear this letter at their waist will not die. Those who do not believe my
words shall look below the pivots of [their] doors—there will be white
hair.” Some were holding torches during the night, climbed the houses,
beat drums, shouted out the name [of the goddess], and [drove] each
other into panic and fear. They also said: “People with vertical pupils
will arrive.” By autumn [of the same year] it stopped.As square or vertical pupils were marks of immortality, these people
expected to arrive must have been the queen’s guards in charge of
punishing all those who did not believe in her and were thus not
allowed to survive the imminent cataclysm. All others, we must infer,
could count on the goddess to let them pass through the catastrophe
unharmed. It is signi cant that the starving population of Shandong
was moving to the west: that was the direction the Queen Mother was
expected to arrive from. The stalks carried by the worried may well be
a symbol for the life-expanding capability of the deity. In many of Xi
Wang Mu’s Han pictorial representations, we see gures approaching
her holding boughs in their hands.^27
No later than 8 AD Xi Wang Mu became iconographically associated
with a hare which, using mortar and pestle, is preparing the elixir of
immortality.^28 This allows us to consider her sort of a patron saint for
those seeking immortality. The ordinary beings who had her painted
on the walls of their tombs may have hoped that their hun souls
would be allowed to enter the Queen Mother’s paradise which, from
Han times on, was thought to be on the mythical mount Kunlun
in the far west. The identi cation of the bo (board) as liu bo or
(^27) This was already observed by James 1995, p. 22.
(^28) Sfukawa 1979, g. 43.