A daoshi is ordained within one of Daoism's distinct institutional lineages, each with its own requirements, ritual texts and specific relationship between monastic and married clergy: the Quanzhen, Complete Reality, tradition, established in the twelfth century, requires celibate monastic ordination and communal temple life broadly comparable in structure, though not in specific doctrine, to Buddhist monasticism, while the older Zhengyi, Orthodox Unity, tradition, tracing its own institutional continuity back to the Celestial Masters lineage founded by Zhang Daoling in the second century CE, permits married, non-monastic priests who typically live among the lay community they serve rather than in a separate monastery.
Ordination in either lineage involves formal transmission of ritual texts and liturgical authority from an already-ordained master to the initiate, together with the conferral of a register, a formal document recording the specific spirits, deities and ritual authorities the newly ordained daoshi is now empowered to invoke and command in ritual, a concept central to Daoist ritual practice's understanding of priestly authority as involving genuine, textually documented command over specific spiritual forces rather than a more general pastoral or teaching authority alone.