Early Road Through The Heavens Structure

The present thesis examines the Taishang lingbao wufu xu 太上靈寶五符序 in the Daoist Canon as the main material to investigate the spatial structure of the early Lingbao 靈寶 (Numinous Treasure) texts. According to Xiaolin Zhengmei's 小林正美 analysis, it was already in the Eastern Jin dynasty when the three volumes had been completed. However, as has been pointed out by Liu Shipei and Chen Guofu, the "five directions" (wufang 五方) structure symbolized by the five directions and the Five Thearchs (wudi 五帝), the "heaven-human-earth " triad revealed by the divine book found by Yu 禹 in Dongting 洞庭, as well as the later clues related to the development of the cavern heavens (dongtian 洞天) display ideas which evidence many changes and deletions. This can prove that these ideas have solid foundations which can not be fluctuated.Although the transmitter of the Linbao texts remains unclear, the classics themselves were widely disseminated. The various heavens of Daoism evolved successively during the spread of the Lingbao texts . Therefore, if we want to know the structure of the four-direction, thirty-two heavens, at least the structure of Lingbao heavens, the Taishang lingbao wufu xu in Daoist Canon is an important place to begin.First, the Taishang lingbao wufu xu describes the process by which the divine books were revealed to the world. It involves the creation of icon, the sacred boundary related to the divine book and the idea of cavern heavens. The underground layer (cave) is the most emphasized aspect. Beside the description of moving the divine book from Heaven to the Cavern Hall (dongting 洞庭), the brightness of the cave was stressed. The cave was thought to be the special palace behind Heaven, which showed the situation that there was another world in the cave. The combination of mountain, various heavens and cave appeared in Xianren yifu wufang zhutianqi jing 仙人挹服五方諸天氣經. The so-called "one mountain of four heavens" (sitian yishan 四天一山), in addition to the structure of the nine "well-spring caverns," have the same meaning to the consistent cavern-heaven thought.Next, according to the ancient ten-month calendar of the Yi nationality (彝族), I...