Daoism in Local Society

Since the inception of Daoist Studies as a field of academic inquiry, scholars have examined the ways in which established Daoist lineages have interacted with local societies and their beliefs and customs. Pioneering studies have posited that aspects of canonical and institutional Daoist traditions provide an organizational framework for the formation of local pantheons and practices (Schipper 1982, Lagerwey 1987, Dean 1993). While this analytical model has benefited our understanding of the transmission of texts and teachings from the top down, from the imperial to the local, questions remain as to how local society has shaped and reshaped religious practices and identities from the bottom up. How do local ritual specialists and their local lineage groups reinterpret and reinvent inherited traditions, and what are the larger implications of these cultural improvisations? In response to these inquiries, this panel advances an approach to Daoist texts and practices that makes central their fluidity and adaptability. 

Never static entities, the material things at the heart of Daoist practice—its temple altars, its ritual manuals, its ordination documents, its apotropaic talismans—only come to life through their interactions with society. Single individuals and small communities integrate received transmissions into their respective cultural repertoires, imbuing inherited teachings with new interpretations and expressions. In remixing old methods and forging new ones, ritual professionals and common people alike change traditions over time, from generation to generation, from one person to the next. This panel gives several concrete examples of such cultural improvisations in both historical and modern contexts, focusing on specific localities, such as the provinces of Henan and Hunan in China and the Penghu archipelago in Taiwan. Its four presenters traverse disciplinary boundaries, exploring a diverse range of Daoist materials, including liturgical manuals, ordination documents, esoteric talismans, temple stelae, regional maps, and ritual performances. In so doing, the panel aims to introduce new perspectives and methodologies for understanding local expressions of Daoist practice.

To set the stage for our panel’s emphasis on lived religion, we begin with two presentations on the contemporary period, both of which build upon original fieldwork. The first talk examines a local tradition of Ritual Masters (*fashi* 法師) based in the Penghu archipelago, located approximately fifty kilometers west of Taiwan. Known as the Penghu Pu’an 澎湖普唵 tradition, the lineage holds the Song-period Buddhist master Pu’an Yinsu (1115–1169) as its ancestral teacher and the deified Lao Zi as the original source of its methods. The talk focuses on the tradition’s use and consecration of apotropaic stone towers, constructed in several sites throughout the islands of the archipelago, often inscribed with talismanic decrees. By juxtaposing iconographical analyses of these carved talismans with a close study of ritual performances and their corresponding liturgical texts, this talk argues that the stone inscriptions and the rituals that empower them reflect a local expression of a Daoist cosmos. 

The second presentation continues the panel’s exploration of contemporary ritual expression and talismanic composition, shifting the geographical location from the Penghu islands to Hunan province. It considers how meaning gets made—and remade—in Daoist liturgical manuals, focusing on the nexus of talismans and hagiography. It zeroes in on one puzzling graph, the character for “dog” (*gou* 狗), which is inscribed in a talisman designed to summon Celestial General Yin Jiao 殷郊天君. The paper examines how one lineage in north-central Hunan interprets the character in terms of its received hagiography of Yin Jiao. It then compares that interpretation with that of a cousin lineage in north-central Hunan and lineages farther afield in the south in Hunan, and even outside the province. All this close reading reveals wildly different interpretations, which goes to show how alive liturgical literature really is.

The latter two presentations turn back the clock by several hundred years, maintaining the panel’s exploration of local expressions of Daoist practice, but now with a focus on the late-imperial period. The panel’s third speaker investigates the integration of Daoism in the local societies of Henan province. It takes a bottom-up approach, examining temple networks, the amalgamation of Daoist and Buddhist rituals, and interactions between Daoism and local cults. The findings highlight extensive local religious networks, revealing how various local leaders, clergy, and communities joined these religious projects. This collaborative spirit not only showcases the extensive reach of these networks, but also the deep-rooted and evolving Daoist traditions within these communities.

The fourth and final presentation explores further local expressions and adaptations of Daoist practice in the late imperial period. It considers Daoist ordination, a mechanism in which the ordinand receives liturgical registers. These registers list divine generals and soldiers and contain the titles of transmitted scriptures. After the Song period, along with the newly-emerged exorcistic rites and revelations, ordination documents started to include the rank of particular exorcistic methods (*fa* 法 or *daofa* 道法) in the office of the celestial bureaucracy (*fazhi* 法職). This presentation explores how local *daofa* traditions were incorporated into the mainstream Daoist ordination in the Ming period. Through the analyses of the twenty ordination cases, we can see what local *daofa* traditions were more prevalent in practice in the Ming. 

Taken together, the four presentations that comprise this panel represent a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach to the study of Daoism in local society. Through a close analysis of a broad array of primary materials, the panel highlights dynamic interactions between established Daoist lineages and local identities. In so doing, the panel has implications for the study of lived religions more broadly. It questions how specific people in specific places shape religious traditions and it provides useful frameworks and methodologies for engaging with these inquiries.