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  • Celestial Masters: History and Ritual in Early Daoist Communities by Terry F. Kleeman
  • James Miller (bio)
Terry F. Kleeman. Celestial Masters: History and Ritual in Early Daoist Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. xiii, 425 pp. Hardcover $49.95, isbn 978-0-674-73716-7.

The beginning of Terry Kleeman’s magisterial history of early Daoism reads like something from a Judge Dee murder mystery. Did Zhang Lu, grandson of the enigmatic cult leader Zhang Ling, ambush his erstwhile superior Marshall Zhang Xiu and steal his force? Or did Zhang Lu merely adopt and expand Zhang Xiu’s teachings without actually having him killed? Did the provincial governor Liu Yan’s son then have Zhang Lu’s mother assassinated and her family exterminated? Such are the murky origins of Celestial Masters Daoism, at least as recorded in the official histories of the era. Kleeman’s approach to this historical material in the first four chapters of his book is to treat the source materials separately. Chapter 1 examines official histories, and locates the origins of the tradition firmly within the civil war at the end of the Han dynasty. It is a complex and often confusing narrative full of murder, strategy, intrigue, and violence. It is as if one were reading about the origins of Christianity from the perspective of the multiple conflicting accounts by Roman aristocrats, generals, and politicians charged with keeping peace in first-century Judea. Here and there are snippets of information about the religious teachings, but they are not the main issue. Such teachings are treated as the fabrications of power-hungry aristocrats eager to dupe the masses into their political cause. [End Page 128]

This military emphasis is softened only slightly in chapter 2, where Kleeman considers the internal Daoist sources. Arguing against Michael Puett’s view of early Daoist practices within the framework of self-cultivation oriented toward divinization, Kleeman emphasizes a social, ecclesial interpretation of early Daoist texts, in which obedience to divinely revealed laws generated the “ammunition” of internal body gods that would be sent into battle through Daoist ritual practice. This was not a battle against the established imperial order of the day, however. Rather, early Daoists existed amid competing secular forces but hoped for the dawn of an age of “Great Peace” when they would be transformed into “transcendents.” Alas, the coexistence of Daoist order within the “profane” world of early China came to an end in 215 when Cao Cao conquered the Daoist community, dispersing the population throughout northern China.

Chapter 3 considers Daoism “after the fall,” based on three third-century texts: two oracular revelations and the “Demon Statutes of Lady Blue” (Nüqing guilü). The central theological question was how to account for the failure of the incipient Daoist state; the blame lay squarely on the immorality of the people. This underlying moral problem was also an ecclesiastical problem: now that the original system of twenty-four parishes had broken down, how could authority be maintained among the faithful? One answer came in oracular revelations from past authorities. Speaking from the grave, Zhang Ling, the first Celestial Master, harangues the people: “You cause the pneumas to be confused and disordered. . . . I cannot stand you people any longer!” (p. 114). In a litany of complaints, he lists their crimes: lusting for glory and wealth, sexual immorality, high taxation, loose talk, and hypocrisy. Another answer came in the form of written codes of conduct in which crimes were punished with the shortening of life. But this period was also a time in which Daoism, freed from its original moorings, began to flourish in complexity, developing complex sexological theories in the (infamous) “Merging of the Pneumas” rite, which were also tied to millenarian visions for a world to come founded by 180,000 elect “seed people.” Accompanying this profusion of texts was the development of demonologies, an important element of the Daoist approach to theodicy.

The first half of Kleeman’s book ends with an account of Daoism under the Northern and Southern dynasties in the fourth to sixth centuries c.e. Following the downfall of the Western Jin in 317, many Chinese people fled south, bringing...

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