Le Taoïsme (Le Tao Te King t. 2) (French Edition)

Religious geography as an interdisciplinary field of study is comparatively new, but the study of Taoist sacred sites and mountains started long before the current interest in this field. Some adventurous student should explore the region of T'ai Shan today with Chavannes' book in hand, and note the changes since — in the same way that Dean , b has recently done field-work in Amoy, comparing his data with de Groot's 1 description of the same region.

Sacred geography was a familiar theme to medieval Taoists who covered the whole empire with a network of sacred sites, the terrestrial paradises of the immortals. This system of homologues underlies all ritual or magic; by manipulating one of these realities, the adept can reach and influence an analogous reality in another realm. Inspired by miniature gardens in Vietnam which he traces back all the way to Han dynasty hill censers, po-shan lu Hjt[il' i; see V. The Chinese had similar grottoes but did not develop renaissance symbolism and ritual around them.

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Important for the study of sacred geography is Stein's conclusion that this imagery and practice are never automatically derived from the site: What the Chinese saw in grottoes were labyrinths leading to sacred chambers, where the successful adept could find divine revelations, talismans and heavenly scriptures Kaltenmark ; Bokenkamp a.

The representation of the true shape of sacred mountains as labyrinthine diagrams is analysed in a forthcoming study by Boltz see V. Two other mountains have been thoroughly investigated: A Taoist sacred writ is not, in the first analysis, an expression of religious doctrine in writing. Rather, the graphic configuration and the object bronze, jade tablets, bamboo, silk, paper on which it appears are themselves sacred. Like the pao, a sacred text legitimises the person who possesses it.

This is also the rationale for later imperial collections of art; cf. Rightfully acquired through revelation or transmission, a Taoist scripture has for the adept or the priest the same rank-conferring value as the imperial regalia for the ruler Seidel , Unauthorised appropriation of scriptures is not only ineffective but punished by the gods Strickmann ; Lagerwey In Ling-pao Taoism they became the archetype and essence of all sacred scriptures.

They contained, mainly, the names of divinities and instructions on how to communicate with them through meditation. However, recitation or even mere possession of the scriptures was in itself already sufficient to gain immortality. The best descriptions of this "cosmogony of script" have been contributed by Robinet The milieu of the Shang-ch'ing visionaries was first described by Strickmann , and their inspired calligraphy by Ledderose ; see also VI.

Every scripture has its attendant spirits who protect the owner, can be summoned in ritual, consulted about the future, etc. Another line of research has traced the roots of the Taoist concepts and rituals of scriptural transmission This investigation has led Stein , to the Chou M period rites of oath-taking and feudal enfeoffment. In keeping with their talismanic character, Taoist scriptures were hidden treasures not to be divulged lightly. A disciple judged worthy of receiving initiation into a scripture went through elaborate preparations, furnished costly pledges of gold and silk, and gained access, through the transmission, to a higher rank corresponding to the rank of the scriptures, in both the celestial and communal hierarchies.

To deepen their understanding of sacred scriptures, specialists of Taoism can also profit from recent studies dealing with the basic concepts underlying Chinese script. A specialist of calligraphy has recently pointed out the difference between script in the West and in China. Ideographic and phonetic writing in the West has never been more than a technique of noting down spoken languages.

Therefore, in the Western mind, script is included in the divine curse that divided mankind and separated it from its origins according to the Tower of Babel myth of the confusion of languages. In Chinese mythology, on the other hand, the written sign precedes the spoken word and has always kept its entirely positive cosmogonie power of unfolding and arranging reality Billeter Script is a revelation of the deeper structure of the universe.

This is illustrated by the legends of its creation by the sages, who were able to decipher the signs of nature Seidel Whether one wants to follow Lagerwey in his semiotic and psychological, Judaic and Christian comparisons or not, his views on Chinese writing, on the science of patterns which leads to a science of appropriate action i.

These insights build on the work of Vandermeersch , esp. According to Vandermeersch, wen-yen is an ideographic script that, even in its initial phase, was not intended to reproduce a spoken language, but was conceived as a completely independent "graphic language" cf. An "ideogram" does not represent an idea but a word.

However, this graphically represented word has less to do with any word of the spoken language than with the entire range of the other ideograms, making the graphic language a self-contained system. This graphic language was developed by the specialists of divination and used to record ritual actions concerning the spirits, sometimes even exclusively for the eyes of the spirits as, e.

This is not the place to develop the full range of Vandermeersch' s argument, but it might be useful to mention some of its implications for Taoism. Taoism is inconceivable without literacy, without reference to the scribal tradition of the diviner" Lagerwey As such they reveal the invisible forces underlying reality and permit acting upon them Robinet The origin of the fu in pre-Han feudal customs is well known through the studies of Kaltenmark and Stein Fu were the tablets on which contracts were written, then they were split and one half was kept by each partner.

In general, the written characters of a Chinese name contain more of che person's essence than his picture or statue Gernet The boundary between names or titles written or engraved on seals in normal characters and those written in the more complicated talismanic scripts is fluid. A typical fu diagram is a rather baroque conglomerate of scriptural elements in which certain forms often the characters for stars and for demons predominate examples in Legeza Attested in tomb inscriptions since at least the Han dynasty, fu diagrams predate organised Taoism.

