Li Tie Guai

Li Tie Guai (Hanzi:李鐵拐) berarti "Li si Tongkat Besi" merupakan salah satu anggota Delapan Dewa (Tiongkok)|Delapan Dewa. Walaupun dikenal pemarah, Li sangat murah hati terhadap kaum miskin, orang sakit dan mereka yang membutuhkan pertolongan. Ia menolong mereka dengan botol cupu labu yang selalu dibawanya.

Alkisah, ia dilahirkan pada masa dinasti Zhou Barat dengan nama Li Yuan. Ia belajar dari Lao Zi (pendiri Taoisme) dan dewi Xi Wang Mu. Meditasi yang dilakukannya selama 40 tahun kerap membuatnya lupa makan dan tidur.

Sebelum menjadi dewa, ia adalah seorang yang tampan. Namun pada suatu saat

The iron crutch was given to him by Xi Wang-mu after she healed an abscess on his leg. She also taught him how to became immortal. His other attribute is a pumpkin containing a magic potion.

is the most ancient of the Eight Immortals of the Daoist pantheon. He is irascible and ill-tempered, but also benevolent to the poor, sick and the needy, whose suffering he alleviates with medicine from his gourd bottle. He is portrayed as an ugly old man with dirty face, scraggy beard, and messy hair held by a golden band, walking with the aid of an iron crutch.

Legend

Before becoming an immortal, he was a handsome man. However, on one occasion his spirit travelled to heaven. He had told his apprentice to wait seven days for the spirit to return; but after six days the student had to go home to attend his sick mother, so he cremated his body. (In another version, the apprentice found his inanimate body, and mistakenly assumed that the master had died.)

Upon returning, Li was forced to enter the only body available, the corpse of a homeless beggar who had died of starvation; who unfortunately had "a long and pointed head, blackened face, woolly and dishevelled beard and hair, huge eyes, and a lame leg." Lao Tzu gave him a gold band to keep his hair in order, and turned the beggar's bamboo staff into an iron crutch to help his lame leg.

He then brought the apprentice's mother back to life using a magical potion. At night he makes himself so small that he can sleep inside his gourd bottle.

Iconography

His characteristic emblems are the gourd bottle, which identifies him as one of the Eight Immortals, and his iron crutch. A vapour cloud emanates from the gourd, and within it is the sage's hun (soul); which may be depicted as a formless shape, or as a miniature double of his bodily self. Sometimes the hun is replaced by a spherical object representing the "Philosopher's Stone". He is sometimes shown riding on a chimera.

There is a different story of how Li came to have a crippled leg. Lao-zi had descended from Heaven to initiate Li in the Taoist teachings. Soon after Li had attained immortality, he left his body to travel to the sacred Mount Hua-hsan. He charged one of his pupils with the task of guarding his body in his absence. A special instruction to this pupil was to burn his body if he did not return within seven days. On the sixth day, however, the pupil received a message that his mother was dying. To fulfill his duty as a son he had to return home, but he also had to guard Li's body. The pupil burned the body and went home. On the seventh day, Li returned but found his body burned to ashes. He was forced to enter the body of a dead beggar, a man with a crippled leg, among other deformities. Li did not want to live that way but Lao-zi begged him to accept his fate, and gave Li a crutch to help him walk.