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They are regarded as pure manifestations of the Tao [1] and the origin of all sentient beings, along with the "lords of the Three Life Principles", or qi. [2] They were also gods who were "associated with the sky, the earth and the underworld." [1] They were thought to be able to control and have power over time in various ways. [2]
Given that many Taoists believed that their gods and gods belonging to different ethnic groups and other religions were subject to the roles the Tao made for them, [84] becoming a xian is technically a process that lets a practitioner get enough holy or spiritual power to defy that role, [citation needed] and some Taoists chose to worship xian ...
"Gods" refers to deities and there are many kinds: heaven gods/celestials (天神); earth spirits (地祇); wuling (物靈, animism, the spirit of all things); netherworld gods (地府神靈); gods of the human body (人體之神); gods of the human ghost (人鬼之神) etc. "Xian" are those who have acquired perfect cultivation of the Tao ...
During the Shang dynasty (17th―11th century BCE), the Chinese referred to their highest god as Shangdi or Di (帝, 'Lord'). [1] During the following Zhou dynasty, Tian became synonymous with this figure. Before the 20th century, worship of Tian was an orthodox state religion of China. [further explanation needed]
There are a variety of immortals in Chinese thought, and one major type is the xian, which is thought in some religious Taoism movements to be a human given long or infinite life. Gods are innumerable, as every phenomenon has or is one or more gods, and they are organised in a complex celestial hierarchy. [6]
Chinese theology, which comes in different interpretations according to the Chinese classics and Chinese folk religion, and specifically Confucian, Taoist, and other philosophical formulations, [1] is fundamentally monistic, [2] that is to say it sees the world and the gods of its phenomena as an organic whole, or cosmos, which continuously emerges from a simple principle. [3]
Each school of philosophy has its tao, its doctrine of the way in which life should be ordered. Finally in a particular school of philosophy whose followers came to be called Taoists, tao meant 'the way the universe works'; and ultimately something very like God, in the more abstract and philosophical sense of that term. [19]
A Daoist temple (traditional Chinese: 觀; simplified Chinese: 观; pinyin: guàn), also called a dàoguàn (道观) or gōngguàn (宫观), is a place where the Dao is observed and cultivated. It is a place of worship in Taoism. Taoism is a religion that originated in China, with the belief in immortality, which urges people to become immortal ...