Second- century "celestial ordinance" inscriptions addressed to the gods of the netherworld and deposited in tombs contain written fu in place of the seal imprint. The only serious study of talismans is Strickmann's a wide-ranging investigation of talismanic seals and their apotropaic and therapeutic use in Taoism and Buddhism in China and Japan.

The functions of the fu characters or diagrams are to give efficacy to rites and validate petitions addressed to the deities and orders given to the spirits. These and other uses of the fu can perhaps best be understood in the general context of the supernatural bureaucracy see V. Nobody has yet tried to make sense of the scripts themselves. The religious concepts expressed in the graphs and their functions could be studied in the ritual manuals in the Taoist Canon, where the different components of the diagrams are, albeit cryptically, explained examples in Legeza At this point in the first version of this chronicle, I launched into a lament that these fascinating materials had not yet been investigated.

That was before I received Boltz's rather technical but masterly study of cartography in the Taoist Canon forthcoming. Boltz presents and analyses 1 the labyrinthine Charts of the Five Sacred Peaks and charts of celestial and infernal regions, 2 nonary charts of space depicted on the grid of a magic square of nine compartments, and 3 star maps, floor plans of altars and oratory chambers, and depictions of the human body as microcosmic landscape.

Their sinuous convolutions also look like bowels, suggesting that they might represent rather the inside of the mountain. Nevertheless, the Taoists do not seem to have engaged in scientific topographical surveys of the surface or the bowels of mountains ; the same instructions indicate the visual aspect of the deities to be encountered. Moreover, these contour maps also exist for sites outside the physical world. Equipped with the chart, the adept can undertake the journey to the site either in the flesh or in meditation.

In this sense, charts are essentially re-creations of landscapes in miniature. The hermit designs the true shape of a sacred site on the floor of his hut, freely wanders in it and makes it disappear with the appropriate formula Stein Put in terms of one of Boltz's well formulated conclusions, "maps in short defined the boundaries to be transcended. They give the priest legitimate authority over the spirit realms and permit ritual action in them.

Feng-tu, the mythical mountain in the far northeast of China, provided personal protection against the demonic forces emanating from this unholy land that houses the administration of the dead. Charts of Feng-tu could also be ritually manipulated to open the netherworld and bring about the salvation of the dead. Here, Boltz's findings match Billeter's notions of the cosmogonie power of the written sign. The sign connects with the physical or spiritual reality of the signified. Boltz writes about the generative force inherent in the "true form" of the paradigmatic paradise mountain: Creation is perceived in China as proceeding from the primordial ch'i manifested first in the sacred sign.

The theocratic organisation of the first Taoist movements has been mentioned above IV.

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In Maspero published a complete panorama of modern Chinese mythology that included the Taoist pantheon and immortals galore. He was the first to note the bureaucratic structure of the modern Chinese pantheon with ministries of rain, of thunder, etc. When he discovered the same phenomenon in early Celestial Master Taoism, Maspero and succeeding French scholars, including myself interpreted it as a projection of the imperial administration of the Han dynasty 1 The fourth- century Shang-ch'ing revelations are similarly replete with official appointments, vacancies and advancements in celestial offices.

The recipients of these revelations, as Strickmann has shown , compensated for their loss of status in this world with lofty official honours in the supernatural world as well as in the imminent messianic empire of Great Peace. This seemed to confirm Maspero's interpretation that the social world is projected onto the supernatural. His "Tables of the Ranks and Functions of the Perfected and the Gods" Chen-ling wei-ye t'u jRIEffclilil was the clearest formulation of the supernatural bureaucracy the text we have today, HT , is only a garbled residue, reworked in the tenth century. Recent finds of pre-Taoist Han tomb inscriptions, by the way, show that the netherworldly bureaucracy of T'ai-shan was not invented by the Celestial Masters but was already a feature of Han religion, which they adopted Seidel In a further article, Stein showed that the Taoist priests of the Six Dynasties tried to curb or abolish popular cults by converting their "deluded" adherents to the "pure gods" of the Tao see VI.

In as much as the priests understood themselves to be celestial office holders invested with power over the popular "demons," their social role was little different from that of the imperial officials who did the same, but on the authority of the terrestrial government. They also had power to summon and to exorcise local nature deities, to destroy temples and abolish cults — not as agnostic secular notables, but as representatives of a rival and superior religious authority, that of the emperor, Son of Heaven.

Their weapon was the official decree, the administrative document, which could contain orders addressed not only to human subjects but to recalcitrant and noxious deities. Stein found late Han Confucians who, by the recitation of.

Taoïsme, Tao Te King

In other words, the official was to prevent all communication with the gods outside the proper channels and by unauthorised people. Only the Son of Heaven and his representatives, the officials, had jurisdiction over the gods and possessed the proper rituals to deal with them in the imperial cult see VI.

At this point it became clear that our projection theory was wrong. The Chinese supernatural bureaucracy does not, after all, seem to be a copy of social conditions ; it is the other way around.

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The Han administrative structure was itself based on a preexisting religious model and, so, no sooner cleared of Marxist leanings we incur the no less embarrassing odium of being Eliadean epigones. Keightley arrived at similar conclusions from his study of completely different and much more ancient materials. He found that "the generational, hierarchical, and jurisdictional taxonomy by which the Shang kings classified their ancestors and the bureaucratic, contractual way" in which the kings dealt with their ancestors served as models for secular institutions and relationships.

