The Shan Hai Jing was not written at a desk. Scholars now widely agree that its content originated with the wu (巫) - the shaman-priests of ancient China who entered altered states of consciousness to journey through the spirit world. The wu were intermediaries between the human and divine realms. They danced, chanted and used ritual substances to achieve ecstatic trance. In this state they travelled to mountains they could not physically reach and encountered beings that existed beyond ordinary perception. The detailed geographical precision of the text - "three hundred li to the east" or "the river flows south into the sea" - reflects the wu's attempt to map their visionary experiences with the same rigor that a cartographer would map physical terrain. The Shan Hai Jing is essentially a field guide to the spirit world compiled by generations of shamanic practitioners.
Ancient Chinese cosmology described a universe of three interpenetrating layers. The celestial realm (Tian 天) was the domain of star gods and the ancestors of humanity. The terrestrial realm (Di 地) was the physical world of mountains and rivers and living creatures. The underworld (Youdu 幽都 or Huangquan 黄泉) was the realm of the dead and the place of germination where new life gathered its forces before emerging. The Shan Hai Jing maps all three layers. The mountain catalogues describe the terrestrial realm in meticulous detail. The Great Wilderness sections reach into the celestial realm where Di Jun rules and the ten suns rise. The Dark Capital (Youdu) described in the Northern Mountains is the entrance to the underworld. The wu-shaman could travel between all three layers and the text records their observations at each level.
The practice of spirit travel (shen you 神游) is the foundation upon which the entire text rests. In Daoist terminology this is the journey of the shen - the spiritual consciousness - while the physical body remains in deep stillness. The wu would prepare through fasting and purification and then enter trance through rhythmic drumming and dancing and chanting. Once the shen separated from ordinary awareness it could traverse vast distances in moments. It could fly to the peak of Kunlun and descend to the Dark Capital and cross the seas to encounter the strange peoples beyond. The creatures described in the text - beings with human faces and animal bodies or birds that speak human words - are consistent with the hybrid forms encountered in visionary states across shamanic traditions worldwide. The Shan Hai Jing is in this reading not a work of fantasy but a systematic record of reproducible visionary experiences.
Kunlun (昆仑) serves as the axis mundi - the cosmic axis connecting all three layers of reality. It rises from the earth through the clouds to touch heaven itself. The Heavenly Emperor's capital sits upon it. The Tree of Immortality grows from its slopes. The Weak Water (Ruoshui 弱水) surrounds its base as a barrier that only the spiritually prepared can cross. This mirrors shamanic cosmologies across Central Asia and Siberia where the world tree or cosmic mountain serves as the pathway the shaman climbs during trance. The wu ascending Kunlun in vision was ascending the central pillar of the universe itself - moving from the dense physical plane through increasingly subtle realms until reaching the source of all creation. This is not metaphor. For the wu it was experiential reality accessed through disciplined practice.
Every mountain chain in the Shan Hai Jing ends with specific ritual instructions: which animals to sacrifice and which types of jade to offer and whether to bury the offerings or burn them. These are not arbitrary religious customs. They are operational protocols for engaging with the spiritual intelligences of each region. The offerings function as energetic keys that open communication between the human practitioner and the mountain gods. The precision of these instructions - "a male chicken and a piece of jade wrapped in reed" or "a sheep and a jade bi disk buried in the earth" - reflects practical knowledge accumulated over generations of shamanic work. Modern practitioners who approach these protocols with genuine respect and intention report that they remain effective as frameworks for meditation and place-based spiritual practice.
While the wu tradition in its original form has largely disappeared from mainstream Chinese culture it survives in fragments. Daoist ritual preserves many wu techniques including trance induction through chanting and the use of talismans and mudras. Folk religion across southern China and Taiwan maintains spirit-medium practices with clear shamanic roots. The Shan Hai Jing itself has been rediscovered by contemporary practitioners who use its maps as guides for inner journeying - sitting in meditation and visualizing the landscapes described and allowing the mountain gods and spirit-beasts to communicate through imagery and intuition. The text bridges the ancient and the modern because its foundation is not cultural convention but direct experience of a multi-layered reality that remains accessible to anyone willing to still the mind and open the inner senses.