Shàngqīng wǔcháng biàntōng wànhuà yùmíng jīng 上清五常變通萬化鬱冥經
Airy and Mysterious Scripture on the Universal Metamorphosis and Myriad Transformations of the Five Permanent Ones, of the Upper Clarity
About the work
A substantial one-juàn Shàngqīng-affiliated scripture devoted to stellar meditation practices centred on the invisible stars of the Northern Dipper. The title-term 五常 wǔcháng may be a scribal corruption of 空常 kōngcháng, formed by contraction of the names of the invisible Fǔ 輔 and Bì 弼 stars of the Dipper (the “souls of Heaven and Earth”); 鬱冥 yùmíng (“airy and mysterious”) probably bears a specialised technical sense. Despite its placement under the Cavern-Mystery (dòngxuán) Língbǎo rubric in the Dàozàng, the text is doctrinally Shàngqīng.
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source in the usual sense. The text opens with a brief 前叙 or doctrinal foreword — a more metaphysical preamble than is typical for the Shàngqīng corpus — which Bobinet considers a post-hoc addition; this is followed without break by the revelation discourse of Tàishàng dàdào jūn 太上大道君.
Abstract
Dated to the Six Dynasties (ca. 420–589) on the grounds of its dependence on, but development of, the Shàngqīng revelation stratum (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 1: 189–191, DZ 324). The received text is a compilation of stellar-contemplative exercises, every one of which invokes stellar deities. The metaphysical framework is developed in the foreword and unfolds across the forty-seven folios: wǔcháng refers to the Five Permanent Ones (explained a posteriori in the prologue, but designating in cognate texts such as DZ 304 Máoshān zhì 9.4a the Five Emperors of the cardinal directions); biàntōng wànhuà refers to the adept’s stellar-induced metamorphosis.
The core practice is the Kōngcháng 空常 meditation (2b–3a, 20b–24a), a twenty-five-star network surrounding the Dipper, grouped five-by-five in correspondence with the Five Planets. The adept paces the network (bùgāng 步綱) and visualises successive in-fluxes of stellar light. A parallel — incomplete — exposition of the Kōngcháng practice, with a supplementary diagram not preserved in the present text, is found in DZ 876 Tàishàng wǔxīng qīyuán kōngcháng jué 太上五星七元空常訣 14b–15b, 17b–21b. DZ 1394 Shàngjīng gāoshàng miàomì shuōjīng 上經高上妙秘說經 (= TC 1: 189) cites the present work in the same ritual context.
Translations and research
- Robinet, Isabelle. La révélation du Shangqing dans l’histoire du taoïsme. 2 vols. Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 1984.
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:189–191 (DZ 324).