Journey to Mount Laojun—The Story of Laozi and Mount Laojun

Laozi and Mount Laojun: The Spiritual Totem of a Sacred Mountain In Luanchuan County, Luoyang, Henan Province, a remarkable peak resembling an alchemical furnace pierces through the sea of clouds. When mist rolls through the mountains, seventy-two temples and Taoist shrines appear and disappear from view. This is Mount Laojun, revered as the "Ancestral Court of Taoism." Standing at 2,217 meters, this mountain became a spiritual landmark of Chinese civilization due to legends of Laozi's seclusion here, with the secrets of the "Tao Te Ching" hidden within its thousand years of incense offerings. I. The Mystery of the Purple Qi Coming from the East In 516 BCE, when the royal house of Zhou was shaken by Prince Zhao's rebellion, Laozi, then keeper of the royal archives, resigned and journeyed westward. While Sima Qian's "Records of the Grand Historian" states that "no one knows where he ended up," local folk epics in western Henan vividly describe his retreat to a cave atop Mount Laojun. Local county records note that after passing through Hangu Pass on his blue ox, Laozi didn't continue directly to Tongguan, but traveled south along the Funiu Mountain range, ultimately drawn to this extraordinary peak "shaped like a granary, gathering wind and energy." Local villagers have passed down the story for generations: Laozi secluded himself in this cave for nine years, carving his lifetime of wisdom onto the cave walls before transforming into a rainbow and departing, leaving behind the 5,000 words of the "Tao Te Ching" arranged like constellations in the stone chamber. II. The Philosophy of Heaven and Earth in the Alchemical Furnace The massive granite columns behind the Taiqing Temple at Mount Laojun's Golden Summit are known as the "Natural Taiji Eight Trigrams Formation." Most remarkable is the Alchemical Furnace Peak, with its concave top perpetually shrouded in swirling mist, perfectly embodying the concept of "the Tao is empty yet inexhaustible in use" from the "Tao Te Ching." The Ming Dynasty's "Funiu Mountain Records" document that Tang Dynasty Taoist priests built eighty-one furnaces here corresponding to the principle of "returning to the origin through nine times nine," creating a spectacular sight of furnace fires illuminating the mountain mist for over three hundred years. The iron chains and blackened cliff faces that remain today still speak of the ancient wisdom of "refining external elixirs to cultivate internal ones"—wasn't the rising furnace fire itself a practical demonstration of "all things carry yin and embrace yang"? III. The Natural Way on Mane Ridge At Mane Ridge, 2,000 meters above sea level, jagged rock formations stand like thousands of blue oxen raising their heads. Legend has it that Laozi enlightened the rocks here, saying: "You are primordial chaos—why not follow the natural way?" Instantly, the stubborn stones split open, sprouting lingzhi mushrooms and sacred herbs, with rock patterns forming natural taiji symbols. Even more miraculous is the "Enlightenment Stone" below the South Heaven Gate, which, after thunderstorms, reveals natural patterns resembling oracle bone script. In 2016, geologists discovered that the interlacing patterns of granite and biotite schist in the rocks mysteriously align with the spiral structure of "reversal is the movement of the Tao" from the "Tao Te Ching"—a remarkable resonance between geological wonder and philosophical thought across time and space. IV. Thousand Years of Incense in the Spirit Official Hall The Laojun Temple, originally built during the Northern Wei Dynasty, still preserves Tang Dynasty colored paintings of the "True Forms of the Five Sacred Mountains" on its pillars. Most precious is the cast iron statue of Laozi in the Three Pure Ones Hall, holding not the traditional ruyi scepter in his left hand but a miniature model of Mount Funiu—this sacred image, cast during the Jin Dynasty's Mingchang era, confirms the local blending of Taoism and Buddhism in the legend of "Laozi traveling west to convert the barbarians." Every year on the fifteenth day of the second lunar month, Laozi's birthday, tens of thousands of pilgrims wind their way up the cliff-side plank roads, creating a spectacular "unity of heaven and human" pilgrimage scene at 2,000 meters above sea level—a vivid illustration of the "Tao Te Ching" passage "the multitude are joyous, as though celebrating a great sacrifice." V. Contemporary Insights from the Sea of Clouds In 2010, while organizing ancient texts, the Laozi Culture Research Institute of Mount Laojun discovered fragments of Han Dynasty silk manuscripts deep in the Seclusion Cave, with the inscription "the highest good is like water; water benefits all things without contention" perfectly matching the flow direction of the waterfall group at Mane Ridge. This mysterious correspondence between geography and text has amazed contemporary scholars: perhaps Laozi encoded universal principles into the mountain's natural features. Today, climbers often witness the "Divine Manifestation of Laozi" phenomenon at dawn—when the first rays of sunlight pierce through the sea of clouds, the entire mountain transforms into a golden scroll of the "Tao Te Ching" through the Tyndall effect, resembling the eternal gaze of that sage upon the mortal world from 2,500 years ago. From the blue ox's hoofprints of the Spring and Autumn Period to today's AR guided tours, Mount Laojun remains a spiritual contour line of Chinese civilization. Here, every rock is an undeciphered annotation of the "Tao Te Ching," every sea of clouds a flowing taiji diagram, and Laozi has merged with the mountain itself—he is both recluse and guardian, using five thousand years of silence to protect the most profound wisdom genes of Chinese civilization.