page_title: Religion in China
section_title: Chinese shamanic traditions
hierarchical_section_title: Religion in China / Main religions / Taoism / Chinese shamanic traditions
caption_attribution_description: Description: 中国法师民间道教 - fashi Taoist, China. Author: uploader, +上帝+
context_page_description: The government of China officially espouses state atheism, though Chinese civilization has historically long been a cradle and host to a variety of the most enduring religio-philosophical traditions of the world. Confucianism and Taoism, later joined by Buddhism, constitute the "three teachings" that have shaped Chinese culture. There are no clear boundaries between these intertwined religious systems, which do not claim to be exclusive, and elements of each enrich popular or folk religion. The emperors of China claimed the Mandate of Heaven and participated in Chinese religious practices. In the early 20th century, reform-minded officials and intellectuals attacked all religions as "superstitious", and since 1949, China has been governed by the Communist Party of China, an atheist institution that prohibits party members from practicing religion while in office. In the culmination of a series of atheistic and anti-religious campaigns already underway since the late 19th century, the Cultural Revolution against old habits, ideas, customs and culture, lasting from 1966 to 1976, destroyed or forced them underground.
context_section_description: Shamanism was the prevalent modality of pre-Han dynasty Chinese indigenous religion. The Chinese usage distinguishes the Chinese "Wuism" tradition (巫教 Wūjiào; properly shamanic, in which the practitioner has control over the force of the god and may travel to the underworld) from the tongji tradition (童乩; southern mediumship, in which the practitioner does not control the force of the god but is guided by it), and from non-Han Chinese Altaic shamanisms (萨满教 sàmǎnjiào) which are practised in northern provinces.
  With the rise of Confucian orthodoxy in the Han period (206 BCE–220 CE), shamanic traditions found an institutionalised and intellectualised form within the esoteric philosophical discourse of Taoism. According to Chirita (2014), Confucianism itself, with its emphasis on hierarchy and ancestral rituals, derived from the shamanic discourse of the Shang dynasty (~1600 BCE–1046 BCE). What Confucianism did was to marginalise the features of old shamanism which were dysfunctional for the new political regime. However, shamanic traditions continued uninterrupted within the folk religion and found precise and functional forms within Taoism.
  In the Shang and later Zhou dynasty (~1046 BCE–256 BCE), shamans had an important role in the political hierarchy, and were represented institutionally by the Ministry of Rites (大宗拍). The emperor was considered the supreme shaman, intermediating between the three realms of heaven, earth and humanity. The mission of a shaman (巫 wu) is "to repair the disfunctionalities occurred in nature and generated after the sky had been separated from earth":
  "The female shamans called wu as well as the male shamans called xi represent the voice of spirits, repair the natural disfunctions, foretell the future based on dreams and the art of divination ... "a historical science of the future", whereas shamans are able to observe the yin and the yang ...".
  Since the 1980s the practice and study of shamanism has undergone a great revival in Chinese religion as a mean to repair the world to a harmonious whole after industrialisation. Shamanism is viewed by many scholars as the foundation for the emergence of civilisation, and the shaman as "teacher and spirit" of peoples. The Chinese Society for Shamanic Studies was founded in Jilin City in 1988.
caption: A 巫 wu master of the Xiangxi area.
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