ABSTRACT
“In China, sacred sites are places where the power of a deity is manifest, places that are ling (numinous, efficacious),” as Susan Naquin and Chün-fang Yü note (1992: 11). While sacred sites need deities, deities also benefit in more than one way from having a “home base”. In the case of Zhenwu worship, the god’s home base is Mt Wudang in central China, where he was believed to have spent some 42 years in self-cultivation and where he ascended to heaven in broad daylight. The mountain has been one of the most prominent sites on the Chinese spiritual atlas since the fourteenth century, in particular for Zhenwu worship.
