“Religious Healing” is a religious practice that utilizes the power of religious belief to regulate balance between the body, mind and spirit of believers, releasing them into a realm free from distress and a path to happiness. In this paper, a research of the Garan Altar is performed to explore and analyze its unique and distinct religious rituals and practices. The Garan Altar is a new urban Daoism Altar, which worships Xuánlíng gāoshàngdì GuanShengdijun. This paper mainly studies the historical development, the connotation of the belief and the types of religious practices, including rituals and ceremonies. To further discuss and analyze the particularity and value of the Altar, methods and principles of its religious practices are also further delved into, with individual case reports and data collated and analyzed. The diversity of religious practices, rituals and methods performed in the Altar are mainly based on the Yun-Chang-Gong Energy practice, imparted by Xuánlíng gāoshàngdì GuanShengdijun of the Garan Altar. These practices include ceremonial invocations (kou-wen ji-jie), spiritual healing (ling-liao ling-xiu), exorcism, transcendence (chao-du ling-xing) and religious ceremonies. Details of the practitioner’s spiritual affinity to GuanShengdijun, accepting God’s mission and impartation of power, spiritual healing practice, divine revelations and organization development are all recorded in this paper. The divine mission is achieved through practicing GuanShengdijun’s loyal and righteous beliefs, while serving believers and providing charity. In exploring the unicity and significance of the Garan Altar religious belief, results of this thesis are presented as a narrative analysis based on the practitioner’s personal experience, field investigations, literature data references, interviews and questionnaires. The results of this research are recorded to provide reference for the academic community for future in-depth research.
