The Heaven of Great Clarity
The Heaven of Great Clarity
The alchemical doctrines and practices are deemed not to have originated in the human world; instead, they enter the world through a divine revelation, or through the transcription of scriptures originally kept in heaven. The history of this heaven—of what has been written about it in different times and in different contexts—reveals many details on the nature of the Taiqing tradition. This chapter examines some aspects of this history: the use of the word taiqing to denote an inner spiritual state; the features of the heaven of Great Clarity mentioned in several Taiqing and Daoist sources; and the destiny that this heaven faced when it lost its status as the highest celestial realm.
Keywords: Chinese alchemy, Taiqing scriptures, alchemical doctrines, Daoist doctrines
Stanford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.