Di La (地腊): The Taoist Fast When Heaven Measures Your Flesh and Rank

The fifth day of the fifth lunar month. The whole of China is hanging mugwort and calamus, wearing perfumed sachets, racing dragon boats on the great rivers. It is the Dragon Boat Festival — Duanwu Jie — the day when the poet Qu Yuan drowned and the people threw rice into the water to feed his spirit.

But for Taoists, this day is something older and more precise. It is Di La (地腊) — the Earth La, the second of the five La festivals. On this day, the five celestial emperors have moved south. They are sitting in the southern heaven of cinnabar qi — Sanqi Dantian (三烁丹天) — and they are examining a different register.

At Tian La, on the first day of the first month, they measured each person’s allotted span of life. At Di La, they measure something more tangible: your rank, your office, and the flesh and blood in which you live.

Di La — the five emperors move to the southern heaven of cinnabar qi to examine rank, flesh, and the flourishing of all living things.

The South and the Flesh

In the Taoist cosmology of the five phases, the south belongs to fire, to the colour vermilion, to the season of summer, to the organ of the heart. The Tianhuang Zhidao Taiqing Yuce names the five La days and their celestial geography: the first La is in the east, the second in the south, the third in the west, the fourth in the north, the fifth at the centre above.

The movement from east to south is the movement from birth to growth, from seed to flower, from the counting of days to the condition of the body that must live through them.

“On the fifth day of the fifth month, the five emperors examine and determine the official rank of the living, the flourishing or decay of their flesh and blood, externally nourishing the ten thousand kinds, internally extending the years and the span of life, recording the names of those who shall live long.” — Yunji Qiqian

The Examination of Rank and Flesh

In the cosmology of the Celestial Masters, every person occupies a position — in a family, in a community, in the hierarchy of the empire. That position is not accidental. It is assigned by heaven and recorded in the registers. At Di La, the registers of rank are opened. The five emperors review each person’s office and determine whether it should be adjusted. The Badao Miyan says: “On this day, one may confess transgressions, petition for requests, and seek the transfer or adjustment of official rank.”

Alongside rank, the emperors examine the condition of the body itself — the flesh and blood, the xuerou (血肉). The quality of the blood, the strength of the muscles, the integrity of the organs. A person whose body is flourishing at Di La has received a favourable audit.

But Di La is unique among the five La festivals: “externally nourishing the ten thousand kinds, internally extending the years and the span of life.” No other La day carries this double dimension — reaching outward to all living things and inward to the individual’s own years simultaneously. This is the ecological theology of the fifth month: to perform purification on Di La is to participate in the flourishing of the whole created order.

The Day and Its Prohibitions

The Di La fast carries specific prohibitions recorded in the Badao Miyan:

The practitioner who observes these on the fifth day of the fifth month is fasting not only from food but from violence — against trees, against animals, against the body’s own balance. He makes himself light, empty, transparent to the qi of summer, and in that transparency presents himself before the five emperors in the southern heaven.

The Two Layers of the Fifth Day

The fifth day of the fifth month carries two complete systems of meaning at once. On one hand, it is the Dragon Boat Festival — Duanwu — with its dragon boats, its mugwort, its realgar wine, its commemoration of the drowned poet Qu Yuan. On the other hand, it is Di La — the Taoist fast with its ancestral offerings, its examination of rank and flesh, its prohibitions and qi practices.

The two layers are not opposed. The mugwort that ordinary people hang on their doors is, in the Taoist understanding, a herb of exorcism that drives away malign influences — precisely the kind of dark forces that the La fast is designed to counter. And the deepest convergence is this: Duanwu is a festival of life at its peak, and Di La is a fast of examination at the peak. The dragon boats race because the river is high. The emperors examine the flesh because the flesh is at its prime.

The Zhengyi Connection: The Summer Fast at the Altar

From a Zhengyi perspective, Di La is a living practice, observed in Zhengyi temples and households on the fifth day of the fifth month. The Shangqing Lingbao Dafa explicitly includes all five La days in its calendar of prohibitions and purifications. On Di La, Zhengyi temples may perform the jiao ritual of renewal — the community assembles, incense is offered, scriptures are chanted, and the petition for the adjustment of rank may be included in the liturgy.

The ritual structure follows the same principles as the broader Zhengyi Jiao Zhai Yi: purification, invocation of the five emperors, ancestral offering, and formal closure. The specific forms have evolved, but the principle remains: the fifth day of the fifth month is a day of purification, and the five emperors are in session in the southern heaven.

The Day the South Is Judged

The five emperors have moved from the eastern heaven to the southern. The azure qi of spring has yielded to the cinnabar qi of summer. The span of life that was counted at the start of the year is now being measured against the body that must live through it.

On this day, the Taoist faithful fast, purify themselves, offer sacrifice to the ancestors, and petition for their rank to be adjusted and their flesh preserved. The dragon boats will race on the rivers. The mugwort will hang on the doors. And the Taoist, in the midst of the festival, will withdraw for a time — to the altar, to the quiet room, to the space where the emperors of the five directions are sitting in judgment and the petitions of the living are rising with the incense.

The fifth day of the fifth month is coming. The south is opening. The flesh is being measured. This is the day for fasting.

Explore Further

• The Yunji Qiqian — Seven Slips of the Cloud Satchel
• The Zhengyi Jiao Zhai Yi — Ritual Purification in the Zhengyi Tradition