He suggested that there is a relationship between Shang religious beliefs and later bureaucratic conceptions. And they did this not only for utilitarian, ideological reasons of control and dominance — as adepts of Michel Foucault would tend to see such measures — but "for reasons of ultimate, religious significance" Keightley Why is this objection wrong? Perhaps because the bureaucratic mentality in China was never completely severed from its religious roots. The bureaucratic model was not created as an ideological tool to strengthen political power, although it could serve this purpose ; it is the Chinese "charter.

One important function of the supernatural bureaucracy was the record- keeping and periodic inspection of human conduct. The Buddhists had their own reasons for adopting this system. In Buddhist terms, the records of destiny represented the karmic balance sheet that determines one's next existence. Teiser's book on the history of this important festival discusses its Taoist antecedents. In pre-T'ang Taoist texts, the tribunal of King Yama already appears as a minor feature in the Taoist world of the dead Thompson The definitive shape of the netherworld administration emerged during the T'ang-Sung transition.

Between the tenth and fourteenth centuries there evolved the system of ten courts presided over by the "Ten Kings of Hell" who judge the souls of the dead. The entirely bureaucratic scenery of these ten tribunals seemed Taoist to early scholars its iconographical expression has been studied by Ledderose We now know that the belief in the "Ten Kings" appears first in a Buddhist context Teiser , Its bureaucratic features are due not to the Taoists but probably to the contemporary formation of the popular pantheon and to developments similar to those that created the city gods see VI.

The Taoists made a belated and unsuccessful attempt to transform these popular Ten Kings into Taoist "Per-. Even today Taoist priests officiate at funerals surrounded by scrolls depicting the Ten Kings. An efficient centralised administration controlling human conduct and determining human fate in this world and the next might seem to be a night- marishly suffocating vision worse than any FBI dream of complete and top-secret files on all citizens — worse because inescapable even in death. In fact, the system was very "human": Moreover, there is an entire class of beings whose "opting out of the system" we have already noted above V.

Perhaps one function of the immortals was to counterbalance this obsession with rank and all-inclusive hierarchies. Scholars have, in fact, begun to challenge the validity of the bureaucratic model in connection with immortals' cults involving local elite worship in the Southern Sung Hymes, in McRae et al. Further research therefore might look into the ways and the periods in which the immortals and non-"officialised" popular gods in general were linked with local cult centres, and how they escaped becoming respectable divinities ranked in official pantheons see VI.

The Human Body and Longevity Practices. The human body, which is at the center of so much Taoist practice, imagery and theory, is not the material object studied and manipulated by Western medicine. The Taoist goal of physical immortality is not eternal life in the kind of body a physician can see through his CT scanner. An article by Staal on Indian concepts of the body provides a good comparative introduction to these questions.

For China, it is of course Needham who has done the most penetrating studies on the conceptual preconditions that made the idea and pursuit of material immortality possible in China and not in the West Needham , II: The basic physiological and philosophical vocabulary that the Chinese use to speak about the body-mind continuum, about matter, energy, vitality, life, spirit, soul, etc. To leave these terms untranslated, as many scholars do, only postpones the problem until we have a better idea of what we are talking about.

Andersen definitions for many of these terms in medical contexts, and tentative definitions can, of course, be found in many studies of Taoist cosmology,. In the pan- Chinese system of correspondences, the body is a microcosm, a map of the universe, each point of which is related to corresponding points in other domains of reality. The physiological practices of the Taoists function on the basis of a rich and ancient symbolism of the microcosmic body in relation to celestial spheres, social entities and sites of sacred geography Schipper ; , chap.

The Taoist definition of life, moreover, is the presence in the body of divinities who also exist in their stellar palaces or terrestrial paradises, and the goal is to prevent the departure of these divine spirits by furthering the communication of these "interior gods" with their celestial counterparts Maspero Texts dealing with physiological practices present quite a number of difficulties: The first, and classic, study in this domain was by Maspero , who deciphered the esoteric terminology of a group of physiological manuals in the Taoist Canon.

For the more practical problems presented by alchemical and medical terminology, see Sivin , appendix 1. Two recent collections of articles on physical and mental practices are reviewed in this issue Pregadio b. The complete translation of the most important text on all early Taoist immortality techniques Ko Hung's Pao-p'u tzu nei-p'ien was somewhat disappointing when it finally appeared, because it is barely annotated and tackles none of the problems of interpretation Ware However, much of this work has since been done by Needham , II; , V.

The Taoist notions of longevity and immortality practices have been so extensively studied by Needham and his collaborators in SCC that it will suffice here to point out some recent monographs and articles on specific topics, texts and techniques. Several studies on gymnastics and respiration have profited from training with a contemporary master, as these Taoist practices are very much alive today.

On the history of respiration and gymnastic exercises, cf. A list of recent Japanese works on Chinese longevity techniques can be found in Sakade Sexual disciplines for health and longevity, already well explored by van Gulik , have received new impetus from the discovery among the Ma- wang-tui manuscripts of a number of sex manuals several sections of which have been admirably studied by Harper Kalinowski deciphered an early text on a specifically Taoist collective rite of sexual union that is of such symbolic and choreographic complexity that it does not invite emulation.

In the context of inner alchemy, after the late T'ang, it was thought that the male and female forces within the adept's own body must be brought to union in order to engender the embryo of immortality Robinet Reading the superb conclusion of Needham's historical account of sexual techniques, one should keep in mind the high degree of ritualisation of these techniques as well as the generally male-oriented benefits , V. A sixth-century Shang-ch'ing treatise on this technique HT has been studied by Andersen ; cf.

