KOU QIANZHI (373–448), Celestial Master (tianshi) at the Northern (Tuoba) Wei court between the years 425 and 448, an office that marked a unique era of Daoist ascendancy in Chinese political history. A member of a traditionally Daoist gentry family of Fengyi (Shaanxi), Kou at an early age developed an intense interest in such occult sciences as astrology, alchemy, and knowledge of transcendental herbs. At about the age of thirty (c. 403) he went into reclusion on the western sacred peak of Mount Hua (Shaanxi) with his master the Daoist adept Chenggong Xing (d. 412?), a student of the Buddhist monk and mathematician Shi Tanying (d. before 418), who had been a colleague of the great Central Asian translator Kumarajiva while the latter was in Chang'an (modern Xi'an) between 402 and 413. After a brief sojourn on Mount Hua the two traveled to the central sacred peak, Mount Song (in Henan). Chenggong died after...