The Heavenly Order Society
Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia is now 14 years old
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The Heavenly Order Society was one of the few White Lotus movement of late imperial China that managed to associate different groups into one. It came into being by the cooperation of the Bagua sect 八卦教 "Eight Trigrams" (also called Jiugong sect 九宮教 "Nine Palaces"), the Ronghua Society 榮華會, and the Baiyang 白陽教, Hongyang 紅陽教 and Qingyang 青陽教 sects. The most important leaders of this new united groups were Li Wencheng 李文成 and Feng Keshan 馮克善 from Henan and Lin Qing 林清 from Daxing 大興 near Beijing.
The society war organised in eight groups (corresponding to the eight trigrams). The mainly used scripture of the adherents was the Sanfo yingjie tongguan tongshu 三佛應劫統觀通書, and they venerated the Birthless Old Mother, but also the sun. They believed in the three progressive eons (sanji 三際), calling the past "dimension-less extreme" (wuji 無極), the present the "greatest extreme" (taiji 太極), and the future "august extreme" (huangji 皇極), but also prognosticated the decline of the Red Sun (hongyang) and the ascent of the White Sun (baiyang), thus favouring the rise of a new dynasty. In 1813 the Heavenly Order Society rose in rebellion against the Qing dynasty and devastated the provinces of Henan, Shandong and Zhili. Some groups even invaded the Imperial City.