The Way of Former Heaven (Xiantiandao 先天道)

Xiantiandao 先天道, the "Way of Former Heaven," is the common designation of a network of Chinese popular sects that share similar symbols, beliefs, and practices and from which many later Chinese redemptive societies, such as Yiguandao 一貫道 ("The Way of Pervading Unity") and Tongshanshe 同善社 ("The Fellowship of Goodness") emerged. In addition, Xiantiandao is a significant influence on the Vietnamese new religious movement Cao Dai (Đạo Cao Đài) that emerged from Sino-Vietnamese sectarian groups in 1920s French-colonial Saigon. While claiming descent from a genealogy of enlightened masters that goes back to the dawn of Chinese civilization, Xiantiandao emerged as a distinct religious group in eighteenth-century Jiangxi Province in southeastern China. In this early period, practitioners and outsiders seem to have referred to the sect and its teachings by various names, including Xiantiandao and Qinglianjiao 青蓮教 ("Green Lotus Sect"), a term that appears in nineteenth-century government surveillance material. Having appealed to traveling merchants and labor migrants in the nineteenth century, Xiantiandao quickly spread throughout southern and southwestern China and, from the 1860s onward, also to Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, especially in Thailand and what is now Singapore and Malaysia. Like many other nonofficial sects, Xiantiandao was subject to state persecution and vilification as an "evil sect" (xiejiao 邪教)—a deprecatory label employed by government officials and cultural elites to criminalize nonofficial religious groups that is still used today in public and political discourses in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Accordingly, Xiantiandao was banned and persecuted by consecutive Chinese regimes, including the PRC. Thus, although almost entirely eradicated on the Chinese mainland since the early 1950s when it was considered a "counterrevolutionary sect" (fandong huidaomen 反動會道門), the sect still retained a considerable presence among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. In fact, state persecution has fueled Xiantiandao's translocal spread in many ways. For instance, many practitioners were forced underground following a large-scale crackdown in southwestern China in the 1840s. With many leaders apprehended and executed and forced to act clandestinely, Xiantiandao branched into various subsects and local networks, many of which later evolved into independent sectarian groups. The well-known redemptive societies Tongshanshe and Yiguandao, but also others such as Guigendao 歸根道 ("The Way of Returning to the Origin") split off from Xiantiandao during this period of instability in the second half of the nineteenth century. Similar to many other Chinese sects, Xiantiandao's teachings are often described as "syncretic." This characterization highlights its peculiar synthesis of established symbols and beliefs—most notably the so-called "Three Teachings" (sanjiao 三教) of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism—and millenarian beliefs centering on the supramundane creator deity Wusheng Laomu 無生老母 ("Eternal Venerable Mother") and her salvationist mission to rescue humankind from the impending apocalypse. Stressing individual moral self-cultivation as a means to restore one's inherent original nature (a Buddhist concept), Xiantiandao practitioners seek to repatriate to Laomu's "original homeland" (guxiang 故鄉) from which the early humans were exiled many eons ago. The sect's teachings are immersed in a narrative of decline and moral corruption, according to which humankind is doomed to be annihilated in the final cosmic apocalypse, and only by following Laomu's teachings will humans be able to restore their inherent true selves and return to her eternal paradise. Like in many earlier popular sects during the Qing period and many later ones, including Yiguandao and Tongshanshe, this narrative is embedded in a cycle of three consecutive cosmic periods. Even though the final period, which is called baiyang 白陽 ("White Sun"), represents the beginning of the world's end, it also marks the period during which the universal truth is being made available to all of humankind, whereas in earlier cosmic periods, only selected people had access to it. Accordingly, the baiyang period represents a time of high urgency to spread the teachings and help more people avoid the apocalypse. Besides highlighting how Confucian-oriented social values are instrumental in actualizing one's true self, vegetarianism is crucial in Xiantiandao teachings. Drawing on Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian notions of meat abstention and fasting, it serves many purposes, from ritual purification to ethical concerns and cleaning up karmic bonds of one's past existences. In addition, many Xiantiandao rituals, individual and communal, are conceptualized in Daoist-inspired terms, most notably neidan 內丹 ("internal alchemy"). Adopting the trope of laboratory alchemy to conceptualize meditative practices, neidan practitioners typically seek to invert the natural course of life by refining subtle substances within the human body to nurture an immortal embryo that will withstand the decay and death of the physical body. Finally, as far as we know, Xiantiandao is the earliest Chinese sectarian group to have adopted spirit-writing (fuluan 扶鸞, "yielding the phoenix," or fuji 扶乩, "yielding the planchette") as a means of communicating with deities, Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and deceased leaders. While it was already a widespread practice in many different religious contexts, it was only in the 1820s to 1840s that spirit-writing gained currency in Xiantiandao. It became an essential means of religious text production and a source of legitimacy, especially regarding leadership and organization. In contrast to Buddhist and Daoist clerics, Xiantiandao sectarians consider themselves lay practitioners, meaning that most live ordinary lives and maintain families. The sect is organized according to a hierarchy of eight ranks, but the exact number may vary depending on which subsect, region, and period one looks at. This system channels access to the sect's teachings and practices, whereby higher-level ("esoteric") teachings are only available to accomplished practitioners. The rank-holders at the top of the hierarchy are also responsible for the overall organization and translocal proselytization. In many subsects, the highest four ranks are only available to men. Yet, researchers found that many practitioners and even entire communities are female, especially in Southeast Asia. Thus, during most of the twentieth century, Xiantiandao "vegetarian halls" (zhaitang 齋堂) in Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia served as safe havens for unmarried women who sought to evade male-dominated lives and for widows. In traditional Chinese societies, Confucian values of obedience and female subordination strongly compelled girls and women to marry and give birth to children. Accordingly, seeking refuge in a Xiantiandao temple and living a chaste religious life was a rare opportunity to evade male domination. Because of the PRC's strict religious policy and anti-sectarian agenda, Xiantiandao has almost disappeared from the Chinese mainland. Even though some communities survived in Taiwan and Southeast Asia and continued to thrive well into the twentieth century, ideological pressure from mainstream Buddhist groups led to a large-scale "Buddhisization" of Xiantiandao communities. Accordingly, many sites were converted into Buddhist monasteries and temples, and many sectarian practitioners formally became Buddhist monastics.