Page 101 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

DEITIES AND SPIRITS

Deities: The pantheon

Defining the Taoist pantheon depends on how one defines Taoism itself. The
present entry briefly discusses the pantheon on the basis of selected sources in
the Taoist Canon. While these sources give a somewhat different image of the
pantheon compared to the deities venerated in present-day Taoism, they help
to show how the modern pantheon is the result of historical development.
The Taoist pantheon, in fact, has always been extremely unstable. From
earliest times, as new divinities were added, some older ones disappeared,
and their ranking changed over time. An important factor in this fluidity has
been the Chinese view of religion itself, in which the realm of the deities
reflected the structure of the imperial court, centered on the emperor who
was considered the representative on earth of the supreme god, Shangdi ...t
* (Highest Emperor). The imperial courts of Shangdi in Heaven and the
emperor on earth shared a similar configuration. Thus the earthly emperor
conferred titles on a large number of deities, and had the authority to decide
which of them were orthodox and which were not. Consequently, the names
and rankings of Taoist deities often depended on the imperial court. In later
times the pantheon expanded through the incorporation of popular deities.
In this sense, a clearly defined Taoist pantheon never existed in the past, any
more than it exists in the present day.

Early Taoist deities. The earliest record of a Taoist deity is associated with the
worship of Laozi (*Laojun, Lord Lao) within the Way of the Celestial Masters
(*Tianshi dao), established by *Zhang Daoling in the mid-second century CE .
Laozi was also deified around the same time within the Later Han court (see
under *Laozi ming), which may have been influenced by the *Huang-Lao tradi-
tion. There is very little evidence on how the veneration of Laozi was carried
out by the Celestial Masters, but statues of Laozi as a sage who had attained
the Dao certainly reflect a view of this figure that had become widespread
by the second century.
No evidence can be found in the received text of the *Taipingjing (Scripture
of Great Peace) to link the contemporary Taiping dao X 3f~ (Way of Great
Peace; see *Yellow Turbans) to the Laozi cult. In the early fourth-century
*Baopu zi (Book of the Master Who Embraces Simplicity), *Ge Hong (283- 343)
describes Laozi as the founder of Taoism and states that certain talismans

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