Celestial Masters: History and Ritual in Early Daoist Communities

by Terry F. Kleeman

In 142 CE, the divine Lord Lao descended to Mount Cranecall (Sichuan province) to establish a new covenant with humanity through a man named Zhang Ling, the first Celestial Master. Facing an impending apocalypse caused by centuries of sin, Zhang and his descendants forged a communal faith centering on a universal priesthood, strict codes of conduct, and healing through the confession of sins; this faith was based upon a new, bureaucratic relationship with incorruptible supernatural administrators. By the fourth century, Celestial Master Daoism had spread to all parts of China, and has since played a key role in China’s religious and intellectual history.

Celestial Masters is the first book in any Western language devoted solely to the founding of the world religion Daoism. It traces the movement from the mid-second century CE through the sixth century, examining all surviving primary documents in both secular and canonical sources to provide a comprehensive account of the development of this poorly understood religion. It also provides a detailed analysis of ritual life within the movement, covering the roles of common believer or Daoist citizen, novice, and priest or libationer.

Genres: Religion, China, Nonfiction, History

446 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2016

Reviews

[Erik Champenois · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Celestial Masters" covers the beginnings of Taoism as an organized religion. While Taoism ostensibly dates back to Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching and to Zhuangzi, those texts did not translate to an organized religious movement. Taoism as an organized faith only really began in 142, when Lord Lao revealed himself to Zhang Ling and initiated the Celestial Masters movement. As Kleeman notes in his introduction, if we are to look for the origins of the Celestial Masters school in the Warring States period of ancient China, those origins are better found in Confucianism and Mohism than in Laozi or Zhuangzi. The arrival of Buddhism likely also inspired the rise of the Celestial Masters school, and certainly influenced the development of Taoism in succeeding centuries.

Kleeman organizes his book commendably: lamenting that limitations in sources mean that we cannot reconstruct early Taoism as well as we can more modern religions (p. 9-10), the book starts with a chapter covering the "external" evidence as found in Chinese historical annals and other sources, then continues with a chapter on the "internal documents" of the believers themselves, before continuing with chapters dedicated to third century Daoism and to Daoism under the Northern and Southern Dynasties. The second part of the book covers ritual life, the Daoist citizen and community, the novice, and the libationer in four separate chapters. This helps us to understand both the historical and ritual life of Celestial Masters Taoism, albeit one downside to the structure is the relatively lesser emphasis on the doctrinal teachings of the school (still very much present in the book but relatively less emphasized).

The first two chapters covers the arrival of The Celestial Masters school, which was initially popularly known as the "Way of the Five Pecks of Rice" due to the required donation of rice by the believers. In the late Han, at a time of war and division, Zhang Ling established a theocratic state in Hanzhong/Sichuan, which continued to be led by his son Zhang Heng and his grandson Zhang Lu. Under Zhang Lu, and after some battles and prevarication, the state submitted to Cao Cao (the famous Chinese statesman of the Three Kingdoms period who laid the foundation of the Cao Wei state during the Three Kingdoms era). Cao Cao appointed Zhang Lu General of the South, and gave his sons titles, though after a few years, Cao Cao broke up the Celestial Master community through population transfers - in the process spreading the faith across North China.

The Celestial Masters was an apocalyptic/millenarian movement, promising the arrival of a Great Peace in the near future. Its adherents saw themselves as distinct from the rest of the profane world, and initially were very much separated, organized into a theocratic state. It was a very communal religion bound together by rituals and organized under parishes. People's spiritual lives were also organized through registers, documents kept by the libationers that tracked the spiritual progress of adherents through an elaborate system of merits and de-merits given as a result of people's actions and charitable acts. As a high demand faith full of ritual and moral rules, the faith also believed strongly in the confession of sin and in repentance. Demons and deities were very much a part of the faith - in their role of delivering revelations to the people, in their role of organizing the ritual life of the community, in influencing and tempting, in causing disease and in healing, and in the location of spirits in the body. As people progressed spiritually, they were assigned spiritual soldiers, generals, and other spirits to be with them and protect them. Couples also participated in the ritual of the merging of pneumas (or merging of qi), which appears to have been a sexual ritual possibly witnessed by family members as well as the libationer (and possibly not confined to married couples only), with the purpose of ensuring the survival of the participants as "seed people" during the coming apocalyptic disaster. This ritual later fell out of favor within Taoism.

