Emotionally and Bodily Correlated: Intimacy in the Precious Scrolls about the Goddess of Mount Tai

Research on human-deity relationships and practices in Chinese religions has tended to emphasize their utilitarian and transactional aspects. The more a deity can respond to people, the more ling 靈 (efficacious) it is considered, thereby becoming more widely worshipped. The idea of ling is associated with the widely shared notion of ganying 感應 (stimulus and response), which is the correlative cosmological resonance between the heaven/deities and human society in a metaphysical, moral sense. However, emphasizing the transactional aspect of the deity-human relationship hinders a nuanced understanding of how devotees’ affective practices create and shape a devotional relationship with deities.

This paper explores how the affective aspects of deity-human reciprocity are essential to understanding the vitality of pilgrimage practices in the cult of the Goddess of Mount Tai, one of the most popular deities in the North China Plain. My case study relies on three baojuan 寶卷 (precious scrolls) about the Goddess that circulated widely from the 16th to the early 20th centuries, which overlap significantly in terms of textual creation, transmission, and narrative. Most importantly, all three consist of a hagiographic narrative and exhortations about pilgrimage practices. These narratives share a similar storyline of a young girl rejecting marriage, leaving home, practicing inner alchemy, traveling to Mount Tai, and eventually returning to heaven to be honored with the title Goddess of Mount Tai and charged with bringing protection to all sentient beings. 

This paper also approaches emotions in prescriptive scriptures by focusing on how devotees embody affective practices encouraged by textual discourses. As Monique Sheer points out, emotions are not something we have and manifest through practices. Emotions are practices by a mindful body with “innate and learned capacities deeply shaped by habitual practices” in given historical social contexts (1). I argue that the practices encouraged by precious scrolls shaped what devotees did and felt as they strove to construct and embody a ritual and emotional proximity with the Goddess. 

My approach to primary sources is inspired by Barbara Rosenwein’s work on emotional communities in the Early Middle Ages, when texts informed learned people’s emotional expressions. She defines emotional communities as “groups in which people adhere to the same norms of emotional expression and value-or devalue-the same or related emotions.” (2) Similarly, I consider the devotees who engaged in the textual and oral production, circulation, and performance of the precious scrolls across time and space as to belong to the same textual and emotional communities because they embody and cultivate specific emotional ties with the Goddess by practicing what precious scrolls exhorted.

By comparing physical and spiritual pilgrimage practices, I will first demonstrate how pilgrims are expected to physically, mentally, and emotionally engage in a pilgrimage to Mount Tai. Next, I question why devotees address the virgin Goddess with maternal titles. By showing how precious scrolls portray the Goddess as an anxious mother who would be physically and emotionally moved by her devotees’ prayers, I emphasize how pilgrimage practices aim to construct an emotionally and physically correlative intimacy. To conclude, I propose to appropriate the indigenous notion of gandong 感動 (stimulate and move) in precious scrolls as an interpretive lens to capture an intimate deity-human relationship unmediated by the impersonal, metaphysical correlation of cosmos, karma, or virtue.

 My analysis begins by examining how different pilgrimage practices invoke various feelings and sensations. I show that in a physical pilgrimage, pilgrims ought to demonstrate steadfastness, balance, and patience by mentally concentrating on invoking the Goddess’s title and physically overcoming danger and exhaustion. Precious scrolls claim that the Goddess sends countless fierce, martial deities to patrol pilgrimage trails from which impious pilgrims might fall. Thus, pilgrimage itself is depicted as a trial for pilgrims to transform their bodies and minds to prove unwavering devotion to the Goddess. Precious scrolls also tell the story of how a woman called Madam Shen engages in a spiritual pilgrimage by sewing robes and banners for the Goddess at home, with her embroidery resembling what a pilgrim would see when climbing Mount Tai. The repeated, embodied practice of needlework not only enables Madam Shen to visualize a pilgrimage to Mount Tai but also brings her closer to the Goddess than a physical pilgrimage. 

Next, I inquire why and how the virgin Goddess is addressed by her devotees as laomu 老母 (Venerable Mother), nainai 奶奶 (Grandmother), and niangniang 娘娘 (Our Lady). Precious scrolls portray the Goddess’ eyes fluttering and her ears burning once a devotee lights incense. She is portrayed as a worried mother who cannot settle down until she confirms everyone under her wing is fine. While scholars suggest that devotees address her as a mother because she blesses reproduction and childrearing, I argue that her maternal attributes are the result of devotees’ attempts to actualize an intimate, familial relationship with the Goddess. By partaking in practices that typify a mother-child relationship, pilgrims construct the Goddess’s identity as a mother and thereby embody their own identities as favored children worthy of her protection. 

The paper concludes by proposing to extend the logic of bodily and emotional correlation to understanding the affective reciprocity between devotees and gods who are ascribed parental characteristics. Many gods of demonic origins, such as the martial god Lord Guan 關公, were popularly known for their benign, compassionate avatars in early modern China. I suggest devotees’ practices of actualizing intimate relationships with gods contribute to the process of potentially harmful gods becoming associated with parental compassion. The cultural tropes about parental love in the forms of expectations, admonitions, and punishments fit well with the tension between the conflicting fearful and compassionate facets of gods. 

(1) Monique Scheer, “Are Emotions A Kind of Practice (and Is That What Makes Them Have a History)? A Bourdieuian Approach to Understanding Emotion,” History and Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of History 51, 2 (2012): 220.

(2) Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 2006), 2.