Many and varied are the means to this end employed by the Taoists. They ransack the vegetable and mineral kingdoms for objects possessing the sought-for magic power; they bring the alchemist's crucible into use in order to prepare drugs of immortality and elixirs of life; they subject themselves to all kinds of ascetic discipline, mental and physical. And the efficacy of each method is proportional to its effect in bringing about assimilation of the vital principles Yin and Yang in felicitous combination. They who are successful in the quest "attain TAO" (as the Chinese express it), thus reaching a superhuman plane of existence where earthly trammels no longer bind them. The more perfect adepts are translated to heavens in the sky, or even "take their place among the stars."[1] But the great majority—the general rank and file, called hsien—are relegated to less exalted abodes. Many remain for varying periods of time among the haunts of men, to escape at last, after many centuries it may be, to one of the Taoist paradises on earth, chief among which is the group of islands that form the subject of this paper.
This cult of deathlessness, that has to do with the making of hsien, so intimately penetrates the island Elysium conception that I propose to consider it rather fully. A knowledge of how and when a mortal becomes a hsien is a necessary first step towards a clear understanding of the Isles of the Blest.
The transformation of an ordinary man into a hsien may take place without any visible bodily change, and its happening may be no less sudden than the change known as "conversion" among our revivalists. True, sometimes it is preceded by mental or physical preparation, or by a combination of the two; but the actual passing over the threshold occurs at a moment of supreme spiritual illumination, or on the swallowing of some magic nostrum, or by virtue of a charm, or by an act of favour on the part of one of the
- ↑ Chuang Tzŭ, S.B.E. xxxix. p. 245.
