A fashi, a master of rites, is a specialist in the more overtly magical and exorcistic side of Chinese religious practice, and the office sits at the meeting of Daoism and popular religion.
Rites, healing and exorcism
The fashi performs the practical ritual work that ordinary people most often need, the exorcism of malign spirits, the healing of affliction, the protection of a household, and the resolution of disturbances traced to the unseen world, drawing on a repertoire of spells, talismans, gestures and the summoning of divine generals and spirit-soldiers. The office is more martial and demonstrative than that of the classical Daoist priest, and the fashi is often distinguished from the daoshi as the master of the vernacular, exorcistic rites rather than the high liturgy of offering, though the two traditions overlap and a single practitioner may command both.
Between traditions
The fashi belongs to the broad and living world of Chinese popular religion, where the ritual master serves the everyday needs of communities for protection and healing, and his methods draw on Daoist, Buddhist and local elements, so the office is less bounded and less institutional than that of the ordained daoshi. His authority rests on initiation into a ritual tradition and on the transmission of its methods and its register of deities. The fashi thus represents the practical, protective and exorcistic dimension of Chinese religion, the specialist to whom people turn when they are troubled by the unseen, and he occupies the ground between the formal traditions and the immediate ritual needs of ordinary life.