Taoism

The Tao Te Ching teaches that reversal is the basic movement of the Tao.

This source names Taoism directly: "religious significance as a centre of Taoism, recognized for its architectural achievement and its role in the development of belief and philosophy in the region."

The art claims a Taoist origin for its circle walking, and Taoist cosmology supplies the trigram scheme it is built on.

Native Chinese tradition practiced alongside Buddhism and ancestor veneration in a widely shared folk mixture.

This source names Taoism directly: "major ancestral temples of Quanzhen Taoism during the Yuan dynasty."

This source names Daoism directly: "Gate, or Longmen, lineage of Quanzhen Daoism, the other two being the Zhongji Jie, the Precepts of Middle Ultimate, and the Tianxian Jie, the Precepts of Celestial Immortality."

Classical Chinese is the language of the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi and the wider Taoist canon.

Taoism is China's own organized religion of priesthood, liturgy and inner cultivation.

The Celestial Masters, the first organised Daoist church, arose at the end of the Han.

This source names Taoism directly: "Wikipedia's article on the history of Taoism, community-edited."

Roughly a million adherents and some of the faith's most active modern temples, Wong Tai Sin foremost, with lineages that arrived as refugees from the mainland after 1949.

This source names Taoism directly: "what remained of it into Buddhism and Taoism."

About 9 per cent identify as Taoist, though Chinese temple practice commonly combines Taoist and Buddhist elements.

The tradition's liturgical, scriptural or ancestral language belongs to this family.

Taoist ritual specialists serve temple communities across the island, generally without a sharp boundary against Buddhist or folk practice.

Daoist temples and their clergy were among the targets.

This source names Taoism directly: "combines elements of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and Catholicism under a single Supreme Being, Cao Dai."

This source names Taoism directly: "state, and by Wuzong's own devotion to Taoism."

One of the three foundational texts of philosophical Daoism, alongside the Tao Te Ching and the Zhuangzi.

Shares the qi and meridian cosmology of Daoist-influenced medicine

Early Daoist thought, associated with Zhuangzi, took shape during the Warring States period.

This source names Taoism directly: "its subsumption into Buddhism and Taoism before the end of the fourteenth century, and the surviving Cao'an temple site in Jinjiang, Fujian."

This source names Taoism directly: "as one of the Four Sacred Mountains of Taoism in China, centered on devotion to Xuantian Shangdi and functioning as the Taoist counterpart to the Buddhist Shaolin Monastery; for its association with..."

Wu Xing, the scheme the five fists are built on, is Taoist and Chinese correlative cosmology rather than anything the art invented.

Xuanxue's central texts are the Laozi and the Zhuangzi, read through commentaries by Wang Bi and Guo Xiang.

The Celestial Masters tradition locates its founding at Mount Qingcheng in the basin, and Mount Wudang carries a Ming imperial temple complex.

Zou Yan is placed at the Jixia Academy, the same milieu credited with the rise of Huang-Lao Daoism, and the Han shu bibliography classes the Yin-Yang school alongside the Daoists among six schools of thought.

His Wudang programme turned a regional cult of Zhenwu into a state one and made the mountain a principal Daoist centre.

This source names Daoism directly: "foundational scripture of Shangqing Daoism, compiled by the scholar official Tao Hongjing from records of revelations the visionary Yang Xi reported receiving between about 364 and 370 CE."

His six years of recorded revelations from the Perfected Immortals (364 to 370 CE), later compiled as the Zhen'gao, gave Shangqing Taoism its founding scriptural corpus.

The publisher's own title names the Tao Te Ching, the foundational Taoist scripture, and the songs set English translations of its verses.

Chinese alchemy divides into waidan, the laboratory work with cinnabar and mercury that killed several emperors, and neidan, which relocated the same furnace and elixir inside the body; the second is a living Taoist discipline while the first is long abandoned.

The largest and most completely preserved surviving ensemble of Yuan dynasty Daoist religious painting, made for worship in an active Taoist temple rather than as a later reconstruction, and this collection's first artwork entry belonging to Taoism.

