道法自然
靈寶天尊
Second of the Three Pure Ones
Festival · Summer Solstice
Second of the Three Pure Ones
The second Pure One, guardian and transmitter of the sacred scriptures. He holds the taiji symbol or a jade ruyi scepter, and represents the moment when primordial chaos begins to differentiate into form.
Festival · Summer Solstice
History · 史记
The second Pure One embodies the moment when undifferentiated chaos first begins to differentiate — the dawning of form out of the formless. Above all he is the guardian and transmitter of the sacred scriptures, and his worship rose together with the Lingbao school in the fifth century, whose liturgies transformed Taoism from private cultivation into a communal religion of rites.
In temple iconography he sits beside Yuanshi Tianzun holding a jade ruyi scepter or the taiji emblem, and is honored especially at the summer solstice.
Legend holds that the Lingbao scriptures were transmitted in three stages across kalpas — first concealed in heaven, then entrusted to the immortals, and finally revealed to humanity when the age was ripe to receive them.
His attribute, the jade ruyi, is a scepter of authority whose name means 'as you will'. It symbolizes the power to command the spirits and sanction the rites by which the scriptures pass from heaven to earth.
靈寶無量度人上品妙經
The foundational Lingbao scripture — the 'book of universal salvation' — ascribed to his teaching and central to Taoist liturgy ever since.
雲笈七籤
Preserves the myths of scripture transmission that anchor his role as keeper of the sacred texts.