Purple Cloud Palace
( english.cntv.cn )
Updated: 2012-11-15
At the foot of Stretching Flag Mount sits magnificent and boundless Purple Cloud Palace. Here, with the cluster of hills guarding the peaks, the wood of pine and green cypress deep and remote, and the surroundings elegant and weather comfortable, the place is thought the Blessed Place in Purple Cloud Palace View-site.
Purple Cloud Palace is an apotheosis of construction by employing the particular physiognomy that is cragged in length while wide and plain on breadth. All the buildings are arrayed along the axis. On the axis lie the Green Dragon and White Tiger Palace, Imperial Stele Pavilion, Shifang Hall, the Grand Hall of Purple Cloud Palace and Parents' Palace from the bottom to the top. The altitude of these building gradually rises and the axis symmetries the wing houses of each construction. And through the way of stacking tall sidesteps, the Purple Cloud Palace is divided into three sections of yard, so as to form a kind of group of constructions in which one row is upon row of the other and the primary buildings are more distinctive than the secondary ones. From a far distance, the palace has the airs of imperial worshipping rites.
Historically, Purple Cloud Palace, because of taking the responsibilities of praying for royal families, had solemn overall arrangement, exquisite furnishings. Inside each various palace, the worshipped deities and celestial beings are ablated. Together with the divine tables, obliging apparatuses and omniscient instruments, all these consist a mysterious and metaphysical world. The images created by Taoist legends are so vivid by design and various on airs. Here, people may differ them from their status, divine responsibilities, specified occupations, dispositions and thoughts.
Emperor of Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties often issued their orders to set up altar so as to praise and pray for good fortune, or plead deities to bless the peace of their state and the plain people or the harvest of crops. In fact, this was a ritual of communicating with Gods, for Taoism thought through that way Gods would help the prayers, bless them to be away from the disasters and prolong their lifespan.
At present, the Purple Heaven Palaces is not only the best Choice to visit, but also the locus of the Taoism Association of Wudang Mountain. Here is the destination of experts from all over the world. Furthermore, it is the very source for Taoism researchers to search the origin of Taoism.