Table of Contents

FOREWORD BY NORMAN GIRADOT 
AUTHOR'S NOTE 
l
Taoism 
The Notion of Religion 
The Tao 
The History of Taoism 
The Destruction of Taoism 

2
Everyday Religion 
The Temples 
The Calendar 
Festivals 
Food 

3
Divinity 
Cosmology 
The Gods 
Spiritual Power 

4
The Masters of the Gods 
Puppets and Mediums 
The Barefoot Master and His Ritual 
The Dignitaries of the Tao 
The Register 

5
Ritual 
Becoming a Tao-shih 
The Sacrifice ofWritings 
The Altar 

6
The Inner Landscape 
The Environment 
The Image of the Body 
The Inhabitants 

7
Lao Tzu, the Body of the Tao 
Birth 

8
Keeping the One 
The Preliminary Stage: The Work of the
Ch'i (Ch'i-kung) 
Chaos: The Work of the Tao 
The Return 

9
The Immortals 
The Abstinence from Grains 
Mountains 
Alchemy 

10
Teaching without Words 
The Kingdom of Humpty-Dumpty 
The Fast of the Heart 
Daily Life 

NOTES 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
INDEX

About the Author

Kristofer Schipper is currently Directeur d'Etudes at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Sorbonne, Paris. An ordained Taoist priest and one of the world's leading authorities on Taoism, Schipper has published extensively on the subject in French, English, Chinese, and Japanese. Karen C. Duval is Research Editor with The Papers of Benjamin Franklin. Norman Girardot is chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at Lehigh University and author of Myth and Meaning in Early Taoism (California, 1983).

Reviews

"Schipper is one of the best-known scholars on the Taoist religion and the only one in the West who has been ordained as a Taoist priest. . . . This book is thought-provoking."--"Journal of Asian and African Studies