Wuism
The Wuismus (Wu-religion of巫) was an ancient Chinese form of a classic shamanistic religion.
The Wu were magic priests and priestesses of the Shang period . Wuism was practiced thousands of years earlier. The Hongshan culture is known for this. Interpreting the famous Chinese oracle bones fell within her area of responsibility. A Wu probably represented a head endowed with magical abilities or the leader of a clan. The Shang kings themselves were probably considered to be the head of all Wu, since the oracle bones show that the king e.g. B. personally interpreted the oracle bones, danced around rain and occupied himself with weather forecasts and dream interpretation .
The main practice of the Wu was ecstatic dancing , accompanied by chants or shouts. Most of the time, people danced around rain and these dances were often continued until it actually rained. Since the dragons are traditionally associated with rain in China, it is assumed that the Chinese belief in dragons can already be found in the Shang dynasty and that the dragons served the Wu as riding or draft animals and that they themselves transformed into dragons in a shamanic manner.
Wuism is one of the oldest, but also one of the most short-lived religions in China , the decline of which is already rooted in the time of the Zhou dynasty . Here, for the first time, a strong opposition to Wuism forms, guided by the nobility and the liege princes, which is primarily to be understood as a defensive attitude towards the rule of the Zhou king Li (r. 878 - 828 BC), who only too much liked to rely on the practices of the Wu religion.
So King Li used a Wu priest who was supposed to find out about the critics of his rule for him . It is said that the priest's espionage went so far that the members of the court soon no longer dared to comment on the existing dynasty .
The Zhou king Ling (r. 571-545 BC) also hired a Wuist magician who was supposed to encourage the liege princes to participate in the morning audiences again. The Wu scholar then shot arrows at a fox skull, which symbolized the princes . So it is not surprising that the nobility treated Wuism with disgust and therefore strived for a kind of religious monarchism , with Confucianism as the main religion, and thus largely communication between humans and spirits in such a form - even with too frequent communicative intercourse between people and gods - refused.
Wuism lives on in parts in the many Chinese folk religions.
literature
- Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer : Ancient China. From the beginning to the 19th century. 3. Edition. CH Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-45115-2 ( Beck's series 2015 Beck Wissen ).
- W. Eichhorn : The old Chinese religion and the state cult. EJ Brill, Leiden et al. 1976, ISBN 90-04-04487-6 ( Handbook of Oriental Studies . Section 4: China . Volume 4: Religions and Customs . Section 1).
- Martin Gimm : The secret shamanism of the Qing emperors . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2018, ISBN 978-3-447-10962-8 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Nelson, Matson, Roberts, Rock, Stencel. 2006.
- ^ Contemporary Chinese Shamanism: The Reinvention of Tradition . ( culturalsurvival.org [accessed August 20, 2018]).