While on the hunt, King Wen encountered Jiang fishing on a grass mat, and courteously began a conversation with him concerning military tactics and statecraft.

[7] The subsequent conversation between Jiang Ziya and King Wen forms the basis of the text in the Six Secret Teachings.

When King Wen met Jiang Ziya, at first sight he felt that this was an unusual old man who is angling with a straight hook hanging out of water, and began to converse with him.

He took Jiang Ziya in his coach to the court and appointed him prime minister and gave him the title Jiang Taigong Wang ("The Great Duke's Hope", or "The expected of the Great Duke") in reference to a prophetic dream Danfu, grandfather of Wenwang, had had many years before.

King Wu and Jiang Taigong decided this was the time to attack, for the people had lost faith in the ruler.

The bloody Battle of Muye then ensued some 35 kilometres from the Shang capital Yin (modern day Anyang, Henan Province).

As for Daji, one version has it that she was captured and executed by the order of Jiang Taigong himself, another that she took her own life, another that she was killed by King Zhou.

Jiang Taigong was made duke of the State of Qi (today's Shandong province), which thrived with better communications and exploitation of its fish and salt resources under him.

An account of Jiang Ziya's life written long after his time says he held that a country could become powerful only when the people prospered.

In the Tang dynasty he was accorded his own state temple as the martial patron and thereby attained officially sanctioned status approaching that of Confucius.

[8] In the popular Ming-era novel Investiture of the Gods, Jiang Ziya is represented as a disciple of the Kunlun sect practicing Chan Taoism.

Aside from fortune-telling, he is able to perform supernatural feats such as mounting clouds,[9] using his internal energy to breathe out a divine fire from his mouth,[10] releasing thunder[10] and lightning[11] at will, creating illusions to conceal the presence of an entire army,[12] and through the use of ritual and incantation, of summoning wind storms to carry away hundreds of refugees,[9] of bringing about snow in order to freeze the Shang army encamped in a mountain valley,[13] and of conjuring a barrier made of the water of the North Sea in order to protect the Zhou capital.

When outmatched by another wielder of supernatural powers, Zhao Gongming, he employs underhanded means on the advice of another thaumaturge named Lu Ya, employing a voodoo-like ritual involving building a straw effigy of his rival which is later shot at with arrows, leading to Zhao's death.

In one legend, he used the knowledge he gained at Kunlun to defeat the Shang's supernatural protectors Qianliyan and Shunfeng'er, by using magic and invocations.

He is destined to deify the souls of both humans and immortals who die in battle using the "List of Creation" (Fengshen bang, 封神榜), an index of preordained names agreed upon at the beginning of time by the leaders of the three religions.

This list is housed in the "Terrace of Creation" (Fengshen tai, 封神臺), a reed pavilion in which the souls of the deceased are gathered to await their apotheosis.

In the end, after defeating the Shang forces, Jiang deifies a total of 365 major gods, along with thousands of lesser gods, representing a wide range of domains, from holy mountains, weather, and plagues to constellations, the cyclical nature of time, and the five elements.

There are two xiehouyu about him: Liexian Zhuan, a book on Taoist immortals, contains his short legendary biography: 呂尚者冀州人也。 生而內智，預見[or 豫知]存亡。 避紂之亂，隱於遼東四[or 三]十年。