太上洞神五星諸宿日月混常經

Tàishàng dòngshén wǔxīng zhū sù rìyuè hùncháng jīng 太上洞神五星諸宿日月混常經

Scripture of the Most High Dòngshén [Canon], on the Five Planets, Sundry Mansions, and the Sun and Moon Mixing with the Ordinary [World]

Anonymous popular astro-divination scripture in one juàn (seven folios), preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng (DZ 657 / CT 657, 洞神部本文類) as the second of two scriptures bundled in the “èr jīng tóng juàn nǚ sì” 二經同卷女四 female-series volume 4 (paired with [[KR5c0037|DZ 656 Tàishàng rìyuè hùnyuán jīng]]). The title’s programmatic keyword hùncháng 混常 (mixing-with-the-ordinary) names the text’s subject: the classified appearances of the celestial bodies — the five planets, the twenty-eight lunar mansions, and the sun and moon — when their essences descend among men and walk the streets in human, animal, or elemental disguise, and the means of recognition, address, and benefit available to those who can spot them.

About the work

The text opens with a prose overview declaring that běidǒu zhī xīng, tàiyī zhī jīng 北斗之星、太一之精 (the Dipper stars, the essence of Tàiyī) customarily takes the form of a diviner in populated places on the first day of each of the four seasonal months (sì mèng yuán rì 四孟元日), recognisable by aberrant carriage and speech, and that pious inquiry is never rebuffed. The body of the scripture then treats, in strict sequence, the incarnation-ethology of each stellar class:

• Five planets (wǔ xīng 五星): Jupiter (mù, suì xīng 木、嵗星) incarnate in the spring on jiǎ/yǐ days in Buddhist monasteries (sì guān 寺觀) and Daoist observatories, of middle stature and sparse beard, in green robes, of peerless dialectic and courtesy, retiring to Dōngyuè (Mount Tài) on the chén day; Mars (huǒ, yínghuò zhī jīng 火、熒惑之精) in the summer on bǐng/dīng days as a vermilion-robed boy of radiant complexion, retiring to Nányuè (Mount Héng) on the wèi day; Saturn (tǔ, zhènxīng 土、鎮星), of the xìn 信 disposition, in the four seasonal junctures and mid-summer tǔwáng 土王 periods on wù/jǐ days, in a yellow robe in markets and wine-shops; Venus (jīn, tàibái 金、太白), of the yì 義 disposition, in autumn on gēng/xīn days in the quarters of women, in white, tall and musical, retiring to Huá Shān on xū day; Mercury (shuǐ, chénxīng 水、辰星), of the zhì 智 disposition, on rén/guǐ days by mountain-streams or on terraces, in dark-cyan robes, bearing the chǐshū 尺書 (foot-measuring document), retiring to Héng Shān on wù/jǐ days.

• Sun and moon: the sun (tàiyáng zhī jīng 太陽之精) in yellow-red garb, mounted on a piebald horse, sings alone in great marshes on the four seasonal dīngsì days, bearing a silk-book pouch; the moon (tàiyīn zhī jīng 太陰之精) as a beautiful young woman, fair-spoken and exquisite-limbed, walking in leisure, concealing herself in the midst of army camps on bǐngzǐ days, granting, to those who inquire of the military arts, supernatural insight and rank at the royal court.

• Twenty-eight lunar mansions (èrshíbā xiǔ 二十八宿), grouped into four palaces of seven: the eastern seven (Jiǎo 角, Kàng 亢, Dī 氐, Fáng 房, Xīn 心, Wěi 尾, Jī 箕), the southern seven (Jǐng 井, Guǐ 鬼, Liǔ 柳, Xīng 星, Zhāng 張, Yì 翼, Zhěn 軫), the western seven (Kuí 奎, Lóu 婁, Wèi 胃, Mǎo 昴, Bì 畢, Zī 觜, Shēn 參), and the northern seven (Dǒu 斗, Niú 牛, Nǚ 女, Xū 虛, Wēi 危, Shì 室, Bì 壁). Each mansion is given a characteristic day-branch, a characteristic human or animal guise (monastic, Daoist, old woman, young woman, nun, child, elder mounted on a yellow ox bearing a wine-vessel, etc.), a characteristic dress, a characteristic environment of appearance, a characteristic gift given to the recognising adept (agricultural lore, medical prescriptions, military stratagems, immortality techniques, fine fruit for fertility, etc.), and — significantly — a characteristic retribution for failure to pay proper reverence (ruò bù yǐ lǐ dài zhī, sān nián zhī nèi jiā pò rén wáng 若不以禮待之三年之內家破人亡 — “should one not treat them according to ritual propriety, within three years one’s household will be broken and its members perish”).

