Lingzhi
The Fungus of the Immortals
- Earliest record
- 109 BCESima Qian's Shiji records Emperor Wu sending masters of methods to gather zhi, and both the Shiji and Ban Gu's later Hanshu record the nine-stemmed zhi that grew in the Ganquan palace in summer 109 BCE. The six zhi of the Shennong bencao jing are of uncertain Han date.
The mushroom of immortality was a class, not one fungus. Ge Hong's Baopuzi, around 320, sorts zhi into stone, wood, herb, flesh and fungus kinds, about a hundred of each.
Ge Hong, Baopuzi neipian 11, 'Xianyao' (Wikisource text); James R. Ware, Alchemy, Medicine, Religion in the China of A.D. 320: The Nei P'ien of Ko Hung (MIT Press, 1966).
A glossy, woody bracket fungus, Ganoderma lingzhi (also filed as G. sichuanense).
More context
The Divine Farmer's Classic lists six zhi among its upper drugs; eaten long, each was said to lighten the body and make one immortal. Sima Qian records Emperor Wu of Han sending masters of methods to gather zhi. In 109 BCE a nine-stemmed zhi grew inside the Ganquan palace; an amnesty followed, and a Song of the Zhi Chamber was made. Ge Hong's Baopuzi, around 320, ranks the zhi after cinnabar, gold and silver among drugs of immortality. The Nihon shoki tells of a man and a boy who ate purple mushrooms on Mount Uda in 644 and lived long. Long filed under Europe's Ganoderma lucidum, it was described as Ganoderma lingzhi by Yun Cao and colleagues in 2012.
Light
In the Nihon shoki a man and a boy dare to eat purple mushrooms on Mount Uda and live long.
Shadow
Seekers who find no zhi, Ge Hong says, are told their hearts were scattered and their virtue thin.