Note 14 — Chapter X · The Mother-goddess of China and Japan

The Chinese gigantic Peach Tree, whose fruit was partaken of by gods and men, grew in the Paradise among the Kwun-lun mountains in Tibet, and, like the Indian Mount Meru (“world spine”), supported the Universe. Its fruit took three thousand years to ripen. The tree was surrounded by a beautiful garden, and was under the care of the fairy-like lady Si Wang Mu, the queen of immortals, the “Mother of the Western King”, and the “Royal Mother of the West”. She appears to have originally been the mother-goddess—the Far-Eastern form of Hathor. In Japan she is called Seiobo. Her Paradise, which is called “the palace of exalted purity”, and “the metropolis of the pearl mountain”, or of “the jade mountain”, and is entered through “the golden door”,14 was originally that of the cult of the West. Sometimes Si Wang Mu is depicted as quite as weird a deity as the Phigalian Demeter, with disordered hair, tiger’s teeth, and a panther’s tail. Her voice is harsh, and she sends and cures diseases. Three blue birds bring food to her.