So what do we do about all of these invading evil spirits?

Well, we do exorcisms. What are exorcisms? Well, they're symbolic actions, tools, and words.

Li Jianmin gives one example from a fifth century physician called Xu Sibo 徐嗣伯

in which he talks about this corpse infixation that we already talked about, shizhu 尸注,

it's very much like guizhu 鬼注, ghost infixation.

He says: "Corpse infixation means that ghost Qi is latent and has not yet arisen,"

so it's hidden. "Hence it makes the person sunken and stagnant."

What to do about it?

"Throw a dead person's pillow at it and the Qi of the hun soul will fly off and be unable again to attach itself to the body," futi 附體.

"Thus the corpse infixation will be cured." So here we see that idea of corpse,

the hidden corpse who has somehow infiltrated the body of presumably somebody related to him in his family,

and it makes him "sunken and stagnant" and so you do a kind of sympathetic magic thing:

you take the dead person's pillow and you throw it at him,

and then the Qi of the hun and po souls of the dead person which have come to infect the

person who is alive will fly off and "be unable again to attach itself to the body,"

futi.

This is a standard term for possession by the gods all the way down to the present, okay?

So: here we see that behind the exorcism, in this particular case of a symbolic action, that behind it is a notion of possession.

Another text which is from much earlier, the Wushi'er bingfang 五十二病方. This is a text, a medical text primarily,

which was found in the Mawangdui tombs of the early second century BC,

and it has all kinds of exorcistic actions, like "spitting and spouting" 唾噴 or "the pace of Yu" 禹步.

We've talked about the pace of Yu. We'll be talking about it again at the very end of the session,

so pay close attention to how it's used in exorcism.

"Still others adopt a fierce tone to intimidate the demons." And it quotes then:

"Spit on the ladle and chant this incantation over it: ‘Spouter, spout ferociously.

On high be like the sweeper star. Down below be like congealed blood. You will be seized left of the gate.

You will be cut apart right of the gate. Should you not desist, you will be quartered and exposed in the marketplace'."

So here you have clearly a priest who is talking angrily and with authority to this ghost in order to get him out.

Now clearly, exorcism is a form of theater.

There's a kind of theatricality, and that theatricality in fact can be exuberant, expressive, or it can be solemn.

And in fact these two forms of theatricality describe perfectly the two different ways

in which Daoist ritual still today or Buddhist ritual addresses itself to the two categories of spirits.

The shen, the good guys, you address them solemnly,

with theater which is calm and with beautiful yayue 雅樂, refined music.

Whereas, when it's these negative spirits, these gui 鬼, that have to be chased away,

well, you use drums and gongs and make noise and set off firecrackers and you yell,

you scream, you screech, okay? Theatricality.

The medical classic the Lingshu 靈樞 or Magical Pivot describes this theatricality:

"The disease results in aversion to people and fire, fear and surprise when hearing the sound of wood, a tendency of the heart to stir."

In other words, the person is on edge and the slightest sound disturbs him.

"Staying alone behind closed doors"—lock all the doors, you're afraid, paranoid—

"and sealed windows, and in severe cases wanting to climb high and sing or take off clothes and run around."

So clearly describing psychologically ill, mentally ill persons and their theatrical behavior.

And Li Jianmin then says, "In such patients, the disease manifested itself in states tending toward an exuberance of fire,

heat and yang that were very theatrical and prone to violent outbursts."

Okay, so: this theatricality of exorcism, which can still be observed today,

any place you go in China and that you see an exorcism you'll see that it's much more,

what should I say, much more fun to watch actually than frequently the rituals for the gods: very very theatrical.

Okay, another feature of exorcisms, a very specific kind of exorcism,

is to use what's called in Chinese a tishen 替神 or a substitute person.

And not long ago here in the Institute of Chinese Studies in the museum there was a display of precisely what I'm going to talk about right now.

It's called a "bamboo slip for release of the pine figurine 松人解除簡."

That same term jie, with another one which is also always associated with exorcism jiechu 解除.

Chu literally means to pull up by the root. The chudiao 除掉, get rid of it entirely.

So, on the one hand, to release and then to rip out, okay?

