Page 531 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

HOUSHBNG DAO)UN LIE)] 491

Housheng daojun lieji

Chronicle of the Lord of the Oao, Saint of the Latter Age

The Housheng daojun lieji (CT 442) belongs to the *Shangqing scriptural corpus,
revealed to the visionary *Yang Xi during the years 364-70. It is, more specifically,
part of a set of four works defined as Purple Scripts or ziwen ~)( (see under
*Lingshu ziwen). The text claims to have been composed by *Qingtong (the
Azure Lad) for presentation to *Li Hong (the Lord of the Oao) and transmis-
sion to his disciple *Wang Yuan (a patron saint of the Shangqing movement),
who was charged, in turn, to deliver it to twenty-four Perfected (*zhenren) for
instructing future immortals.
Its vision of the end of the world makes the Housheng lieji, with the Santian
zhengfa jing = 7:. lE ~ ~~ (Scripture of the Orthodox Law of the Three Heav-
ens; CT 1203; Ozaki Masaharu 1974), one of the main scriptures of Shangqing
apocalyptic eschatology. The text presents a panegyric of one of the main
divinities of the Shangqing pantheon, the Imperial Lord of the Golden Portal
(*Jinque dijun), also known as the Saint of the Latter Age (*housheng); he is
the messiah Li Hong, avatar of the god Laozi. It describes the apocalypse, and
contains an account of the otherworldly bureaucracy and of the Shangqing
scriptures, the possession of which gives access to this supernatural bureau-
cracy.
The work predicts the impending advent of the savior Li Hong as a mighty
god who will descend from Mount Qingcheng (*Qingcheng shan, Sichuan)
and appear in the world on the sixth day of the third lunar month of a year
marked by the cyclical characters renchen :E J1f (the twenty-ninth of the sexa-
gesimal cycle; see table IQ), after the end of the world. In the precedingjiashen
EJ3 $ year (the twenty-first of the sexagesimal cycle), calamities will herald
the apocalypse, and great cosmic disasters and social disorder will annihilate
the unfaithful. The chosen people will, by that time, have found security in
the mountains and will constitute the "seed-people" (*zhongmin) of the new
humankind. They will enjoy the delights of the era of Great Peace (*taiping)
inaugurated by Li Hong, and will obtain positions in the several hundred ranks
of the transcendent official hierarchy, in accordance with their own spiritual
achievements and the sacred scriptures they have received. Their names will
be registered in the celestial palaces they will inhabit. Access to immortality is
not only determined by religious merit, but also partly by predetermination: