Eight Pillars (八柱, bāzhù)

In Chinese mythic accounts the Eight Pillars are primordial mountain-pillars set in the eight cardinal directions to separate and/or support Heaven and Earth and to serve as axes between realms. A primeval cosmological episode involving one pillar appears in sources: the northwest pillar Mount Buzhou was damaged when the water deity Gonggong smashed his head into it, after which Heaven tilted toward the northwest and the Earth leaned east, causing cosmic disorder (with the sun, moon, and stars said to have followed). Variant traditions sometimes reduce the number of pillars (for example, to four), and over time pillar motifs were syncretized with other axis-mundi ideas (for example later identifications of Kunlun with Mount Sumeru).

The Eight Pillars are described primarily as mountains or mountain-pillars rather than anthropomorphic beings. Individual named pillars in the tradition include Kunlun, Jade Mountain, and the damaged Mount Buzhou; sources do not provide a single canonical list of all eight names. Kunlun in particular is depicted as vast and multi-tiered, with its base penetrating deep into the earth while its summit reaches toward the sky; literary addenda associate Kunlun with palaces (for example a palace protected by ramparts), lakes (e.g., a Lake of Gems mentioned in traditions about Kunlun), and paradisiacal gardens associated with the Queen Mother of the West. Mount Buzhou is described as a defective/damaged pillar and thereby notable for its broken state in the cosmogonic tale.

As structural and mythic features rather than agents, the pillars' 'powers' are their functions in cosmology: they were thought to hold up or separate Heaven and Earth; to provide routes of ascent (climbing certain pillars such as Kunlun could allow travel from Earth to Heaven and be linked with human transformation into immortals or xian); to serve as source-places for great rivers in later accounts (Kunlun is associated with river sources and later equated with Mount Sumeru); and to act as habitats or gates for deities, immortals, and shamans (for example the Queen Mother of the West's court on or near a pillar). Damaging a pillar (as Gonggong did to Buzhou) produces catastrophic, world-altering consequences in mythic narrative.