Religion in China. Shaman and Shamanism in Daoism

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Taoism (Daoism) is not a religion that can count on numerical strength among its clergy today, nevertheless, its clergy is kept extremely busy by a population needing its services during the unfolding of the annual liturgical calendar as well as on special occasions of life. Many visitors to Taiwan, as well as residents there, might presuppose that Taoism is its principal religion, given the great number of temples, large and small, as well as the bustling activities carried on there. Communication between the human and the divine signifies a religious life in which spirituality, much more than speculative philosophy, occupies a dominant place. Taoism is presented both as a philosophy with religious meaning and as a religion of salvation with mystical overtones. Shamanism is one of the determinants of Chinese religions and Taoism stipulating its main principles and values.

The Tungus word shaman means literally ‘one who is excited, moved, or raised’, that is, a person of either sex who has mastered spirits and who can at will introduce them into his or her own body, or a person who permanently incarnates these spirits and can control their manifestations, entering into controlled states of trance in appropriate circumstances (Cahill, 2006). On the regular occurrence together of spirit possession and shamanism, particularly in the Arctic locus classicus, that is, in today’s Siberia, but also beyond, such as among the Inuit or Eskimo people of the North American Arctic. “Shamanism, so long the vital backbone of China’s spiritual and social culture, foundered under the later Manchu emperors” (Herne 2001, p. 22). Ancient Chinese religion may be defined as an ecstatic religion, to the extent that it had an essentially shamanic character. And even following upon the emergence of ethical humanism and the humanist repudiation of many of the myths and practices of an earlier age, religious Taoism and certain forms of Buddhism, together with that product of their union which is called popular or folk religion, continued to manifest those features that can be identified as shamanic and also ecstatic. The shamans also served their clients by ‘summoning back’ the soul of a sick or deceased person. At one time, the soul was summoned wherever death had occurred, when a relative would climb onto the roof, holding the deceased’s garments and crying out for the person to return (Herne, 2001).

Both Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu have been called mystics. The text Lao-tzu was addressed to rulers and contains also political teachings. The text Chuang-tzu is in this sense quite different. It defines happiness and freedom as being found in a mystical union with nature that presupposes withdrawal from politics and society. In examining the latter text, we find blissful descriptions of a trance state that is akin to the quietist mysticism known in Western Christianity, especially in seventeenth-century France and Flanders (Herne, 2001). There is still another dimension in Chuang-tzu which goes beyond nature mysticism, with its self-effacing and quietist connotations. These ‘shamanic’ passages in Chuang-tzu include the lyrical description of the holy or perfect man, who has also been called an immortal (Cahill, 2006). Following Herne (2001) “with the omnipresent Tao, rather than through deliberate acts designed to achieve long life and nothing else. To some groups, Taoism became increasingly synonymous with the desire for immortality, and they often took little notice of other important philosophical principles” (14).

Chuang-tzu could very well have been referring to a shaman of traditional antiquity, his dietary habits, his shamanic ‘flights’, and his healing and other magical powers. From these lines, it would seem that the shamanic tradition has become something of a legend, peripheral to the society in which it was born, and yet, appropriating in the meantime a prestige coming from being a rarity. Eventually, the texts of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu also served a later generation of religious zealots, anxious to transcend the limited conditions of human existence (Herne, 2001). They revived belief in personal deities, practicing rituals of prayer and propitiation. They fostered the art of alchemy – both the external alchemy which sought the elixir of life and the internal alchemy which internalized this elixir through meditation. This popular Taoist tradition developed its own mystical traditions, embellished with stories of wondrous drugs and wonder-working immortals, of levitations and bodily ascensions to Heaven. It even evolved a kind of ‘nuptial’ mysticism, manifested in bridal piety and in the fruit of marital union. All this exceeds what researchers know of Christian miracle-workers and mystics, and brings us back sometimes to the ecstatic experience of the shamans (Herne, 2001). Following Walsh (1989): “at the heart of shamanism lies the shamanic journey or soul flight. It is this that helps define shamans and sets them apart from other ecstatics, healers, and mystics; it is this that makes them “cosmic travelers” (p. 26).