The text closes with a historical anchor — a closing list of famous men who owed their power to their recognition of a specific stellar essence:

太公識太白之精，李斯識鎮星之精，諸葛亮識熒惑之精，得兵機祕要之訣。黃帝識太陰月之精，白日上昇。張良識歲星之精及太白之精。韓信識角亢之精。李靖識南方七星之精，得萬勝兵訣、雷公之式。曹操識日精。李淳風識東方七星之精，通玄象，識氣候。

(Tàigōng recognised the Venus essence; Lǐ Sī recognised the Saturn essence; Zhūgě Liàng recognised the Mars essence and obtained the mysteries of military stratagem. Huángdì recognised the lunar essence and ascended to heaven in broad daylight. Zhāng Liáng recognised the Jupiter and Venus essences. Hán Xìn recognised the JiǎoKàng essence. Lǐ Jìng recognised the essence of the southern seven mansions, obtaining the Ten-Thousand-Victories Military Precepts and the Thundergod’s Liturgical Form. Cáo Cāo recognised the solar essence. Lǐ Chúnfēng recognised the essence of the eastern seven mansions, threading the mysterious phenomena and penetrating the seasonal vapours.)

Prefaces

No preface. The text opens directly with its first astrological declaration.

Abstract

Schipper’s notice in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004, 2:787–88, DZ 657) reads:

“Book of the Five Stars, Sundry Mansions, and the Sun and the Moon. Incorporated in the Dòngshén canon, this small popular book on the planets, the mansions, and the sun and the moon that mix with the everyday world (hùncháng 混常) tells us about the moments and the ways of incarnation of these stellar powers on Earth. Those who are able, thanks to this book, to recognize these powers and meet them will greatly benefit. Many great men of the past, the latest mentioned being Lǐ Chúnfēng 李淳風 (602–670), owed their power to their knowledge of the whereabouts of the stars.”

The terminus post quem is 670 CE, the death-date of Lǐ Chúnfēng, the latest historical figure named in the scripture’s closing historical roll. The terminus ante quem is 1445 CE, the compilation of the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 in which the text is first certainly attested; van der Loon’s Taoist Books in the Libraries of the Sung Period does not list the scripture among his Sòng-bibliography-attested titles, and the text is absent from the 1042 Chóngwén zǒngmù. The text’s classification in the Dòngshén 洞神 canon (where it is bundled with KR5c0037), its cháng rén 常人 / sì guān 寺觀 / dào shì 道士 sociology of walking-among-men incarnations, and its lexical register — close to the Táng–Sòng popular astrological corpus — all suggest a floruit in the later Táng or the Sòng, but no firm internal evidence permits a narrower bracket; the frontmatter accordingly uses 670–1445 with dynasty “唐—明初”.

The text is anonymous. The catalog meta lists no author, and none is plausibly recoverable; the scripture is presented as a revelation from the Tàishàng 太上 (Most High).

The work’s signature innovation is its consolidation of three distinct divinatory traditions — planetary (wǔxīng 五星), lunar-mansion (èrshíbā xiǔ 二十八宿), and solar-lunar — into a single “walking stars” taxonomy (hùncháng 混常), where each stellar essence is keyed to a specific day-branch, locale, disguise, and mode of reciprocity with the human recogniser. The text is of considerable interest for the history of Táng–Sòng popular religion and its theology of divine ubiquity.

Translations and research

• Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 2:787–88 (DZ 657, K. Schipper). Primary reference.
• Ho, Peng Yoke. Chinese Mathematical Astrology: Reaching Out to the Stars. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. For the Táng–Sòng popular astrological idiom the present scripture redeploys.
• Kalinowski, Marc. Cosmologie et divination dans la Chine ancienne: le Compendium des Cinq Agents (Wuxing dayi, VIe siècle). Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 1991. For the wǔxíng divinatory apparatus.
• Kalinowski, Marc, ed. Divination et société dans la Chine médiévale: étude des manuscrits de Dunhuang de la Bibliothèque nationale de France et de la British Library. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2003. For the medieval divinatory corpus.
• Sun Xiaochun and Jacob Kistemaker. The Chinese Sky During the Han: Constellating Stars and Society. Leiden: Brill, 1997. For the twenty-eight mansions as a system.

Other points of interest

The scripture’s “walking stars” taxonomy (hùncháng 混常) is a distinctive contribution to the Daoist religious imagination. Its systematic correlation of celestial bodies with specific urban and rural locales — monasteries, wine-shops, army camps, the quarters of women, marshes, terraces — furnishes a theological topography in which every class of liminal space is home to a different stellar incarnation. The text can be read as a devotional mirror for the Táng–Sòng urban adept, teaching both the civic art of keeping one’s manners intact in public encounters (since the unrecognised stranger might prove to be Mars or Mercury) and the pragmatic art of soliciting supernatural boons across the social map.

The text’s retribution clause — that failure of propriety toward a mansion-incarnation brings the collapse of the offender’s household within three years — represents an unusually explicit articulation of a retributive reciprocity in the popular Daoist mode. This is of interest for the comparative study of Táng–Sòng retributional theologies (cf. the contemporary Tàishàng gǎnyìng piān 太上感應篇 tradition).

The text’s homologisation of planets with the Five Constant Virtues (wǔcháng 五常) — Jupiter with rén 仁 (benevolence), Mars with lǐ 禮 (ritual-propriety), Saturn with xìn 信 (trust), Venus with yì 義 (righteousness), Mercury with zhì 智 (wisdom) — is a classic Hàn legacy, here deployed to structure the order of incarnation.

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5c0038
• Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), 2:787–88 — DZ 657 entry (K. Schipper).
• Wikipedia: Li Chunfeng (terminus post quem anchor, 602–670)