In 362, the Xus employed Yang Xi as their household shaman and spiritual advisor, and two years later when he first established contact with the Perfected Ones from the previously unknown heaven of Shangqing (上清, Highest/Supreme Clarity), they prophesied that the Xu family would have an important role in transmitting the prophetic revelations.

[1] According to Shangqing School tradition, between 364 and 370, Yang Xi had a series of midnight visions in which Perfected Ones appeared to him in order to reveal their sacred scriptures, talismans, and secret registers, as well as their instructions concerning personal matters such as health and longevity.

[4] The Zhengao says the Perfected women told Yang that since they could not express themselves in debased human writing, he would act as an intermediary, rendering their words in his own outstanding calligraphy.

Early readers of these revealed texts were impressed both by the erudite literary style of ecstatic verse and the artistic calligraphy of Yang Xi and Xu Hui.

Notably, Gu Huan (顧歡, c. 425-c. 487) edited a compilation of Yang-Xu texts entitled Zhenji (真跡, Traces of the Perfected), which became the model for Tao Hongjing's 499 Zhengao.

The esoteric c. 493-514 Dengzhen yinjue (登真隱訣, Concealed Instructions for the Ascent to Perfection), which provides technical guidance for Shangqing adepts, and the 499 Zhengao, which was intended for a broader audience of laypeople.

Daoist zhenren "Perfected" deities gao "dictated" the Shangqing revelations to highly literate medium and shaman Yang Xi.

Note the change of the original bǐ 匕 "spoon" at the top of 眞 (compare the Small seal script in the infobox above) to shí 十 "ten".

[33] Tao Hongjing's redacted fragments relate the circumstances of the revelations, the Perfected Ones' explanations and interpretations of their scriptures and methods, private correspondences between Yang and the Xus, and responses to their direct questions addressed to the Shangqing divinities.

[1] Each chapter has a three-character title, emulating the New Text school's apocryphal chènwěi (讖緯, "mystical Confucian prophetical works of Eastern Han").

[35] Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted to minor recipes and methods by lesser divinities, with information on the afterlife of the Xus' relatives and acquaintances, and a work revealed to Peijun (裴君, Lord Pei), the Baoshen qiju jing (寶神起居經, Scripture on the Behavior for Treasuring the Spirit).

[36] The fourth chapter concerns Maoshan, its long history of mystics and hermits, biographies of the Mao brothers, and Guo Sichao (郭四朝), an early inhabitant of the mountain.

The seventh chapter is Tao's postface, explaining his editorial methods, the history of the Shangqing textual corpus being scattered and plagiarized, and the Xu family genealogy.

[34] Scholars have long recognized that much of the Zhengao content derives from a syncretic assortment of older sources from Wu shamanism, Celestial Master Daoism, and Chinese Buddhism, despite the "resplendent homogeneity which originally disparate elements appear to have acquired in his inspired transcriptions".

[39] The Shangqing school "succeeded in adhering to a perilous ridgeline" situated between ancient shamanism or mediumship and modern institutionalizing a church and codifying its liturgy.

The passage is also an explicit renunciation of Celestial Masters marriage rites in which the initial sexual act of a bride and groom was performed ritually in the presence of the elders.

Yang Xi names this refined type of spiritual union as oujing (偶景, "mating of the effulgent spirits") rather than the Celestial Master sexual practice of heqi (合氣, "joining of the pneumas").

At their spirit marriage on the next night, Consort An explains their destiny, It is just that I grasp the crux of things and so seized this rare opportunity, thereby responding to cosmic rhythms and numerological fate.

As a result, Our records were compared, our names verified; Our immaculate tallies joined in the jeweled realms— Our dual felicity has been arranged: We will travel as wild geese supporting one another.

...[43] The Zhengao is a unique source for understanding the ancient shamanistic Daoism of Southern China, and its ecstatic poetry shows a distinct relationship to earlier shaman-inspired literature such as in the Chuci anthology.

The spiritual quest for "a divine lover who is at the same time a redeemer" is a central theme in the Zhen Gao, and the male and female Daoist adepts exchange love poems with their immortal counterparts, in celebration of their ecstatic union.

Leaving my chariot behind, I search for an empty vessel, In all this I am full of passionate feelings, Who like a mustard grain can suddenly grow to cover ten thousand acres!

[44] Among the Perfected who transmitted poetry to Yang Xi, the most prolific (9 poems from 21 August 365 to 28 May 366) was Lady Youying (右英婦人), the thirteenth daughter of the goddess Queen Mother of the West.

All nine were "seduction songs" for Yang's patron Xu Mi, who the Perfected said was destined to join Lady Youying in spirit marriage and ascend to Shangqing heaven.

Lady Youying hoped that her poetry, filled with the colors, sounds, and scenes of the celestial regions, will convince him to join her in a mystical sacred marriage in the "unseen realm".

[48] The Silk Road transmission of Buddhism into China began in the 1st or 2nd century CE, and the new foreign religion had become widely popular by the time the Zhengao was written.

[50] The Chinese philosopher and author Hu Shih (1935) first discovered the Sishi'er zhang jing borrowings in the Zhengao (volumes 6 and 9, and criticized Tao Hongjing for plagiarism.

The following passage uses two fundamental tenets of Buddhism—Dukkha "suffering; unsatisfactoriness" (Chinese kǔ 苦 "bitterness"), the first of the Four Noble Truths, and Saṃsāra "karmic cycle; reincarnation" (lúnhuí 輪回 "transmigration")— to exhort Shangqing adepts toward single-minded, painstaking training and to reject the futile cravings of mundane life.

The text comprises some 70 poems and songs recited to Yang Xi by the Shangqing divinities, and they communicated with verbal artistry specifically "calculated to impress and enchant" the literate aristocracy of the Eastern Jin court.

Yang Xi's "virtuoso efforts combining spiritual content with lyric technique" precisely appealed to this 4th-5th century Chinese audience, since most of the Perfected Ones' verses had the then current pentasyllabic meter favored by the Eastern Jin literati themselves.