Hidden Immortal Rock

Hidden Immortal Rock

Hidden Immortal Rock is a large cave among the Thirty-Six Rocks of Mount Wudang and has long been renowned in the history of Taoism in China. Historical records indicate that the famous Han Dynasty Taoist master Yin Gui once practiced here.

Yin Gui held a high status in Taoist history, with legends claiming that Laozi once bestowed upon him the “Five Thousand Words of the Dao De Jing.” Historical texts describe Yin Gui as someone who “not only understood astronomy and celestial phenomena but was also well-versed in the River Chart and the Luo Writing, could use elixirs to cure illnesses, and was skilled in refining gold and silver.” Hidden Immortal Rock is actually a rock cave, eleven meters high and thirteen meters deep. Due to the many eminent practitioners who meditated here throughout history, the cave was once widely famous, but now only five stone shrines remain inside.

In the main hall of the five stone shrines, there are currently two stone statues: one called the “Sun Star Deity” and the other the “Moon Star Deity.”

Behind the stone statues are two rows of mysterious inscriptions. Although Taoist scriptures contain invented scripts such as dragon-pattern and phoenix-script characters, no one has yet deciphered how to read these two rows of characters, which closely resemble “seal script,” or what they represent.

During the Song and Yuan dynasties, those who came to Mount Wudang to practice mainly engaged in secluded meditation. These practitioners “hated the mountains not being high enough and the forests not dense enough, fearing only that their names might reach the ears of the public.” Although they left behind many traces, few were recorded in historical texts.

However, in another cave on Mount Wudang, there is a unique sight of Taoist monks erecting their own stone tablets and carving their own portraits to preserve their names for posterity. Among these stone tablets, one is an epitaph personally written by the Yuan Dynasty eminent Wudang Taoist Li Mingliang, recording his life story; another is a stone carving of his own self-portrait. This is the first self-portrait of a Wudang Taoist ever discovered on Mount Wudang, making it extremely precious.

During the Ming Dynasty, Mount Wudang was decreed by the emperor as the “Great Mountain” and the “Mysterious Mountain of Governance,” and was revered as the supreme “Imperial Ancestral Temple.” The mountain gained fame worldwide for its prestigious status as the “Foremost of the Five Sacred Mountains,” described as “where the Four Great Mountains bow and the Five Directional Immortal Peaks pay homage.”

Mount Wudang is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites, a National Key Scenic Area, and a National 5A-level Tourist Attraction in China. It is also a sacred Taoist mountain and the birthplace of Wudang martial arts, hailed as “a unique wonder since ancient times and the foremost immortal mountain under heaven.”