1 00:00:02,570 --> 00:00:02,970 For. 2 00:00:15,400 --> 00:00:24,010 Welcome everyone to the first of the four sessions this term in which our focus is mainly on revelations in Chinese, Indian and Mongolian religions. 3 00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:27,610 Full details of the program can be found on our website. 4 00:00:28,330 --> 00:00:33,550 Next to him, we will be having to further two mythological speakers Reinier Lang and Peer Kwabena, 5 00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:37,060 and the details of their talks will soon be added to the website. 6 00:00:38,700 --> 00:00:43,200 Our first speaker for this year, fossil crusader needs little introduction. 7 00:00:43,740 --> 00:00:48,060 He's already well known in Oxford and across the world as a scholar of Chinese religions. 8 00:00:48,750 --> 00:00:56,150 Russell is professor of Daoism and Chinese religion at the École Pratique Attitude in Paris, and he's also editor of Toon Power, 9 00:00:56,940 --> 00:01:01,590 a major journal in Scientology and president of the French Association for Chinese Studies. 10 00:01:02,400 --> 00:01:09,810 Most recently, he's focussed his research on late imperial Chinese religious practices and the production and dissemination of religious texts. 11 00:01:10,650 --> 00:01:21,090 His recent book. Making the God Speak, published by Harvard Asia Centre in 2022, is widely acclaimed and I recommend you all to read it. 12 00:01:21,960 --> 00:01:25,840 So Counsel, over to you. The production. 13 00:01:26,870 --> 00:01:40,010 Sort of, yeah, revelation and divine literature across cultures, including within East Asia, but not limited to East Asia. 14 00:01:41,840 --> 00:01:47,749 So even though it might at some point be a rather heavily logical book, 15 00:01:47,750 --> 00:01:59,000 I attempted to reach out and try to start building comparative frameworks for discussion across religion and culture and languages, 16 00:01:59,510 --> 00:02:08,089 and the fact that Rob and Anna and Yago very kindly invited me to present this book today in 17 00:02:08,090 --> 00:02:14,270 this treasure seminar is the proof that maybe this this is an idea that has some future I mean, 18 00:02:14,270 --> 00:02:18,319 comparing ritual means of producing revelation. 19 00:02:18,320 --> 00:02:23,000 So I'm really extremely excited about it and almost thanks again for the invitation. 20 00:02:24,470 --> 00:02:32,420 I will now be sharing my screen because I have a PowerPoint presentation. 21 00:02:36,170 --> 00:02:39,200 Good. This should be working. 22 00:02:41,840 --> 00:02:57,160 Yes. And. So because this is a book that tries to cover a lot of ground, arguably too much, and she's short like 30 or 40 minutes presentation. 23 00:02:57,340 --> 00:03:03,460 I'm going to run a lot of things across a long period of time, about 20 years. 24 00:03:04,870 --> 00:03:11,560 But hopefully we can have more specific focussed questions during the Q&A session. 25 00:03:13,030 --> 00:03:15,280 So I will not go into detail during the presentation, 26 00:03:15,280 --> 00:03:23,050 will try to give a general sense of what I was trying to achieve, to say the first word about with this book. 27 00:03:23,440 --> 00:03:28,660 So depart a point or maybe rather depart a point. 28 00:03:30,710 --> 00:03:40,670 I wrote this book as I was already working for a number of years on Chinese religious literature. 29 00:03:40,670 --> 00:03:48,409 We are an ongoing website, open access website, project, mapping the whole of Chinese religious literature, 30 00:03:48,410 --> 00:04:02,210 which is saying quite a lot and a good part of this religious literature circulating in book form or manuscript all now in digital form is revealed. 31 00:04:02,270 --> 00:04:07,640 It's ascribed to the gods through many different ways and. 32 00:04:09,520 --> 00:04:22,590 So this project is trying to make sense of the ways these books were produced and try to come up with a more useful or 33 00:04:22,610 --> 00:04:30,729 workable typology of regulation that we have and scholars of Chinese region have been using for a number of years, 34 00:04:30,730 --> 00:04:35,500 which really just reveals drive or often media mystique. 35 00:04:35,500 --> 00:04:44,860 And even though some of this literature is in fact the producer of first good possession crossbreed mediums, not all of it is so. 36 00:04:46,590 --> 00:04:49,860 And what I try to do is map the terrain, 37 00:04:49,860 --> 00:05:00,120 even though I have more expertise of more experience of working with certain kind of Texas history spirit writing during the second millennium. 38 00:05:00,480 --> 00:05:09,510 But I still try to place it in a as large as possible, a framework of all kinds of different types of civilisation. 39 00:05:11,130 --> 00:05:17,880 It very much seems that the very idea or revelation that is God's taking the initiative to 40 00:05:17,880 --> 00:05:28,140 impart teaching to humans appears around the the Han dynasty and the second millennium, 41 00:05:28,140 --> 00:05:33,990 B.C., and the first two centuries of our era. And that is closely related to eschatology. 