Organised Taoism is conventionally dated from 142 CE and the revelation said to have been received by Zhang Daoling, who founded the Way of the Celestial Masters. Later revelations in the fourth and fifth centuries produced the Shangqing and Lingbao scriptures, each with its own methods and its own hierarchy of deities. The gradual compilation of these bodies of text produced the Daozang, the Taoist canon, whose received form was printed under the Ming in the fifteenth century and runs to well over a thousand titles.
Two lineages dominate today. Zhengyi, Orthodox Unity, descends from the Celestial Masters; its priests may marry, live among the communities they serve, and are ritual specialists rather than monastics. Quanzhen, Complete Perfection, founded in the twelfth century, is monastic and celibate and draws openly on Buddhist and Confucian elements.
Practice covers a wide field. Ritual includes offerings, exorcism, healing and rites for the dead, often performed on behalf of a whole community rather than an individual. The pursuit of long life took the form of waidan, external alchemy, the compounding of elixirs, and later of neidan, internal alchemy, which reads the same operations as a refinement of the body's own energies through breath, posture, diet and meditation. The pantheon is extensive and headed by the Three Pure Ones.
Counting Taoists is unreliable, because Chinese religious practice has not generally been exclusive: a person may use Taoist ritual, observe Buddhist festivals and honour ancestors in a Confucian frame without treating these as competing memberships. Taoism was suppressed during the Cultural Revolution and has recovered substantially since. It operates in mainland China through a state-recognised association, and more freely in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and among Chinese communities abroad.