Taoism

From Barbelith

Taoism is best known in the West as a philosophy extolling the virtues of active non-action and the Natural Way of Things, established by Laozi (a.k.a. Lao Tzu, or "Old Boy").

But in China, it's also an incredibly complex folk religion.

Look! More gods than you can shake a stick at (http://www.taoarts.com/pantheon.html)!

Three Pure Ones, one Jade Emperor, Seven Masters (a.k.a. the Seven Exalted Ones, the pupils of Wang Chongyang (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Chongyang)), and Eight Immortals. And that's not the half of it!

In the Sung Dynasty, Wang Chongyang and his seven pupils established what's called Complete Reality Taoism to try to trim away some of the flowery excess and get back to the essential teachings of Taoism. They were all promptly deified themselves by subsequent generations.

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External Links

  • Here's a cool description (http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/yinyang.htm) of how observations of the Big Dipper (the Seven Stars) led to the formation of the yin-yang symbol, the tai chi.

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