The history and epistemic boundaries of Yijing studies, astronomy and calendars, sexagenary and stellar systems, fengshui, fate calculation, date selection and divination.
The Great Emperor of the North Star of Purple Tenuity is one of the Four Sovereigns. Symbolically centred on the north celestial pole and the Purple Tenuity Enclosure, he…
The Great Heavenly Emperor of the Curved Array is one of the Four Sovereigns; his title derives from the Gouchen asterism in the traditional Purple Tenuity Enclosure. Dao…
Chen Tuan (Master Xiyi) lived through the Later Tang to the Song, retiring in seclusion at Jiushi Cliff on Wudang and the Yuntai Guan on Mount Hua. Emperor Taizong of Son…
Tradition holds that Wei Boyang of Kuaiji wrote the Zhouyi Cantong Qi (Token for the Agreement of the Three According to the Book of Changes), correlating the imagery of …
People often ask: can a foreigner's fate be calculated with bazi (八字, the eight characters of a birth chart), and does fengshui apply in the Southern Hemisphere at all? O…
Bao Jing, style name Taixuan, was a fangshi of the Eastern Jin who rose to the office of Governor of Nanhai. The 'Biographies of the Arts' in the Book of Jin states that …
Bo He, courtesy name Zhongli, was a fangshi active between the end of the Han and the Wei–Jin period. The Biographies of Divine Immortals records that he studied under Do…
Chen Tuan, style name Tunan, self-styled Fuyaozi, was a renowned Daoist priest and recluse of the Five Dynasties and early Song. In his youth he failed the jinshi examina…
Chen Zhixu, style name Guanwu, sobriquet Shangyangzi, was a native of Luling, Jiangxi, and one of the great synthesizers of internal alchemy in the Yuan dynasty. At the a…
Dong Dening was a scholar of internal alchemy during the Qianlong era of the Qing; details of his life are unknown. His works, the Zhouyi cantong qi zhengyi (Correct Mean…
Fabrizio Pregadio, an Italian scholar of Daoism, has worked for many years on Chinese alchemy and internal alchemy, and has taught at the University of Venice, Stanford U…
Hao Datong, a native of Ninghai, Shandong, was one of the Seven Perfected of Quanzhen; originally skilled in divination and the study of the Yijing, he took Wang Chongyan…
Lei Siqi, style name Qixian, was a native of Linchuan, Jiangxi, and a scholar at the Song–Yuan transition. After the fall of the Song he abandoned Confucian scholarship t…
Li Daochun, style name Yuansu, sobriquet Qing'an, was a native of Xuyi, Jiangsu, and a prominent theorist of internal alchemy in the early Yuan; his dates of birth and de…
Li Hanguang, originally surnamed Hong, changed his surname to Li to avoid the taboo name of the filial and pious Crown Prince Li Hong; he was the thirteenth-generation pa…
Liu Huayang, a native of Nanchang in Jiangxi, was a Qing-dynasty Buddhist monk and internal-alchemy master, a representative figure of the Wu–Liu School. Born in the firs…
Liu Yiming, sobriquet Wuyuanzi, was a native of Quwo in Shanxi, an eleventh-generation figure of the Quanzhen Longmen Lineage in the Qing and a celebrated theorist of int…
Peng Xiao, courtesy name Xiuchuan, styled Zhenyizi, was a Daoist priest of the Later Shu during the Five Dynasties. A native of Yongkang, he served the Shu state as a Cou…
Ren Farong, a native of Tianshui, Gansu, was a Daoist of the Quanzhen Longmen lineage. In 1955 he entered the priesthood at Louguantai in Zhouzhi, Shaanxi, and for many y…
Tao Hongjing, style name Tongming, self-styled the Hermit of Huayang, was a Daoist priest and scholar active between the Southern Qi and Liang dynasties, and the great sy…
Wang Bi, styled Fusi, a native of Gaoping, Shanyang, in the Wei kingdom of the Three Kingdoms period, was the representative figure of Zhengshi-era Xuanxue (Neo-Daoist Le…
Wei Boyang was an alchemist of the Eastern Han, a native of Shangyu in Kuaiji, styled Yunyazi. Ge Hong's Biographies of Divine Immortals says he was "the son of a disting…
Wu Quanjie, a native of Raozhou, Jiangxi, was the second Grand Master (Dazongshi) of Xuanjiao (the Mysterious Teaching) in the Yuan dynasty. As a youth he entered Mount L…
Yin Changsheng, a fangshi of the Eastern Han, appears in Ge Hong's Shenxian Zhuan. Tradition holds that he was a scion of the clan of Empress Yin, consort of Emperor He o…
