Diary of Spirit Communications 周氏冥通记

Compiled by Tao Hongjing of the Liang Dynasty.

It is recorded as one volume in The Book of Sui: Treatise on Classics and Documents.

        Diary of Spirit Communications

The current version in The Daozang consists of four volumes, included in the Biographies category of The Dongzhen Section. Another edition is found in The Complete Library of the Four Treasuries.

This book records spiritual manifestations and divine communications experienced by Zhou Ziliang of the Liang Dynasty. Volume One contains a brief biography of Zhou: Zhou Ziliang, courtesy name Yuanhe, whose ancestral home was Runan and settled in Danyang. He was born in the 4th year of the Jianwu reign of the Southern Qi Dynasty (497). At the age of twelve, he became a disciple of Tao Hongjing and received Taoist scriptures, talismans, and diagrams. At nineteen, he suddenly began to commune with divinities and immortals, often meeting them in dreams and secretly receiving heavenly instructions. He died of illness the following year, aged only twenty.

Written in the form of a diary, this work records Zhou Ziliang’s private conversations and encounters with various immortals. It contains several dozen entries, mostly consisting of immortals’ instructions on cultivating the Dao, extraordinary tales of the celestial realm, teachings on fortune and misfortune, and transmissions of scriptures, talismans, and elixir formulas.

In content and style, the book closely resembles Zhengao (Declarations of the True), also written by Tao Hongjing.