The Qingwei School 清微派

The Qingwei School, a new talismanic school that emerged in the Song Dynasty.

The school claimed to originate from the Yuanshi Tianzun (Primeval Lord of Heaven) in the Qingwei Heaven and the Jade Pure Realm, hence naming its sect "Qingwei". It also stated that after Yuanshi Tianzun transmitted the Dharma, its teachings evolved into four schools: Zhenyuan, Taihua, Guanling, and Zhengyi. By the tenth generation, Ancestor Shu Yuanjun integrated the four schools to establish the Qingwei sect. The lineage was then passed down to Guo Yulong, Fu Yangyu, Yao Zhuang, ... Zhu Dongyuan, Li Shaowei, Nan Bidao, and Huang Shunshen (see Qingwei Immortal Genealogy and Qingwei Rituals).

According to this, its founder was Zu Shu (who was said to be a resident in Continuation of the Comprehensive Mirror of True Immortals Through the Ages Practicing Taoism, Volume 5, Biography of Zu Shu). Whether this claim is credible remains to be studied. From existing materials, the deeds of the generations from Zu Shu to Nan Bidao are sketchy, and they had few disciples. It is really hard to determine whether an influential Taoist school was formed at that time. It was not until the time of Huang Shunshen that the Qingwei School became famous in the world.

According to Chen Cai's Qingwei Immortal Genealogy, Huang Shunshen (1224–?), also named Yingyan, was from Jianning, Fujian. He was intelligent from childhood and was well-versed in classics, histories, and various schools of thought. At the age of 16, he accompanied his father in the military office in Guangxi, where he met Nan Bidao, who was an official there, and received the Qingwei Thunder Method from him. During the Baoyou period of the Song Dynasty (1253–1258), he once served as a reviewer and became famous for his thunder method. Emperor Lizong of the Song Dynasty summoned him and granted him the title "True Person of Leiyuan".

In the year of Bingxu in the Yuan Dynasty (1285), he was summoned to the imperial court. Before long, he begged to return to the mountains, and was appointed "True Person of Leiyuan, Guangfu, and Puhua" by imperial decree. He was a great master of writing in the Qingwei School, "who devoted himself to writing, expounded the doctrines, and thus the books of the school became fully prepared". Most of the Qingwei School's works collected in the Taoist Canon today were written by Huang Shunshen and his disciples.

The Qingwei School mainly practiced the Qingwei Thunder Method. Like the Shenxiao School, it advocated combining the thunder method with the elixir method, with internal cultivation as the main focus and talismans as auxiliary. Qingwei Rituals, Volume 1: "For practice, one should focus on rectifying the mind and sincere intention. If the mind is not upright, it is insufficient to influence things; if the intention is not sincere, it is insufficient to communicate with the gods. The spirit operates here, and things respond there, so even thousands of miles away, it can be as close as breathing within a foot's distance." It also said: "The generals and officials are only in the body; the gods and spirits never leave the mind." Generals, officials, gods, and spirits all refer to the ghosts and gods summoned when performing the thunder method, meaning that being able to summon them all depends on the practitioner having profound internal cultivation skills. Therefore, the school wrote Qingwei Inner Secrets, which specifically discusses the way of inner alchemy cultivation.

Qingwei Immortal Genealogy states that Huang Shunshen had nearly a hundred disciples. Continuation of the Comprehensive Mirror of True Immortals Through the Ages Practicing Taoism·Biography of Huang Leiyuan says: "The disciples he initiated all had their names inscribed on stones; only thirty were before the stone, and five after the stone." These five disciples split into two branches to spread north and south: one branch centered in Jianning, Fujian, spreading in the south. This branch was passed down by his disciple Xiong Daohui (styled Zhenxi), first to Peng Ruli from Ancheng, who passed it to Zeng Guikuan (styled Chenwai), who then passed it to Zhao Yizhen (styled Yuanyang) from Junyi, continuing into the Ming Dynasty. The other branch centered in Wudang Mountain, Hubei, spreading in the north. Huang Shunshen passed it to Zhang Daogui, Ye Yunlai, and Liu Daoming of Wudang Mountain, who then passed it to Zhang Shouqing. Zhang Shouqing had many disciples, and later a Qingwei branch combining Quanzhen and Zhengyi was formed, also known as the New Wudang School, which has been continuously passed down. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, in addition to the New Wudang School founded by Zhang Shouqing continuing to spread in the Wudang area, another Qingwei branch was spreading in the Dongyue Temple in Beijing.

According to Koyanagi Shikita's Records of Baiyun Temple, Volume 5, Records of Dongyue Temple, the abbot tablets enshrined in the Lingji Xianci of the temple, in addition to the founders of Dongyue Temple, Zhang Liusun and Wu Quanjie, mainly enshrined the successive Qingwei School ancestors who presided over the temple during the Ming, Qing, and Republic of China periods. One tablet reads "The first generation ancestor of the Qingwei School in the Ming Dynasty, Yu Guihong", and another reads "The fourth generation of the Qingwei School who passed away in the Qing Dynasty, Liu Shouyi, Xia Ling" (the second and third generations were missing).

The first-generation ancestor Yu Guihong (who once served as You Xuanyi of the Taoist Registration Office in Chaotian Palace, Nanjing) should be the founder of this branch, probably living in the mid to late Ming Dynasty. After the fourth generation, tablets were erected in sequence up to the 21st generation. From the listed names, the characters for generations from the 4th to the 21st are: Shou (守), Quan (全), Zhen (真), Dao (道), Zheng (正), De (德), Cun (存), Cheng (诚), Chuan (传), Shang (尚), Xian (贤), etc.

Ye Guocheng conducted a survey of Dongyue Temple in 1939 and obtained a sect poem from the temple: "Gui chong ying shou quan zhen dao, Zheng de cun cheng chuan shang xian, Yuan jie yi liang ming hua ji, Dong zhong qing tai mu hong yan" (recorded in Investigation of Beiping Dongyue Temple in the Folk Custom Series). This poem completely matches the generational characters recorded on the aforementioned tablets, proving that the school continued to be passed down in this temple until the Republic of China. General Register of Various True Sects also includes eight other Qingwei branches with different generational characters, indicating that by the Republic of China, the Qingwei School had many derived branches. In addition, according to Golden Cover Heart Lamp, Lü Shoupu, the 8th generation of the Longmen School, and Fei Yangde, the 12th generation, both passed down the Qingwei method. Biography of Lü Yunyin, the Master states: "Lü Shoupu was the 24th generation in Qingwei and the 8th generation master in Longmen". This indicates that the tradition of the Qingwei School integrating with Quanzhen, which began when it was introduced to Wudang in the early Yuan Dynasty, continued unchanged into the Qing Dynasty.