Huánglù zhāi shí tiānzūn yí 黃籙齋十天尊儀
Liturgy of the Ten Celestial Worthies of the Yellow-Register Fast
About the work
Item 3 (場三) of the six-part Huánglù mortuary series (DZ 509–514). The opening rubric 二儀同卷場三 (“two liturgies in one fascicle, Chǎng 3”) shows that this fascicle bundles the present work with the immediately following Huánglù zhāi shízhōu sāndǎo bádù yí KR5b0216.
Abstract
The shí tiānzūn 十天尊 (“Ten Celestial Worthies”) are the ten salvific deities who together preside over the Huánglù deliverance of the deceased. The rite invokes them in order — beginning with the Shífāng jiùkǔ tiānzūn 十方救苦天尊 (Celestial Worthy of Salvation from Suffering of the Ten Directions) and proceeding through the Yùbǎo huángshàng tiānzūn 玉寳皇上天尊 and his counterparts — each governing one of the ten paradises through which the released souls travel. The opening passage invokes the Dōngfāng Qīnglíng Shǐlǎo Cāngdì jiǔqì tiānjūn 東方青靈始老蒼帝九炁天君 and his Huálín paradise 華林境界, then walks through the parallel paradises of the other directions. Each invocation is paired with a four-line dedicatory verse (e.g. Dōngfāng shèngjìng miào nánsī 東方聖境妙難思). The cumulative effect — to dispatch the named deceased through ten salvific paradises — is the Huánglù equivalent of the Buddhist pure-land visualisation.
Translations and research
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. 2: 1011–1012 (DZ 512, entry by John Lagerwey).