Taoism: Growth of a Religion by Isabelle Robinet

Author:Isabelle Robinet
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2009-04-20T02:19:00+00:00

Ecstatic Wanderings

Earthly paradises. The Shangqing adept is able to travel in his own mind, without ever leaving his chamber. As he does this, he is mimicking the ancient wanderings of the Sage of Zhuangzi and Huainanzi, wanderings that took the Sage to the ends of the universe and beyond the four seas. He also commemorates the expeditions of those ancient monarchs who traveled around their world in order to control its spaces and to bring to it their royal efficacy, only to return to the capital with their special virtues concentrated in their own persons.' The adept wanders like a traveling shaman, as did Huangdi and the Great Yu, and as the patron saints of his own school did when, impelled by their quest, legend says that they traveled on foot through the mountains and the Polar Seas. In these mental wanderings, he puts into effect the adage of Laozi: "Without going outside his door, he knows the universe."

He travels to distant frontiers, to foreign, unpacified countries, into wild territories, the lands of barbarians and monsters, of marvels and the extraordinary, rich in untapped powers, as described in the Shanhai jing (Book of Mountains and Seas).' But, contrary to the descriptions in this work and in the Chuci, for whom these lands are dangerous and peopled with monsters, they are in the Shangqing tradition full of benefits for the adept. There he meets the famous spirits of Chinese mythology-the four corner posts of the world, the four emperors, or the "five old men" (including the one in the center)-and receives from them the food of immortality. He conjures them to enter his prayer room and even his viscera, and he feeds on their secretions. He dares to go as far as to the famous "isles of immortality," where emperors once sent their agents. He even goes to Kunlun or its companion sacred mountains, the axes of the world or "marchmounts," the sacred peaks of Taoism. These landmarks anchor the world; they are earthly counterparts of the planets in the skies and the five viscera in man and perform the same functions. They are also abodes of the immortals, as well as of the Five Emperors, and provide storage places for the sacred texts. The "Picture of the True Form of the Five Peaks" from the southern Taoist tradition, the result of the "mysterious contemplation" of Lord Lao, reveals "the configuration of their contorted and labyrinthine summits." Like the description of the isles of the immortals, it is supposed to have been given to men by Dongfang Shuo, the fallen immortal and the banished companion of the Queen Mother of the West who lived among the courtiers of Emperor Wu of the Han. This schema, which exists in several versions, includes labyrinthine maps and talismans that give access to the mountains (as well as to the whole world) to those who possess them. The mountains are places imbued with magic, rich in Yang power.

Another Shangqing work that describes the "outer regions"

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