A heaven with an administration, and everything that grew around it.

Yin-yang, the Five Phases (wuxing), and qi are not Daoist inventions. They belong to a shared, pan-Chinese cosmology that predates and extends far beyond any single tradition — used across Confucian, Daoist, Buddhist, medical, and folk practice alike. Daoists drew on this common inheritance, as did everyone else. Using these concepts says nothing about anyone’s religious affiliation. The same goes for the Yijing (I Ching, 易經). It is older than both Confucianism and Daoism as distinct traditions, and was later canonised as one of the Confucian Five Classics. Daoists, Confucians and Buddhists have all read it. Consulting it makes no one a Daoist — or a Confucian. Fengshui sits in the same place: scholars classify it as Chinese popular religion and vernacular cosmology. Some Daoists have practised it throughout history; that does not make it Daoist in origin or essence.

These pages are written from published scholarship and primary texts, and each figure lists what it was written from. Where sources disagree, we say so rather than picking one and presenting it as settled. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or speaking for any temple, monastery, lineage, or religious organisation. Nothing here is a substitute for a tradition’s own teachers. We describe what practitioners have believed and done. Describing a belief is not asserting it is true.