Many scholars prefer to believe in a Japan with an uncontaminated native Shinto tradition. However, Chinese ideas of yin and yang and the Five Agents are already reflected in such early Japanese works as the Kojiki and the Nihongi, with their myths and legends (Kohn, 2001). Taoist influences can be discerned in the Shinto veneration of such sacred objects in its temples as the sword and the bronze mirror, both used in Taoist rituals. In comparison with Korea, Taoist influences appear more diffused in Japan, and less distinguishable from native Shamanism. In comparison with Confucian influences, Taoist influences are more implicit than explicit and are usually not recognized by the Japanese as having an alien origin. This does not mean that Japanese scholars have escaped from its influences (Cahill, 2006).

In China the male spirit-mediums are called tang-ki (or dang-ki) (Hokkien dialect, literally, ‘divining youth’), not necessarily because they are young, but rather because they are not expected to live long. Such a person is subject to involuntary possession by one or more spirits and serves as a medium for those who desire to seek out the will of the spirits as regards them. “A medium or shaman goes into trance and wields the wooden writing stick attached to the planchette; he is an interpreter to read each character” (Kohn 182). The trances vary with the importance of the occasion. Feats of self-mortification are followed by sessions in personal consultations. These involved the presentation by worshippers of charm papers and amulets, or the stamping of clothing and household ornaments with blood marks, or the interpretation of ‘speaking in tongues’ (Kohn, 2001). Eventually, the dang-ki makes some final gesticulations. He leaps into the air, is caught apparently unconscious in the arms of an assistant, and must be revived by having charm water splashed into his face. The dang-ki and what they represent do violence also to those among us accustomed to the comfortable idea that the Chinese are always moderate and reasonable. Among other things, these divining youths flout Confucian customs by deliberately causing self-injury in public performances. This can only be understood in terms of their being instruments of higher powers, cut off from the world of ordinary mortals (Cass, 2008).

Divination is a widespread practice in popular religion. There are also more mechanical ways of divining. A common act in Taiwan is the use of ‘divination blocks’ – two pieces of wood, rounded on one side and flat on the other, cut into the shape of a crescent moon, mirror images each of the other (Lee, 2004). When dropped on the floor, the combinations of positions indicate responses from the deity. Sometimes, these are used in conjunction with joss-sticks. For even more elaborate questions, people may use divination verses in temples. First, they take out a numbered slip from a vase, to which corresponds a verse of four lines, usually rather cryptic words with added explanations. Such usage is widely found, also among overseas Chinese. It is now being revived in mainland China. This brings us to the subject of ‘spirit writing’, a ritual that has been traced back to the Sung dynasty. Today, these revelations contain a diverse lot, ranging from housekeeping procedures and liturgical instructions through moralistic verses and commentary on the classics, to rarer but elaborate mythological explorations of Heaven and Hell (Cass, 2008).

A popular divinatory practice that has received widespread attention is geomancy (feng-shui, literally, ‘wind and water). An ancient practice, it was earlier applied especially to the selection of burial sites. Today, the feng-shui specialist is also consulted in the selection of sites for the living and all their activities, in the construction of office towers, banks, and hotels in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and beyond. He works with the geomancer’s or astrological compass, an instrument with a magnetic compass at the center of a disc inscribed with concentric circles and the symbols of yin and yang and the eight trigrams. The various forms of Chinese divination are arousing increasing interest in the West, where astrology remains the most popular pseudo-science (Stephen 1997). In shamanism, the main sacred objects and things involve bells, magic mirrors, drums, the spirit wand, the ritual light.

The vitality of popular religion is reflected by the abundance and prosperity of temples and shrines in a region like Taiwan. Frequently, the Chinese temple is the only architectural structure in a town or village that still follows the traditional style of roofs with curved eaves. It is built along a north-south axis, with the deity facing south like a ruler or emperor in his palace. The entranceway is usually a triple gate. Large temples rest in walled compounds with many courtyards surrounded by long halls with individual rooms and centering on the main structure housing the image of the deities. Temples are very visible structures when they are well maintained since the Chinese prefer strong colors like green roof tiles and red pillars even for their holy places. Statues of deities, especially of Buddha figures, are often gilded. Indeed, there are so many temples, even in Communist China today, that one wonders how the Chinese could ever have been described as an irreligious people. Shrines are miniature temples, the dwellings of more humble deities like the local earth god (Stephen 1997).

