Deities Reside Within: Negotiation of the Spatial Concept in the Summon Ritual Script of the Rural Jiao in South Zhejiang

This article is a case study of the Xiangtongguan, a Daoist jiao ritual script prevalent in southeast Zhejiang. I discuss the dual-spatial concept between the Daoist scriptures and local pantheon and how the concept influenced the inception of ritual texts. The core feature of Xiangtongguan is its D...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inMin su qu yi no. 201; pp. 101 - 167
Main Authors Qu, Xiaoyu, Peng, Liansheng
Format Journal Article
LanguageChinese
Published Taipei Shih Ho-cheng Folk Culture Foundation 01.09.2018
Subjects
Case studies
Chinese culture
Cosmology
Deities
Religious literature
Rites & ceremonies
Scripts
Taoism
Zhejiang China
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:This article is a case study of the Xiangtongguan, a Daoist jiao ritual script prevalent in southeast Zhejiang. I discuss the dual-spatial concept between the Daoist scriptures and local pantheon and how the concept influenced the inception of ritual texts. The core feature of Xiangtongguan is its Daoist cosmology of jiao ritual. It contains on the one hand a specific geographic area, which I called "the local," that reflects the distribution of local temples and deities; on the other hand a dual structure of ritual placement constituted by "the local" and the "three heavens." Based on analysis of changes occurring in stages of jiao ritual placement and relations of ritual characters found in manuscripts collected from five kinds of "Masters," I conclude that the morphological characteristics of the Xiangtongguan text was a result of the negotiation between perspectives of "the local" and "the three heavens." Editors of the scriptures employ the "district/settlement" framework as a guideline to select and int
ISSN:1025-1383