上清丹天三氣玉皇六辰飛綱司命大籙

Shàng qīng dān tiān sān qì yù huáng liù chén fēi gāng sī mìng dà lù 上清丹天三氣玉皇六辰飛綱司命大籙

Shàngqīng Great Register of the Flying Steps of the Six Stars that Govern Fate, of the Jade Sovereign of the Three Pneumata of the Cinnabar Heaven

Anonymous (late imperial Daoist register, borrowing a preface attributed to 金明七真 Jīnmíng Qīzhēn; probably Sòng–Míng)

A 14-folio, one-juàn Shàngqīng-framed talismanic register for meditation on the Six Stars of the Nán dǒu 南斗 (“Southern Dipper”), the fictitious Daoist constellation of long life, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng as DZ 675 / CT 675 (Dòngshén bù, Shénfú lèi 洞神部神符類). The text is classified by Schipper & Verellen (2004, 2:1054–55) in their Part 3 section 3.B.4.b (Shàngqīng Registers, modern), indicating a late-imperial (Sòng–Yuán–Míng) date of composition under borrowed Shàngqīng-xuánxué authority.

About the work

The scripture opens with a short preface under the heading “Jīnmíng Qīzhēn xù” 金明七真序 (a borrowed/re-assigned preface in the name of the legendary early-Táng revealer 金明七真 — see the related DZ 674 KR5c0055). The preface lays out the Daoist eschatological frame: the “correct teaching” (zhèng fǎ 正法) alone leads to the “great awakening” (dà jué 大覺), the compassionate care of the Dà dào jūn 大道君 is compared to the tenderness of a mother for her infant and the skill of a good physician, and the purpose of the register is declared to be the salvation of beings afflicted by the eight tribulations (bā nàn 八難), the five poisons (wǔ dú 五毒), and the ten sufferings (shí kǔ 十苦) of the present degenerate age.

The text proper — titled Shàng qīng dān tiān sān qì yù huáng liù chén fēi gāng sī mìng dà lù — is a talismanic and meditative register focussed on the Six Stars of the Southern Dipper (Nán dǒu liù chén 南斗六辰), the Daoist constellation of long life (a fictitious but canonically established Daoist star-group, distinguished from the astronomical Northern Dipper). The central practices are:

• Visualisation meditation on the Six Star Lords and their consort Ladies. The text illustrates the meditation postures: the adept may be seated (figs. 48, reproduced in S&V 2:1054 from the Míng 1598 reprint), reclining (fig. 50), or walking, and visualises the radiant descent of the Star Lord and his Lady into the adept’s body.
• The fēi bù 飛步 or fēi gāng 飛綱 dance-steps on the Southern Dipper pattern. The title of the register — fēi gāng sī mìng “flying steps that govern fate” — refers to a distinctive Daoist dance-step pattern traced over the Nán dǒu asterism. The pattern itself is only briefly alluded to in DZ 675 (2a–b) — drawn on the soles of the adept’s feet as part of two specific talismans — and is described in detail only in the cognate scripture DZ 638 Tài shàng fēi bù Nán dǒu tài wēi yù jīng 太上飛步南斗太微玉經, which is the primary source for the complete dance-step protocol.
• Two foundational talismans: the Dǎo kōng fú 蹈空符 (“Void-Treading Talisman”) to be installed under the adept’s right foot, and the Dǎo kōng bèi tǔ fú 蹈空背土符 (“Void-Treading, Earth-Rejecting Talisman”) to be installed similarly. The text specifies that the talismans should be written in zhū shū 朱書 (cinnabar ink) on a zǐ bó 紫薄 (purple-backed) yellow-paper ground.

The register’s theological frame invokes the Dān tiān 丹天 (“Cinnabar Heaven”) — one of the Thirty-Two Heavens of the mature Shàngqīng / Língbǎo cosmology, specifically associated with the southern quadrant, the sān qì 三氣 (“Three Pneumata”) of cinnabar, vermilion, and crimson, and the Yù huáng 玉皇 or Jade Sovereign who rules that heaven.

Prefaces

The preface attributed to Jīnmíng Qīzhēn 金明七真 is the only prefatorial material. The attribution is almost certainly a late pseudepigraphic borrowing of Jīnmíng’s name — the genuine Jīnmíng corpus (DZ 164, DZ 674, DZ 1388, DZ 1390) is a coordinated early-Táng set of registers quite distinct in diction, structure, and theology from the present text.