The Shang-ch'ing lineage transformed ancient southern techniques of trance into ritualised, repeatable exercises of visualisation. The texts describe com-. The fabulous imaginary universe of the Shang-ch'ing visualisations, and the adept's metamorphoses, ecstatic flights and stellar excursions in it, are a major contribution to Chinese imagery and literature, see VI. Robinet has described this universe, traced the ecstatic flight and stellar journeys of the visionary , , examined its textual tradition , and outlined the kind of perfected immortal the visionaries sought to become b; cf.

The more abstract and philosophical T'ang dynasty meditation manuals show considerable influence from Buddhism, something that has been briefly discussed by Robinet Needham has mapped out the kind of investigation that should be done on meditation , V. Unless we are dealing here simply with unlucky renderings of key terms into English, this mystical philosophy constitutes an amazing departure from the Taoist view of things in which man and the universe are one continuum of ch'i in various rougher or finer states.

It is true that, among the many attitudes toward physical death, indifference to the decay of the body is sometimes encountered, but scarcely among those who aspired to immortality in any form. Chuang-tzu's acceptance of death and Mo-tzu's Ir? One of these, a minister of the T'ang emperor Hsiian-tsung, explained his wish by saying that "the dead are unconscious and end up blending with earth" Gernet There is no mysticism here and no thought of life beyond death. For most medieval Taoists aspiring to immortality, there was no mystical way around some kind of physical preservation or restoration of the body.

Even in the elixir-poisoned, putrified corpse of a successful Shang-ch'ing alchemist, the elixir preserved a pilot-flame in the seat of life the all-important five viscera so that the adept could later reclaim his body in order to achieve immortality Strickmann In the more popular communities of Celestial Master and Ling-pao Taoism, where no one had the means or leisure to brew elixirs, the visible death of the parishioners had to be explained by a kind of post-mortem immortality: Five celestial lords of the five planets and the "five viscera will descend to take charge of the cadaver, bearing it to the Palace of Supreme Darkness where the Blue Spirit will rejuvenate it, refining its flesh and bones in alchemical fashion and preparing it for eternal life" Bokenkamp.

Disciples who later opened the tomb would invariably find an empty coffin Robinet b; Needham , V. The preservation of the body as proof of saintliness and enlightenment was also a wide-spread Buddhist belief in China Seidel a ; the most famous "empty coffin" is Bodhi- dharma's Faure It remains to be seen how T'ang Taoists like Ssu- ma Ch'eng-chen used Lao-Chuang and Buddhist ideas to obviate the Taoist dilemma that immortality was unthinkable without preserving the however sublimated body-mind continuum beyond death.

The real difficulty here lies not with the Chinese texts but with our Western lack of a discourse apt to express what the Taoists mean by physical immortality. Alchemy and its Interiorisation. Among the most advanced contemporary scientists in physics, astronomy and biology, we hear voices today saying that our twentieth-century perception and interpretation of the universe is conditioned by nineteenth century scientism — and is subject to changes occurring in our mental perception of the world. Despite its tangible achievements, today it seems that modern science is no more than one method among many for perceiving and classifying reality.

The ways of perceiving the world and man in the civilisations of the past, whether Western or non- Western, may reveal aspects of knowledge that remain hidden to the eyes of modern science. Such reflections have stimulated contemporary interest in the "sciences" of traditional civilisations, including alchemy, medicine and technology. Chinese alchemy has been extensively studied, not by specialists of Taoism but by historians of Chinese science whose contribution to our knowledge of Taoism is immense. The supposedly greater open-mindedness of Taoists to the observation and technological manipulation of nature has been much discussed Needham , II; in a critical way, Sivin Schafer ; see I V.

The goal of Chinese alchemy was physical immortality, and its texts are preserved thanks to their inclusion in the Taoist Canon. There was no alchemy in early Celestial Master Taoism. It is only in the milieu of the fourth-century Chiang-nan drug-culture studied by Wagner. Ko Hung firmly believed in the existence of elixirs that confer immortality and laments that he does not have the means to acquire the costly ingredients.

Needham accords Ko Hung's Pao-p'u tzu an important place in the history of alchemy esp. Studies of the alchemical activities of the Shang-ch'ing patriarch T'ao Hung-ching have shown their connection with eschatological beliefs i. It also appears that Shang-ch'ing alchemists were fully aware of the toxicity of their mercury-, lead- or arsenic- containing products and that some of them ascended to high rank in the stellar palaces of the Shang-ch'ing heavens through a kind of ritual suicide Strickmann ; on involuntary elixir poisoning, cf.

Fragments of the oldest alchemical texts, mentioned by Ko Hung in the fourth century Needham , V. Needham's monumental work on alchemy needs no introduction. I shall only point out some of his findings that are particularly useful for students of Taoism. The "this-worldly and non-ethical" orientation of ancient Chinese thought is the basis of Taoist alchemy — before Buddhism introduced ethical polarisation and the ideal of transcending this world and moving to a more desirable existence in a non- material realm beyond physical death Needham , V.

The religious character of alchemy is borne out by the fact that participation in the highly ritualised processes of transmutation was generally considered more important than the ingestion of the resulting elixir , V. Need- ham's SCC V. The theoretical background of elixir alchemy is examined by Sivin in Needham 1 , V. This important study is summarised in an excellent article that, although published before SCC V. He focuses on the concept of time and its manipulation in the alchemist's procedure of "maturing minerals" by accelerating the natural time cycles.

