Laozi Enthroned Among Them

The most historically significant of the three is the Celestial Worthy of the Way and its Virtue, who is identified with Laozi, the sage traditionally regarded as the author of the Daodejing, in his exalted, deified form as Taishang Laojun, the Most High Lord Lao. Here the process by which Daoism transformed its founding philosopher into a supreme god can be seen at its height: the human sage of the classic text is raised to a cosmic deity, an eternal manifestation of the Dao who descends into the world in different ages to teach.

The title of the third Pure One, naming the Way (Dao) and its Virtue or Power (De), directly echoes the title of the Daodejing itself. The Three Pure Ones sit at the apex of the crowded Daoist pantheon, above the Jade Emperor who administers the cosmos as its celestial sovereign, and they are enshrined together in the main halls of Daoist temples. They express the effort of religious Daoism to give the abstract, nameless Dao of the philosophers a form that could be worshipped, to make the ultimate principle of the universe into presences before whom the faithful could stand.