A to Z Challenge -- X -- FLOWERS, PEACHES, AND IMMORTALITY

XERANTHEMUM ANNUUM -- A plant used to make besoms/brooms around Bulgaria and the Balkan regions of Eastern Europe.

 Also called the Immortelle or the Everlasting. In the language of flowers, it means Cheerfulness Under Adversity or Unfading Remembrance.

In Turkey, it was used as an analgesic burn remedy.

XI WANG-MU -- (Also called Hsi Wang Mu)  This is a goddess from the Chinese Taoist pantheon.  She lives in the Kulun mountains and guards the Tree, which grew the Táo Zi, the Peaches of Immortality.  (The ones Monkey stole.  The ones that only grew every 3,000 years.  Yep, those peaches.)

She is called the "Queen Mother of the West".  Her powers were almost infinite.  Her ferocious beginnings as a humanoid goddess with tiger features and tail began thirty-three centuries ago with the first recorded record of her. She was a wild goddess that brought plagues and death to the people before organized Taoism morphed her to the most powerful goddess in their pantheon, who had her own throne and controlled life and the afterlife.

XOCHIQUETZAL --  (pronouced Sho-chi-ket-sal) She is the the Aztec goddess of beauty, prostitutes, household crafts, artists (sculptors, painters, etc.), lovers.  She is also the goddess of feminine sexual power.  She was associated with flowers, but he marigold is sacred to her.

She created humans and was the intermediate between them and the gods.

Her festival was celebrated every eight years at the  end of autumn.


I was really grasping at straws with this one, but I managed to find some awesome things.



Disclaimer: None of these pictures belong to me.  I found them on Google.