Chapter 2 Making the Gods Write: A Short History of Spirit-Written Revelations in China, 1000–1400
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Abstract
The chapter proposes a general scenario for the development of spirit-writing in its first phase, between the earliest mentions in the tenth century to the end of the Mongol period. It reviews all the available evidence—gods involved, social setup, practitioners, techniques—and proposes that a dominant context is that of Daoist ritual. Spirit-writing is one particular ritual technique of creating divine presence that is usually deployed by religious specialists with the same aims as other techniques: requesting blessings, obtaining cures and salvation, asking questions about the future and destiny of the deceased, and learning the intentions of the gods. In a few cases, it led to discursive teachings (revelations). It was often practiced in conjunction with other ritual techniques, as part of a ritual repertoire. All such techniques required training and initiation. During the early modern period, the variegated spirit-writing techniques were codified and routinely used by Daoists (primarily the fashi 法師 exorcists) and largely associated with them. In its last section, the article offers a typology of the spirit-written texts composed during this first phase of historical development.