Introduction

Between 364 and 370 CE, deities known as Perfected Ones 真 人 were said to have appeared in visions to the medium Yang Xi 楊羲 and others in what is now southeastern China to give instruction on a wide range of topics. Deigning to descend from a hitherto unknown zone of the heavens called Supreme Purity or Shangqing 上清, they dictated to the recipient, who wrote down their words, or else they arrived bearing written scrolls, some of which they allowed to be copied. The resulting texts were shared with patrons, notably members of the southeastern clan Xu 許. Within a few generations the texts circulated more widely, sometimes imitated and forged by aristocrats seeking the religious and social cachet that simply owning the scriptures could convey. This scriptural profusion prompted the Daoist master Tao Hongjing 陶弘景 around 499 (and another figure named Gu Huan 顧歡 a bit earlier) to cull what he considered the apocryphal from the thirty-odd authentic scriptures that had survived and to compile other documents, including diary-like records of the Perfected Ones’ appearances in visions and dreams. The larger of these compilations that survives was titled Zhen’gao 真誥 or Declarations of the Perfected. All this is of course well known to scholars of Daoist religion, but few of these writings have been carefully studied or translated in non-Asian-language publications. Yet they constitute one of the most fascinating textual dossiers of world religious history.

Here I want to pose the following question: What were Shangqing scriptures for? These texts prescribe a great many practices. The prescriptions certainly do not skimp on detail.