Popular religion honors Taoist deities or ‘saints’ and is often practiced with the help of Taoist priests on festivals such as the lunar New Year. They serve the interests of the faithful by the performance of a variety of rituals, and also as exorcists against the unwanted harmful ghosts. In these capacities, the Taoist clergy is regarded as having qualifications superior to the other mediums and shamans who have had no rigorous training and can claim no prestigious lineage. But Taoist religion is not the whole of popular religion. After all, the latter includes also many Buddhist beliefs and practices, some of which (but not all) had been incorporated into the Taoist system. Neither should the Taoist religion be identified with the ancestral cult, which can also be traced to the earliest times, but which, while being an ancient tradition, shares bonds with both Confucianism and Taoism (Stephen 1997).

There has always been a certain shroud of secrecy surrounding Taoism. Starting as a philosophy of recluses and for recluses, it has preferred anonymity and chosen to articulate its teachings in riddles. Then as an esoteric religion, it tends to disclose many of its secrets only to the initiated (Walsh, 1989). Only recently has this shroud of secrecy been penetrated, as some of the initiates have begun to publish their knowledge and expertise, sharing it with a wider audience. Historical parallels may also help to understand early Taoism. With its recluse tradition, its superior message of the Tao, and its close relationship to early Confucianism, Taoism may be compared to early Gnosticism, which stood in close relationship to early Christianity. The developments are parallel, but apparently several centuries apart. Like Gnosticism, Taoism is a wisdom tradition (as also is Confucianism). The Gnostic motif of mankind’s fall and eventual redemption is not clearly reflected in Taoist philosophy but finds a stronger echo in Taoist religion, where a divinized Lao-tzu became a ‘divine man’ with Messianic qualities. Like Gnosticism, Taoism also harbors a strong mystical urge, much more than may be found in official Christianity or Confucianism. “Taoist thought and schools were quite widespread in Silla. As Ch’a Chuhwan noted in his exhaustive examination of the subject, the development of Taoist thought was typically related to beliefs in mountain spirits” (Lee 2004, p. 49). However, while Taoist philosophers might retreat from the world, they did so more for the sake of freedom and protest than in the name of rejecting the material world as evil.

Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu have received so much attention as these two. Like the Confucian classics, they have each developed a tradition of commentaries, some of which are very important, not only for understanding the original text but also for what the commentators themselves have to say. After all, remembering the example of Confucius, there is much that has been said by creative thinkers who attribute their ideas to the ancients. There are also important questions asked about the original texts (Walsh, 1989). Neo-Taoism was a multi-faceted movement, including exegesis, philosophical discussions, as well as poetry and art. It was also an iconoclastic movement, which may be compared with that of the modern ‘hippies’. The age-old respect for authority, and for the Five Relationships, was collapsing. Children were calling their parents by their personal names, while poets and philosophers found solace in drink and conversation.

People can perform rituals with no idea about what they mean. There may also be rituals that seem ‘deliberately’ to construct gaps, empty even of those marked actions to which meaning might be attributed, leaving spaces for sensory experience. The actions comprising shamanic performances were much more variable than the sky or mountain rituals, and this is what one would expect with a practice concerned with managing the unpredictable Shamanic performances included rather few sequences of named, pre-established, actions that ‘had to be done, like other rituals. It is true that the actions of calling down a spirit, the entry of that spirit into the shaman, and the speech of the spirit, were marked in various conventional ways and can be described as ritualized. But all this took place among multifarious other components of the performance. These were mostly like ordinary everyday actions in the sense that they could be changed easily to accomplish a goal. For example, one method of exorcism could be substituted by another ‘better’ one, or a technique of impressing and shocking people could be changed for another more sensational one. ritualized ( Siikala 1978). But all this took place among multifarious other components of the performance. Herne depicts (2001): “with the task of carrying the wish to an appropriate kami, just as if the plaintiff himself were a powerful shaman with the capacity to ride the spirit horse into the divine realms and address the gods directly” (p. 130). These were mostly like ordinary everyday actions in the sense that they could be changed easily to accomplish a goal. For example, one method of exorcism could be substituted by another ‘better’ one, or a technique of impressing and shocking people could be changed for another more sensational one. In most of these men’s and women’s rituals freshly butchered and cooked meat was offered and it is appropriate here to say a few words about ‘shamanism’ and sacrifice.