Daoist liturgy addresses the Northern Dipper in rites for destiny and long life, and ritual walking traces its stars.

Daoist practice more often uses the breath as an object of attention than as something to be forced.

The animal signs, the ten stems and twelve branches and the five agents belong to the same cosmology as Taoist ritual, which uses the sexagenary cycle to fix auspicious times and addresses the star deities held to govern them.

Clergy or specialist role within Taoism.

The bedchamber texts were gathered into the Daoist canon and read within the nurturing-life literature.

Feng shui applies the Taoist account of qi, of yin and yang and of the five agents to the siting of buildings, and Taoist priests are commonly the practitioners consulted; it is a technical art within the tradition rather than a devotional one.

A fu is a written command in talismanic script, issued with the authority of the celestial bureaucracy, and it is burned or worn rather than read.

Fung Ying Seen Koon is a Taoist temple and recognized Daoist culture centre in Hong Kong's New Territories, so linked to Taoism at the religion level.

The system takes the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching, a cornerstone of Taoist cosmology, and reassigns each to a spectrum running from shadow through gift to siddhi. This is modern borrowing of the structure, not a Taoist teaching, and no Taoist lineage transmits it.

The Taoist liturgy for the dead.

The bodygraph is built on the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching, a cornerstone of Taoist cosmology, mapped onto gates and channels. The borrowing is structural: no Taoist practice travels with it, and Ra Uru Hu devised the system in 1987.

The Daoist Zhongyuan reading of the observance.

The Book of Changes is foundational Taoist material: yin and yang, the eight trigrams and the doctrine of continuous change are the same cosmology Taoist ritual and inner alchemy work with, and the text is read philosophically as much as cast.

Its own text: "the most formal Daoist vestment."

The Macao SAR Government Cultural Affairs Bureau's own record names Taoist ceremonies and the named Taoist schools outright as this ritual music's subject and setting, a second musical work the atlas now holds for the tradition.

Mawangdui belongs to Taoism, its own tradition field; Tomb Three held the two earliest known copies of the Tao Te Ching.

Quanzhen Daoism organises its celibate clergy on the monastic model, a structural parallel to the Buddhist sangha rather than a borrowing of Buddhist institutions wholesale.

Derived from the tradition recorded on the mantra, Taoism (Quanzhen and Zhengyi).

The movements, breath regulation and inward attention are the practical layer of Taoist self-cultivation, sharing the map of cinnabar fields and channels with inner alchemy; modern qigong keeps the technique with the goal of immortality removed.

Sik Sik Yuen is classed as a Taoist organization in standard reference accounts of religion in Hong Kong, and its temple's own presentation of its faith identifies Taoist deities as central even while honoring the Three Teachings together with Buddhism and Confucianism, so linked to Taoism at the religion level.

One of Wang Chongyang's Seven Perfected, the founding circle of the Quanzhen school of Taoism.

Named for the taiji, its principles are drawn directly from Daoist cosmology: yin and yang, softness overcoming hardness.

A role playing game whose entire cosmology and plot are built on Taoist self cultivation and the mortal-immortal boundary, not a passing fantasy reference to the tradition.

First patriarch of Shangqing Taoism, per the school's own founding tradition.

Headquarters of the Longmen branch of Quanzhen Taoism and seat of the China Taoist Association.

Daoist internal schools

The 574 ban struck Daoist establishments alongside Buddhist ones, which distinguishes it from the later Tang persecution that spared them.

The opening of the founding text of Taoism.

Shares the qigong movement's broader Daoist-derived vocabulary of cultivation, energy and the dan tian, but is not a Daoist lineage or sect.

Jing is a foundational concept of Daoist internal alchemy (neidan).

Qi is central to Taoist cosmology, though it is not exclusively Taoist: it also belongs to Confucian philosophy and secular Chinese medicine.

Shen is a foundational concept of Daoist internal alchemy (neidan).

Hong Tao-Tze's teaching draws on esoteric Daoism alongside qigong and martial arts, per Tai Ji Men's own account.

Mount Qingcheng, above the Dujiangyan works, is one of the founding seats of organised Daoism.

