The covenant at Heming Mountain.
In 142 Lord Lao descended and appointed Zhang Daoling to govern the spirits under a written covenant, and his first act was to abolish the blood sacrifices the old local cults had been extracting from villages. Institutional Taoism dates from that year — five centuries after Laozi, and about a covenant rather than a book.
The revelation on Heming Mountain in 142 CE is the founding charter of Taoism as an organised religion, and it is worth noting how different it is from the founding of a philosophy. What Zhang Daoling receives is not insight but a commission: Lord Lao appoints him Celestial Master under a covenant of Orthodox Unity, granting him authority over the spirit world. The programme that follows is administrative and reformist — the existing local cults, which demanded blood sacrifice and payment from villagers, are declared to be demons operating without authority, and are abolished or subordinated. In their place come registered parishes, appointed officers, written petitions, a system of confession and the annual rice levy. The bureaucratic character of Taoism is present from the first day and is the point of the revelation, not a later accretion. Institutional Taoism therefore dates itself to 142 rather than to Laozi, which is roughly the gap between the New Testament and the Council of Nicaea.
The same ground, other faiths
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