>>714671830
taoism is largely intertwined with chinese folk mythology, it's a complicated topic and you could say that taoism isn't inherently defined as a religion and doesn't inherently have deities, but there have been taoist communities who worship various deities, usually ones lifted from chinese folklore, such as the jade emperor, in taiwan tianhou is a very popular deitiy, the three pure ones are the highest ranking taoist deities so they're often worshipped in rituals too, although people wouldn't ask them for advice, they're seen more as the natural forces of the universe, there's also humans who have been deified and are worshipped like laozi and guan yu, people usually try to differentiate between different types of taoists, there's the philosophical taoists who don't really engage with supernatural elements and just look at it from a philosophical sense, and there's ritualist taoists who worship a wide variety of deities and have various rituals and traditions, there's also taoist symphatisers, that don't really identify with taoism but integrate some of it into their lives and beliefs, you can say that you don't really agree that ritualist taoism is "real" taoism but then millions of taoists will disagree with you
