The Three Pure Ones.
Three figures on the high altar of every large temple, representing three primordial breaths rather than three persons. Nobody petitions them. Worshippers walk past to the side halls where the gods with actual jurisdiction sit, which is exactly what you would do in any bureaucracy.
The Sanqing are the highest figures in the Taoist pantheon and are best understood as three stages of the differentiation of the Dao rather than as three persons: the Jade Pure One, associated with the primordial beginning; the Highest Pure One, associated with the numinous treasure and the transmission of scripture; and the Grand Pure One, who is Laojun and who deals with the human world. The arrangement is often noted as having taken shape partly in response to the Buddhist trikaya. What is sociologically interesting is that they receive almost no popular devotion: they sit on the main altar of every large temple in the highest position and worshippers walk past them to the side halls, where the gods with specific jurisdictions — wealth, childbirth, examinations, illness, the sea — are found. The high gods are acknowledged and not petitioned, which is exactly how one behaves toward the top of a bureaucracy.
The same ground, other faiths
claims that share this one's ideasSign in to open the first thread. Everything here is attributed.