Shangqing (Highest Clarity) Taoists affirm the visualisation of inner and celestial deities as a central practice. Arising from revelations received in fourth-century China, the tradition teaches elaborate meditative techniques in which the adept visualises the gods that dwell within the body's organs and centres, together with the deities and palaces of the heavens, and journeys inwardly among them. Through such visualisation, recitation, and the cultivation of the inner cosmos, the practitioner seeks purification, communion with the divine, and ascent to the celestial realms of Highest Clarity.
The revelations were received by the medium Yang Xi between 364 and 370 CE near Mount Mao (Maoshan) in Jiangsu and transmitted initially to the aristocratic Xu family who patronised him. It fell to Tao Hongjing (456 to 536 CE), a scholar-official turned Taoist recluse, to gather, edit, and authenticate the scattered original manuscripts into the Zhen'gao ("Declarations of the Perfected"), completed around 499 CE, and to establish Maoshan itself as Shangqing's institutional centre, a role that makes Tao Hongjing, rather than Yang Xi, the effective systematiser and founder of Shangqing as an organised tradition.