Abstract

Kristofer Schipper’s notice in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004, 2:1054–55, DZ 675) is the authoritative modern framing. Schipper emphasises two points:

1. The text is a modern talismanic register (in the TC’s editorial sense, Sòng–Míng) and not a Tàng or earlier composition, despite the attribution of the preface to Jīnmíng Qīzhēn. The Dān tiān-based theology, the elaborately structured talismanic vocabulary, and the visualisation-meditation technique with illustrated postures are all late-imperial features.
2. The work is not self-contained for the practices it claims to transmit. The fēi gāng dance-steps on the Nán dǒu pattern — which give the text its title — are described in detail only in DZ 638 Tài shàng fēi bù Nán dǒu tài wēi yù jīng, an earlier text of the same tradition. DZ 675 thus presupposes knowledge of DZ 638 and a fuller ritual corpus of the Shàngqīng fēi bù tradition.

Per the project’s dating rule, the frontmatter gives the composition window as 1200–1445 (Sòng, Yuán, or early Míng, up to the closing of the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng in 1445). Dynasty: 宋-明 (mid-to-late imperial, indeterminate). The attribution of the preface to Jīnmíng Qīzhēn is preserved in the prose as a pseudepigraphic borrowing.

The Nán dǒu 南斗 (“Southern Dipper”) is a fictitious Daoist asterism — not one of the standard astronomical lunar lodges — canonised in the mature Daoist tradition as the heavenly administration of long life, complementary to the Běi dǒu 北斗 (Northern Dipper) which governs the registers of death. In Daoist cosmology, the Nán dǒu records the lengthening of life-spans, while the Běi dǒu records their shortening; a correctly performed fēi bù 飛步 on the Nán dǒu pattern therefore directly promotes the adept’s longevity. The Nán dǒu cult, first documented in the Sōu shén jì 搜神記 (Gān Bǎo 干寶, Eastern Jìn) and elaborated in the mature Shàngqīng corpus, was one of the most important Daoist devotional systems of the late imperial period.

Translations and research

• Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 2:1054–55 (DZ 675, K. Schipper). Primary reference.
• Schipper, Kristofer. Entry on DZ 638 Tài shàng fēi bù Nán dǒu tài wēi yù jīng in Schipper & Verellen 2004, 2:1050–51. Primary source for the full fēi gāng dance-step protocol that DZ 675 presupposes.
• Andersen, Poul. The Method of Holding the Three Ones: A Taoist Manual of Meditation of the Fourth Century A.D. London: Curzon, 1980. For the broader Shàngqīng meditative tradition.
• Robinet, Isabelle. Taoist Meditation: The Mao-shan Tradition of Great Purity. Albany: SUNY Press, 1993. Foundational study of the Shàngqīng tradition.
• Schafer, Edward H. Pacing the Void: T’ang Approaches to the Stars. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. Classic study of Daoist stellar ritual, including the bù gāng 步綱 step-tradition.
• Andersen, Poul. “The Practice of Bugang.” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 5 (1989–90): 15–53. Technical study of the dance-step tradition of which fēi gāng / fēi bù is a late-imperial form.

Other points of interest

The illustrated meditation postures of DZ 675 are notable: folios 3a (meditating Daoist, seated), 4b–5a (meditation on the Dipper while reclining), and subsequent illustrations depict the adept at the centre of the Six Stars as they descend radiantly into the body. The Míng 1598 reprint of the Daozang preserves these woodblock illustrations — held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France under shelfmark Chinois 9546/670, reproduced as figures 48 and 50 in Schipper & Verellen 2004, 2:1054.

The relation to DZ 638 Tài shàng fēi bù Nán dǒu tài wēi yù jīng is illuminating: DZ 638 is the primary Six-Dynasties / early-Táng scripture establishing the fēi bù Nán dǒu dance-step meditation, while DZ 675 is a much later talismanic-register elaboration of the same tradition. Sòng–Yuán–Míng Daoism elaborated a number of such register-supplements to foundational Shàngqīng scriptures; DZ 675 is an instance of that productive late-imperial tradition.

The pseudepigraphic use of Jīnmíng Qīzhēn’s name in the preface — five centuries after the early-Táng Jīnmíng corpus — is an interesting example of the late-imperial Daoist strategy of conferring authority on newly-composed registers by framing them under the names of celebrated Táng systematisers. It illustrates the continuing textual-practice authority of the Jīnmíng name well into the Sòng and Míng.

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5c0056
• Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), 2:1054–55 — DZ 675 entry (K. Schipper).
• ctext.org: 上清丹天三氣玉皇六辰飛綱司命大籙