Tàishàng dòngzhēn wǔxīng bìshòu jīng 太上洞真五星秘授經
Secretly-Transmitted Scripture on the Five Planets, Most High, from the Dòngzhēn Canon
five-folio Sòng astral-ritual scripture companion to DZ 43, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0044 / CT 44), 洞真部 本文類
About the work
A five-folio companion-scripture to [[KR5a0043|DZ 43 Shíyī yào shénzhòu jīng]] treating the Five Planets (Wǔxīng 五星): Mars (Huǒxīng 火星), Mercury (Shuǐxīng 水星), Jupiter (Mùxīng 木星), Venus (Jīnxīng 金星), and Saturn (Tǔxīng 土星). The scripture names nine of the eleven astral lords of DZ 43 and explains that whenever any of these astral divinities shines upon a given region of Earth, a natural catastrophe results. The severity of the disaster is a function of the quantity of sins reported to Heaven by the spiritual officers of the nine provinces on the days of the Sānyuán 三元 (Three Principles). Yuánshǐ tiānzūn accordingly reveals the appropriate incantations for each of the named divinities, and also describes their iconographic clothing so that adepts may make images of them and worship them, especially on the Three-Principles days. Additionally, the scripture and its principal incantations are reused in various Song-era Língbǎo liturgical compendia; recitation is recommended in [[KR5a0219|DZ 219 Língbǎo wúliàng dùrén shàngjīng dàfǎ]] 33.5b and [[KR5a1225|DZ 1225 Dàomén kēfàn dàquán jí 道門科範大全集]] 45.1b.
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens directly with the revelation of the incantations.
Abstract
Although the scripture’s title attaches it to the Dòngzhēn 洞真 section of the Daozang — the Shàngqīng scriptural division — it is formally not a Shàngqīng work: John Lagerwey, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:1127, notes that its form follows the revealed Língbǎo scriptures. The Bìshū shěng xùbiàndào sìkù quèshū mù 秘書省續編到四庫闕書目 mentions a Língbǎo wǔxīng bìshòu jīng (see Van der Loon, Taoist Books in the Libraries of the Sung Period, 99), suggesting that the scripture circulated under a Língbǎo title in the Northern Sòng before being reclassified with a Dòngzhēn heading in the Míng canon. The cognate DZ 976 Tàishàng dòngshén wǔxīng zàn 太上洞神五星贊 and DZ 657 Tàishàng dòngshén wǔxīng zhūsù rìyuè hùncháng jīng 太上洞神五星諸宿日月混常經 belong to the same mid-Sòng Wǔxīng astral-ritual cluster.
The frontmatter brackets composition notBefore 1150 / notAfter 1199 (parallel to DZ 43), with dynasty 南宋. No author is attributed; no persons are listed in the catalog meta.
Translations and research
No translation. Standard scholarly entry: John Lagerwey, “Taishang dongzhen wuxing bishou jing,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.1, 1127 (? — adjacent to DZ 43 in the Zhèngyī cluster). On Daoist astral ritual: Edward H. Schafer, Pacing the Void (California, 1977); Hou Ching-lang, “The Chinese Belief in Baleful Stars,” in Facets of Taoism (Yale, 1979), 193–228.
Other points of interest
The pairing of DZ 43 and DZ 44 in the late-Sòng Shíyī yào / Wǔxīng astral-ritual cluster provides a particularly full witness to the Daoist scripture-text base underlying the Sānyuán (Three Principles) audit-ritual programme, in which human sins are periodically reported by astral officers to the celestial bureaucracy and natural calamities follow as mechanical retribution.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0044
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.1 — DZ 44 entry (John Lagerwey).