Yu Yan, style name Yuwu, was a native of Suzhou, Jiangsu, and a scholar of the Book of Changes and internal alchemy at the Song–Yuan transition. After the fall of the Son…
Zhan Shichuang, a native of Xiamen, Fujian, is a professor and doctoral supervisor at the Institute of Daoist and Religious Culture, Sichuan University, and formerly a pr…
Zhang Boduan, styled Pingshu and later renamed Yongcheng, with the sobriquet Ziyang, was a renowned master of internal alchemy in the Northern Song, honored by the Southe…
Zhang Wanfu, a Daoist priest of the Taiqing Temple in Chang'an during the Kaiyuan era of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, a "Master of the Three Caverns," dates of birth and dea…
Zhang Wumeng, style name Lingyin, sobriquet Hongmengzi, was a Daoist priest of the early Northern Song. In his youth he entered Mount Hua, where he studied together with …
Zhao Youqin, styled Yuanduzi, was a native of Poyang in Jiangxi (he claimed descent from the Song imperial house) and a celebrated scientist and Daoist priest of the Yuan…
Zhong Fang, style name Mingyi, was a recluse and scholar of the early Northern Song. In his youth he failed the jinshi examination, and lived in reclusion with his mother…
Zhu Yuanyu, styled Yunyang Daoren, was an internal alchemist of the Longmen (Dragon Gate) Lineage in the Kangxi era of the early Qing; his dates are unknown. He studied u…
Zou Yan, a native of Qi during the Warring States period, was a celebrated scholar at the Jixia Academy and the representative figure of the Yin-Yang School. The 'Biograp…
Entering the twenty-first century, Daoism on the Chinese mainland has continued to develop under institutionalized management. The Chinese Taoist Association has been led…
During the wars and upheavals of the Five Dynasties, Daoism continued to be honored under the various regional regimes (Du Guangting under the Former Shu, and under South…
The Qin and Han were a crucial stage in the "prehistory" of Daoism. Qin Shi Huang and Emperor Wu of Han both put great faith in fangshi (masters of methods): they dispatc…
A platform for Daoist studies under the Department of Philosophy in the College of Humanities at Xiamen University, led by scholars such as Zhan Shichuang, which edits th…
A website on Daoism and internal/external alchemy maintained by the Italian scholar Fabrizio Pregadio, offering excerpted English translations of alchemical texts such as…
The Daozang category of Chinese Wikisource, containing texts of Daoist classics such as the Daodejing, the Scripture of Great Peace, the Zhouyi cantong qi, the Baopuzi an…
The Central Lineage of Internal Alchemy (Zhongpai) is an internal-alchemy school founded by the Yuan-dynasty Daoist Li Daochun, centered on the principle of “guarding the…
The Cult of Wenchang Dijun is the worship, within Daoism, of the deity who presides over civil office and emolument, formed by the merging of two strands: one is the loca…
The Eastern Lineage of Internal Alchemy (Dongpai) was founded by Lu Xixing (1520–1606?), a native of Xinghua in Jiangsu during the Ming dynasty, and takes its name from i…
The Golden Elixir tradition, or Danding (Elixir and Tripod) School, is a Daoist tradition whose principal path of cultivation is the compounding of external elixirs (waid…
The Huashan Lineage was founded by Hao Datong, one of the Seven Perfected of Quanzhen. Hao Datong's given name was Lin, his courtesy name Taigu, and his sobriquet Guangni…
Mazu worship is the most important cult of a seafarers' protective deity around the China seas; its relationship to Daoism is close but not fully coextensive, and this si…
Daoism was never transmitted to Japan as an organized religious order, but from ancient times its ideas, deities, and techniques were transmitted in great volume via the …
The spread of Daoism on the Korean peninsula began in the Three Kingdoms period. The Samguk sagi records that in the seventh year of the Wude reign of the Tang (624) Empe…
Vietnam has been under Daoist influence since the Han dynasty, when it belonged to Jiaozhi Commandery, and it is one of the regions within the Sinitic cultural sphere whe…
The Sanhuang (Three Sovereigns) Tradition is a Wei–Jin Daoist scriptural school centered on the Sanhuang wen (Scripture of the Three Sovereigns — comprising the Sanhuang …
