Taoism Part 2
Sunday 21 July 2013 • 17:41 • 0 comments
Hey guys! I'm back with more on Taoism! :)
Taoist Pantheon:
Westerners who study Taoism are sometimes surprised to discover that Taoists venerate gods, as there doesn't seem to be a place for deities in Taoist thinking.
Taoism does not have a God in the way that the Abrahamic religions do. There is no omnipotent being beyond the cosmos, who created and controls the universe. In Taoism the universe springs from the Tao, and the Tao impersonally guides things on their way.
But the Tao itself is not God, nor is it a god, nor is it worshipped by Taoists.
This may seem surprising as Taoists do use 'God-talk' to refer to the Tao:
The Venerable Lord, the Tao, was at rest in open mystery, beyond silent desolation, in mysterious emptiness... Say it/he is there and do not see a shape; say it/he is not there, yet all beings follow him for life.
Taishang laojun kaitian jing, in Livia Kohn, The Taoist Experience: An Anthology, 1993
And they conventionally revere Lao Tsu both as the first god of Taoism and as the personification of the Tao.
Nonetheless, Taoism has many gods, most of them borrowed from other cultures. These deities are within this universe and are themselves subject to the Tao.
Many of the deities are gods of a particular role, rather than a personal divine being and have titles rather than names.
Books often describe the Taoist pantheon as a heavenly bureaucracy that mimics the secular administrations of Imperial China. Some writers think that this is the wrong way round and that the secular administrations took their cue from the structure of the heavens. Since the Imperial administrations and the religious culture of the time were closely intertwined this would not be surprising.
I'll be back soon with more information on Taoism! :)
- Clarice :)
Citations:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/taoism/beliefs/gods.shtml