Celestial Master's Mansion, Taiwan嗣汉天师府（台湾）
- Type
- Temples and Abbeys (Gongguan)
- Location
- Taiwan, China · Taiwan · Caotun Township, Nantou County · Caotun Township, Nantou County; in the 1950s the office was located at Juexiu Temple in Taipei. No reliable published record of a detailed address or coordinates has been found
- School
- Zhengyi (Orthodox Unity) Daoism, Daoism in Taiwan
- First built
- 1950 (Taipei office established) / 1990s (headquarters built in Caotun, Nantou) · Zhang Enpu came to Taiwan in 1949 with his son Zhang Yunxian and the ancestral sword and seal; in 1950 he established the 'Taiwan Office of the Mansion of the Celestial Masters' at Juexiu Temple in Taipei and founded the Taiwan Provincial Taoist Association; no authoritative record has been found for the exact year the Caotun Mansion of the Celestial Masters was established
Overview
In 1949, Zhang Enpu, the 63rd-generation Celestial Master of Longhushan in Jiangxi, crossed the strait to Taiwan together with his son Zhang Yunxian and the ancestral sword and seal; in 1950 he established the 'Taiwan Office of the Mansion of the Celestial Masters' at Juexiu Temple in Taipei and founded the Taiwan Provincial Taoist Association, marking the beginning of Zhengyi Daoism's establishment of an institutional foothold in Taiwan, after which the systems of conferral of registers, transmission of ordination, and rites of offering were continued among the Zhengyi ritual altars of Taiwan. After Zhang Enpu's death in 1969, the Zhang clan resident in Taiwan chose his cousin Zhang Yuanxian to succeed him; in 1970, Zhang Yuanxian performed the Golden Register Rite of Offering marking his succession at Tiantan in Tainan, making him the last Celestial Master to be recognized both by the authorities and by the Daoist community, and he later established the Mansion of the Celestial Masters in Caotun Township, Nantou County. After Zhang Yuanxian's transformation-departure in 2008, disputes over succession broke out on several sides: his eldest daughter, Zhang Yifeng, held a ceremony of succession at the Caotun Mansion of the Celestial Masters on October 15, 2011, styling herself the 65th generation, while other parallel organizations exist, such as the 'Zhengyi Sihan Zhang Tianshi Fu' (associated with the line of Zhang Daozhen) in Fenyuan, Changhua; there is currently no generally recognized 65th-generation Celestial Master. For its part, the Mansion of the Celestial Masters at Longhushan in Jiangxi issued a statement in 2009 that every generation of Celestial Masters had historically been invested by imperial court decree, and that no such investiture had continued after the 63rd generation.
Highlights
- Zhang Enpu's crossing to Taiwan with the ancestral sword and seal
- The beginning of the Zhengyi register-conferral system in Taiwan
- Disputes over the 64th- and 65th-generation succession