The Southern Lineage of the Golden Elixir (Nanzong) is a Daoist school of the Song–Yuan period that takes Zhang Boduan as its founding patriarch and internal-alchemical c…
Wudang Daoism refers to the Daoist tradition centered on Mount Wudang in Hubei and on the cult of Zhenwu (the Dark Emperor of Heaven); historically it was not a single sc…
The Xuanwu Lineage is a branch within the resident Daoist orders of the Wudang Mountains that possesses a complete generational-name genealogy; it takes its name from its…
The Xizhu Xinzong (Western India Mind Lineage) of Longmen is a branch of the Longmen lineage that emerged in the early Qing, named for its founding patriarch, the 'Jizu D…
Yao Daoism refers to the form of Daoism believed in and transmitted by the Yao people (particularly the various branches of the Guoshan Yao and the Panyao). From the Song…
The Yinxian (Hidden Immortals) Lineage is a name later applied to the internal-alchemy and Yijing-study transmission descending from Chen Tuan in the Five Dynasties and N…
Zhengyi Daoism takes the Celestial Masters of Longhushan as its patriarchal line and is characterized by talismans, registers, and rites of retreat and offering; together…
Caodaism (Đại Đạo Tam Kỳ Phổ Độ) was formally established as a religion on 7 October 1926, growing out of a spirit-writing (扶乩) circle in Saigon in 1925; its founders inc…
The Centre Guan Di at Terre-Sainte was completed in 2017 on the heights of Terre-Sainte in the town of Saint-Pierre, a recently built religious site of Réunion's Chinese …
Chunyang Palace in Taiyuan, popularly known as the Lüzu Temple, is dedicated to Lü Dongbin. It was first built in the Yuan dynasty (some say the Song), rebuilt in the 25t…
Chunyang Temple stands at Shuzhu Hill in Haizhu District, Guangzhou, founded in the fourth year of the Daoguang era of the Qing (1824) by the Quanzhen priest and astronom…
Kathu Shrine is one of the oldest Chinese temples in Phuket, and is widely recognized as the birthplace of Phuket's Nine Emperor Gods Vegetarian Festival (known in Thai a…
Ing Hok Kiong is the oldest of the more than one hundred Chinese temples in Bagansiapiapi, Riau Province. Tradition holds that Bagansiapiapi was founded by a group of Hok…
Kong Hock Keong, popularly known as the Goddess of Mercy Temple, is the oldest Chinese temple in Penang, built with joint funding from the Hokkien and Cantonese communiti…
The Kwan Tee Pagoda in Mauritius was built in 1842 by the first generation of Chinese immigrants, its principal deity Guandi (Kwan Tee) — venerated as god of wealth, of w…
The Cairns Lit Sung Goong was founded in 1886–1887 as the main temple of the Chinese community during the North Queensland gold-rush and settlement era; it was known loca…
The Minglun Sansheng Temple principally enshrines Guandi, who together with Fuyou Dijun and Jiutian Siming Zhenjun is known as the Three Sage Benefactor Lords. Its predec…
Mount Weibao is the foremost mountain of Daoism in Yunnan. Tradition holds that Xi Nuluo, the founding ancestor of the Nanzhao kingdom, once farmed here; the Xunshan Hall…
Nan Tian Gong, Ampang, is one of the largest and most active Nine Emperor Gods temples in Malaysia, generally traced to a temple founded by Chinese tin-mining laborers in…
The Qingyang Palace (Green Ram Temple) is one of the largest and oldest Daoist temples in Southwest China. Tradition holds that Laozi arranged to meet the Guardian of the…
Sakado Seitenkyu, in full "Seitenkyu of the Ascending Five Thousand Dragons," is the largest Daoist building in Japan, and also the site with the purest Daoist character …
Sin Sze Si Ya Temple was founded in 1864 by the Kuala Lumpur Chinese Kapitan Yap Ah Loy, and is the oldest surviving Chinese temple in Kuala Lumpur. Its enshrined deities…
The Stele of the Numinous Temple of Songgao at the Central Marchmount, abbreviated as the "Songgao Lingmiao Stele" or the "Stele of Lord Kou," was erected in the Northern…
The Sze Yup Temple, Sydney, had its main hall completed in 1898, with the east and west halls added in 1904; it was founded by Sze Yup (Siyi) immigrants from Guangdong an…
