Talk:Queen Mother of the West

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"Her role with respect to immortality and everlasting happiness probably arose from her origin as the goddess of fertility, and may be related to the West Asian fertility goddess Astarte. A fictional account of her meeting up with King Mu of Zhou Dynasty, as part of his journey to the west meeting various exotic characters, may be related to the story of King Solomon and Queen Sheba, both derived from ancient tales of Egypt/Babylon. "

This speculation seriously smells like fringe scholarship or Neo-pagan ecumenism; please cite both theories. I would challenge the former statement, at the least, as being historically overwhelmed by the centrality of Her theology in relation to Daoist (and earlier fangshi) teachings as paradisical psychopomp. At any rate, it is irrelevant to Xi Wangmu as She is worshipped by Daoist clergy and believers in any period. I must argue for deletion on the grounds of fringe bias.--Aunty Entity 05:50, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Move to Queen Mother of the West

In English scholarship, 'Xi wangmu' is rarely used. Before seeing this article, I had never even heard of this term. The English translation of 'Queen Mother of the West' is. This can be seen in the following google results:

Google Books:

• 'Queen Mother of the West' [1] = 406 results
• 'Xi wangmu' [2] = 28 results

Google:

• 'Queen Mother of the West' [3] = 15,300 results
• 'Xi wangmu' [4] = 621 results

It seems pretty clear that 'Queen Mother of the West' is more often used, at least using google, and that the article name should be changed. Google Books, which in my opinion is the way to determine word usage, also shows a great preference to the english term. Zeus1234 03:27, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I've moved the page, per the reasons given above. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:16, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Move to Xi Wang Mu

I don't agree it should be "Queen Mother of the West" on the basis of google search results. I also don't agree that the title of a Goddess should be used in place of her pinyin spelling.

To support this you will find on Wikipedia that Guan Yin is used and not her titles or english spellings. You do not see it as "Kuan Yin" or her English title of "Goddess of Mercy". Also the page on Jesus is just Jesus and not "King of Israel" which is one of His many titles.

The correct listing I think should be the pinyin spelling of Her name with out the tones just as you see for Guan Yin. So I propose to move it to 'Xi Wang Mu'. A google search for that will turn up 6,290 hits.

Just make sure that if you do wish to move this article that you go through the 'controversial move' procedure at [5], because I will contest it. Zeus1234 (talk) 09:04, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

The name doesn't even mean "Queen Mother of the West"

This was demonstrated by Paul R. Goldin in After Confucius, 11-13. He translates it as "Spirit Mother of the West"; at a minimum, there should be a reference to this newer interpretation. There's little justification for perpetuating the misunderstandings of the past.--74.103.157.38 (talk) 06:24, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

There's more justification in the former name than the newer one. 王 isn't remotely "spirit". — LlywelynII 12:03, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Xi Wang Mu=Jing Mu

I was hoping to find published reeferences in English that QMOTW or Xi Wang Mu was/is Jing Mu, one of the Five Supremes due to her seniority, can anyone help? ACHKC (talk) 08:53, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Charles Hucker, the Jesuits, Stuart Munro Hay and Bernard Leeman all argue that there appears to a connection between Sheba and Xi Wang Mu —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ntsukunyane Mphanya (talk • contribs) 09:37, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

There isn't much point putting references from the above authorities because these have been systematically deleted from Wikipedia in the past three weeks by fringe history bigots who believe that Israel and Judah before 596 BCE were in Palestine and will censor any works on Sheba that suggest otherwise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.244.245.175 (talk) 09:44, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

sexuality

"The fourth century Yü Fang Bi Jue … claimed that she achieved longevity by sexually vampirizing innumerable men … to build up her yin essence" [6]. --2.247.254.141 (talk) 02:38, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Unclear citations

I noted that some citations do not work (Bernard 2000, Quan Tangshi) and for some of them (CMYC, CTS) the reference is unclear.--Aethelwolf Emsworth (talk) 17:46, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

Restored the list of alternate names

In these edits White whirlwind (talk · contribs) deleted a raft of alternate names from the infobox. The problem is that this deletes the names from the article entirely, which seems counterproductive for an encyclopedia article. I'd also note that Wangmu niangniang/王母娘娘 is a really popular name. So I am reverting these edits. I can see how all those alternate names make the infobox look a bit complicated, which was the point of the edit I am about to revert. It might be that the names could be put into back into the body of the article. They resided there until somebody moved them into the infobox a while back. -- M.boli (talk) 12:05, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

A) Strong support. Even now that we can dump uncommon alt names into the Wikidata pages, we need them listed here with their various romanizations, characters, links, etc. There's never a reason to remove encyclopedic content.

B) There's no such thing as "Nacre" or "Mother-of-Pearl Lake". The name is properly and usually "Jade Pond", which is what I'll replace it with here. Per cursory Googling, it's sometimes more loosely translated "Jade Lake", "Shining Lake", "Lake of Gems", "Lake of Jewels", "Turquoise Pond", "Jasper Pond", "Green Jade Pond", "Green Jasper Pond", "Emerald Pond", "Azure-Gem Pond", &c. &c. &c. but except for the also-popular-with-scholars "turquoise" we should leave most of that mess for a separate page on the pond. — LlywelynII 12:24, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Sources for future article expansion

There's more that could be used for expanding or sourcing the article in the sources just added re: the proper/more common translation of Xiwangmu's Yaochi. I was only looking at the one aspect.

Also,

• Wu, Hung (April 1987), "Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the West" (PDF), Orientations, vol. Vol. 18, Hong Kong: Yifawn Lee, pp. 24–33 {{citation}}: |volume= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |authormask= ignored (|author-mask= suggested) (help).

looks pretty good, if old.

