Lady Wei Huacun, an aristocrat from the Jin dynasty and a Celestial Master practitioner, was the first leader of the Shangqing School. Three decades after her death, from 364 to 370,
Yang Xi (330-c. 386) was believed to have had revelations "aided almost certainly by
cannabis" (
Joseph Needham 1980:213) and "received...
scriptural and
hagiographic literature" from
zhenren xian who brought him into a visitation experience. These texts eventually formed the basis of the school’s beliefs. The immortals and spirits that appeared to him were from "the
heaven of Shang-ch'ing" and stated that
Imperial China and all other
governments in the world would end and be replaced by a
theocratic Taoist
empire. The school at this time believed that the
4th century was a time of
sin and divine trials brought on by six evil and
demonic tiān realms called the Six Heavens in English and during the
apocalypse which would come in the year
392, "the earth was to be cleansed of evildoers by a cataclysm of fire and flood." The good people of the world would be safe from this because of the power of the "luminous caverns of the perfected" beneath divine mountains like Maoshan, and Lord Li Hung would descend from heaven to rule the world afterwards. The revelation began to spread in aristocratic circles of South China, and eventually Tao Hongjing, advisor to the princes of Qi, joined the group. He commented upon, and compiled the Shangqing texts, and developed a well-structured system consisting of a pantheon and new ways to reach immortality that depended upon meditation. More interested in Daoism and
Buddhism than in public administration, in 492 he received authorization to leave the court. He moved to Maoshan, which had by now become the center of the school. There, with the help of the
Emperor Wudi of the
Liang dynasty, he built the temple of Huayang, the first Shangqing temple. After his death, the school continued to prosper, and recruited many people from the aristocracy. From its beginning near Nanjing, the school expanded to the north after laws passed in 504 and 517 forced several masters of the school to go into exile. Ironically this expulsion helped spread the movement to the north, and did little to weaken the schools organization in the south. The Daoist encyclopedia published under the patronage of the
Emperor Wu of the
Northern Zhou (561-578) placed a great deal of importance on the Shangqing texts. The Shangqing School dominated the Daoist movements under the Tang. During this period, all of its leaders received a title from the emperor. Emperor
Taizong personally visited three of the temples on Maoshan, and in 731 the
Xuanzong emperor put Shangqing deities in charge of China’s sacred mountains. The Daoist section of the imperial encyclopedia was composed primarily of Shangqing texts. At the same time, the Shangqing school underwent a transformation and integrated texts from the Lingbao School as well as from the Way of the Celestial Master school. The clergy also became more important and more emphasis was put on public rituals. During the second half of the
Northern Song dynasty, the influence of Shangqing Daoism declined at the court, but still remained, changing its focus to rituals and talismans. New buildings appeared on Maoshan that survived until the
Cultural Revolution of
Mao Zedong. Under the Song, some of the Shangqing leaders still benefited from imperial favour such as the 23rd leader, Zhu Ziying (974–1029), who received the title of ‘national master’ from the court. The 35th and 44th masters, Ren Yuanpu and Wang Daomeng, were equally distinguished for having ended a grasshopper invasion and a flood. Under the Yuan dynasty, the Shangqing school integrated itself under the Zhengyi alliance. At the end of the 20th century, the
Taiping Rebellion, the
Japanese army and the Cultural Revolution have resulted in the complete destruction of the temples on Maoshan. Two of the temples, Jiuxiaogong and Yuanfugong have been rebuilt more for tourists than for religious purposes. ==Practices==