So now we move on to another Daoist text or series of texts, but written by a specific person,

Tao Hongjing 陶弘景.

Tao Hongjing, his dates are 456 to 536 AD, so towards the end of the period of division, 220 to 589,

and he is an extraordinary member of the elite, of the elite literate population.

He is a famous Daoist, he is a famous medical expert,

and he is also a famous consultant of emperors in the South,

which is controlled by Chinese dynasties as opposed to the North,

which in his lifetime were controlled by non-Chinese dynasties,

dynasties of tribal groups that descended from the north.

So in the writings of Tao Hongjing we can see what we saw developing in the previous section.

We can see how this comes to fruition and expression in his vision of what is the cause of disease,

and he sees three causes.

First of all, "diseases of suffering caused by things."

Then, there is "externally arising diseases," waifa bing 外發病,

which are simply "caused by the contraction of external evils like wind or cold."

So these are the traditional medical classic kinds of things caused by external events or elements.

But then he has a category of "internal diseases."

We've already seen that this idea of internal diseases was very much associated with psychology,

that is to say people are afraid, they're anxious, they're stressed out, whatever, okay?

So: that category of internal rising diseases already existed,

but it takes a new turn which is precisely the expression of this return of the repressed of these demonological etiologies of disease.

Why? Because this kind of internal disease is caused by demonic haunting,

and "the ghosts in this category of internal disease are not associated with conditions caused by the presence of spirits in a person's mind."

In other words, it's not all in their heads, "but refer to actual hun and po souls and other spectral beings," gui

"that exist," literally exist, really exist, "outside the person's body."

So here we're at the exact antipode of Wang Chong who says it's all in the person's imagination,

fiction of his imagination.

Here these are real spirits, these ligui precisely who come into the person,

so they're "external evils," waixie 外邪, not internal evils, that are then "transformed into internal causes," neiyinhua 內因化.

So they're interiorized external spirits and "are therefore classified as different from external disease causes such as wind evil."

So they come from the outside, but they effect on the inside, we can say in a psychological way, but they are really existing spirits, okay?

In the mind of this great literatus Tao Hongjing.

He's very much involved with the Bencao 本草, that is to say a materia medica,

that is to say a list of all of the herbal solutions to disease,

and there's a text which includes not only the Bencao jing 本草經 itself but also a whole series of commentaries.

And this is what it says: "Now the reasons for disease are many,

but they're all related to evil," always the same term xie.

Right down to the present day when the government wants to say a certain teaching or religion is evil,

they call it xiejiao 邪教, okay?

So: xieqi, xiejiao. "What is evil is so because it is not right," buzheng 不正.

So, zheng versus xie, orthodox versus heterodox.

Here what does it refer to?

"It refers to that which is not normal," abnormal, "in the human body.

Wind, cold, summer heat, dampness, hunger, overeating, taxation (too hard work) and leisure—

all these are evil, and it is not just ghost Qi that causes terrible diseases."

So here we have all of the external causes related to the seasons and so on.

"Humans live in Qi as fish live in water," so that cosmology of Qi is still very much there.

"When the water is muddy, the fish become thin; when Qi is clouded, humans become sick."

"Nothing is more serious than when evil Qi harms a person," xieqi.

So here there's no reference to the gui as in the Tao Hongjing text.

It's much more like the medical classics that it's all in terms of Qi,

but let's watch what happens to this term xieqi, or evil Qi.

"Once the channels and network vessels" of the body as it is conceived in Chinese medicine "have received this outer Qi,"

the xieqi from outside, "they pass it on into the viscera," the five organs and into the "bowels which,

depending on their state of vacuity or repletion, cold or heat, knot it into disease."

So again that same idea of combination of outer and inner, okay?

But we're talking about xieqi coming from outside.

"Disease then gives rise to disease until it spreads and mutates on a wide scale."