42 00:05:33,990 --> 00:05:44,210 That is, gods produce tribulations because humans are going very fast down a slippery slope toward a final apocalypse, 43 00:05:44,220 --> 00:05:55,560 and therefore it's high time for humans to be given tools to at least try and save themselves in this very close connection between revelation and 44 00:05:55,560 --> 00:06:06,600 eschatology remains salient throughout all of the diverse modes of revelation during the first and second millennium and down to the present day. 45 00:06:09,030 --> 00:06:18,000 So what happens during this 2000 years of regulatory E3 is that we have the continued developments. 46 00:06:18,480 --> 00:06:26,040 Was ever a new modes of regulation appearing but the almost always remaining relevant there is 47 00:06:26,040 --> 00:06:32,100 nothing ever disappears from the scene in terms of ways and means of production revelation. 48 00:06:32,340 --> 00:06:38,610 But the what we might call the regulatory ecology grows ever more complex and diverse. 49 00:06:38,610 --> 00:06:45,990 New modes of care serve fit, new niche, allow people to produce new, new kinds of reveal texts. 50 00:06:46,320 --> 00:06:51,300 But the old modes remain a practice and active. 51 00:06:54,210 --> 00:07:03,360 So I was trying to group with this rather fascinating diversity, an ever evolving diversity of modes of regulation. 52 00:07:03,840 --> 00:07:11,459 I was hoping that maybe comparative work might help me and might help us to pitch the Chinese 53 00:07:11,460 --> 00:07:17,940 ways of producing revelation in a larger framework and to help us think through this. 54 00:07:18,330 --> 00:07:24,149 So this book is not really a full fledged attempt at such a comparative framework, 55 00:07:24,150 --> 00:07:34,740 but I think it's a gesture in that direction and maybe offer a platform on which we can engage in a conversation. 56 00:07:34,740 --> 00:07:38,400 And I hope that's what we will do today and we continue doing. 57 00:07:39,440 --> 00:07:42,680 In the future. Hmm. Okay. 58 00:07:42,800 --> 00:07:54,200 Now, the book begins with this very simple question, which is one entry point into the other, the various questions I just put to you. 59 00:07:54,470 --> 00:07:59,090 And is what happens when the God is present or is made present? 60 00:07:59,720 --> 00:08:10,790 An event described with words such as this, a God and I use God in most general sense, I mean a divine entity. 61 00:08:10,790 --> 00:08:17,899 And that might include vivid eyes and body survivors and immortals and ancestors and all kind of beings. 62 00:08:17,900 --> 00:08:26,240 And I'm not going into a theoretical typology here that would be very interesting, but it's not the topic for today. 63 00:08:26,690 --> 00:08:40,880 So we have all these various divine entities arriving in the world and creating events described with words such as John, Pauline and Sasha. 64 00:08:41,300 --> 00:08:49,220 And these verbs are extremely interesting because thanks to the the the peculiarities of Chinese grammar, 65 00:08:49,490 --> 00:08:58,069 they can be both direct, acquisitive right and can mean both a God sense of its own accord or East Coast descent. 66 00:08:58,070 --> 00:09:10,370 Right. So we can see I don't I dissent and you can also add the very same verb being used to describe a priest who makes a godly sign. 67 00:09:10,400 --> 00:09:13,580 A priest, John, such and such aggression. 68 00:09:16,100 --> 00:09:23,600 So this description roots are extremely numerous throughout Chinese literature, 69 00:09:24,830 --> 00:09:30,230 including a geography and stories and official histories and so on and so forth, 70 00:09:31,970 --> 00:09:37,240 clearly points to the fact that events were perceived as being extremely frequent. 71 00:09:37,250 --> 00:09:47,660 But we are describing rather generic terms, and this is just an example I took from the introductory section of the book Taking from Geographic 72 00:09:48,140 --> 00:09:54,910 Work beginning in the 13th century about a major God from China called Transcendent Lord, 73 00:09:55,310 --> 00:10:10,600 who is private named Shushan. We have been ascribed numerous revelation of doctrinal scriptures, liturgical texts and other things as well. 74 00:10:10,960 --> 00:10:18,490 And here we have a short extract that says In the year 1224, this transcendent law, John, 75 00:10:18,550 --> 00:10:27,670 descended at a place called jingling and showed the teachings of loyalty and piety, 76 00:10:27,670 --> 00:10:33,440 and all the throngs of people converted to him and followed is teaching, right? 77 00:10:33,730 --> 00:10:39,520 So we here we are the remnants or even three scribe by just the single word meaning to descend. 78 00:10:39,820 --> 00:10:45,940 To descend. So how can we analyse that kind of descriptions? 79 00:10:46,540 --> 00:10:55,960 Um, of course, it would be possible to reconstruct a kind of stage event where priests or other people, 80 00:10:56,560 --> 00:11:04,360 as just created, theatrically, created an event where God was felt to be present. 81 00:11:05,620 --> 00:11:08,770 But I don't think that would lead us so very far. 82 00:11:09,490 --> 00:11:14,860 I'm not so interested in the sort of we just phenomenology to try to understand 83 00:11:14,860 --> 00:11:19,209 what happens in the minds of the people who witness to that event and reported it. 84 00:11:19,210 --> 00:11:27,550 Because I think we just don't have phenomenology is absolutely fine if based on fieldwork here for even to the 13th century, 85 00:11:27,550 --> 00:11:29,620 we just don't have the sources to do that. 86 00:11:30,370 --> 00:11:42,190 What we have forever is indication on how regional specialists actually created the conditions for such events to take place. 