Also,

• Kirkland, Russell. "Women in the Taoist Tradition: A Historical Survey". University of Georgia. Archived from the original (doc) on May 9, 2008. Retrieved October 24, 2008.
• "Taoism and the Arts of China: Sacred Mountains and Cults of the Immortals". Art Institute of Chicago. 2000. Retrieved October 27, 2008.

were listed in the "sources" but unused by the actual article. The later source is probably better replaced by references to the exhibition's book, now listed among the sources.

Also,

• Wang, Robin (2003). Images of Women in Chinese Thought and Culture: Writings from the Pre-Qin Period through the Song Dynasty. Hackett Publishing. ISBN 0872206513.
• Cahill, Suzanne E. (1994). Transcendence & Divine Passion: The Queen Mother of the West in Medieval China. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0804725845.
• Zeisler, Bettina (2009–2010). Vitali, Roberto (ed.). "East of the Moon and West of the Sun? Approaches to a Land with Many Names, North of Northern India and South of Khotan". The Tibet Journal. XXXIV–SSSV (3–2). Dharamsala, H.P., India: 371–463.
• Max Dashu (2010). "Xiwangmu: The Shamanic Great Goddess of China". Academia.edu.

were listed in a Further readings section which, while possible, is generally a bad idea. Without explanation for why these entries are particularly useful or important, it's just a garbled and more incomplete and more outdated version of a Google Books search. Kindly restore them to the article once their formatting has been cleaned up and once they're being used to source statements in the article.  — LlywelynII 12:42, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

• Le Roux des Haute-Rayes, Michel-Ange-André (1775), "Extracts from the Chinese Historians", The Origin of Laws, Arts, and Sciences..., vol. III, Edinburgh: George Robinson, p. 305.

The part supposing Xiwangmu may be a reference to Egypt is obviously hilariously contrived and silly, although it may be worth noting as sth offered and debunked along the way as the idea reached Europe. On the other hand, it does seem worth noting that the name can be parsed as Mother of the King of the West, which may be obvious to Brits but very much isn't to Americans and others. Similarly, it may be worth discussing if there's a long Chinese tradition of treating it as a placename on occasion instead of as a goddess. — LlywelynII 02:51, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Merge from Wusheng Laomu into Queen Mother of the West (implemented)

• Wusheng Laomu is a title or epithet of Xiwangmu, so I don't think a separate is warranted. It would be more appropriate to merge, with material unique to Wusheng Laomu being moved to a section of Queen Mother of the West and the already existing section on names being expanded to list this as a notable synonym. Scyrme (talk) 06:03, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. The Chinese language Wikipedia keeps Wusheng Laomu separate from Xiwangmu. Both Chinese and English pages on Wusheng Laomu seem to be largely about Yiguan Dao religion. I see why merger makes sense if in a formal sense Wusheng Laomu is an epithet -- a descriptive term --- for Xiwangmu. But every reference I find treats them as separate deities. -- M.boli (talk) 08:36, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

• I'm not sure where you get the idea that they are mostly about Yiguandao in particular; both articles name multiple denominations/sects. The Chinese language article is completely unsourced and has apparently been for at least a decade, so I'm not sure it's a good guide for what we should do with English articles. As for references, why not look at the article's own reference on the topic? Pregadio (2013) - The Encyclopedia of Taoism:

  The most famous female divinity in Taoism is the Queen Mother of the West (*Xiwangmu). [...] In the Ming and Qing periods, the Queen Mother descended to the altar and took the name of Unborn Venerable Mother (Wusheng laomu 無生老母). In this form she is still venerated by women, especially in popular milieux. [Q1]

  In later times Xiwangmu did not continue to play this charismatic role, but reappeared as various avatars (e.g., Wusheng Laomu 無生老母 or Unborn Venerable Mother) in subsequent millenarian movements, until as late as the Eight Trigrams uprising of 1813 (Naquin 1976). [Q2]

  This reference clearly identifies Wusheng Laomu as a name of Xiwangmu in these two quotations. Scyrme (talk) 10:10, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

@M.boli: Do you still oppose this merge? Scyrme (talk) 17:48, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Nope! Go ahead. I didn't have much knowledge of the topic. And as you note, the Chinese language article is quite flimsy, that wasn't good evidence. I should have responded earlier. -- M.boli (talk) 17:54, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Alright, since the only objection was retracted, I've now implemented this merge. Scyrme (talk) 00:57, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 23 March 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: speedy not moved. Started by a sockpuppet without rationale & no one supported any move. (non-admin closure) {{ping|ClydeFranklin}} (t/c) 01:11, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

---

Queen Mother of the West → Wusheng Laomu – wrong title correct 203.17.215.26 (talk) 03:43, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

• Procedural oppose. Requested by an IP with no rationale. O.N.R. ^(talk) 05:45, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:UE. No justification for proposed move. 162 etc. (talk) 14:20, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. In English web search, "Queen Mother of the West" is 35 more times more common than "Wusheng Laomu". "Xi Wangmu" and "Xiwangmu" together are a bit more than 10 more common than Wusheng Laomu. That's the reason the original Wusheng Laomu wikipedia page was merged into Queen Mother of the West and not the other way around.

The disparity is also in the Chinese, where Wusheng Laomu "无生老母" gets 35k hits while Xiwangmu "西王母" gets 2.3 million. Xiwangmu is "West Queen Mother" -- M.boli (talk) 14:54, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per above. 〜 Festucalex • talk 05:59, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.