Now listen carefully to the next sentence:

"The spirit"—still that term jingshen—"the spirit uses the body for its residence,"

so the spirit and the body, and the one is physical and the other is spiritual,

and the one lives in the other. "When the body receives evil"—so the xieqi—"the spirit inside is also in disarray.

When the spirit is in disarray, then ghost spirits," guiling 鬼靈, "enter.

Their demonic power gradually strengthens, while the hold of the spirit of the person gradually weakens.

How could this not lead to death?" So there you have it, illness as spirit possession.

So from Han Feizi to Tao Hongjing, in fact, there's a very similar understanding of the human person.

Tao Hongjing: "the spirit," jingshen, "uses the body for its residence."

Wang Shuhe from the Maijing: "the five viscera are at once the abode of the hun and po souls and the support of the essence spirit," the jingshen.

Han Feizi: "the state of the jingshen not being in disarray is called ‘having virtue'."

We're simply recalling here now key phrases from the whole longer passages that we've already looked at.

So, spirit disarray or soul loss, that is the loss of the soul,

in turn allows evil spirits to take possession of the body.

So still to this day one of the standard rituals of exorcism done is called shouhun 收魂, that is to say to bring the souls back,

especially done for children—children who have what?

Been surprised by something and so their spirit flies out of them and they become listless, and they become ill, they don't want to eat.

And so you call in the Daoist priest and he does a shoujing 收驚 or to bring to an end that impact of the surprise, but also a shouhun 收魂.

And in fact this goes all the way back to a text, a poem in a book called the Chuci 楚辭,

called "Zhaohun" 招魂, that is to say summoning the soul.

The idea was that in ancient China when a person died,

you went up onto the roof of the house and you summoned his soul to come back,

to make sure that he was really dead.

So "come back! come back!" Okay, so: this in fact very ancient idea of possession as the

normal state but also the abnormal state. Possession by zhengshen 正神, correct spirits,

as opposed to the xieqi or xieshen that can come in and occupy when there's an empty space inside, okay?

So: we see it, Tao Hongjing, Wang Shuhe, Han Feizi,

all with this basic idea that spirit disarray or soul loss then in turn allows evil spirits to take possession of the body.

Tao: "When the spirit is in disarray, ghost spirits enter."

Wang Shuhe: "When the hun and po souls become volatile, the five viscera are empty,

and evil spirits, xieshen, immediately take up residence there."

Han Feizi: "What everybody refers to as ‘being haunted' is in fact a condition where the hun and po souls have departed and the spirit is in disarray."

So Han Feizi, who is the most radical secularist of them all, he avoids the language of possession.

He just says soul-loss means "virtue is absent" or that inner power is absent,

but the obvious question is: what takes its place?

And it hardly seems to make any practical difference whether it is "evil Qi that takes a person by surprise,"

xieqi (Suwen); Wang Shuhe,

that "evil spirits that take up residence"; or another alternative from a late sixth century medical text

called Zhubing yuanhou lun 諸病源候論 or Discussion of the Origin and Symptoms of the Various Diseases,

who says that "outside perversity," waixie 外邪—

so it's not designated either as Qi or as spirits but just outside perversity—

that is welcomed into the body by "corpse worms."

Well, that's something we haven't run into before, shichong 尸蟲, that reside there.

What is he talking about?

Well, we'll come back to that in a moment,

but what I want to insist on first is that we have here—the structure is that of possession,

either by "normal" or by "deviant" spirits.

So every person is possessed. Every person is a space that is either possessed by his normal sprirts

or by abnormal and dangerous spirits, spirits that cause disease, madness, and death.

And then as Li Jianmin says very rightly when he's discussing precisely ghost infixation,

"Looking at the main indications of these medicinals, evil Qi, xieqi 邪气, malign Qi, eqi Qi 惡氣

and ghosts appear to be very similar notions."

M05.4 A New Synthesis

Intellectual Change in Early China: Warring States and Han

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