Can I get a cite on this? Last I checked, Taoism teaches there is no afterlife.
In Who Invented Hell?", David B pretty much blew off the whole question of Taoist Hell(s) by saying “Taoism has a few” – not unreasonable, IMHO, since the subject was Hell, not Taoism per se.
It is important to note that there are two main strains of thought in China that can be called “Taoism” – the philosophical Taoism of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, and the religious Taoism of the Ch’in and Han masters, the two not having a lot to do with one another. In philosophical Taoism, there is indeed no afterlife as we would refer to the term; the closest equivalent is the Theravadan concept of nirvana (Taoist terminology was used early on to translate Buddhist concepts, to the confusion of both Buddhists and Taoists). Religious Taoism, OTOH, picks up a lot of folk religious concepts, and gives us the Ten Hells, the Black Judge and his minions, the Ox-headed Demon and the Horse-headed Demon, and so forth (and a lot of these ideas are shared by various Mahayana Buddhist cults in China).
thanks! I’ll admit to knowing nothing about those “religious taoists” – David’s article could have been a little more clear.
As Akatsukami noted, the question wasn’t about whether Taoists have a hell – it was about Hell in general. I just threw in those other mentions to show that it’s a common theme, not as an attempt to explain every single possible religious facet of Hell.
A good set of links to resources by and about Taoism is this.