So: this is the function of this bamboo figurine, that wasn't very tall, I would say, as I recall.

The text that was written on it is as follows:

"The master has been repeatedly marked down"—that is to say the person for whom the exorcism is done—"and the pine figurine answers for this.

The deceased person has been indicted for his crime and forced into labor service."

So we're talking about a deceased person: "The pine figurine answers for this," so he's got to do the job.

"The six domestic animals perform labor service: the pine figurine answers for this.

Do not come back for the older or younger [brother]."

Ah! There we see, so it's this specific dead person who's causing trouble

and so we give him a substitute person to do the jobs that he's been forced to do in his earth prison.

In that way we can say, okay, don't come back for the older or younger brother, don't come back for the wife.

"If the pine figurine withdraws too early or does not answer betimes," what do you do?

"Flog it, beat it 300 times, in accordance with the rules and regulations."

So once again that whole judicial character of this vision of illness and death

and how it's transmitted from the dead to the living inside his family.

Then we have another text by a certain Yan Zhitui 顏之推, who was born in the year 531,

and it's called Family Instructions of Sire Yan 顏氏家訓.

And so it's generally considered to be a very good Confucian text.

And so he doesn't like what he is about to describe and so he says,

"According to heterodox books"—okay?

heterodox, orthodox—"after a man's death, his soul returns home to kill, guisha 歸殺.

The sons and grandsons all flee, and none are willing to stay at home."

Incidentally, this practice is still carried on in some places where I've done fieldwork, notably in southern Anhui.

Then, "they draw talismans on tiles and take all kinds of quelling action (yansheng 厭勝)"—

another specific term to zhenya 鎮壓,

to suppress these gui that come up from down below, how to quell them, how to keep them under control,

and talismans or fu 符 are one of the other key items used,

tools used by Daoist priests in order to chase away evil spirits, still to this day.

So, this is the actions that they take, and "on the day of burial,

they light a fire in front of the gate and spread the ashes outside.

They perform the fu 祓 sacrifice to send off the family ghost (the jiagui 家鬼)

and send petitions for stopping disease by infixation and contagion"—

so these kinds of disease that we've talked about.

So this then tells us not only of a very bizarre and very un-filial very un-Confucian kind of behavior between the children,

grandchildren, and their deceased father or mother, running away, leaving the home.

If they want to come back and occupy and kill,

well, let them come back, but we're all gone. They're not going to find us.

And then performing as well sending petitions.

Sending petitions, well, this is part of the whole bureaucratic system from the very beginning,

perhaps even before the imperial period,

but here it's very interesting to see that the Daoist rituals for which talismans and petitions,

fu and zhang 章 as they're called, are the,

I would say the two key tools for the Daoist rituals that start to emerge in the second to the sixth century,

so precisely in this period, this new period of "warring states" and division.

So this Han scholar, Eastern Han scholar, that we've already run into before, Zheng Xuan,

who is a great commentator on the Classics who died in the year 200,

so right at the end of the Eastern Han,

he explains a term that is found in the ritual texts, which are therefore referring back to ritual practice from even the royal period,

is a term called cezhu 策祝, which Li Jianmin translates as "invocation," zhu,

"with writing tablets," the ce are writing tablets.

And it's taken from the chapter on taizhu太祝, or the "Great Invoker" in the Zhouli,

one of the three ritual texts that dates to the Han but includes much earlier information as well, okay?

So: it's a commentary on an early ritual text, early Confucian ritual text,

and it refers to offering up a petition to inform the spirits:

"Invocation by means of writing tablets aims to send crime diseases (zuiji 罪疾) far away." Okay?

So: already quite outside of a Daoist context,

we see that these petitions are also associated with problems of illness

and exorcism of the evil spirits causing the illness.

One of the most well-known forms of exorcism which was performed

and is in fact still performed in many villages throughout China today

and was in the Han dynasty performed every year at the beginning of the new year in the palace,

in the imperial palace, is called nuo 儺.

And one of the things that is described in this nuo is dismembering dogs.

The word zhe 磔 means to dismember the body, to take it apart.

When you "dismember and cast out at the nine gates,"

pestilence or epidemics is driven out of the country, driven out of there.

