Cunxiang or cunsi, visualisation, is the interior half of Taoist liturgy and the tradition regards it as the operative half. While the visible ritual proceeds — the memorial read, the offerings presented, the steps of the Dipper paced out — the officiating priest is simultaneously conducting an internal sequence: summoning the spirit officials resident in his own body, dispatching them, visualising the memorial ascending, and entering the celestial court where the petition will be received. The outer performance is the form the inner journey takes in the world. Ritual manuals accordingly contain two registers of instruction, the audible and the internal, and the internal is often the part a master transmits orally and does not write. The corollary, stated plainly in the tradition, is that a priest who performs only the visible actions accomplishes nothing, however correct they look — which is also why the register and the training matter more than the choreography.