Qingwei Descended Great Rites 清微元降大法
Paul PengQingwei Descended Great Rites
Author unknown.
As the Qingwei Sect’s transmission lineage recorded in the book ends with Huang Shunshen in the early Yuan Dynasty, it should have been compiled by Taoist priests during the Yuan Dynasty.
Originally twenty-five scrolls, included in the Methods category of the Dongzhen Section of The Daozang.
Qingwei Descended Great Rites
This book is a comprehensive collection of the Qingwei Sect’s Daoist methods from the Song and Yuan dynasties. Its contents can be divided into two parts.
The first part recounts the origin and transmission of the Daoist methods, including chapters such as The Primordial Qingwei in Response to the Times, Essential Compilation and Synthesis of the Master-Disciple Lineage, and The Origin of the Dao. It proclaims that the Qingwei Daoist lineage inherits and unifies the traditions of the Primordial Lord, Upper Clarity, Numinous Treasure, Dao and Virtue, and Orthodox Unity schools.
The second part compiles various Daoist methods of the Qingwei Sect, focusing on thunder rites. These include:
- Secret Rites of the Qingwei Pervading the Mystery
- The Celestial Mystery Rites of the Primordial One Qi
- Upper Clarity Five Thunders Rites for Subduing Mountains
- Western Brahma Blue Firmament Five Thunders Rites
- Upper Clarity Five Primal Five Thunders Rites
- Qingwei Dragon Light Inner Rites
and so on, totaling fifty kinds.
For each thunder rite, the text first lists the names, crowns, costumes, and appearances of the thunder generals and commanders under that division, then presents the heavenly scriptures, petitions, divine medicines, and divine incantations used, and summarizes their functions.
At the end of the book are attached two chapters: The Pivot of Daoist Methods and The Qingwei Daoist Lineage.
Among them, The Pivot of Daoist Methods summarizes the essentials of the Qingwei Daoist methods. It generally takes the primordial Dao as the foundation of talismanic arts, and inner cultivation of the mind and nature as the key to writing talismans and performing rites. It holds that the arising of not a single thought and the quiescence of all things is the Dao within the Dao; talismanic diagrams and incantations are secondary.
Daoist methods involve no visualization, no artificial construction, no shouting, no praises or invocations. Only through a single numinous light penetrating heaven and earth, and uniting one’s essence and spirit with the essence and spirit of all things between heaven and earth—with essences merging and spirits relying upon one another—can one summon the gods by talismans.
This book integrates the inner cultivation theories of the Daoist internal alchemy school, Buddhist Chan, and Confucian Neo-Confucianism, marking the theoretical maturity and perfection of Daoist talismanic arts.
