Wu is the earliest attested Chinese term for a shaman or spirit medium, appearing already in Shang and Zhou dynasty sources as a specialist, historically often though not exclusively female, who communicated with spirits through trance, dance and possession, and is treated in Chinese religious scholarship as an ancestral root of both the later fangshi masters of methods and the mediumship still practised in Chinese folk religion today.
Facts
Status
Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 2 Current StatusWu type ritual practice survives in regional Chinese folk religious traditions today, though its standing has fluctuated across dynasties and under different political regimes. 2 Significance
Sacred RoleMediated between the human and spirit worlds through trance, dance and possession, with recorded functions including rainmaking, healing and exorcism; the earliest wu are attested in Shang and Zhou period sources and were both men and women. 2 Attestation
HistoricityTreated in Chinese religious scholarship as an ancestral root of both the later fangshi masters of methods and the mediumship still practised in Chinese folk religion today. 2 Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Source Daoism HandbookLivia Kohn (ed.)
Related To
Sources
1. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy
Mircea Eliade, Princeton University Press, 1951on Chinese shamanism within the comparative surveyView the Source 2. Daoism Handbook
Livia Kohn (ed.), Brill, 2000on the wu and the origins of Chinese shamanic practice
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