辯偽錄 2.12

2.12

The first transformation states: Laozi was born prior to the Five Cycles. The second transformation states: Laozi was born amidst the Three Qi. The sixth transformation states: Lord Lao's surname was Li, his taboo name was Hongyuan Yaoling, and his style was Guangming; in the seventh year of Shanghe, the year being gengchen, on the third day of the ninth month, which was jiazi, at the mao hour, he was first born in the Jade Country of the Northern Dark, in the Li Valley between the Celestial Ridge and the Numinous Mirror Mountain. On the night the Holy Mother of Dark Numinosity gave birth, three suns emerged in the east and nine dragons spewed water; the Moon Consort scattered blossoms, and the Sun Youth radiated brilliance. At the age of five he embodied the Way and solidified genuine truth; at twenty he possessed a golden form and jade countenance. Abandoning his home and leaving his kin, he distanced his traces from the worldly dust. Later, moved by Yuanshi's descent to teach, he was bestowed the Yuyi Taizhang Taidong Zhenjing; the Purple Tenuity Celestial Thearch, Lord of Jade Clarity, descended in a carnelian carriage to receive him, granting him the cinnabar seal and talismanic texts, making him Sovereign of the Shangqing Golden Gate, Latter Saint Thearch, commanding the divine immortals of the ten heavens, rivers, and seas. The eleventh transformation states: Lord Lao, on the first day of the seventh month in the first year of Qinghan, lodged his dark spirit and jade essence to descend into the Jade Maiden of the Great Primal for one thousand three hundred years; he was styled the Unsurpassed Laozi, also styled the Dharma King of the Great Chiliocosm. The twelfth transformation states: Lord Lao, in the first year of Qinghan, lodged in the Flying Dark Jade Maiden of the Nine Heavens for eighty-one years; he was styled Laozi of High Ascendancy. The thirteenth transformation states: Lord Lao, on the ninth day of the ninth month, a jiawu day, in the first year of Qinghan, descended into the Jade Maiden of the Primal Element for seventy-three years; he was styled Laozi of Nine Numinosities. The tenth transformation states: Laozi, in the gengchen year of Yang Jia, the eighteenth king of Yin, in the intercalary fifth month, entered the mouth of the Jade Maiden of Dark Subtlety for eighty-one years; on the fifteenth day of the second month in the gengchen year, the ninth year of Wu Ding, the Holy Mother's left armpit broke open as she held a plum tree, and he was born. Immediately at birth he walked nine paces; with each step lotus blossoms grew, and nine dragons spewed water; he was endowed with the seventy-two marks and eighty-one minor signs. Pointing with his left hand to heaven and his right hand to earth, he said: 'Above heaven and below heaven, only the Way is exclusively honored; I shall expound and propagate the unsurpassed Daoist teachings to ferry across all beings universally.' It also states: Li Lingfei attained the way of cultivating longevity; his true wife, Lady Yin of Tianshui, was napping by day in Lixiang and saw the Supreme One descend from heaven, transforming into a dark pearl; she swallowed it and became pregnant, and after eighty-one years he was born with white hair, called Laozi; born beneath a plum tree, he pointed to the plum as his surname.