wudang eight immortals staff workshop

on the eight immortals style

This form is a part of our northern long fist system, from the sacred peaks of Laoshan 崂山 Wudang’s sister mountain in the north. According to the oral tradition, this sword style was created by Qiu Chuji 丘处机 (1148—1227), the mytho-historical founder of Dragon Gate Daoism 龙门派, who famously met with Genghis Khan in Uzbekistan in 1222. The Great Khan was so impressed by Qiu’s understanding of immortality techniques that he named him head of all religion in China. Qiu returned to present day Beijing where he founded the White Cloud Temple 白云观. At an earlier phase of his life Qiu had spent several years at Laoshan, practicing inner alchemy in its Cave of Luminous Mist 明霞洞, where he purportedly created the Dragon Sword style.

The Dragon Sword was subsequently mastered by Sun Xuanqing 孙玄清 (1497—1569). A later custodian of the Cave of Luminous Mist, Sun was cloud-wandering disciple of Zhang San Feng 张三丰 (who also spent some time in this cave according to local Laoshan traditions). Sun passed the Dragon Sword down through Laoshan’s Golden Mountain Lineage 金山派, where Li Shiqing 李是庆, a famous Daoist guqin master, learned it in the early 19th century. He taught it to Kuang Zhenjue 匡真觉, head of the 20th generation of Golden Mountain Sect, who was the uncle of Kuang Changxiu 匡常修, 21st generation leader who then passed it on to our grandmaster Zhong Yunlong 钟云龙 in 1985.

Our teacher, master Yuan, learned this from master Zhong in the early 1990’s, and then our class began our study of the Dragon Sword in April of 2012. I’ve been practicing this style for the past 13 years. While the technical details of the form are relatively simple, its deeper dimensions continue to bear poetic and alchemical fruit.