87 00:11:42,590 --> 00:11:53,680 Okay, so I've been conducting my analyses of regulatory events with within as much as possible. 88 00:11:53,680 --> 00:12:01,270 And of course, we don't always have the three elements, but as much as possible within the triangle of sources, 89 00:12:01,690 --> 00:12:13,540 the first accounts of the events themselves, either sometimes appended within the revealed text or embedded in the text or appended to it as sort of. 90 00:12:13,690 --> 00:12:21,490 And that's quite common in the Chinese case. And at the end of the text, you have a short story describing the regulatory events, 91 00:12:22,030 --> 00:12:29,590 or you have a geographic sources telling about saints and practitioners receiving regulations. 92 00:12:29,770 --> 00:12:39,790 And you have all kinds of big stories or records of strange and anomalous and remarkable events. 93 00:12:40,150 --> 00:12:43,390 Stories, basically. So we have lots of those. 94 00:12:43,840 --> 00:12:47,410 And of course, we have contents of the regulation themselves. 95 00:12:47,980 --> 00:12:53,320 And that's the two kind of sources that most scholars who have been interested in Chinese regulation have looked at. 96 00:12:53,620 --> 00:13:03,220 What they have much less often paid attention to is the third tip of our triangle, which is the liturgical prescriptions, 97 00:13:03,580 --> 00:13:09,910 the ritual methods through which these events are produced or at least made possible. 98 00:13:10,450 --> 00:13:14,529 That's not always available in all modes of regulation. 99 00:13:14,530 --> 00:13:26,739 But there is a surprising, surprisingly rich and diverse body of such liturgical prescription and looking closely at those and liturgical 100 00:13:26,740 --> 00:13:35,200 texts in connection to the contents of the relation and the narrative accounts below is to go and deep, 101 00:13:35,800 --> 00:13:38,980 go further into an understanding. 102 00:13:40,180 --> 00:13:44,889 What really happened in the story, such as the one I just mentioned, 103 00:13:44,890 --> 00:13:51,310 where we say that the God was as it descended or was made to descend and teach to humans. 104 00:13:51,940 --> 00:13:58,780 So because I think this is the maybe the the more original aspect of my work, 105 00:13:58,780 --> 00:14:04,929 I will focus more on this question of the ritual methods and what the manuals, 106 00:14:04,930 --> 00:14:16,180 the liturgical manuals tell us about the the context, the conditions and the procedures for producing the revelations. 107 00:14:17,920 --> 00:14:34,570 Okay. Now, based on this question of the the existence or lack thereof of the known codified ritual maidens for ritual production, 108 00:14:35,290 --> 00:14:40,960 the the fact that the circumstances for the relation might be described or not. 109 00:14:41,980 --> 00:14:53,020 And a third. Criteria for building ecology of relation, which is the presence and witness. 110 00:14:53,340 --> 00:15:09,670 Winter different was a collective event or if only one person was made and counter God or the text itself without the presence of other human beings. 111 00:15:10,390 --> 00:15:16,270 Combining this three area allowed me to build this five fold typology, 112 00:15:17,170 --> 00:15:23,800 and I'm going to go through it and describe each of the five types quickly and obviously 113 00:15:24,010 --> 00:15:31,870 these as both the beauty and limitation of ideal types in obviously in most cases, 114 00:15:32,230 --> 00:15:41,920 relation kind of overlap the boundaries and do not sit very neatly and squarely with one particular types. 115 00:15:42,130 --> 00:15:53,200 But I still think that these are useful for us to understand this ecology and how different modes of creating regulation are also regulated 116 00:15:53,200 --> 00:16:02,650 to relate to the content of the relation and feel different needs and serve different purposes and can be complementary to each other. 117 00:16:03,100 --> 00:16:17,320 Right? So these five types are not at all this way of seeing how different religious traditions do regulations of think of regulations differently. 118 00:16:18,280 --> 00:16:25,780 Each of these five types can be, I mean, very often within one given religious tradition in the Chinese world, 119 00:16:26,470 --> 00:16:32,590 the different types can be found next to each other, and they serve different purposes and they complement each other. 120 00:16:32,710 --> 00:16:41,140 Okay. Okay. So first the the first type of mode will be extremely familiar with all of you. 121 00:16:41,140 --> 00:16:44,830 So I don't need to explain much further. 122 00:16:45,320 --> 00:16:49,540 I call that the supra type for obvious reasons. 123 00:16:49,930 --> 00:16:56,860 The fact that this type was suddenly imported into the Chinese cultural world through 124 00:16:58,420 --> 00:17:05,530 my expansion into China beginning of the first second century of the common era, 125 00:17:06,670 --> 00:17:12,660 we don't see any similar thing existing in the Chinese world before that. 126 00:17:12,940 --> 00:17:16,600 And I, as you can see from this table, 127 00:17:17,130 --> 00:17:25,690 I define a certain type of relation as a revealed text that do not that does 128 00:17:25,690 --> 00:17:31,840 not say anything about the circumstances in which it was revealed to humans. 