Shàngqīng tāijīng jì jiějié xíngshì jué 上清胎精記解結行事訣
Formula for the Practice of Untying the Knots from the Records of Embryonic Essence, of the Upper Clarity
About the work
A fourteen-folio early-Shàngqīng ritual manual for the “untying of the embryonic knots” (jiějié 解結) — the loosening of the karmic bonds that form during gestation. Transmitted in the Dàozàng in a composite juàn with DZ 409 (KR5b0093). Position 20 of the Shàngqīng dàdòng zhēnjīng mù.
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens directly with the ritual sequence and carries no author preface or transmission colophon.
Abstract
Dated by Robinet (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 1: 165–166, DZ 408) to the Eastern Jìn — within or immediately after the Yáng Xī revelations (364–370) of the original Shàngqīng stratum. The text is closely cognate with DZ 1382 Shàngqīng jiǔdān shànghuà tāijīng zhōngjì jīng 上清九丹上化胎精中記經, of which it reproduces the essential passages: 1a–12b, 12b–13a, and 13b–14 of the present text correspond respectively to 3a–15b, 22a–b, and 26a of DZ 1382. Both texts represent position 20 of the Shàngqīng dàdòng zhēnjīng mù list.
The ritual’s substance is the undoing, through visualisation and qì-circulation, of the twelve “knots” (jié 結) that are considered to have formed during the twelve months of gestation — these knots being the somatic manifestation of karmic bonds inherited from previous existences and the source of later disease and death. The Jiějié rite is one of the cornerstones of Shàngqīng internal liturgy and remains central to the later Sòng liàndù 鍊度 mortuary tradition.
Translations and research
- Robinet, Isabelle. La révélation du Shangqing dans l’histoire du taoïsme, vol. 2 (on the Dàdòng list, no. 20).
- Bokenkamp, Stephen R. Ancestors and Anxiety: Daoism and the Birth of Rebirth in China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007 — for the broader karma-and-rebirth context.
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:165–166 (DZ 408).