section_path: Varieties/Other divisions of Taoism/Religious Taoism
section_name: Religious Taoism
paragraph_text: Religious Taoism
  
  Some Taoist sects are expressly religious in the Western sense. "Lord Heaven" and " Jade Emperor " were terms for a Taoist supreme deity also used in Confucianism and Chinese folk religion, and some conceptions of this deity thought of the two names as synonymous.
  
  The Taoist Jade Emperor in the first millennium AD was a primary deity among polytheists who had a heaven that contained numerous ministries and officials and which was "modelled on...the earthly emperor ".
  
  Polytheist Taoists venerated one or more of these kinds of spiritual entities: "deified heroes...forces of nature" and " nature spirits ", xian, spirits, gods, devas and other celestial beings from Chinese Buddhism, Indian Buddhism, and Chinese folk religion, various kinds of beings occupying heaven, members of the celestial bureaucracy, ghosts, "mythical emperors", Laozi, a trinity of high gods that varied in how it was thought of, and the Three Pure Ones. Some Taoists chose not to worship beings they saw as gods, and only worshipped guardian spirits or "celestials", such as devas, various kinds of beings occupying heaven, members of the celestial bureaucracy, and xian. In some Taoist sects, the Tao was the primary thing that was venerated and beings that would be gods in other sects were merely treated as supernatural beings similar to gods who could only act in accordance with the Tao's wishes.
  
  When the Tao Te Ching was written, many Taoists told stories and legends about heroes "whose bodies had been rendered invulnerable". This could be achieved by making contact with "dragon's blood" or a river in the afterlife, or drinking the "waters of the 'Well of Life' and eating the 'fungus of immortality'".
  
  Ordinary Chinese in the early Tang dynasty often worshipped local gods, Buddhist gods and devas, and Taoist gods simultaneously, and this population included a significant amount of the Taoists who have ever worshipped devas throughout history.
  
  The trinity is thought by scholars to have evolved into the Three Pure Ones. It was thought of in the early Han dynasty as the three gods Tianyi, Diyi, and "the Taiyi". These beings were varyingly interpreted as relatively simple heavenly, earthly, and all-purpose gods respectively, the "supreme deity" (an intangible god that represented the mind of the Tao), "his disciple", the Lord Tao (a more physical god representing the Tao), and Lord Lao (Laozi "deified"), or an emanation of the Tao that was ultimately singular in nature.
  
  An unrelated trinity was the Three Great Emperor-Officials, three of the highest shen in some branches of religious Taoism thought to be able to pardon sins.
  
  The Tao was not worshipped alone, although gods do exist that anthropomorphize it in various ways. Laozi was sometimes thought to be a god or "the image of the Tao".
  
  "Some Taoist adepts" worshipped thousands of gods that were thought to exist in the body.