Wei Huacun魏华存

Style & Daoist names

Xian'an (courtesy name), Lady of the Southern Marchmount, Sovereign of Purple Vacuity (Zixu Yuanjun), Perfected of the South (Nanzhen)

Period

Western Jin–Eastern Jin

Dates

251 — 334

School

Shangqing (Highest Clarity) School, Way of the Celestial Masters (Tianshi Dao)

Role

First-generation Patriarch of the Shangqing SchoolDaoist Priestess

Birthplace

Rencheng (present-day Jining, Shandong)

Places of activity

Mount Mao (Maoshan), Mount Heng (Hengshan, Southern Peak)

Life

Wei Huacun, style name Xian'an, was the daughter of Wei Shu, Minister of Works under the Western Jin; the Shangqing lineage honours her as its first-generation Grand Preceptor, and she is known as the 'Lady of Nanyue' and 'Perfected Sovereign of Purple Emptiness.' According to the Biography of Lady Wei cited in the Taiping Yulan and the Zhengao, from childhood she loved the Dao, took hemp-seed powder and poria pills, and aspired to immortality; at the age of twenty-four her parents forced her to marry Liu Wen of Nanyang (also given as Liu Youyan), by whom she had two sons, Liu Pu and Liu Xia. She once served as a libationer of the Way of the Celestial Masters, and later lived apart in fasting retreat at home, where she received the thirty-one-juan Shangqing Zhenjing from the Perfected Wang Bao of Pure Emptiness and others; when her sons later crossed the Yangzi to the south, Wei Huacun also moved south, and died at the age of eighty-three, Daoist texts stating that she left behind a sword in place of her body and ascended as an immortal. Between the second year of Xingning and the fifth year of Taihe of the Eastern Jin (364–370), Yang Xi claimed that Lady Wei had descended in spirit to the household of Xu Mi of Jurong, transmitting the Shangqing scriptures and methods; the Shangqing lineage took shape from this event, and Wei Huacun is therefore honoured as its founding patriarch. She is one of the highest-ranking female patriarchs in Daoist history, and from the Tang and Song onward has been widely venerated at Mount Heng (South) in Nanyue and at Maoshan.

Contributions & Influence

• Honoured by the Shangqing lineage as its first-generation patriarch, the source of the transmission of Shangqing scriptures and methods
• Tradition holds that the Scripture of the Yellow Court: Inner Effulgences was transmitted through her
• A representative female patriarch in Daoism

Works

• Scripture of the Yellow Court: Inner Effulgences (traditionally said to have been transmitted by her)
• Perfected Scriptures of Shangqing (traditionally transmitted)

Legends

Tradition holds that the assembled Perfected descended to transmit scriptures to her, that she took an elixir and departed transformed into a sword, and that at Nanyue she was invested as the Perfected Sovereign of Purple Emptiness, the Lady of Nanyue who governs the Upper Perfected Office of Life-Destiny. These all derive from Daoist texts.