Historical Origins, Belief Characteristics, And Social Significances Of Daoist Female Immortals

Daoism is the indigenous organized religion of traditional China. Different from the monotheismslike Christianity, Daoism is polytheism. The followers believe in a large group of immortals. Itslarge immortal hierarchy forms a special world of transcendentals. The immortal belief is the coreof the development of Daoism. Daoists believe people can become immortals who have unusualmagic power by making great efforts, and it is the goal of the Daoists to become immortals. To beinterested in this-worldly affairs and at the same time to become immortals is the innate characterthat makes Daoism so different from other religions.Compared to other religions, Daoism has another special characteristic, that is, females have asurprisingly high position in Daoism. Accordingly, in Daoism there are so many female immortalswho are highly esteemed.Due to the emergence of feminism, the role of female attracts people’s attention. Against thisbackground, numerous works on females have come out. Comparatively speaking, the works onreligious females are not abundant. But the religious female especially the Daoist female is animportant topic worth being studied.Taking these facts into consideration, this thesis makes Daoism female immortals its topic.Considering that though the studies on individual female immortals like Xiwangmu hasinnumerable great achievements, till now nobody has written a book on the female immortal as awhole. So this thesis tries to analyze female immortals in its entirety, from the perspectives oftheir origins, theogony classification, belief characteristics, and its social significances.This thesis tries to analyze the origins of the females immortals from the perspectives of theinfluence of Daoism as Philosophy, the mythologies, and folk customs. This thesis also tries toclassify female immortals into three types: Those that are born immortals, those who becomeimmortals by practicing and those who become immortals because of the folk customs. And thebelief characteristics of the females includes four aspects: Sacredness, this-worldly, Orientation,folk-custom and regionalism. This thesis tries to write about four social significances of the beliefof female immortals respectively:1) Respecting females,2) Keeping in good health and livinglong,3) Nature melody and4) Harmony in society.