Lord Lao’s Mountain: From Celestial Master Daoism to Contemporary Daoist Practice*

The Mountain of Lord Lao (Laojun shan 老君山) in Xinjin 新津 District, Sichuan 四川 Province, has been identified as the center of a former diocese of Celestial Master Daoism (Tianshi dao 天師道). Moreover, it remains a famous sanctuary for the worship of Laozi 老子. The temple on Mt. Laojun is today an active religious institution that belongs to the Dragon Gate (Longmen 龍門) lineage of Complete Perfection (Quanzhen 全真) Daoism. In the late Qing dynasty and Republican times, the temple was closely connected with a popular religious movement called the Teachings of the Liu School (Liumen jiao 劉門教), which was founded by the Confucian scholar Liu Yuan 劉沅 (1768–1856). In this paper, several aspects of Mt. Laojun’s past and present will be highlighted. Special emphasis will be placed on the Liumen movement and the impact that this community made on the recent development of the sanctuary. We will see that the current hagiographic legitimization of Mt. Laojun, which holds that Lord Lao once dwelled there and engaged in secluded self-cultivation, very likely has been fabricated by the patriarchs of the Liumen movement. This sacred site is an excellent example of a former Celestial Masters’ diocese that still functions as a Daoist institution in contemporary China, and the multifaceted Daoist traditions of Sichuan are reflected in its modern history.