The oldest and most systematic part of the text, comprising 5 chapters. Each records a mountain chain corresponding to a cardinal direction plus the center: Southern Mountains (南山经), Western Mountains (西山经), Northern Mountains (北山经), Eastern Mountains (东山经) and Central Mountains (中山经). Every entry includes the mountain's location, minerals, plants, animals, resident gods and the correct ritual offerings. These chapters are closely aligned with Five Elements (Wu Xing 五行) cosmology and likely originated as shamanic gazetteers during the Warring States period. The mountains are not just physical landmarks; they function as energy centers in the body of the earth and the rituals prescribed for each are designed to maintain the flow of qi through the landscape.
Eight chapters divided into Inner Seas (海内, 4 chapters) and Outer Seas (海外, 4 chapters). The Outer Seas describe distant lands and strange peoples beyond China's immediate borders - the Country of the One-Eyed (一目国), the Country of the Long-Armed (长臂国), the Feathered People (羽民国). The Inner Seas focus on regions closer to the central states, blending myths of cultural heroes like Yi the Archer (后羿) with descriptions of sacred mountains like Kunlun (昆仑). These chapters are more narrative than the Mountain Classics, weaving historical memory with mythological imagery. They represent the expansion of consciousness beyond the familiar into the realm of the Other.
Four directional chapters plus the standalone Hai Nei Jing (海内经), making 5 chapters total. These are the most fantastical and likely the latest additions, added during the Western Han. They recount divine genealogies - the high god Di Jun (帝俊), his wives Xihe (羲和) and Changxi (常羲) who gave birth to the suns and moons - and the exploits of culture-bringers like Yu the Great (大禹) and the Responding Dragon (应龙). The Great Wilderness represents the primordial chaos at the edges of creation, a place where the normal rules of reality do not apply. In meditation, this corresponds to the dissolution of the ego and the return to the formless source.
The sequence from Mountains to Seas to Wilderness is not accidental. It mirrors the journey of consciousness: starting at the stable center (the five mountain ranges, corresponding to the five viscera and the five elements), moving outward into the collective unknown (the strange tribes of the seas, representing the parts of the psyche we project onto others) and finally dissolving into the creative void (the Great Wilderness, where all forms return to potential). Many Daoist and neo-shamanic practitioners use this structure as a meditation template. Beginning at a personal "central mountain" - perhaps visualized as the heart or the lower dantian - the practitioner gradually expands awareness outward, encountering and integrating the strange "tribes" of the inner world, until finally resting in the vast, undifferentiated awareness of the Great Wilderness.