129 00:17:32,140 --> 00:17:44,440 Surprise, I usually reveal or spoken by the Buddha as to or deities or very sad of or divine entity in a not a time and not a place. 130 00:17:45,640 --> 00:17:55,629 So the scene of the relation is not a scene that takes place in human history and we are not told of the where and when, 131 00:17:55,630 --> 00:18:01,210 how this text first preached in heaven reached humanity. 132 00:18:02,150 --> 00:18:10,490 And if so, did this model prove extremely popular as the widespread circulation of sutras in Chinese world attest, 133 00:18:10,760 --> 00:18:20,959 both translated to tries and homemade so-called apocryphal sutras, which, as you all know, are extremely numerous and varied. 134 00:18:20,960 --> 00:18:25,910 And this model was adopted by the diaries to have their own similar. 135 00:18:25,910 --> 00:18:30,319 They're not called sutras, of course, but they are clearly of the same type. 136 00:18:30,320 --> 00:18:38,600 We also have scenes of passion, large or primordial, various gods preaching in heaven to other gods. 137 00:18:38,840 --> 00:18:48,380 And then we are not told when this was translated because this open often implied a process of translation into human language. 138 00:18:48,470 --> 00:18:51,890 How this translation, what mission it was done. 139 00:18:52,670 --> 00:18:56,570 So that's type one to encounter. 140 00:18:57,350 --> 00:19:02,929 Here we have an event that is situated within human history. 141 00:19:02,930 --> 00:19:16,550 We are told who, when and where a given human obtained encounter with the divine being transmitted either 142 00:19:17,120 --> 00:19:24,740 orally or in a writing teaching because that particular human deserves such initiation, 143 00:19:25,040 --> 00:19:34,940 often as a result of his high merits in terms of, you know, moral good actions and or spiritual self cultivation. 144 00:19:35,660 --> 00:19:40,100 And this encounter, even though it might be located often on sacred mountains, 145 00:19:41,060 --> 00:19:47,180 what happened in far away in remote places, off limits to ordinary humans. 146 00:19:47,450 --> 00:19:57,679 And there was no witness. So this person may even then go back among ordinary mortals and tell them how he benefited from this revelation. 147 00:19:57,680 --> 00:20:01,850 But there was no witness, and we don't know how this happened. 148 00:20:01,850 --> 00:20:06,300 And sometimes this is described actually a chance encounter, 149 00:20:06,320 --> 00:20:18,469 not necessarily something that was predictable from the degree of spiritual maturity or advancement of that particular aesthetic. 150 00:20:18,470 --> 00:20:24,710 Sometimes people just encounter gods by chance and the gods teach them certain practices. 151 00:20:25,370 --> 00:20:30,889 Useful knowledge, first encounter, third type is spirit possession. 152 00:20:30,890 --> 00:20:42,379 Then this is of course extremely common because spirit mediums have been probably the most common type of 153 00:20:42,380 --> 00:20:50,060 ritual specialist in Chinese society for as long as we have written evidence and they still are today, 154 00:20:50,480 --> 00:21:06,540 and respected mediums enter and let gods possess them and answer specific question pertaining to topical questions from individual clients. 155 00:21:06,540 --> 00:21:15,380 And that would not qualify as regulation as I define it, which needs to have some sort of universal value and import. 156 00:21:15,800 --> 00:21:28,610 But sometimes it does, and we have written evidence for this as early as the medieval periods, which in Chinese terms would be third to sixth century. 157 00:21:28,880 --> 00:21:37,490 We have story of spirit, medium revealing future events in terms of dynastic change or major wars, 158 00:21:38,030 --> 00:21:45,320 or providing teachings about self cultivation or telling humans about retribution 159 00:21:46,520 --> 00:21:50,720 after death and the way this would cultivate to avoid punishment in house. 160 00:21:50,930 --> 00:22:02,960 So that kind of contents that qualify as a revelation in my definition open can happen through spirit possession. 161 00:22:03,170 --> 00:22:13,820 And so in that particular type we have circumstances described because we know not necessarily the name of the spirit mediums sometimes, 162 00:22:14,120 --> 00:22:17,960 but at least where and when. And we have witnesses. 163 00:22:18,110 --> 00:22:26,540 So people spirit possession normally, not necessarily, but usually happens in a community setting. 164 00:22:26,540 --> 00:22:33,469 And we have people acting as a witness and writing reports about it because the mediums and like the shaman, 165 00:22:33,470 --> 00:22:40,190 the medium himself or herself cannot remember anything that happens during possession. 166 00:22:40,250 --> 00:22:43,010 That's the very principal possession. 167 00:22:43,250 --> 00:22:53,900 And therefore we actually need witness to have a revelation through spirit possession to be recorded because we are suffering self cannot recall it. 168 00:22:54,910 --> 00:23:01,340 Right? So. So gods come to humans to speak to humans. 169 00:23:01,450 --> 00:23:05,350 As encounters with and liking encounters in possession. 170 00:23:05,680 --> 00:23:19,210 That's a communal event, not a solitary event type for which I call visualisation is in many ways parallel and opposed to possession. 171 00:23:19,690 --> 00:23:25,060 It's the kind of practice that some scholars have described as self-possession. 