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Shangqing revealed

4th century · Mount Mao (Maoshan), Jiangsu (Jurong, Jiangsu, China)

Between 364 and 370, on Mount Mao, the Perfected Ones of the heaven of Highest Clarity (Shangqing) descended in night visions to the medium Yang Xi and dictated scriptures for the brothers Xu Mi and Xu Hui. The revelations, which named the departed matriarch Wei Huacun among their sources, offered visualization of the gods within the body, journeys among the stars, and an aristocratic path of salvation that displaced the Celestial Masters at the southern court and made Maoshan the tradition's holy mountain.

Tagged: Daoism Shangqing

The Event

Date
4th century (approximate)
Era
The Medieval Schools; Standard periodization of Daoist history
Location
Mount Mao (Maoshan), Jiangsu; today Jurong, Jiangsu, China
Traditions
Daoism
Streams
Shangqing
Key figures
Yang Xi, Wei Huacun, Xu Mi
Key texts
Shangqing scriptures

How the Tradition Tells It

The Shangqing scriptures present themselves as dictated by the Perfected. The manuscripts that survive passed through the hands of Yang Xi and the Xu family, and the scribe Tao Hongjing, who edited the corpus a century later, worked openly to separate genuine revelation from forgery within it; the tradition has always known that its revelations arrive through fallible hands.

Primary Sources

  • The Shangqing revelations recorded by Yang Xi.

Secondary Sources

  • Robinet, Isabelle. Taoism: Growth of a Religion. Translated by Phyllis Brooks, Stanford University Press, 1997.
  • Kohn, Livia, ed. Daoism Handbook. Brill, 2000.

Provenance: HIST-0805; confidence 0.85; accessed 2026-10-28.

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