Jujube and chestnut wood were traditionally used for carving printing blocks. The Divine Sovereign says: having set forth this Scripture on Abstaining from Licentiousness for all mankind, I urge you to have it carved onto woodblocks, printed and circulated to admonish the world. This is my sincere and fervent wish, that all people may speedily put its teachings into practice.
A Poem Against Licentiousness
You seek the path of death of your own free will, You boast of deep love, yet deeper grows the karmic wrong. View alluring beauty as you would demons; Deceive no gods or ghosts with lustful thought sown.
What joy abides in fleeting amorous dream? Hell’s stern decrees bring woe no soul can bear. Ask those who stain another’s spouse and dame: Would they their own dear kin endure the shame?
Appendix VIII Precious Admonition on Abstaining from Licentiousness by the Divine Sovereign Wenchang
By command of the Supreme Honored One of the Golden Palace, on the yin and mao days of each month, I make a circuit of Fengdu Hell to examine and verify the deeds of guilty people under heaven. I behold the black registers piled mountain‑high, each volume recording the karmic record of a mortal’s whole lifetime. Therein are revealed mortals’ manifold transgressions. Under the celestial statutes, of all evils, retribution for licentious wickedness is the strictest.
Those who seduce others’ wives or daughters and dishonor women’s chambers shall endure torments in hell for five hundred kalpas. Thereafter they are reborn as mules and horses. After another five hundred kalpas, they may regain a human body, only to become prostitutes, performers and actors.
Those who scheme to seduce widows and nuns and ruin their moral integrity shall endure torments in hell for eight hundred kalpas. Afterwards, they are reborn as sheep and swine, doomed to slaughter by humans. Following another eight hundred kalpas, they regain a human body, yet are born blind, mute, or maimed in their senses and limbs.
Those who corrupt traditional moral ethics through licentiousness, the low defiling the high, elders defiling the young, shall endure torment in hell for one thousand five hundred kalpas. Afterwards they are reborn as serpents and rats. After another one thousand five hundred kalpas they obtain a human body, yet they may die within the womb or perish while still infants; never shall they attain a full, long lifespan.
Worse still are those who write obscene books to corrupt people’s minds. Upon death, they are cast into the Uninterrupted Hell. They cannot be reborn into the ghost realm until every copy of their writings is destroyed, and all karmic debts incurred by those who sinned from reading the books are cleared. There they dwell in perpetual gloom, deprived of sunlight, moonlight and starlight, feeding on wind and sleeping upon ice, their skin cracked and raw. Even immortals and Buddhas cannot grant them deliverance. Few comprehend the immense calamity which obscene books bring upon mankind.