A little thread on some of the religious Taoist things in MDZS.

(I'm not an expert on Taoism, neither am I a practitioner, this is what I absorbed over the years by proximity, reading, and know through cultural practices)

**Please correct me if you're a Taoist practitioner and you spot something wrong.

Also, this is not a comprehensive list. This is just a few points.

(!) Reincarnation cycles are a huge part of Taoism and Buddhism. The belief is that everyone goes to hell to pay penance for their bad deeds.

After you're done paying your penance, you get to reincarnate.

Usually you start as something small, like an insect.

And with every life, you reincarnate into something bigger, until you're human again.

In Taoism, the goal is to surpass this by cultivating a golden core, to the point where you reach immortality, and then you can get out of the cycles.

If you do enough good, sometimes you can have like human reincarnations quicker!

This is a never ending cycle. Meaning that as long as your body is whole (in death), and your soul is whole (in death), you get to repeat reincarnation over and over again.

(!) Mo Xuanyu's decision to sacrifice his soul is abhorrent to a lot of people because he didn't just give up his current life, he's giving up his future lives. He's giving up all future iterations of himself, all future possibilities. Gone.

For a religion that is all about the unending nature of reincarnation, the endless cycle of it, this is just a huge no-no.

(!) The entire reason Jin Guangyao built the statue in his mother's likeness was to help her on her path to reincarnation. If she was worshipped enough, she would be able to reincarnate faster.

(!) The dismemberment of Nie Mingjue

To enter reincarnation, your body must be made whole. This is why eunuchs back then would keep onto their 'male roots'. So that they would eventually be buried with them.

This is such a huge belief that even today, the older religious Chinese generation do not dare to donate blood or organs for fear of missing out on reincarnation.

This is also why the fact that NMJ was dismembered was a whole "Gasp" moment.

(!) This is also why the shattering of Xiao Xingchen's soul was devastating to Xue Yang. Without a whole soul, Xiao Xingchen could not reincarnate and could not come back from the dead.

(!) This is also why other sects view Wei Wuxian as evil. Calling on spirits is seen as preventing them from entering reincarnation. He's making it impossible for them to move on into their next life, trapping them in this one, perhaps forever.

The longer you stay in this life without moving on, the more corrupted you get and then by that time, you cannot reincarnate at all. Again, for a religion where reincarnation is a huge thing, it's viewed as not just killing them in this life, but also all future lives.

(!) The use of talismans are very much Taoist in nature. They're still in use today to repel or contain evil. In fact, there used to be one in my house!

The Lan sect uses them to repel evil. Jin Guangyao uses them to seal Nie Mingjue's head in his room.

Anyway I hope that you learned something from this thread >.>

Hey! Someone commented that reincarnation is a mostly Buddhist concept and that Taoism doesn't have it.

I consulted a Chinese Taoist website which says yes.

And a friend who says the texts don't mention it, but it is practiced now.

I will look more into it!