English summary Cangnan, a recently-created district along the coast of SE Zhejiang, bordering on the province of Fujian, has a largely Minnan-speaking population. It also boasts one of China's richest and most theatrical Taoist ritual traditions - a fact unknown before the fieldwork presented here. Basing themselves at once on field observation and a critical examination of some of the more important liturgical manuscripts used by the Taoists of Cangnan, the authors show the relationship of this tradition to liturgical manuals produced in the region in the 13th and 14th centuries, but also to the tradition of Quanzhou, from which the Taoists of Cangnan seem to have come. The fact that Cangnan Taoism has preserved not only the external spectacle of ritual, but also its grounding in the «inner work» of visualisation, as well as a conscious and systematic tradition of explanations, makes it particularly useful as a basis for describing the difference between Taoism, as a «higher religion», and the « shamanistic substrate » on which it is generally agreed to have been built.