Taoist tradition preserves a rich gallery of immortals (仙, *xian*), ranging from clearly mythic figures to historical practitioners later honored as transcendent beings. Among the most emblematic are the Eight Immortals (八仙), including Lü Dongbin, Zhongli Quan, He Xiangu, Lan Caihe, Li Tieguai, Han Xiangzi, Cao Guojiu, and Zhang Guolao. These figures are central to Taoist folklore and ritual imagination, each associated with distinctive attributes and stories, though their historical existence remains uncertain. Lü Dongbin in particular is often portrayed as a Tang-era scholar who turned to inner alchemy and became a model of spiritual refinement. Within the symbolic universe of Taoism, such immortals function less as historical data points and more as living archetypes of what the cultivation of essence, energy, and spirit can become.

Alongside these legendary figures stand individuals who are historically attested yet gradually enveloped in an aura of immortality. Zhang Daoling, regarded as the founder of the Celestial Masters school, is one such figure; historical records present him as a religious leader, while later tradition claims he attained immortality after profound alchemical practice. Ge Hong, the Jin dynasty scholar and alchemist, wrote the *Baopuzi*, a foundational text detailing methods for longevity and transcendence; later lore often treats him as having himself realized what he described. Chen Tuan, associated with meditative and breath practices and famed for extraordinary longevity, similarly occupies a liminal space where history and hagiography intertwine. These figures illustrate how Taoist communities read spiritual attainment back into the lives of accomplished practitioners, interpreting their dedication to inner cultivation as evidence of a more-than-ordinary destiny.

Within the organized schools of inner cultivation, certain masters are remembered in explicitly “immortal” or “perfected” language. Wang Chongyang, founder of the Quanzhen school, and the early Quanzhen “Seven Perfected” are historically documented as serious adepts of inner alchemy and rigorous meditative discipline. Later tradition venerates them as realized beings whose lives exemplify the integration of doctrine, practice, and spiritual transformation. Qiu Chuji, another Quanzhen patriarch, is particularly well documented; sources describe him as a master of internal cultivation whose spiritual authority was recognized even by temporal rulers. In such cases, the language of immortality does not simply claim physical deathlessness, but points to a mode of being understood as purified, liberated, and aligned with the Dao.

Viewed together, these legendary and historical immortals form a continuum rather than a strict divide. At one end stand mythic exemplars like the Eight Immortals, whose stories dramatize the possibilities of Taoist cultivation in vivid, symbolic form. At the other end stand documented teachers such as Zhang Daoling, Ge Hong, Wang Chongyang, Qiu Chuji, and Chen Tuan, whose lives and writings ground the tradition’s more visionary claims in concrete practice. From a critical perspective, none can be demonstrated to be “immortal” in a literal, biological sense. Yet within Taoist spiritual culture, their remembered presence serves as a map of the path: a way of showing how the refinement of body, breath, and spirit might open onto a life that, in the eyes of later generations, transcends the ordinary limits of time.