Investigating the history of folk Taoism: the concept of magic in the study of zhuyou rituals

Abstract

This article is devoted to the problem of applying the concept of magic in the study of Chinese Taoist pseudo-medical practices, particularly the therapeutic and apotropaic rituals of zhuyou 祝由, using incantations and talismans (fu 符). It addresses the question of whether, in the current state of sinological research, the use of the term "magic," which originated in Western culture, is still legitimate, and whether the phenomena in question meet the criteria for magicalness. This is an important issue because of the dissonance between the trends in contemporary theoretical research on magic, showing a tendency to interpret it as a parareligious phenomenon in which the concepts of religion and magic intermingle, and the practical approach of sinologists, who still clearly distinguish magical phenomena from religious phenomena and consistently use the term 'magic'. The article also attempts to answer the question of how classical definitions of magic should be modified to be consistent with the concept of magic actually used in sinological research.