¹“Matteo Ricci contributed vast meritorious deeds and virtue to the world. In this age of the resolution of bitterness and grief, he presides as the head spirit of the spirit realm. All who know this should never speak of him save with reverence.²Yet, people remain unaware of Matteo Ricci’s meritorious deeds and virtue because he benefited the world inconspicuously.

³“Matteo Ricci, a Westerner, came to the East and offered many ways to build the kingdom of heaven on earth, but his vision never came to pass, because he could not correct all the corrupt practices that had become entrenched over the ages.⁴Yet, he did succeed in casting down the boundaries between the East and West, enabling the spirits, who guarded the borders and could not travel to one another’s regions, to cross borders unhindered.

⁵“After his death, Matteo Ricci led preeminent spirits of civilizations in the East to the West and again sought to build the kingdom of heaven on earth.⁶From that time forth, the spirits inside the earth began ascending to heaven to learn its marvelous ways and then returning to earth to breathe inspiration into people.⁷It is this that fostered the advancement of scholarship and the development of sophisticated machines, enabling humanity to model its civilization after that of the kingdom of heaven and hence raise up modern civilization.⁸The material conveniences of Western civilization were modeled upon heaven’s civilization.”

⁹“This new civilization, however, became enlightened about only the material world and its principles, and so it cultivated arrogance and brutality and sought to conquer nature with power mighty enough to shake both heaven and earth, unhesitatingly committing every form of wickedness.

¹⁰“Thus, the authority of the way of the spirits collapsed, and the three realms fell into terrible disorder, causing both the way of heaven and human affairs to contravene the dosu of heaven and earth. ¹¹In response, Matteo Ricci assembled all the ancient divine sages, buddhas, and bodhisattvas, then ascended to the ninth heaven and there entreated me to address the catastrophic plight of humans and spirits.

¹²“In answer to their plea, I descended to the canopy tower in the Nation of Great Law in the West, and after traveling the world while surveying the three realms, attended by Matteo Ricci, I came to this Eastern land, Joseon.

¹³“For thirty years, I resided at the golden Maitreya statue of Geumsansa Temple on Moaksan Mountain, where Monk Jin-pyo, after being awakened to the coming of Maitreya Buddha as exalted by Shakyamuni Buddha in rapture, had devotedly prayed for my incarnation.

¹⁴“While at the Maitreya Shrine, I bestowed upon Choe Su-un a heavenly mandate and spirit teaching to enable him to raise up my supreme dao. ¹⁵However, he failed to boldly transcend the confines of Confucianism, and so he could not reveal the true dharma that would have laid a path to the way of spirits and a new civilization and eventually illuminated the true light of my supreme dao.

¹⁶“I therefore finally withdrew the heavenly mandate and spirit teaching from Choe Su-un in 1864, and in 1871, I incarnated into the world myself. ¹⁷I am the ‘Sangje’ revealed in Donggyeongdaejeon and in Su-un’s lyrics.”