Gods

Source: TW

Even then the definition of ‘god’ ought to be used with caution in this case. James Miller’s “the way of highest clarity” is valuable in this regard, and worth citing in full.

Basically the gods of Shangqing daoism were not ‘personal’ in the sense of possessing individual wills and personalities. Rather they are akin to bureaucrats; beings whose power does not derive from their own characteristics, but rather from their position in a hierarchy. He cites this example with the rite used when a person has successfully completed the various meditations to become an immortal. You basically encounter the gods and then tell them “I have done all that is required of me to become an immortal, please register me as one.” The god in this case has no individual will: they just register the applicant’s information as impersonally as a filing clerk registers documents.

As much as all this ritual is patterned after courtly ritual, what the adept is actually doing in the process of ritual is engaging with the subtle forces of nature- which have been given human shape, presumably for convenience. A similar thing might be said of the astral gods.

It is true that some spirit or god may reside in the planets. However, this god may not necessarily possess an individual personality or will, (like a buddhisatva or god) It just simply dispenses it jovial/martial/saturnine influence to earth in accordance with the rules of the cosmos. However, it is nonetheless possible to meaningfully interact with said god through appropriate rituals, much as you can produce rain through cloud seeding.

Thus this anthropomorphisation of the five phases etc. is not some kind of corruption, but, to use miller’s terms, to use human interactions/courtly ritual as a packaging for real-world transformation.

I think there’s a similar distinction between these gods which behave in a mechanistic manner as opposed to those which actually have wills in western occultism too; but I must defer to the opinion of @polyphanes .

@neilalexanderw1 which gave them certain powers [iirc you were not manhandled by the officials of the underworld and generally more protected against malign spirits]; the first registers were given as a child but more were given as you grew older; if you wanted to become a cleric you could get more registers.

[It is an amusing thought to consider if Joseph Smith is America’s Zhang Daoling – CC @AOHSUsometimesY @yuxuan_tay :)]