Proposing that we should not restrict our attention "to those isolated accomplishments that entitle the alchemist to credit in the light of modern chemistry," Sivin concludes that alchemy was not "dedicated to the search for abstract knowledge" but was a means of self-perfection. By the late T'ang tenth century , Taoist meditation masters had sufficiently integrated Buddhist Madhyamika thought to produce a new and completely Taoist reaction to Buddhism, i. This new synthesis is called "inner alchemy," because the terminology it employs is that of laboratory alchemy wai-tan; e.

An indication of Buddhist participation in the transformation of alchemy into mental practices is the fact that perhaps the first to use the term nei-tan was the Buddhist monk Hui-ssu WM ; cf. Here again Needham's work is the most comprehensive and the first one should turn to , V. He reexamines much of the early history of physiological practices treated in , II from the novel perspective that these techniques were intended "to produce a physical enchymoma of salvation, as it were, within the body of the practitioner" , V. Needham describes the evolution of the various macrobiotic techniques up to their inclusion in the nei-tan synthesis, discusses the factual e.

Several specific studies on nei-tan have been published since Needham's survey. This text is illuminating because it not only tells about the speculative aspects but gives unusually clear indications of the actual physiological training. Tseng Ts'ao's theoretical discourse, however, is of such complexity yin inside the yang, inversions of the agents fire-water etc. The long and laborious physiological and mental training described by the Ling-pao pi-fa leads finally to a liberated state of spontaneity, which is, according to Baldrian-.

Hussein, the point where the nei-tan texts leave off and more mystical authors like Lao-tzu and Ghuang-tzu start their quest; in other words, it is the point at which the perfect mastery of body and mind allows one to enter mystical trance. Despeux has drawn attention to the scarce and mostly late treatises on nei-tan practices for women. I don't knock them, as long as they are not too pretentious and absurdly pseudo-mystical, and as long as they entertain some readers and make others breathe more deeply. In contrast to recent authors, the great sinologist Wilhelm had the excuse of exploring completely uncharted territory.

It is difficult, if not futile, to define Taoism by its doctrines because the essence of the religion lies in its methods, techniques, practices and ritual. The rank of a priest is not determined by his doctrinal knowledge but by the extent of his initiation into the liturgy of his particular tradition. Ritual texts predominate in the Taoist Canon, but Chavannes is still the only scholar to have devoted an exhaustive study to any one Taoist ritual. Saso was the first to attempt a general description of contemporary Taoist ritual.

Lagerwey c and Berthier have studied the ritual of the so-called red-headed priests of the Lu-shan tradition fsIU-lM in Taiwan and Fukien. In the s, interest turned to the origins and history of ritual. A thorough examination of the rare traces of this early ritual has shown that the major innovation that distinguished it from earlier popular cults was the adoption of "bureaucratic" procedures to deal with the gods.

Prayers in the form of written memorials presented to the gods by an officiant in a visionary journey to the heavenly courts or by burning are still an essential part of Taoist ritual Schipper , Strickmann forthcoming I. The deep roots and extraordinary persistence of Taoist ritual can be gauged from the fact that Chinese writing probably was invented for use in written communication with the spirit world. Prayers have always been offered in writing, and gods have answered — through legible cracks in oracle bones, through divine scriptures discovered in sacred mountains and through the writing brush of mediums and visionaries — in literary Chinese or in a variety of sacred talismanic scripts see V.

The most recent studies of the basic conceptual patterns underlying Taoist ritual show that Taoism has perpetuated and elaborated a number of ancient concepts and practices going back at least as far as the Warring States period. Ancient exorcistic postures and movements reappear in Taoist healing and longevity rituals Harper The study of a Celestial Master rite of sexual union has revealed a structure based on an extremely complex system of symbols and correspondences derived from ancient mantic arts Kalinowski For Lagerwey b, chap.

The history of Taoist ritual has known many phases the most important of which are: When Celestial Master Taoism spread in what was then the south of the empire, it incorporated the ancient cult practices of Chiang- nan the ch'an-wei WM- and Ling-pao traditions; Kaltenmark , , absorbed Buddhist elements such as the rite of circumambulation and Shang- ch'ing meditational practices to become the highly successful Ling-pao liturgy Bokenkamp ; Robinet ; Lagerwey a; Schipper Bell has spelled out the interplay of text and rite underlying the evolution of communities and priestly hierarchies in the Ling-pao tradition.

All these features, already present in the earlier parishes of the Celestial Masters, now, in the fifth century, took the shape that has dominated Taoist cult practice ever since. We have seen above V. In keeping with the bureaucratic mentality, Taoist ceremonies always involve the acquisition of merit and the advancement and investiture of divine and human participants.

The ghosts of the unshriven dead were redeemed and "promoted" Cedzich , and the legitimacy of priests as well as of worldly powers was consecrated through ritual. The combination of the traditional state religion with Taoist rites honouring T'ai-shang Lao-chun: Toward the end of the T'ang and during the Sung period, we witness a new involvement of Taoist ritual with local cults of saints see VI.

This development does not reflect a "popularisation" of Taoism but the use of Taoist ritual by new local power elites, such as the emerging merchant guilds, to consecrate the investiture of their leaders Schipper a and to upgrade their local cult traditions through imperial recognition and integration into the Taoist pantheon Cedzich , This social process together with the generous patronage of several Sung emperors led to a proliferation of new ritual dispensations, which Strickmann.