Adds a specific, dated milestone in Taoism's institutional history between the Tang dynasty's elevation of Taoism as its ancestral faith in 618 and Genghis Khan's meeting with Qiu Chuji in 1222, both already recorded here: Emperor Huizong's sponsorship of the Zhenghe Wanshou Daozang, completed in 1119, the first Taoist canon ever produced in print.

Adds a milestone in Taoist history between Zhang Daoling founding the Way of the Celestial Masters in 142 and the Tang dynasty elevating Taoism as its ancestral faith in 618, both already recorded here: Emperor Taiwu of Northern Wei's personal Taoist investiture in 442, briefly making Taoism the formal religion of a reigning Chinese emperor.

Adds a specific, dated institutional milestone between the Tang dynasty elevating Taoism as its ancestral faith in 618 and the Ming dynasty completing the Zhengtong Daozang in 1445, both already recorded here: Genghis Khan meeting the Quanzhen Taoist master Qiu Chuji near the Hindu Kush in 1222 and, persuaded by his counsel against killing, exempting his school from taxes and forced labor and placing him in charge of religious affairs across the empire.

Adds a specific, dated milestone in Taoism's history between the Tang dynasty elevating Taoism as its ancestral faith in 618 and Emperor Huizong completing the first printed Daoist canon in 1119, both already recorded here: Emperor Xuanzong's 748 order to copy the newly assembled Kaiyuan Daozang widely across his empire, Taoism's first attempt at a complete standardized canon.

The homeland arc's close: revival on the mainland, distinct from and earlier than the tradition's existing 1949 Taiwan events, which record the diaspora rather than the homeland's own recovery.

Closes a 32-year gap since 1994's The Wudang Mountains Join UNESCO's World Heritage List, the most recent event already on Taoism's map, with the association's most substantial ecological commitment to date.

The tradition's first homeland reversal on the map: the same Cultural Revolution that suppressed Confucianism in China (already on the map) also targeted Taoist temples and clergy.

Adds a milestone in Taoism's history between Emperor Xuanzong ordering the Kaiyuan Daozang copied widely in 748 and Emperor Huizong completing the first printed Daoist canon in 1119, both already recorded here: Emperor Wuzong's edict of the eighth month of 845, suppressing Buddhism across Tang China and elevating Taoism to formal primacy at court.

Adds a specific, dated institutional milestone between the Tang dynasty's imperial patronage of Taoism and its later arrival in Taiwan with Fujian settlers already recorded here: the completion and countrywide distribution of the Zhengtong Daozang, the canon every modern edition of Taoist scripture still descends from.

Taoism's peak political standing at home, the imperial house's own ancestral faith, four and a half centuries after Zhang Daoling's founding and a millennium before the tradition's existing Taiwan events begin.

Closes a one year gap since 2023's citation of the federation's own founding at Mount Maoshan, moving the map from the federation's establishment to its first governing council in session.

Closes an 18 year gap since 2008's The Chinese Daoist Association Adopts the Maoshan Declaration and Eight Year Plan, the most recent event already on Taoism's map, with a new global federation founded on the very same mountain.

Fills the 47-year gap since 1979's revival following the Cultural Revolution, the most recent event already on Taoism's map, with international recognition of a leading Taoist site, extending the same modern Chinese period the 1949 and 1966 events already record.

Adds a milestone in Taoism's history between Zhang Daoling founding the Way of the Celestial Masters in 142 and Emperor Taiwu of Northern Wei receiving Taoist investiture in 442, both already recorded here: Yang Xi receiving the Shangqing revelations at Jurong and Maoshan between 364 and 370, founding the school that became one of Taoism's most influential lineages.

Taoism's own homeland founding as an organized religious movement, distinct from the tradition's existing two events, which cover only its later Taiwan diaspora and never touch mainland China at all.

Its own text: "used in Daoist cosmology, feng shui and divination."

The taijitu (yin-yang diagram) symbolizes the complementary polarity of yin and yang in Taoist cosmology.

Cao Dai names Taoism as one of the Three Teachings it fuses, and its spirit mediumship stands in the Taoist line rather than the Buddhist one.