The Taoist Sanctuary of San Diego is one of the earliest religious corporations in the United States registered under the name 'Daoist,' established in 1975; its current …
The Guandi Temple (Kanti, the Hakka pronunciation of Guandi) is the only Chinese temple on the island of Tahiti and stands in the Mamao district of Papeete. It is recorde…
Tow Boo Keong in Penang is principally dedicated to Doumu Yuanjun (the Dipper Mother) and the Nine Emperor Gods, and is a major center of the Nine Emperor Gods cult in no…
The polychrome sculptures in the Hall of the Twenty-eight Lunar Mansions, on the west side of the third courtyard of Yuhuang Temple, Fucheng, are the pinnacle of Chinese …
Yuhuang Temple at Fucheng is a Daoist temple dedicated to the Jade Emperor, founded in the ninth year of the Xining era of the Northern Song (1076), rebuilt in the sevent…
The birth-star or Lord of the birth-year determined by a person's birth-year stem and branch, held in Daoism to govern one's fate for life. Each of the Seven Stars of the…
A selective compendium of the Daoist Canon compiled by Jiang Yuanting during the Jiaqing reign of the Qing and reprinted with additions by Erxian Nunnery in Chengdu durin…
A divinatory art that calculates auspicious and inauspicious days for weddings, breaking ground, and burials by means of the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches and vario…
The mother of the stars of the Northern Dipper, also called Doumu Yuanjun or the Numinous Sovereign Great Sage Doumu of the Prior Heaven. Her iconography, with three eyes…
Dragon and Tiger: an alchemical code term. The Dragon belongs to Wood and Fire, symbolizing spirit (Nature) and mercury; the Tiger belongs to Metal and Water, symbolizing…
The eight three-line symbols — Qian, Kun, Zhen, Xun, Kan, Li, Gen and Dui — symbolizing heaven, earth, thunder, wind, water, fire, mountain and lake. Daoism uses the pre-…
The art of geomancy (kanyu), which determines the orientation of dwellings and graves according to Yin and Yang, the Five Phases, the Eight Trigrams, and the configuratio…
The Four Symbols: the Azure Dragon of the east, White Tiger of the west, Vermilion Bird of the south, and Xuanwu (Black Tortoise) of the north — the four-directional grou…
The ten Heavenly Stems (jia, yi, bing, ding, wu, ji, geng, xin, ren, gui) combine with the twelve Earthly Branches (zi, chou, yin, mao, chen, si, wu, wei, shen, you, xu, …
According to legend, Fuxi received a chart carried on the back of a dragon-horse from the Yellow River, and Yu the Great received a document carried on the back of a divi…
The practice of suppressing inauspicious influences in a dwelling and safeguarding the household's peace by means of talismans and registers, mirrors, bagua plaques, Shi …
Kan and Li (Water and Fire Trigrams): among the Eight Trigrams, Kan (Water, with a yang line at its center) and Li (Fire, with a yin line at its center). Internal alchemy…
Kuixing, the first star of the Northern Dipper, or the four stars forming the 'dipper bowl' (kui), presiding over literary fortune. Depicted as a blue-faced, red-haired d…
The deification of the nine stars of the Northern Dipper, said to be the nine sons born of Doumu (including the Heavenly Sovereign, the Purple Tenuity Sovereign, and the …
The seven stars of the Northern Dipper (together with two attendant stars, making nine stars in all) govern life, death and lifespan in the human world according to Daois…
The Taishang xuanling beidou benming yansheng zhenjing, which became popular in the Song dynasty. It relates how the Seven Primordial Lords of the Northern Dipper govern …
Pacing the Dipper (Bugang) is the sequence of ritual steps by which a priest treads the altar according to the positions of the Northern Dipper's seven stars or the Nine …
A fundamental distinction in internal alchemy and in the study of the Book of Changes: 'pre-celestial' (xiantian) refers to the original state prior to birth, of pure yan…
Repentance Rites are liturgies of worship and confession of sin performed to dispel calamity, such as the Precious Litany of the Jade Emperor's Pardon of Sins and Bestowa…
The cycle of sixty combinations formed by pairing the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches. Daoism assigns to each of the sixty combinations a Year-Governing Taisui deity …
