the Third Day of the Third Lunar Month

The Third Day Of The Third Lunar Month

Today was the great Daoist festival of San Yue San, that takes place every year on the Third Day of the Third lunar month. It is said that on this day, Xi Wang Mu, the Queen Mother of the West, offers a banquet in Heaven and invites all the Immortals to taste the peaches of immortality. This day is considered as the birthday of the Immortals. In the Wudang mountain, this festival is a major event, during which thousands of worshippers climb the mountains to come pray at the ancient Daoist temples.

At the Five Immortals Temple, we started preparing the festival one day ahead, as a group of faithful devotees took over the kitchen. We shared tasks amongst Chinese worshippers and foreign students and on the day of the festival, from sunrise until the mid-afternoon, everyone was busy tending the altars, cooking, cleaning, and watching over safety. Hundreds of people coming from the city, from the village, from all over the surrounding area, came to pray and repent, wishing for good health, peaceful home and smooth affairs, as they lighted noisy fire-crakers to ward off evil, burned countless incense sticks and prayer papers, and offered food and oil for the spirit lamps on the altars. Inviting the bell and offering them good wishes while they prostrated was the highlight of the experience for all those involved in attending the altars.

By lunch time, an abundance of free food was offered to all the worshippers in the temple, who were like flowing water filling their bowls with delicious vegetarian dishes, some of them made with wild greens and fresh bamboo shoots that we hand-picked on the mountain.

Unfortunately, the road leading up to the village mid-way on the White Horse Mountain is under repair, so the number of worshippers was less than during previous years.

However, to grace all by their beauty as an ausipicious sign, the pink and white peonies (牡丹 Mu Dan) bloomed right on time for the festival.