Besides the Offering chiao liturgy for the benefit of the living community, healing and the salvation of the dead have always been prime concerns of Taoist ritual. Ritual faith-healing, often effected through the salvation of ancestors suffering in infernal prisons, was the major attraction of Celestial Master Taoism Strickmann ; Seidel , , a and continued in the Ling-pao liturgy Bokenkamp Taoist healing rites using seals and talismanic scripts have been so popular throughout Chinese history that we find numerous adaptations of them in Chinese and Japanese Tantric rituals from the Middle Ages until today Strickmann a.

Any relationship between these Taoist therapies and those of "classical medicine" has not yet been demonstrated. The redemption of suffering souls from hell, which he achieves in his visionary experience, lends efficacy to the external salvation rite he is conducting. The close connection between ritual and theatre has been pointed out by van der Loon Marionette theatre in Ch'uan-chou temples in the s still demonstrated "the underlying continuity of exorcistic ritual and theatrical performance in China" Dean The development of Taoist cultic life since the Sung remains to be explored.

Instead, the rites of the ordained Taoist priest, mainly the chiao Offering, became the esoteric part of local festivals of renewal, enacted behind closed doors inside the temple Schipper 1 ; Lagerwey 1 b. The priest is no longer in charge of a community, rather he is a ritual specialist in the employ of local cults. The exuberant, indigenous cult traditions disrupted the unity of the medieval Taoist church but not of its liturgical tradition. Through the elaboration of new rituals and scriptures the priests absorbed local saints and "upwardly mobile" demons into their universal Taoist pantheon.

This must not be understood as a fusion of Taoism with popular religion but as an upgrading — involving extensive transformation — of local cults into a universal Taoist dispensation. In this context, Kenneth Dean b has called Taoist liturgy "the alchemy of Chinese. The study of Taoist ritual has barely begun but should make rapid progress, given the current fascination with ritual in the humanities.

Taiwanese Taoist priests have been invited to perform rituals in Hawaii and Paris. Ritual manu- cripts have been collected Schipper ; Dean and published Saso ; Schipper ; and most important: Ofuchi ; performances have been videotaped ; and an effort is being made to study the revival of ritual practice in the P. The fact that ritual specialists who survived the "Cultural Revolution" are few and very old lends a particular urgency to field-work on Cheng-i and Ch'uan-chen rituals in the P. Lagerwey , has traced Taiwanese ritual traditions to their origins in mainland Fukien, and Dean a has completed the first comprehensive ethnographic study of local cultic life in the very region of Amoy where de Groot observed the seasonal cycle of temple feasts.

In , art historians, anthropologists and specialists on India and China met in Berlin to compare notes on "Classical Asian Ritual and the Theory of Ritual. It also applies to Taoism in the sense that the label "Taoism" does not group a complex of religious traditions united by common basic doctrines but rather primarily designates a twice millenary ritual tradition with roots that reach back even further. At the core of this tradition are the codified patterns of ritual communication with gods and spirits enacted in written literary Chinese.

Taoist iconography is a rich and almost completely untouched field of study. Among the reasons for this curious neglect are, no doubt, many art historians' exclusive preoccupation with style and dating, a traditional lack of interest in the religious significance of art works, a low esteem for folk art and the parochial attitudes of some specialists of Chinese art as well as the tight-fisted policies of certain museums and collections especially in China and Japan. The following pages therefore provide less information on research done than on questions and materials awaiting study.

Han dynasty mortuary art is replete with mythological themes. All such artifacts from Han tombs deserve comprehensive study. They are the iconography illustrating the Han texts on the lore of the immortals. Seidel ; more recent studies listed in Silbergeld, Schafer ; Cahill a. Up to , Han pictorial art was collected and indexed according to themes in Finster- busch's monumental Motivindex , The wealth of artifacts discovered in recent excavations of Han tombs increases our knowledge of beliefs concerning the world of the dead summarised in Dien ; Seidel ; Croissant The art historian Wu Hung has drawn attention to a Szechwan sarcophagus, the south panel of which shows the relief of a half-open door through which the soul can leave and enter the coffin.

I tend to believe that scenes on tomb walls represent not the past life of the deceased, but the paradise to which the soul goes. This would explain the wealth of paradise scenes in the rich tombs of the Han aristocracy. The tremendous variety of Chinese tomb architecture, the abundance of artifacts and inscriptions not only from the Han but over the last 2, years could certainly answer many questions about Taoist immortality beliefs, if someone were to investigate with the right questions in mind.

The Shang-ch'ing oratories could contain no pictures or statues Ch'en On the other hand, icon worship in the popular cults as well as at the court is attested to in the history of the Latter Han. Wu Hung has studied the third century K'ung-wang shan?

Chronicle of Taoist Studies in the West - Persée

One question to study, therefore, would be whether it was Buddhist influence or indigenous icon worship that prompted the development of Taoist statuary especially in the Ling-pao sect. We also need to know when statuary entered Taoism. What was the ritual function of icons, their textual basis, their Taoist interpretation? For one attempt to link a pre-T'ang Taoist scripture with a Taoist sculpture, cf.

