The founding story is precise where history is not. In 142 CE, on Mount Heming in the hills west of Chengdu, Taishang Laojun is said to have descended and conferred on Zhang Daoling a covenant of orthodox unity, appointing him Celestial Master and abolishing the blood sacrifices of the local cults. What the covenant established was not a philosophy but an administration. The community was divided into twenty-four parishes, each under a libationer who could be a woman as readily as a man, and every household contributed five pecks of rice a year, which is why hostile sources called it the Way of the Five Pecks of Rice.
Its characteristic practice was the handling of illness. Sickness was understood as the consequence of transgression, so the sick person was placed in a quiet chamber to reflect, and a written petition was submitted in triplicate to Heaven, Earth and Water. There was no fee and no animal offering. Members held registers listing the spirits they were entitled to command, received in stages from childhood, and the register rather than any inward state marked a person's standing.
This is a religion of contracts, documents and offices, and that shape has proved extraordinarily durable. The Zhengyi priesthood, which ordains married householder priests who serve a community rather than withdraw from it, descends directly from this structure and still issues registers and submits written petitions. When Daoism is described as a liturgical tradition rather than a mystical one, the Celestial Masters are what is meant.