Taoism and Sword in Sword Culture

Taoism and sword have endless stories. Taoism is about preventing evil, and the sword is naturally a powerful tool for Taoism to kill evil and punish evil. In the Taoist fasting ceremony, the sword is an instrument of high-powered practice, and the spells, taboos, qi-taking and burning symbols in the ceremony must match the sword. Taoism believes that the generation of heaven and earth, Xuanwei's order, all rely on the three-foot sword. The sword with superb skills on the altar has incomparable divine power, which can slay and exorcise demons. In the history of China, Taoists practiced swords. At that time, everyone knew that Li Bai's poems were famous all over the world, but few people knew that this great poet was both a Taoist priest and an excellent swordsman. Li Bai believed in Taoism, which was popular at that time, and liked to live in seclusion in the mountains and seek immortality to learn Taoism. He wants to be an extraordinary hermit and immortal. According to records, after Li Bai broke up with Du Fu for the first time, he went to the Taoist Temple in the Little Chef Palace of Hippo and was awarded the title of Taoist. Since then, he has officially performed Taoist rituals and become a Taoist priest. Li Bai, a Taoist, is good at Ren Xia and often compares himself to a chivalrous man. He is a good sword. Zhao Ke, who "kills one person in ten steps and the meteor flies" in "Martial Arts", is a portrayal of himself. According to statistics, the word * * * appeared 107 times in Li Bai's Poems of the Whole Tang Dynasty, except for "Jiange" which appeared three times as a place name, "Sword Wall" which appeared 1 time, and "Sword" which appeared as a weapon 103 times. Sword with 1 time, Wu Gou with 1 time, Wu Hong with 1 time, Zhan Lu with 1 time, and Mo Xie with 1 time. Generally speaking, Sword appeared 1 18 times, distributed in 106 poems, accounting for about 10% of the total number of poems. It can be seen how much Li Bai loves swords.

Li Bai loves swords, and after studying Buddhism, he integrated fencing into Taoism, which gave him a glimpse of another realm of heaven and earth. Those who "learn from Tao" are born with the same gas, which is the gas of Taihe, invisible and without image. The man of practice condenses this lofty and powerful spirit by law, so that he can penetrate the fish in the stone and he can resist. This is not only the "brave" level of martial arts, but also the "immortal" level of fairy science. The imperial sword skill in xianjian is the representative of Taoist swordsmanship. One of the most important magic skills in xianjian is the imperial sword that Yun Tianhe dreamed of. The art of imperial sword is mainly based on the principle of the unity of man and sword. At the same time, it assists the Taoist classic mentality, communicates with the three realms through the "fairy sword", and seeks to integrate its royal sword into the realm of heaven and earth. It can be seen that the art of imperial sword is a fairy art supported by Taoist classic psychology, and its ethereal image of flying out of dust and flying in Lingfeng is quite attractive in Taoism.

Legend has it that Lv Dongbin, the sword fairy, can "soar with a sword". Lv Dongbin is one of the famous Taoist immortals of the Eight Immortals. According to legend, he often carries a long sword, which is majestic and powerful, and his swordsmanship connects the gods. When he killed the demon, the sword flew out from behind, automatically looking for the target and taking the head thousands of miles away. Lv Dongbin has a poem: "If you want to sharpen your edge, dare to do it, and open a box of jade dragons in the morning. The spirit in his hand is three feet cold, and there is a snake on the stone. " It is the best portrayal of casting a sword for yourself.

Li Bai was accompanied by a sword box all his life. At the age of fifteen, he studied sword in Emei, claiming that "my sword is green and dry, and I know how to cut it". "The sword is not an enemy of ten thousand people, and literature is stolen all over the world." At the age of twenty, Du Fu began to travel around the world with his sword, expressing the spirit of "drawing the sword to Long Hudou".

After the deification of Taoism and the freehand brushwork of literati, the sword is no longer a simple weapon, but is endowed with the moral and ethical color of righteous words. In the Tang Dynasty, when everyone wore swords and everyone hung swords, the emergence of martial arts novels integrated sword culture and chivalrous culture, and the image of a chivalrous man with a negative sword was deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

Because of the development of sword dance in the Tang Dynasty, swordsmanship focused on actual combat became a performance with acrobatic elements, so the description of swordsmanship in the novels at that time was also inconceivable: in legend, Nie Yinniang described the scene of three swordsmen fighting swords: they could float into the air, fight in the stomachs of the living, and even fly thousands of miles in an instant. This fantasy description continued in the subsequent martial arts novels, thus creating countless romantic martial arts.

And those peerless swords that either exist in reality or are rendered in literature have become more and more legendary and mysterious after historical precipitation.