By dismembering victims who are sacrificed to the spirits of the state's gates,

the aim is to cast out misfortune and disaster, to forbid the ghosts of pestilence,

and prevent them from regaining entry in the future.

So in fact here we see—we've just been talking about medical aspects of exorcism,

that it's the individual body which is attacked by these evil spirits—

here we see the same idea on the level of a, clearly of a city, the imperial city, because it has nine gates, okay? So: it's a walled city.

And notice that these gates have gods, just as the gate gods,

the menshen 門神 of every house in traditional China, okay?

And these gods like any other gods, they receive sacrifices, they have a job to do,

which is precisely to keep out evil spirits, not allow evil spirits to come in.

And so this nuo is performed on a regular basis and then of course it's also performed

if there's a specific reason like an epidemic that suddenly breaks out,

and it involves then dismembering victims as a sacrifice to the spirits of the state's gates,

casting out, driving out the evil spirits and preventing them from coming back in.

And in this book, there's a chapter by Mu-chou Poo called "Ritual and Ritual Texts in Early China."

He goes all the way back to the Shang dynasty and brings it down into the Han dynasty,

and he in his chapter describes the nuo as it was performed in the imperial capital.

And I'll just read a very short portion of this early text from the [Hou] Hanshu [後]漢書 as I recall:

"There are altogether twelve spirits (who can) drive away the evil and the baneful.

Let them roast your bodies, break your spines and joints, tear off your flesh, pull out your lungs and entrails.

If you do not leave at once, those who stay behind will become their food."

So here we see once again that theatricality, that violence, that verbal violence,

that physical violence that these twelve spiritual—

who are dressed up to look like, well, twelve specific entities—spiritual entities with masks.

And they're the ones who look ferocious and fearful and they're driving out the gods,

the spirits, who are threatening.

So it's basically an exorcism performed in the imperial palace

and in the imperial city on an annual basis at the start of the new year.

Remember we used this phrase tugu naxin 吐故納新, very early on,

that is to say that you have to spit out the old and bring in the new.

So at the end of the year in fact you have all that accumulated negativity which has to be driven out definitively,

and so nuoxi 儺戲 or still nuo theater as it's called nowadays

is typically used in many many villages as I say even today, though primarily before 1949,

precisely to drive out the evil spirits, usually in the first half of the period,

and frequently in fact what we all call the Lantern Festival which takes place on the fifteenth day of the first month—

in fact it's often an exorcistic nuo, form of nuo, in which

the procession goes through the entire village and it collects "garbage"

that is thrown into a wooden boat or a paper boat and then they rush outside of the shuikou 水口,

outside of the downstream limit of the village,

and burn the boat and send off the ghosts.

So here we see that from the imperial palace down to the village this idea on a periodic basis, especially at the new year,

get rid of all this old negativity so that the new year can be prosperous.

Another version of this attitude toward space—

because notice that we keep talking about spaces that have to be exorcised,

from which evil spirits have to be driven,

whether it's the space of the body, the space of the village, the space of the palace, or in fact the space of China, okay?

To me, it's always the Daoist Jintan 禁壇 ritual that I first saw in southern Taiwan in the early 1980s.

Jintan literally means to forbid entry onto the tan, onto the Daoist altar.

And in this ritual, the priest has a sword and a bowl of fushui 符水,

that is to say of talisman water,

in which he's burned one of these talismans that represent divine energies—

he's burned it into his bowl of holy water.

And an acolyte, one of his members of the Daoist troupe, dressed in a tiger,

kind of a tiger outfit, so he looks like a tiger spirit.

And the tiger of course is referring to the baihu 白虎 from the west,

the animal of the west, who is a negative spirit, spirit of death.

Okay, so: he erupts under the Daoist altar area and he steals the incense burner which represents the life of the community.

Okay, he steals it, he runs off with it.

And out comes the priest with his sword and his bowl of holy water,

and he goes after him and he strikes at him with his sword, of course symbolically, very theatrical.

And once in a while, he'll take a big swallow of this water and spew it out, okay?

