In my video “Taoism: A Decolonized Introduction,” I made a passing reference to the Six Ancestral Sage Kings (or Six Holy Kings) and their significance in Taoism, promising that I’d dedicate a standalone video on the subject, so here we are.
Everything you need to learn about the Tao can be learned from the Six Holy Kings – or so goes an axiom credited to Confucius.
He isn’t the only one to uphold the Six Kings as the paragon of aspirational virtue and wisdom. Even Confucianism’s rival school of thought, the Mohists, would name-drop the Six Kings, 堯舜禹湯文武.
Cultural references to the importance of the Six Holy Kings continues well into the modern era with the founding of the Republic of China. Sun Yat-sen cited the importance of the new Republic upholding the tradition and values of the Six Holy Kings (“中國有一個道統，堯、舜、禹、湯、周文王、周武王、周公”).
Chinese historian and philosopher Li Zehou 李泽厚 notes that the Six Holy Kings are shamanic rulers, wū 巫, and that their divine right to sovereignty comes from their alignment with Heaven, which is received on the basis of their abilities to commune with Heaven. The shamanistic-historical traditions of the Chinese civilization comes straight from the Six Holy Kings. (You can read more about this in Chapter 10 of I Ching, The Oracle.)
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