In spite of turmoil, that apocalyptic disaster and its subsequently promised Great Peace never arrived. With the breakup of the theocratic state, the community appears to have been disrupted, with a breakdown in central authority. Under the Northern and Southern dynasties, and with the population movements that took place from the north to the south, Taoism spread across southern as well as northern China. In the early 300s, Li Xiong, a general under the Jin, declared himself independent of the Jin, and declared himself Emperor of a new Taoist Cheng-Han state (also known as the Great Perfection) in northern Sichuan.

Taoism also experienced a renewal under Kou Qianzhi (365-449), who declared new revelation from heavens (both conserving but also changing aspects of Taoism), and who succeeded in having Taoism established as the state religion of the Northern Wei (from 442 through the end of the dynasty in 534). Kou's reforms also recreated Taoism into a less communal religion, with the role of libationer curtailed and the parish structure abandoned. Taoism became a state-sponsored system, with followers served by a class of priests, and rituals shifted from focusing on the individual and the household to focusing on the wider community. Simultaneously, Taoism lost its exclusivity and communal character, as Taoists lived side by side with Buddhists and others rather than organizing themselves into theocratic communities.

Even changed, Celestial Masters Taoism remained the dominant form of Taoism until the Ming dynasty (later Celestial Masters Taoism was also referred to as Zhengiy Taoism). The Celestial Masters gave birth to various offshoots, however, including the generally more elite (and dominant under the Tang) Shangqing/ Supreme Purity movement, the more individualized Lingbao/ Numinous Jewel movement (later on absorbed by the Shangqing), and finally the appearance of the more monastic Quanzhen Complete Perfection school in the twelfth century, which eventually surpassed the Celestial Masters as the dominant expression of Taoism (including today).

I find Taoism an incredibly interesting religion and one that is generally quite poorly understood by Westerners, who are more familiar with the philosophy of the Tao Te Ching and less familiar with the history of theocracy and rich ritual and cosmic systems of Taoism. When reading this book, I couldn't help but compare the Celestial Masters movement to early Christianity and to Mormonism: all being highly apocalyptic faiths, with demanding moral and ritual systems, and with Taoism and Mormonism initially being very communal and theocratic faiths.

I also couldn't help but reflect on how the initial structure and evolution of world religions makes for their success and indeed on how humans are inclined to embrace systems that embrace order and comprehensiveness. It seems that there is something that makes religions relatively more successful when founded as intensely communal and high demand faiths that orders individual and community life through rules and rituals and that embrace every aspect of daily life, morality, and the cosmos. Likewise, it seems that religions have to adapt and evolve to changing contexts and embrace some amount of internal diversity and doctrinal or cultural change to be able to become truly worldwide faiths. As a world religion that shaped Chinese lives over millennia - and still shapes people today - the foundations and evolution of Taoism are certainly a fascinating case study in how successful faiths begin - and adapt and endure.

[Michael Berens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Daoism (aka Taoism) is probably the least known and least understood of the "world religions" in the West. For those wishing to learn more, Celestial Masters is not the place to start. Written primarily for scholars, it assumes some familiarity with the history and development of Daoism as well as how it is practiced, as opposed to Daoist philosophy. That said, it is a fascinating look inside the origins of pastoral Daoism and Daoist ritual. Anyone wanting a deeper and richer understanding of this fascinating religion will be well rewarded by reading Professor Kleeman's clear, well-organized, detailed, and thoroughly referenced book. I wish I read it before having visited several Daoist temples in China. I would have better appreciated what I saw there. I should add that, while targeted to scholars, the writing is not overly dense and academic. It is quite readable for the layperson, with all the passages in Chinese translated into English as well.