Ritual and the occult in Chinese medicine and religious healing: The development of zhuyou exorcism

This dissertation examines how religious healing and medicine in China influenced each other through the development of zhuyou, a ritual therapy to move and transform qi in the body. According to the earliest medical texts, zhuyou used incantations to expel hidden or occult pathogens that were so minute and subtle they were as if ghosts. How healers adapted its symbols and activities from the 16th through 18th centuries reflected changing values and conceptions of disease. As part of a broad attempt to standardize medicine and the gods in the 12th century, imperial physicians explained exorcism as zhuyou to synthesize popular religious healing rituals and techniques into classical medicine. This made zhuyou the subject of intense debate among Jiangnan scholar physicians in the 16th through 18th centuries about the role of the gods in medicine and the efficacy of rituals, especially in combination with drugs. Through claims about the miraculous effectiveness of various cures, healers asserted their moral authority. As the object of intention that healers manipulated in zhuyou rituals, qi was not just the energetic and material basis for all things and their transformations but also a reflection of this power and authority to heal. A variety of manuals show how different healers interpreted the art. For example, Orthodox Unity priests at the Temple of Profound Mystery in 18 th century Suzhou rewrote the origin myth of zhuyou to make it a part of their tradition. With every brush stroke when writing a charm and every ritual gesture, the priest cultivated qi and perfected sincerity in his performance, just as contemporary artists described how calligraphy, dance and other arts reflected character. Critical of religious healing, scholar physicians in the region reinterpreted zhuyou as a secular therapy to treat emotional and spiritual disorders. Rather than ghosts, the cause of disorder was flawed character, resulting in improper behavior or excessive harmful emotions. Sage physicians could cure gentlemen through rational discussion, leading patients on a path of study, discipline and reflection. Women, however, required ritual performance to counter-balance their emotions or trick them into correcting their behavior