172 00:23:25,420 --> 00:23:30,430 It's about creating encounters with gods in one's mind. 173 00:23:33,130 --> 00:23:44,260 And so inviting guards to join the subject within his own internal mental space. 174 00:23:46,870 --> 00:23:57,940 And it's a circumstance as described because the idea the virtuoso private practising visualisation is named. 175 00:23:58,720 --> 00:24:08,930 We know when where all of this happens. There was witness that cannot be witness in any witnessing visualisation because this happens not in public. 176 00:24:08,930 --> 00:24:13,730 It is not accessible. The event is not accessible through the senses to order people. 177 00:24:13,750 --> 00:24:24,129 Other people might be present, but they would not feel or anything because the event is taking place within the mind of the of the practitioner. 178 00:24:24,130 --> 00:24:31,120 Nothing and no, nothing audible, visible, sensible, would be accessible to others. 179 00:24:32,230 --> 00:24:36,650 And by contrast, the spirit possession, the ritual meadows is known and codified. 180 00:24:36,670 --> 00:24:45,880 I'm not saying that's a strict possession is not a codified method, but it's not supposed to be something that is reproduced. 181 00:24:46,630 --> 00:24:51,370 The whole story of the narration of events, 182 00:24:51,370 --> 00:25:01,089 of sacred possession is that the gods as full agency and decides whether they 183 00:25:01,090 --> 00:25:04,720 should come down and possess the medium or not and what they are going to say. 184 00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:13,210 By contrast, because it's the arejust specialists who as well as agency and who can call and summon gods to come. 185 00:25:13,630 --> 00:25:17,650 And for that reason, the visualisation is qualified or there is a method. 186 00:25:17,650 --> 00:25:24,760 Then you can learn and train your self in and follow and that will produce the desired event. 187 00:25:26,230 --> 00:25:29,340 And finally, type 535. 188 00:25:29,530 --> 00:25:34,989 Yeah, thank you for bearing with me through this rather long winded transcription of my typology. 189 00:25:34,990 --> 00:25:43,030 That's really the core of what I wanted to share with you today type physical presence, type revelation, 190 00:25:43,030 --> 00:25:55,240 because we have all three elements and that that is the document that seems to appear in the historical records later than to the first four type, 191 00:25:55,510 --> 00:25:59,860 all of which are already present in a well-documented medieval time. 192 00:25:59,860 --> 00:26:06,769 So again, through a sixth century presence type seems to appear around the 10th century. 193 00:26:06,770 --> 00:26:19,300 It is very closely linked to a new wave of Daoist ritual methods and practices largely linked to. 194 00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:31,389 Exhausted, seeking therapeutic rights that is based on the active and sensible presence of martial dogs. 195 00:26:31,390 --> 00:26:35,380 Very useful deities. 196 00:26:36,400 --> 00:26:40,060 Especially not as it not only. But especially son of. 197 00:26:40,900 --> 00:26:49,930 Who are the actors of Divine Law. And therefore any sinners and demons and demons and attacks their followers. 198 00:26:51,040 --> 00:27:02,890 The presence type revealed that revelatory events are so described in terms of where and where they happen. 199 00:27:03,220 --> 00:27:12,220 They are usually come in all but its part of communal celebration and rituals for the eyewitnesses and the actually 200 00:27:12,280 --> 00:27:20,170 a major element in presence upregulation is that the audience can be made to feel the presence of the gods, 201 00:27:20,560 --> 00:27:25,120 either see them or hear them, or feel them in another way. 202 00:27:25,120 --> 00:27:34,839 And quite often all of those sensory experiences together and the ritual methods 203 00:27:34,840 --> 00:27:39,639 for producing the divine presence is known and actually described in the writer, 204 00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:50,440 which details in the ritual liturgical manuals of these new Daoist movements that was alluding to and that are found in the Daoist canon. 205 00:27:52,380 --> 00:28:00,110 Okay. So here we have a typology that is chronological in a certain way. 206 00:28:00,120 --> 00:28:11,570 It tells about the the gradual unfolding of a full array of different modes that produce different kinds of text and that uh, 207 00:28:11,790 --> 00:28:25,670 uh, certain sometimes like cross fertilise and stone, all kinds of new ways of producing reveal text. 208 00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:33,120 But these are the three and five main types under which I think we can sort out the, 209 00:28:33,250 --> 00:28:38,370 the stories that we have and the texts, the text that that we have. 210 00:28:40,190 --> 00:28:46,090 Okay. So now I'm and maybe I'll use like ten more minutes to talk a little bit more about this. 211 00:28:46,100 --> 00:28:54,290 The last of these five type represents Ty because this is the one I've been working most with. 212 00:28:54,290 --> 00:28:57,800 And actually the bulk of the book is about this. 213 00:28:58,440 --> 00:29:11,419 Um, so in this particular type, the presence type, the role of the priest creating the divine presence that lead to regulation is, is crucial. 214 00:29:11,420 --> 00:29:14,600 And so these priests rely on qualified methods. 