Nobody has yet made a proper investigation in this field, although over a. In contrast to painting, which, in the wake of calligraphy, became an aesthetic pastime of the elite, statuary never lost its strong magic aura. Four seminal articles Delahaye 1 ; Frank 1 ; Croissant 1 ; Durt forthcoming have dealt with the following characteristics of religious statuary. In pre-Buddhist China, puppets could come to life, statues could weep or sweat.

Buddhist statues can step off their lotuses and come to the aid of a believer, and Buddhist icons may contain not only relics to animate them but replicas of the five viscera. In Han funeral rites the deceased was represented by a life-sized puppet; later, realistic portrait statues of monks were made to act as stand-ins for the deceased at his funeral and to be waited upon with daily food offerings by successive generations of disciples ; and, finally, the mummified corpse of a monk could become an icon for worship.

For the T'ang dynasty, we have sufficient textual sources to study the proliferation of Taoist icons under the influence of the imperial ancestor cult for Lao-tzu and the eighth- and ninth-century creation of statues glorifying emperors in their lifetimes cf. Completely untapped sources for the study of Taoist iconography are the detailed descriptions of the deities' appearances, costumes, head gear, colours, attributes, retinue, etc. As Teiser a has demonstrated, there are enough extant T'ang sources to trace the evolution of the popular belief in the Buddhist hells and their depiction on temple walls.

Much can be gleaned about the func-. Most of these treasures come from the southern part of Shansi province, which has been accessible to foreigners for more than a decade. Many Taoist religious scroll- paintings and frescoes, from about the fifteenth century to today, are probably tucked away in museum basements or in private collections in the West. In China they were never appreciated or collected; they were used, burnt, and replaced.

Apparently converted to Taoism in South China during the Sung period, the Yao preserve a medieval form of Taoist ritual in which they use and periodically recopy these paintings Lemoine ; Strickmann An outline of the symbolism and function of Taoist iconography has been published by Thompson The beautiful exhibition catalogue by Little covers mostly elite art works inspired by Taoist themes that are ex-. To understand this art, a thorough knowledge of the abundant textual sources is essential" see also VI.

Taoism in Chinese Culture. Imperical Court and Cult. No study has yet dealt directly with the relationship between Taoism and the imperial court or with the structural affinities between the imperial cult of Heaven and Taoist ritual. These topics have, however, been touched on here and there in other contexts, most of which have been mentioned elsewhere in this chronicle.

Again, there are more questions than answers. The Chinese emperor was not only the sovereign but the high priest of the realm, and his ritual worship of Heaven was the only officially sanctioned communication between mankind and the highest impersonal and distant divinity. It is therefore to be expected that any indigenous Chinese religion would: The Celestial Masters regarded the ages of the ancient emperors, whom they believed to have been guided by the wisdom of Lao-tzu incarnate in their advisers, as the pre-history or "Old Testament" of their dispensation.

From the founding of the Celestial Master's dispensation through the revelation of Lord Lao, it was, in Taoist eyes, the "Master of Heaven" chosen by the god who should advise the emperor, Son of Heaven Seidel His priests were empowered by sacred objects lu g , registers homologous with the auspicious portents legitimising Chinese sovereignty the epitome of which is the River Chart MB? Against this background one can understand why the rulers of many dynasties during the period of disunity CE sought to strengthen the legitimacy of their rule by inviting Taoist dignitaries to celebrate, at court, a Taoist investiture ceremony called the "Transmission of [Taoist] Registers" shou-lu IfH.

The Chinese God-Emperor had his hallowed place in the supernatural hierarchy of Taoism.

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These findings further disprove the identification of organised Taoism with popular cults see VI. Taoism, by its very essence, could never assert a spiritual authority against the empire — as in the medieval Christian dispute between spiritual and worldly power — but Taoist-inspired uprisings could turn against those emperors who, in the eyes of destitute peasants, had lost their mandate Seidel , a.

It has been said that Taoist ritual see V. Schafer ; see IV. The Taoists, for their part, seem to have gained prestige and tangible sponsorship, while the imperial side gained immense propagandistic value from the Taoist legitimation Seidel a, Sages flock to the court of a charismatic emperor, and wisdom comes to the sacred centre to be distilled and redistributed like new blood to all parts of the social body an image found in the T'ai-p'ing ching; cf.

Most court Taoists, it appears, were not part of the state bureaucracy but were attached to the palace and were neither approved of nor mentioned by the official historians Verellen a. More often, Taoists were subjected to strict measures of state control, as under the Northern Wei Mather , the Northern Chou and in all codes since the Sung de Groot ; Eichhorn ; Overmyer a in this volume. Potential for more serious conflict between Taoism and the court lay elsewhere. The keystone of Taoist ritual is communication with celestial deities and with a whole panoply of gods and spirits outside the narrow limits set by imperial codes for all non-official cults.

Stein showed to what length Taoists went to avoid being included among the "illegitimate cults" i. Most of what he says in regard to popular religion holds true as well for Taoism. Although completely out of touch with the social and religious reality of the Ming period and "deliberately archaic" in its approach, the ideology of these codes not only determined the outlook although less the concrete policies of Ming officials but, as Overmyer shows, even today informs the attitude toward popular religion and communal Taoism in the People's Republic.

