Tài shàng dào dé dà tiān zūn shuō dào yuán yī qì jīng 太上道德大天尊說道元一氣經
The Most-High Way-and-Power Great Heavenly Worthy’s Spoken Scripture of the Way’s Origin in the Single Pneuma
Anonymous; Qīng spirit-writing scripture (Dào zàng jí yào)
A very short revelation-scripture on the cosmology of the one qì 一炁 and its relation to the Three (三 — i.e., the Three Pure Ones / sān qīng 三淸), composed in unbroken four-character verse and presented as direct discourse of the Tàishàng Dàodé Dà Tiānzūn (= Lǎo zǐ deified). The argument: “the Way begins from the One and is completed by the Three; the Three produce the myriad things; form and pneuma joined together and partaking of the same pneuma as Heaven embraces the Way and gives birth to the True; the formless True Pneuma transforms and form-and-pneuma is preserved…” — a condensed cosmology in which the Three Worthies are explained as triadic differentiation within the single primordial pneuma (一炁眞元 / 一炁中傳), and ritual practice as the threefold meditation that returns the Three to the One. The text closes with the seal-formula 勅 (“commanded”).
Prefaces
The text carries no preface, postface, signature, or date.
Abstract
A short Qīng spirit-writing scripture preserved only in the Dào zàng jí yào, with no presence in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng. The pagination of the source file begins at sheet 5a, indicating that the present scripture in the woodblock print stood at the end of a longer section (possibly bound after KR5i0008’s Cháng qīng jìng with its commentary, or after a related preface-set), and that the four leading sheets occupied by the preceding text are not pertinent to the present scripture’s content. The scripture’s terminus a quo is the late Míng / early Qīng (the genre and the Three-Worthies cosmology are post-Sòng); the terminus ad quem is Jiǎng Yǔpǔ’s 1809 compilation. No firmer dating is internally derivable.
The text is doctrinally akin to the Lǎo zǐ shuō wǔ chú jīng 老子說五廚經 and to several short cosmological revelations in the Yún jí qī qiān — terse 4-character or 5-character distillations of Daoist cosmogony designed for liturgical recitation — and likely served as a recitation insertion in a longer Quánzhēn scripture-cycle of the early-Qīng Lǚzǔ planchette circles that produced much of the DZJY corpus.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.