215 00:29:14,780 --> 00:29:23,719 They are trained for this, and they are often described in the historical sources, actually masters of creating divine presence. 216 00:29:23,720 --> 00:29:32,000 And people go to them saying, Yeah, master, please, I would like to see or hear decent that of God, please make it present for us. 217 00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:36,210 Right. So this is really. They are. They are. 218 00:29:38,560 --> 00:29:39,970 The tool of their trade, right? 219 00:29:40,090 --> 00:29:48,430 Making people feel the presence of the God and being able to converse with the God and receive teachings or instructions from the gods. 220 00:29:48,850 --> 00:29:54,790 So these techniques are very formalised, which does not mean that it's common knowledge. 221 00:29:54,800 --> 00:30:06,180 These mythological manuals were transmitted within priestly lineages from ascetic disciples, so they were not like open access and pursue knowledge. 222 00:30:06,190 --> 00:30:13,030 But still there are the qualified and copied and now they are available to us because 223 00:30:13,030 --> 00:30:18,190 the diaries canon has become fully available to scholars during the 20th century. 224 00:30:19,170 --> 00:30:24,830 So witnesses and so and within because they are often we have lots of descriptions that that 225 00:30:24,920 --> 00:30:34,409 show that these were group events and and really shaped by group dynamics orchestrated by 226 00:30:34,410 --> 00:30:40,739 the identity of the priest and also the agency of the God in these prison style rituals that 227 00:30:40,740 --> 00:30:49,559 God is usually described as a light to the priest with different kinds of relationship, 228 00:30:49,560 --> 00:31:00,660 sometimes swear and brothers or uh, initiated, um, priest as initiated disciples of the gods. 229 00:31:00,780 --> 00:31:10,530 But know, I think whatever is the case, having a very close bond and a relationship that where the the rights and duties of both parties, 230 00:31:10,530 --> 00:31:19,170 priests and gods hockey is spelled out, and therefore even the gods of course have their own agency and can decide what to do in and what they say. 231 00:31:19,380 --> 00:31:29,250 But priest are some sort of control over them and can make them speak and read depending on the mastery of their ritual, not just on their own merits. 232 00:31:33,170 --> 00:31:41,540 And so there are several subtypes of this present presence type of creating divine presence and revelation. 233 00:31:41,540 --> 00:31:50,119 And I should add one extremely important point, which is these ritual techniques were and still are, 234 00:31:50,120 --> 00:32:04,540 because these are all living traditions usually used to create divine presence without any particular desire for full fledged revelation, right? 235 00:32:04,790 --> 00:32:13,009 They are usually used in the course of producing rituals for asking for a salvation for the dead or healing of the humans, 236 00:32:13,010 --> 00:32:16,430 or expelling of plague demons or all that kind of things. 237 00:32:16,610 --> 00:32:23,599 And that does not, as I use the term, in the time of revelation, but they can in certain circumstances. 238 00:32:23,600 --> 00:32:28,219 If if one is really interesting in obtaining teaching instruction from the gods, then the gods. 239 00:32:28,220 --> 00:32:38,090 My priest can use the same techniques to ask for scriptures or instructions or other kinds of discursive contents from the gods. 240 00:32:38,090 --> 00:32:44,930 But they are usually the statements are usually used for creating divine presence without a revelation. 241 00:32:45,900 --> 00:32:54,600 Okay. There are several subtypes, all using the same word, same verb, gene descent or make descent, 242 00:32:54,600 --> 00:33:01,800 which I introduced earlier in the year in a talk in which are qualified by the 243 00:33:02,190 --> 00:33:08,090 kind of sensory events that this ritual prediction of divine presence leads to. 244 00:33:08,100 --> 00:33:14,440 And of course, these are not exclusive. Often we have a combination of these different sensory experiences. 245 00:33:14,700 --> 00:33:20,790 So one is the physical appearance we see, the gods we see is shaped, we see moving. 246 00:33:20,850 --> 00:33:26,760 Right. The voice, the Jungian or you means talk or talk. 247 00:33:27,570 --> 00:33:36,480 So we hear. And then the priest produce the event of hearing the voice of the gods, the writing, 248 00:33:36,870 --> 00:33:46,620 which by the 12th 13th century, becomes the most common mode because it's practically useful in ritual context. 249 00:33:46,800 --> 00:33:56,070 The Irish ritual is all about exchanging documents between humans and gods to the humans burned petitions, prayers and so on and so forth. 250 00:33:56,310 --> 00:34:01,799 And the gods respond in kind, right? So they approve the documents in the right answer. 251 00:34:01,800 --> 00:34:08,760 So the issue formal documents like ordination documents or that kind of problems, that kind of things, right? 252 00:34:08,970 --> 00:34:18,420 So making the gods variety actually are extremely a crucial in making Daoist ritual work. 253 00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:25,740 So spirit writing becomes the most common subtype of presence type ritual. 254 00:34:25,740 --> 00:34:30,510 But still we have to understand it in a framework of order subtext. 