Spirit-Writing and the Development of Chinese Cults

Abstract

Chinese spirit-writing, like other forms of shamanism, is one route to authority and influence during social crisis. The writings discussed here were produced by a spirit-medium who founded a cult during the plagues and political turmoil in China in the 1890s. Such material is valuable for understanding how the medium defines his/her mission, attracts and impresses followers, deals with group problems, and responds to the socio-political conditions of the time. This method of revelation was abandoned, however, after the spirit-writer's cult was relocated to Hong Kong and gained a mass following, in favor of the alternative method of “fortune-sticks” and fortune poems. The former divination method is ideal for the origins of such a cult; the latter, for mass worship in the metropolis.