Xi Wangmu: The Queen Mother of the West

She appears first in the oracle bones of the Shang dynasty - dangerous, ambiguous, sending plague and blessing with equal authority. In the Shanhaijing she has tiger's teeth and a leopard's tail. By the Han dynasty she keeps the peaches of immortality in a jade palace at the summit of Kunlun, receives emperors, and holds the fate of the cosmos in her hands. In the Tang dynasty poets address her di...