255 00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:37,499 And another important means is dreams inducing dreams, and they are also rituals. 256 00:34:37,500 --> 00:34:43,379 For that time. We are in Chinese world about temples where people go to obtain dreams from the gods. 257 00:34:43,380 --> 00:34:51,870 And this is also induced by priests in pretty much the same way that the priests also produced the writing. 258 00:34:51,870 --> 00:34:56,190 All the speaking presence of the gods. 259 00:34:59,450 --> 00:35:03,590 And so I was saying just a moment ago, this. 260 00:35:05,250 --> 00:35:12,720 Even scriptwriting can obviously be used for all kinds of purposes writing poetry, conversing with the dead, 261 00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:25,080 for using scriptures for all kinds of things, and in the modern period, using spirit photography or spray painting all kinds of documents on paper. 262 00:35:26,910 --> 00:35:33,719 I think the original impetus for the development of this technique that eventually became the most common way of producing 263 00:35:33,720 --> 00:35:45,450 revelation in Chinese societies originally was getting a written response from the gods in the course of performing in ritual, 264 00:35:45,450 --> 00:35:48,960 and so making sure that the ritual worked its purpose. 265 00:35:49,860 --> 00:35:57,360 And in many liturgical manuals from the early modern period, which means elevens to 15th century. 266 00:35:59,490 --> 00:36:06,920 We have a clear and straightforward explanation saying that when a priest sends the documents to the gods, 267 00:36:06,970 --> 00:36:14,160 there are several ways through which he or she usually he can obtain a response. 268 00:36:14,670 --> 00:36:21,720 Technical degree, spiritual term is boring and that can be divination blocks. 269 00:36:22,170 --> 00:36:27,749 This is very easy to manipulate, but it's it's a bit crude. 270 00:36:27,750 --> 00:36:29,579 You basically when you throw the blocks, 271 00:36:29,580 --> 00:36:40,530 you basically get a yes or no visual visualisation that is getting an audience with the God and hearing the gods response to the to the repressed, 272 00:36:40,830 --> 00:36:42,390 the dreams or writing. 273 00:36:42,780 --> 00:36:53,759 But when you do documents like ordination or appointment among the divine bureaucracy certificates, that kind of things then spread. 274 00:36:53,760 --> 00:36:59,880 Writing is most definitely the most convenient way to obtain what one needs from the gods. 275 00:37:01,430 --> 00:37:13,340 There are some early cases where a spread writing is not yet full fledged writing that is legible Chinese language, 276 00:37:14,480 --> 00:37:27,530 but are signs but written on an active, active table covered with ash that is prepared for the gods to walk onto what to write into. 277 00:37:28,490 --> 00:37:35,720 And here, in a ritual liturgical manual of the Mongolian period, 13 and 15, 14th century. 278 00:37:36,110 --> 00:37:39,500 We add here. 279 00:37:41,980 --> 00:37:50,200 Description. For all the signs that the gods might write on the ash and how to translate this into normal language, so we have that kind of thing. 280 00:37:50,530 --> 00:38:01,540 But then this quickly gave way to real, directly written and legible language written with Chinese characters. 281 00:38:02,050 --> 00:38:13,420 And so this is spirit writing. And so we see spirit writing appearing as a ritual tool among the exhausted priests of the early modern period. 282 00:38:13,780 --> 00:38:25,570 And then it becomes much more popular and much more widely practised around the turn of the 16th to 17th century. 283 00:38:25,870 --> 00:38:38,380 And by the time it becomes the year, by and large, the most common way of producing revelation, of producing morality books, 284 00:38:38,740 --> 00:38:45,570 doctrinal scriptures, poetry, instruction for self cultivation, and so on and so forth in Chinese world. 285 00:38:45,580 --> 00:38:50,770 And we have and this is still the case today in spell running is very much a living tradition. 286 00:38:50,770 --> 00:39:01,420 Expanding in the PRC, in the People's Republic of China, still practised more or less discretely in certain parts. 287 00:39:01,900 --> 00:39:11,620 But it's practised very openly and very commonly through the rest of the Chinese world and Taiwan, Hong Kong, Asia and Europe, North America, etc. 288 00:39:12,430 --> 00:39:19,450 Um, and we have, and this is a rather this both common and easy. 289 00:39:20,290 --> 00:39:23,680 These are reasonably easy ritual techniques to learn. 290 00:39:23,860 --> 00:39:27,489 And as a result, we have tens of thousands of books that are produced, 291 00:39:27,490 --> 00:39:36,190 full speed of writing and still new ones appearing by the day and usually immediately published on the Internet. 292 00:39:38,100 --> 00:39:44,339 And so we have all kinds of groups, all kind of contents. But the key element is that the disciples are here. 293 00:39:44,340 --> 00:39:53,210 We have the picture that was taken in, in a small spread writing shrine in an apartment in Hong Kong. 294 00:39:54,600 --> 00:40:02,940 We have one medium who we are the there the writing instrument, writing on the ash table so that one person. 295 00:40:02,940 --> 00:40:07,890 But we have other techniques which two mediums and you have also techniques without a medium. 