Well, so he ends up by of course driving the tiger clad, tiger-skinned clad ghost out,

and then he goes around the altar performing the pace of Yu,

the Yubu, and he does it, and it's called to jiejie 結界,

to seal off the entire [altar], okay?—

using this pace that Yu used to walk, to channel the waters away,

so here we see that the waters, the flooding waters are just like these gui,

these invading evil spirits who have to be channeled out and driven out, okay?

And then, he finally arrives: where?

In the northeast corner, guimen.

And there there's a bushel of rice, which purifies, okay?

And in it, lo and behold, what do we find? A mask.

The mask that the tiger skin clad priest was wearing when he stole the incense burner,

and it's now been planted in this bushel of rice.

And the priest puts his sword in there and he also has something called a wuleihao 五雷號,

which is his control over thunder of the five directions,

that's also planted.

So the two tools of his authority are both planted to keep this gui in his place, to zhen 鎮 him,

to keep him in his place in the northeast corner.

So this of course then prevents the return of demons through that most vulnerable gate, the Demon Gate.

So in all these exorcisms, the same model is at work:

we have a space which can be filled either with good or with evil spirits.

If it's filled with good spirits, it's like China itself,

a shenzhou 神州, that is to say a "continent of the gods."

This is a space also referred to in Daoist self-cultivation texts:

like hu shenshen 呼身神, "calling on the body spirits,"

zhi baibing 治百病, "to treat the hundred diseases,"

to treat, to heal the hundred diseases,

So whether it's on the level, as I say, of all China, of the palace, of the village, or of the body, which is

also full of spirits, to summon them, to call them, to keep them inside your body, so that's the good spirits.

For a space that is filled with evil spirits there is no name: they must be driven out.

And that is exactly where that title in the Hanshu bibliography comes back.

Remember, it was zhi buxiang 執不祥, "capturing the inauspicious,"

he guiwu 劾鬼物, "investigating demonic entities."

The verb he refers to a judicial investigation and most specialists think that this appeared in

the Song dynasty in a Daoist movement, a new Daoist movement that we'll be talking about later,

called the Tianxin zhengfa 天心正法 or Heart of Heaven tradition.

And it has a specific ritual called kaozhao 考召.

Kao literally means to, like kaoshi 考試, to investigate and examine,

so you're examining a potential criminal.

But before that of course you have to summon him in order to carry out this in their interrogation,

so it's a summons and interrogation ritual in this Song dynasty tradition.

But in fact, in early medieval Daoist texts, in the vast bureaucracy of local gods,

it's the earth god who uses the very same term kaozhao,

summons and interrogation, to police every administered territory.

Every village has its she, so the function of the she is to protect the village,

just like the function of the menshen 門神 is to protect the house.

But if the people are misbehaving, he's going to let the gui, the negative gui, in to cause trouble, okay?

So: he's on the one hand a protector and the passage,

the way through which evil can enter, if there has been immoral behavior in the village, okay.

So: that's on the level then of the village, the earth god.

Every house by now has a stove god, who has exactly the same function.

And according to texts like Baopuzi 抱朴子 from the early fourth century,

the human body also has something called the sanshi 三尸 or three corpses.

This is what he says their function is:

"The three corpses are shapeless and want people to die early so they can become ghosts, wander about at will,

and enjoy people's sacrifices and libations."

So in addition to these good gods, these that you want to keep inside your body in the early Daoist texts,

you also have these three corpses.

You have the sanhun 三魂 and the qipo 七魄, the different kinds of souls,

but you also have these negative spirits who have just one idea and that is to get out as quickly as possible

so that they can wander around like other ghosts and enjoy the food of sacrifices.

And these three corpse spirits report wrongdoing to the director of destiny, the siming 司命.

And I just referred to them a moment ago on the level of the Daoist universe as a whole,

we have the Three Officers of Heaven: tian, di,shui, Heaven, Earth, Water under the earth.

In short, in this universe where exorcism is a constant recourse,

a constant necessity—in this world in which the repressed,

that is to say demonic haunting by evil spirits has re-entered into the medical canon, okay?—

in this space now, every space has its spy and protector gods.

M05.5 The Answer: Exorcism

Intellectual Change in Early China: Warring States and Han

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