Shamans did not carry out sacrifices and we can now see the logic of why this was so. Sacrifice was an intervention in the processes of the world, and the indeterminate blessing it brought was essentially simply the good fortune that the cyclical current of harmonic world processes should be maintained. It was the social group, represented by the ‘old man’, which made itself an actor in the drama of renewal by sacrifice (Wong, 1990). When benign renewal was disrupted, as with floods, wildfires, epidemics, plagues of locusts, absence of game, and so forth, the sky, mountains, or forest were also offered ad hoc propitiations. In Inner Asia, as a whole shamans might, or might not, intervene in such situations, depending on whether their spirits, which were of human origin, had become land-masters and therefore potential causes of the disaster. In natural calamities were not explained by shamanic spirits, because such spirits were not masters of the land. This is why both sacrifices and propitiations addressed to natural objects were carried out by a person who represented humanity itself as a constituent part of nature (Cass, 2008).

In the great ritual just described, shamans danced between the home trees, with their images of ancestral disasters, and the outer tree, bearing its spirits of double-edged fortune and maleficent void. Nothing in this shamanic universe was a single indivisible unit, and nothing was simple or devoid of threat. Such a universe arose, from the shaman’s real-life practice, which was deeply implicated in the psychology of a knot of relationships. Although the individuals calling on the shaman’s services were different on each occasion, the shaman’s performance involved a necessary cast of intertwined roles. One can go further and say that shamans’ practice created its own social relations (Cass, 2008).

In sum, shamanism in Taoism is a widespread practice reflecting the essence and uniqueness of this religion. ‘Shamanism’ as a whole conglomerate of beliefs and practices is not only about the knowledge but about the various kinds of knowledge. This knowing is not, however, thought of as supernatural. It is knowledge of what is there to be known, but only certain individuals are gifted to know it or discover it, and they do so in different ways. For this reason, ‘shamanism’ could encompass and deepen ordinary knowledge of nature (including human nature), thus revealing what made the ordinary marvelous. Shamans’ rituals reveal this to have been understanding of an emotionally candid reality, for which the conscious subject is not the standard patriarchally defined person but all imaginable kinds of individual selves. The self is not conceived as being alone, and the shaman’s practice aims to reconstitute and make effective this very sociality for the sufferer. The notion of sociality that shamans bring into play extended beyond death to previous sufferers and beyond the boundaries of humanity to the consciousnesses of other living beings such as animals and birds.

References

Cahill, S. E. (2006). Divine Traces of the Daoist Sisterhood, Magdalena, NM: Three Pines Press.

Cass, V. (2008). In the Realm of the Gods: Lands, Myths, and Legends of China. San Francisco: Long River Press.

Herne, R. (2001). Magic, Shamanism and Taoism. Llewellyn Publications; 1st edition.

Kohn, L. (2001). Daoism and Chinese Culture, Cambridge: Three Pines Press.

Lee, K. (2004). The Indigenous Religions of Silla: Their Diversity and Durability. Korean Studies, 28 (1), 49.

Stephen R. Bokenkamp. (1997). Early Daoist Scriptures, Berkeley: University of California.

Walsh, R. (1989). The Shamanic Journey: Experiences, Origins, and Analogues. Re-vision, 12 (2), pp. 25-32.

Wong, E. (transl). (1990). Seven Daoist Masters: A Folk Novel of China. Boston: Shambala.

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Religion in China. Shaman and Shamanism in Daoism

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