This conviction is as old as the Chinese empire and deeply engrained enough to have outlived it. Han Confucians instituted a religious cult to Confucius and the Duke of Chou Shryock and sacrificed to local "worthies;" They chased demons, exorcised haunted houses, produced rainfall by reciting the classics, and proposed to rout the armies of the T'ai-p'ing rebellion by reciting the Classic of Filial Piety. The authors of the early portions of the Book of Great Peace Kandel and the late Han founders of Taoist movements themselves came from the milieu of the fang-shih Seidel Many of the beliefs and practices of Shang-ch'ing Taoism were derived from these masters of techniques Robinet a; cf.

But was this tradition Confucian? In fact, Han Confucians themselves discussed the question of who could call himself a Confucian. Yang Hsiung has recently been called the "first Neo-Confucian," as he was among those Han thinkers who elaborated a new synthesis of Confucian and other beliefs adapted to the changed conditions of the Confucian empire Nylan 1 Mather and wrote commentaries on the Lao- tzu, the Chuang-tzu and the Book of Changes in the third to fourth centuries used to be referred to as "Neo-Taoists" i. They belonged to the high society and had enough classical Confucian education to, as one scholar recently put it, "cleanse" the Chuang-tzu of "superstitious" elements.

The fact that they actually had little to do with Taoism has, thanks to Gernet , already reached the history books. They were sons of good families at odds with the Confucian tradition of their forefathers and enamoured with Taoist mysticism cf. There is, to my knowledge, no recent study on anything Confucian between the Han and the late T'ang. Therefore, all we can say about the first thousand years of interaction between Taoist priests and Confucian office holders is to repeat what was said above in the context of "bureaucracy" V.

Imperial officials if, and how, and to what extent they were Confucians is still anybody's guess as well as Taoist priests and, to some degree, Buddhist monks constituted the clerical elites of the Chinese Middle Ages. They shared a mastery of literary Chinese and an esprit de corps based on their respective hierarchies and a common sense of mission to combat and "civilise" the popular.

Summing up Chinese and Japanese studies, David Yu has found that there was a much more lively and positive give-and-take than previously assumed between officials and Taoists from the Six Dynasties period onward. Taoism, unlike Buddhism, had no fundamental conflict with the Confucian world-view, and further research will no doubt reveal more than hitherto acknowledged collaboration and mutual influence between representatives of the two traditions, especially in the fields of divination, ritual and philosophy. Once Neo-Confucianism had become the established moral and political orthodoxy, Taoism and Buddhism were in for a harder time.

They were attacked more and more and condemned in countless Confucian essays, some of which read like hate mail. This hatred determined policy, and we see it implemented in the codes of the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties cf. Confucian opposition based on philosophical principles Taoism and Buddhism as heterodox [hsieh Jft] doctrines disturbing cosmic harmony; cf.

As modern scholarship revises the vision of a monolithic, static, "orthodox" and, above all, rational and agnostic Confucianism a vision reinforced by the Chinese intellectuals of the Cultural Revolution , it becomes increasingly apparent that Neo-Confucianism was a synthesis of Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist elements. Revitalised by Buddhist and Taoist spirituality and practices, this new Confucianism may have felt the need to set itself off from the two other traditions just as, for example, early Taoists had to stress the difference between their "pure creed" and the too similar practices of popular cults see VI.

In other words, there may be a connection between the borrowing from and denunciation of the other tradition. Would this sort of Confucian religious worship perhaps add motivation to the attacks on Taoist and popular temple worship? There is today a kind of dividing line running through the whole field of sinology. Eminent philologists and specialists of Confucianism and classical literature tend to emphasise the study of the Chinese elite culture as traditionally defined.

Anthropologists, sociologists, those who come from the French school of sociologie religieuse, and specialists of Taoism and of popular religion have reacted against what they see as a one-sided identification of China with the culture of its tiny elite. They tend to identify China with the popular culture of the majority of its people. Both sides tend to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Scholars of Taoism and popular culture might keep in mind that the leaders of the movements they study had more classical Confucian and literary Bildung and sometimes also Buddhist scholastic knowledge than they themselves give to their students these days. How are these future sinologists to recognise elements of the elite culture in the sources they will study? Ivan Bernardez rated it liked it Jun 12, Katie Bananas marked it as to-read Nov 21, Expartako added it Apr 02, Andrea Ansaloni added it Apr 25, Mina added it Sep 02, Augusto marked it as to-read Sep 15, Don Atkinson is currently reading it Dec 19, Yifan Zhang marked it as to-read Mar 03, Sarah Van herck marked it as to-read Mar 14, Benjamin Scharf marked it as to-read Apr 08, Sab Boo is currently reading it Apr 25, Sim Mon marked it as to-read May 13, Alex Damicis added it Jul 13, Julie Haudry is currently reading it Nov 20, There are no discussion topics on this book yet.

His association with the Tao Te Ching has led him to be traditionally considered the founder of Taoism pronounced as " Lao Tzu Chinese: His association with the Tao Te Ching has led him to be traditionally considered the founder of Taoism pronounced as "Daoism". He is also revered as a deity in most religious forms of the Taoist religion, which often refers to Laozi as Taishang Laojun, or "One of the Three Pure Ones". Laozi translated literally from Chinese means "old master" or "old one", and is generally considered honorific.

Historians variously contend that Laozi is a synthesis of multiple historical figures, that he is a mythical figure, or that he actually lived in the 5th-4th century BCE, concurrent with the Hundred Schools of Thought and Warring States Period. As a result of being a a central figure in Chinese culture, both nobility and common people claim Lao Tzu in their lineage. Books by Lao Tzu. No trivia or quizzes yet. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account.