The traditional religious Zhuangzi narratives placed him as the disciple of Laozi, whom they regard as a quasi-divine founder of a mystical religion worshipping a mysterious entity translators tended to render as a definite descriptive term, but capitalized it as if it were a singular name, “The Dào.” Compatible philosophical treatments were versions of metaphysical monism, epistemic intuitionism (often explicitly anti-rationalist), political anarchism and a vague normative absolutism—follow The Dào. The bulk of popular and religious treatments still follow this interpretive line, treating Laozi as the earliest layer of “Daoist mystical thought” or “Lao-Zhuang” thought and situating Zhuangzi as his “follower.”