 The underlying basis for our distinction between the philosophical and religious poles is epistemic. Both species of Daoism start from a common critique of “ordinary” knowing of daoway:guide. From this mildly skeptical or relativist base, philosophical Daoism tends toward pluralism, perspectivalism, skepticism, political equality and freedom. Religious “mysticism” usually is accompanied by a credulous assertion of supernatural epistemic abilities—control of some abstruse or magical way of overcoming skepticism. This is often explained by a supposed Daoist correlate of Confucian cultivation and the sage. It is typically the associated with some intuitive or “superlative” direct access to a single correct daoway:guide. As its special insight cannot be justified to those with “ordinary” perspectives and/or cannot be put into language and argument, it tends to generate the esoteric, hierarchical and authoritarian attitudes familiar in religions as well as the institutions that initiate and cultivate the common human into the idealized adept. 