Twelve divine generals named after the sexagenary stems and branches — the six Ding are yin spirits, jade maidens, and the six Jia are yang spirits, mighty warriors — who…
The six stars of the Dou lunar mansion. In Daoist belief, the Six Officiating Star Lords of the Southern Dipper govern the extension of life and the bestowal of blessings…
A method of divination and revelation in which a planchette writes on a tray of sand to invite a deity's descent; already flourishing in the Song dynasty, a great many Da…
Twenty-eight constellations near the ecliptic, divided among the Four Symbols: the Azure Dragon of the East, the White Tiger of the West, the Vermilion Bird of the South,…
Waidan (External Alchemy): techniques of smelting a 'golden elixir' from minerals such as lead, mercury and cinnabar in a cauldron and furnace, to be ingested in pursuit …
Written by Wei Boyang of the Eastern Han, it correlates the hexagrams and lines of the Zhouyi (Book of Changes), Huang-Lao thought, and the furnace methods of alchemy. Wr…
The Zhonghe ji (Anthology of Central Harmony) is a collection of treatises, poems and prose by Li Daochun (styled Qing'an, also Yingchanzi), an internal-alchemy master of…
Celestial Masters: History and Ritual in Early Daoist Communities is the most comprehensive English-language monograph on the early Way of the Celestial Masters. Kleeman …
Direct Pointers to Awakening to Reality (Wuzhen zhizhi) is the Longmen-Lineage alchemist Liu Yiming's (sobriquet Wuyuanzi) commentary on Zhang Boduan's Awakening to Reali…
Elucidating the Truth of the Book of Changes (Zhouyi chanzhen) is Liu Yiming's work interpreting the Zhouyi (Book of Changes) through the lens of alchemical teaching; it …
The Essentials of the Daoist Canon (Daozang jiyao) is the most important compendium of Daoist texts from the Qing dynasty. Two accounts exist of its compilation: one hold…
The Gazetteer of Mount Mao is one of the most complete and rigorously organized of the surviving Daoist mountain gazetteers, recording the full history of Mount Mao (Moun…
The Huainanzi is a summa of early Western Han Huang-Lao Daoist thought, compiled by scholars and masters of methods gathered by Liu An, Prince of Huainan; it takes Daoism…
The Perfected Sun's Treatise on Preserving Health (Sun zhenren sheyang lun), in one scroll, lists what to do and avoid for health preservation month by month through the …
The Beidou jing (Scripture of the Northern Dipper for Prolonging Life) tells how the Supreme Venerable Sovereign (Laojun) descended at the Yuju site in Chengdu and expoun…
《元始天尊说北方真武妙经》是真武（玄天上帝）信仰最核心的「本传」经典，经中元始天尊为妙行真人说真武来历：净乐国王与善胜皇后梦吞日光，怀胎十四月，于开皇元年三月初三日诞太子于王宫；太子「生而神灵，长而勇猛，不统王位，唯务修行」，誓断天下妖魔，遂辞父母入武当山修道四十二年，功成果满，白日登天，玉帝敕镇北方，统摄真武之位；又敕真武率天兵下界收断…
The Selected Daoist Texts Series (Daojiao Dianji Xuankan) is a series of critically collated and annotated Daoist classics published by Zhonghua Book Company, appearing s…
The Secret of the Golden Flower (Taiyi jinhua zongzhi) is said to have been revealed through Lü Dongbin, and is an internal-alchemy scripture that emerged from spirit-wri…
The Taishang ganying pian (Treatise of the Most High on Action and Response) is the most widely circulated Daoist morality book in China; its opening lines, 'Fortune and …
Twelve Daoist Books is the collected works of Liu Yiming, eleventh-generation patriarch of the Longmen Lineage in the Qing dynasty. Though named "twelve," the standard ed…
The Fanghu waishi (Unofficial History of Fanghu) is the collected writings of Lu Xixing (styled Qianxu), founder of the Eastern Lineage of internal alchemy in the Ming, c…
Wang Bi's Commentary on the Laozi is a foundational work of Wei–Jin Xuanxue (Learning of the Mysterious) and became the standard commentary on the Daodejing for later gen…
The Zhouyi Cantong Qi (Token for the Agreement of the Three According to the Book of Changes) was later honored as the king of alchemical scriptures for all ages, and is …
「武当＝武学圣地」的公众形象，是三重叠加的产物：黄宗羲《王征南墓志铭》（1669）一句「内家拳起于宋之张三峰」、民国中央国术馆把太极形意八卦划归「武当门」的分类建构、以及金庸与还珠楼主的小说想象。真实的武当道教以真武信仰、斋醮科仪、内丹修炼为主体，武术是附属，且大量内容为民国以来整合追认；但当代武当山又以这一形象为依托，重建了确实存在且已…
玄武最初不是神，而是天上的一片星区：二十八宿中北方七宿连缀成龟蛇缠绕之形，与青龙、白虎、朱雀并为四象。此后两千年，这个星象一步步走向人格化的至上神：六朝隋唐被道教吸收为北方之神；宋真宗为避「圣祖」赵玄朗名讳改「玄武」为「真武」，此后宋室累加封号；元成宗大德七年（1303）加封「玄天上帝」，由真君升格为上帝；明成祖借「靖难显圣」尊为皇室保护…