. esoteric buddhist elements in daoist ritual manuals 533
Mahākāla
The Great Black God (da heitian ), Mahākāla, is also seen
occasionally in Daoist ritual texts, where he is known as the Great
Black Heavenly God (Da heitian shen ), and personified as
the Marshal Gou Liuji. In this capacity, he is usually invoked
alongside the Great God of Black Mist (Heiwu da shen ), the
Marshal Bi Zongyuan , and the two are jointly referred to as
the “two Marshals, Gou and Bi”. Their association with the
color black puts these divinities, in Daoist ritual cosmology, under the
realm of the Northern Emperor (Beidi ),^15 and in one text we see
them addressed along with related deities of the Northern Emperor
exorcistic tradition, such as Tianpeng , Xuanwu , and the
aforementioned Acala, in an exorcistic technique known as the “Black
Net” (heizhao ) (CT 1220, 227:17a).
Mārīcī
The goddess Mārīcī (Molizhi tian ) is commonly referred
to in Daoist texts as the Heavenly Mother (tianmu ); one text
gives her full title as the “Great Sage, the Goddess Mārīcī, Heavenly
Consort of Purple Rays, Mother of the Dipper, Mistress of Brahma-
Pneumas”. Several rituals
devoted specifically to her are contained in a text found in the Daofa
huiyuan, fascicles 83–87, called the “Hidden Writings of the Pre-Heav-
enly Thunder Crystal”. Here we find, for example, the
following description of her iconography, supplied in order to assist
the practitioner in visualizing himself becoming Mārīcī
: “[The Sagely Heavenly Mother] has three heads and eight arms.
In her hands she holds up the sun, moon, a bow and arrow, a golden
spear, a golden bell, an arrow, a shield, and a sword. She wears clothes
the color of blue sky, and rides on a fiery cart, which is pulled by seven
white gibbons.”^16 Of particular interest here is the fact that the spell
provided in this text, to be chanted by the adept when visualizing his
transformation into the goddess, is a dhāraṇī taken directly (with even
the pronunciation glosses included) from a Buddhist ritual text.^17
(^15) For more on Beidi exorcistic ritual, see Mollier 1997.
(^16) CT 1220, 83:2b. For more on Mārīcī as the Daoist Mother of the Dipper, see
Pregadio 2008, 382–383. 17
See note 8, above.