Note 15 — Chapter XI · Tree-, Herb-, and Stone-lore

The Far Eastern Artemis appears to be represented by the immortal lady known in China as Ho Sien Ku, and in Japan as Kasenko. She is shown “as a young woman clothed in mugwort, holding a lotus stem and flower” (like a western Asiatic or Egyptian goddess), “and talking to a phœnix”, or “depicted carrying a basket of loquat fruits which she gathered for her sick mother. She was a woman who, having been promised immortality in a dream, fed on mother-of-pearl, and thereafter moved as swiftly as a bird.”15 The Mexican god Tlaloc’s wife was similarly a mugwort goddess.