296 00:40:08,430 --> 00:40:12,059 We are doing the writing in just the writing increments and move by itself. 297 00:40:12,060 --> 00:40:23,400 So it's actually the whole family of different spirit writing techniques that we encompass within the larger category of spirit writing. 298 00:40:23,810 --> 00:40:30,660 One thing, all of those different practices and traditions for writing have in common is that the members. 299 00:40:30,660 --> 00:40:36,809 So that includes the medium here and the person sitting next to her, which are also a very crucial role, 300 00:40:36,810 --> 00:40:42,420 is noting down what is written character by character on the table onto paper. 301 00:40:42,870 --> 00:40:48,960 And of course the guard can ask, do that, do proofreading and correct anything that was written down mistakenly, 302 00:40:49,860 --> 00:40:55,439 but also the other members of the group that are not necessarily acting as medium themselves but are still, 303 00:40:55,440 --> 00:40:59,580 you know, taking part in the event, co-producing the event, 304 00:40:59,850 --> 00:41:07,650 maybe paying for the printing of this revelation and performing rituals and doing charity works and all that kind of things. 305 00:41:07,860 --> 00:41:13,500 And all of the members are taken as personal disciples by the gods. 306 00:41:14,490 --> 00:41:25,470 And issued this personal bond between disciple and God that explained the whole emotional charge and the dynamics of the spirit writing groups. 307 00:41:26,790 --> 00:41:34,980 This is an opportunity for inspiration is always there in the spirit of writing tradition, sometimes more prominently. 308 00:41:34,990 --> 00:41:38,400 Sometimes I can background, but it's always there. 309 00:41:38,730 --> 00:41:45,510 Spirit writing is described by the God themselves as a very efficient and time effective 310 00:41:45,510 --> 00:41:51,540 and cost effective techniques to reaching out to many humans in a short period of time. 311 00:41:52,080 --> 00:42:00,890 And he gives a voice to literally thousands of different spirits from the high gods that speaks to him 312 00:42:00,960 --> 00:42:10,380 throughout the Chinese world to more local gods who only have one particular mediums giving a voice to them. 313 00:42:12,120 --> 00:42:16,290 So we got through three writing wise, all kind of things. 314 00:42:16,290 --> 00:42:23,790 So this is a very quick typology of contents morality, books, scriptures, liturgy, angiography, 315 00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:33,360 spiritual conservation instructions, records of discussion between the humans and their divine masters. 316 00:42:33,360 --> 00:42:37,720 And once. And time is running short. 317 00:42:37,750 --> 00:42:45,210 Maybe one more minute about the kind of things that are not actually in the book, but which I am doing now, 318 00:42:45,540 --> 00:42:56,520 is just a preview of the next step of my work around sort of running in the whispered writing shapes the life of individuals that take part in them. 319 00:42:56,940 --> 00:42:59,980 As, as I said before, looking at the, 320 00:43:00,100 --> 00:43:10,770 the intense emotional sociability between the human and the gods and how this shapes individual and collective lives and the way through it. 321 00:43:10,770 --> 00:43:19,050 Writing allows for activation of both the humans who build themselves into unique, 322 00:43:19,110 --> 00:43:22,769 strong personas through their interaction with the gods to the God themselves as 323 00:43:22,770 --> 00:43:29,250 well grow into personas the more they speak and interact and talk to humans. 324 00:43:30,300 --> 00:43:34,680 And so the gods express themselves. They all want to have their personal style. 325 00:43:34,680 --> 00:43:39,089 They all speak and write in their own personal style, their own individual stories, 326 00:43:39,090 --> 00:43:50,760 and the love to tell you stories and to remind our humans who you are, to take part of wisdom in those writing societies of how how unique they are. 327 00:43:51,120 --> 00:43:58,829 And this is not really last. I'm one of the things I'm doing now is using a circle social network analysis to look 328 00:43:58,830 --> 00:44:03,030 at the connections between humans and gods and also between the gods themselves. 329 00:44:03,030 --> 00:44:07,319 And this is just a visually visualisation of a dataset. 330 00:44:07,320 --> 00:44:18,570 I've made of 13 different sprites writing outers that involves almost 500 gods, and all the black dots on this visualisation are gods. 331 00:44:18,570 --> 00:44:23,729 So you see smaller gods only on the outside of the visualisation. 332 00:44:23,730 --> 00:44:30,480 At the centre you have larger gods with very a strongly connected between each other and to all of different human groups. 333 00:44:30,870 --> 00:44:37,769 And this kind of is yours. And I think all of us understand the dynamics of through the writing and how this is a self producing dynamic. 334 00:44:37,770 --> 00:44:46,350 And the more gods become central and talk to different gods and different humans, then they grow into bigger person and then want to speak even more. 335 00:44:47,610 --> 00:44:51,070 So I'll stop at that. Well, thank you for the song. 336 00:44:51,120 --> 00:44:57,839 That was a really wonderful summary of your work and thanks for that extra bit. 337 00:44:57,840 --> 00:44:59,790 That's not in the book. Very interesting.