Daoism

All timelines

Streams: All of Daoism Philosophical Daoism Celestial Masters and Zhengyi Shangqing Lingbao Quanzhen

The Medieval Schools

397-402

Lingbao scriptures

Around the turn of the fifth century Ge Chaofu, heir of the alchemical Ge family, composed the scriptures of Numinous Treasure (Lingbao), and they spread faster than any Daoist text before them. The Lingbao corpus took in the Buddhist cosmology of world ages and rebirth and turned Daoism toward universal salvation: great communal retreats, confession, and rites for the dead that promised deliverance not for one adept but for ancestors and strangers alike. Its liturgy still shapes Daoist ritual.

Jiangnan

5th century

First Daozang compiled

Lu Xiujing, the great systematizer of the southern churches, gathered the scriptures of the Three Caverns, the Shangqing, Lingbao, and Dongshen corpora, and around 471 presented the court with a catalogue of the whole: the first Daozang, the first attempt to fix Daoism as a canon with boundaries. His ordering of the caverns still structures the canon today, and his editing of the Lingbao liturgy made him the father of its ritual order.

Jiankang, the Liu Song capital