Ko Hsuan

The Chinese wizard responsible for the seminal Taoist work The Classic of Purity. Ko Hsuan's specialization was mostly concerned with understanding the barriers or membranes that separate the physical and nonphysical universes. He was set on the path of this extremely abstract research during his early years, when he discovered he had an aptitude for laying unquiet spirits: hence his sobriquet "the Ghost Catcher".

Reports from his contemporaries (such as his nephew Ko Hung) state that he also seemed to have achieved considerable physical mastery over his body and his immediate surroundings. Ko Hung writes that "when he was plastered, or sometimes when the weather was just too hot, he would throw himself into the nearby lake and just stay down there at the bottom of it for hours."

(See also: Membranes.)