 Since its origins, Tianshi dao, or the Way of the Celestial Masters, proposed to provide an exemplary and comprehensive model of religious and social organization (Hendrischke 2000; Schipper 2008; Kleeman 2010 and 2016). The population was organized and governed on the basis of “registers” (lu), which existed in two forms: household registers (recording births, marriages, and deaths) and individual registers (conferring rank in the social and celestial bureaucracies, and listing the spirits under a person’s command, whose number increased according to age). Healing rites were one of the main practices. Importantly, illnesses were seen as owed neither to demonic influences (as in exorcism) nor to imbalance of cosmic forces (as in classical medicine), but to moral faults. As part of the healing ritual, an officiant submitted petitions—reporting the petitioner’s fault, confession, repentance, and request for aid—to the Officers of Earth, Water, and Heaven, the three main original Tianshi dao deities. An analogous emphasis on ethics and morals is the main feature of the best-known early Tianshi dao text, a partially-preserved commentary to the Daode jing (Bokenkamp 1997: 29–148).