Qingwei Liturgy for Ritual Retreat 清微斋法
Paul PengQingwei Liturgy for Ritual Retreat
The original text bears no author’s name.
Based on the master‑disciple lineage of the Qingwei Sect recorded in the book, it was presumably compiled by Taoist priests during the Yuan Dynasty.
Two scrolls, included in the Methods category of the Dongzhen Section of The Daozang.
Qingwei Liturgy for Ritual Retreat
The contents of this book are divided into three parts.
The first part narrates the origin and transmission of the Qingwei Sect. It lists the lineages of four schools: Yuanshi (Primordial), Lingbao (Numinous Treasure), Hunyuan (Chaotic Origin), and Zhengyi (Orthodox Unity), holding that the Qingwei tradition integrates and unifies the four schools. Its transmission lineage ends with Nan Bidao in the late Song Dynasty and Huang Shunshen in the early Yuan Dynasty.
The second part expounds the essential tenets of Qingwei Daoist practices. It maintains that Taoist cultivation corresponds to Confucian gewu (the investigation of things), centering on rectifying the mind and making the intention sincere. Only by rectifying the mind, making the intention sincere, and nurturing it can one communicate with the divine and resonate with things, so that spells and rituals naturally become efficacious.
The final section, Lingbao Great Zhai and Jiao Rituals, constitutes the main body of the work, detailing the liturgical rituals of the Qingwei Zhai Fa. It contains the formal structures of various memorials, scriptures, registers, slips, proclamations, talismans, and incantations used in the rituals, classified into nine types:
