Lü Zu Bao Gao — A Liturgical Invocation Recited to Patriarch Lü
This is a baogao (寶誥) — a "precious litany," one of a large family of short invocations recited before Daoist temple images, each addressed to a particular deity or immortal. This one honors Lü Dongbin (呂洞賓), called here Patriarch Lü (呂祖): the Tang-dynasty figure, traditionally said to have been born in 798 CE, who became foremost among the Eight Immortals and is venerated as one of the Five Patriarchs at the root of the Quanzhen lineage of internal alchemy. The line "awakened from the Yellow Millet Dream" recalls the story, central to his legend, of Lü falling asleep at an inn and dreaming an entire lifetime of office, wealth, and ruin while a pot of millet cooked on the fire — waking to renounce worldly ambition and give himself to the Way.
The baogao form opens with a spoken vow of refuge, moves into a eulogy of the deity's virtues, deeds, and holy places in loosely paralleled clauses of varying length — not the even four-character verse of scripture, but the freer rhythm of liturgical praise-prose — and closes by naming his full accumulated title. That closing title, "Pure Yang, Who Proclaims the Orthodox Way, the Emperor Who Admonishes and Transforms, Who Keeps Faith and Grants Blessing," reflects honors that tradition holds were added to Lü Dongbin's cult after the Song and into the Yuan; baogao of this kind remain in active use in Daoist temple liturgy today. The Wikisource witness gives no further date for this particular recension, and records several variant readings — each marked 又或, "or alternatively" — at points where other copies of the litany diverge; these are noted in the colophon and kept in the source text below.
A word on two terms. Baogao 寶誥 pairs "precious" (寶) with a word (誥) that named formal royal proclamations in antiquity; the genre borrows that old solemnity for temple use. And 梯航, literally "ladder and ferry-boat," is a stock pairing for the means by which the faithful climb and cross over — kept here as a single image rather than unpacked into an explanation.
Translated for the Good Works Library directly from the classical Chinese, printed in full below. We know of no published English translation of this baogao in the two standard bibliographies of Daoist texts in Western-language translation; a live web search could not be completed at the time of preparation, so this is offered as an honest gap, not a claim of priority.
Translation
With a wholehearted mind, I take refuge and bow in submission!
Inner Minister of Jade Clarity, Immortal Elect of the Gold Tower.
He took incarnate form as Teacher of the Three Teachings; he holds the Law and issues the commands of the Five Thunders.
Awakened from the Yellow Millet Dream, he forgot the fame and achievement of the world;
with the radiance of his precious sword, he sweeps away the demons and monsters of the human world.
Among the four modes of birth and the six paths, every appeal to him meets good faith; through the Three Realms and the Ten Directions, no request goes unanswered.
At Yellow Crane Tower he left his sacred traces; within the Hall of Jade Clarity he refined the cinnabar.
His Daoist likeness is kept in shrines upon the cliffs; his immortal traces are shown in grottoes among the clouds.
He spreads the incense-fire of the Dharma-gate; he honors the ladder and ferry of his heirs in the Mystery.
Great in compassion, great in vow; great in sagehood, great in mercy.
Founder of the mountain, opener of the teaching — the Numinously Responsive Patriarch.
Supreme Minister of Heavenly Thunder, True Person of Numinous Treasure.
Pure Yang (Chunyang), Who Proclaims the Orthodox Way; the Emperor Who Admonishes and Transforms, Who Keeps Faith and Grants Blessing (Fuyou Dijun); the Celestial Worthy Who Promotes and Practices the Wondrous Way.
Colophon
This Good Works Translation was prepared for the Daoist shelf of the Good Works Library, for the Lü Dongbin and the Immortals' Teachings room. The English was translated independently from the classical Chinese text printed below. The litany's loosely paralleled clauses of varying length — not the fixed four-character verse of scripture, but liturgical praise-prose — are kept as short lines mirroring the source's own paragraphing; the opening vow, the string of epithets, and the closing accumulated title are each kept in their original order and count.
Before the claim above was written, a translation-status check was performed: Komjathy's Daoist Texts in Translation and the 2023 Purple Cloud survey of Daoist texts in Western languages were searched by this Chinese title, by "Lü Dongbin" and "Chunyang," and by "baogao"/"precious litany." Both record substantial translated scholarship on Lü Dongbin's alchemical dialogues (the Zhong-Lü chuandao ji and its kin) but no entry for this liturgical invocation. A live web search could not be completed at the time of preparation, so no claim is made about the wider web, including the Daoist temple and practitioner sites where a baogao of this kind most plausibly circulates in informal translation. We know of no published English translation of the 呂祖寶誥 in the two bibliographies actually checked; we make no claim of priority, and this gap should be read as a genuine limit of our search, not as evidence of absence.
A note on the source's parenthetical variants. The Wikisource transcription marks seven points, each introduced 又或 ("or alternatively"), where other copies of this litany read differently: a sword's radiance that "soars" rather than "shines," "Yellow Crane Creek" in place of Yellow Crane Tower, a cliff-shrine couplet with different characters throughout, "later heirs" in place of "heirs in the Mystery," two added epithets ("great in benevolence, great in filial devotion"), "the Mysteriously Responsive Patriarch" in place of "the Numinously Responsive Patriarch," and an expanded closing title that adds "harmonizer of pronouncements, aide to the cosmic turning" and "Sovereign of the Three Bureaus." These variants are kept verbatim in the Source Text below but not folded into the running translation, which follows the transcription's main reading throughout.
Prepared for the Good Work Library by the Tianmu Anglican Church with AI-assisted translation and editorial work.
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Source Text: 呂祖寶誥
Classical Chinese text of the Daoist Canon, in the Chinese Wikisource transcription. Presented complete for reference, study, and verification alongside the English translation above. Passages in parentheses introduced 又或 ("or alternatively") are variant readings recorded by the transcription, not part of the main text.
志心皈命禮！
玉清內相，金闕選仙。
化身為三教之師，掌法判五雷之令。
黃粱夢覺，忘世上之功名；
寶劍光輝，掃人間之妖怪。
（又或寶劍光騰）
四生六道，有感必孚；三界十方，無求不應。
黃鶴樓頭留聖跡，玉清殿內煉丹砂。
（又或黃鶴溪頭）
存道像于岩祠，顯仙跡于雲洞。
（又或存芝像于山巖，顕仙蹤于古洞）
闡法門之香火，禮玄嗣之梯航。
（又或為後嗣）
大悲大願，大聖大慈。
（又或大聖大慈，大仁大孝）
開山啟教，靈應祖師。
（又或玄應祖師）
天雷上相，靈寶真人。
純陽演正，警化孚佑帝君，興行妙道天尊。
（又或爕言贊運，純陽演正，警化孚佑帝君，三曹主宰，興行妙道天尊）
Source Colophon
The Chinese text follows the Chinese Wikisource transcription of the Daoist Canon edition of this text (article 呂祖寶誥, revision of 20 December 2017), inspected from a witness copy captured on 8 August 2026. Chinese Wikisource transcriptions are published under CC BY-SA 4.0 and the GFDL; the text itself is ancient and in the public domain. The wiki header and license templates have been removed; the text is otherwise complete and unaltered.
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