The Chinese character for shaman is 巫 (wū). Look at it closely: it shows a figure with outstretched arms between two horizontal lines — heaven above, earth below, and the shaman connecting them. The character is one of the oldest in the Chinese writing system, appearing on Shang dynasty oracle bones (甲骨文, jiǎgǔwén) from over 3,000 years ago.
The wu (巫) were China's original religious specialists. Before Daoist priests, before Buddhist monks, before Confucian scholars, there were shamans who entered trance states, communicated with spirits, healed the sick, predicted the future, and managed the relationship between the human world and the spirit world. Their tradition is the bedrock on which all later Chinese religious practice was built.
What the Wu Did
The wu performed a range of functions that later became distributed among different religious specialists:
| Function | Chinese | Later Specialist | |---|---|---| | Spirit communication | 通灵 (tōng líng) | Spirit mediums (乩童, jītóng) | | Healing | 治病 (zhì bìng) | Doctors, Daoist healers | | Divination | 占卜 (zhānbǔ) | Fortune tellers, Daoist priests | | Rain-making | 求雨 (qiú yǔ) | Daoist ritual specialists | | Exorcism | 驱邪 (qū xié) | Daoist priests | | Funeral rites | 丧葬 (sāngzàng) | Buddhist/Daoist clergy | | Dance and music | 歌舞 (gēwǔ) | Ritual performers |
The key technique was trance (入神, rù shén — literally "entering the spirit"). The wu would dance, chant, and sometimes use psychoactive substances to enter an altered state of consciousness in which they could:
- Travel to the spirit world (上天入地, shàng tiān rù dì — "ascend to heaven, descend to earth")
- Allow spirits to possess their bodies
- See things invisible to ordinary perception
- Communicate with the dead
The Shang Dynasty: Shamanism at the Center of Power
During the Shang dynasty (商朝, Shāng Cháo, c. 1600–1046 BCE), shamanism was not a marginal practice — it was central to state power. The Shang king himself may have functioned as a chief shaman, and the royal court employed wu for divination, healing, and communication with ancestral spirits.
The oracle bone inscriptions (甲骨文, jiǎgǔwén) — the earliest Chinese writing — are records of divination sessions. Questions were inscribed on turtle shells or animal bones, which were then heated until they cracked. The wu interpreted the crack patterns as answers from the spirits.
Questions recorded on oracle bones include:
今日雨不雨？(Will it rain today?) 王疾，有祟？(The king is ill — is there a curse?) 帝令雨？(Does the High God command rain?)
These aren't abstract theological inquiries. They're practical questions from a government that relied on spirit communication for decision-making. The wu were not just religious figures — they were political advisors, intelligence analysts, and weather forecasters, all rolled into one.
The Decline of the Wu
The wu's central role in Chinese society declined during the Zhou dynasty (周朝, Zhōu Cháo, 1046–256 BCE) and the subsequent classical period. Several factors contributed:
Confucian rationalism: Confucius (孔子, Kǒngzǐ) was famously skeptical of spirits. His statement "Respect ghosts and spirits but keep them at a distance" (敬鬼神而远之, jìng guǐshén ér yuǎn zhī) established an intellectual tradition that valued ritual propriety over ecstatic experience.
Bureaucratization of religion: As Chinese society became more bureaucratic, religious practice followed suit. The spontaneous, ecstatic shamanism of the wu was replaced by the structured, text-based rituals of Daoist priests and Buddhist monks.
Gender dynamics: The wu tradition included both male and female practitioners, but as Confucian patriarchy strengthened, female wu (巫女, wūnǚ) were increasingly marginalized and stigmatized. The word 巫 itself acquired negative connotations — 巫术 (wūshù, "sorcery") became a pejorative term.
State control: Successive dynasties attempted to regulate or suppress shamanic practices, viewing them as potential sources of social disorder. Shamans who could communicate with spirits and mobilize popular belief were politically dangerous.
The Chu Tradition: Shamanism's Literary Legacy
The state of Chu (楚国, Chǔ Guó), in the Yangtze River valley, maintained a strong shamanic tradition long after it had declined in the north. The greatest literary legacy of Chinese shamanism comes from Chu: the Songs of Chu (楚辞, Chǔ Cí), an anthology of poems attributed to Qu Yuan (屈原, Qū Yuán, c. 340–278 BCE) and others.
The "Nine Songs" (九歌, Jiǔ Gē) section of the Chu Ci is a collection of shamanic hymns — songs performed during rituals in which the wu invoked and embodied various deities:
帝子降兮北渚 (dìzǐ jiàng xī běi zhǔ) 目眇眇兮愁予 (mù miǎomiǎo xī chóu yú)
The Lord's daughter descends to the northern shore, her distant gaze fills me with sorrow.
These poems describe the wu's experience of divine encounter — the longing for the deity, the ecstasy of possession, the grief of the deity's departure. They're love poems addressed to gods, and they're among the most beautiful and strange works in Chinese literature.
Shamanic Survivals
Despite centuries of suppression and marginalization, shamanic practices survive in Chinese culture:
Spirit mediums (乩童, jītóng): In Taiwan and Southeast Asia, spirit mediums who enter trance and allow deities to possess them are direct descendants of the ancient wu tradition.
Nuo ritual (傩, nuó): In Guizhou, Jiangxi, and other southern provinces, masked ritual performances called nuo preserve ancient shamanic elements — trance, spirit communication, exorcism through dance.
Ethnic minority shamanism: Among China's ethnic minorities — particularly the Manchu (满族), Mongol (蒙古族), and various southwestern groups — shamanic traditions have been maintained more openly than among the Han majority.
Folk healing: Village healers who use trance, incantation, and spirit communication to diagnose and treat illness continue to practice in rural China, though they're increasingly rare.
Daoist ritual: Many elements of Daoist ritual — the use of talismans, the invocation of spirits, the ritual dance steps (禹步, Yǔ Bù) — are inherited from shamanic practice. Daoism didn't replace shamanism so much as absorb and systematize it.
The Wu in Chinese Medicine
The connection between shamanism and Chinese medicine is deep and often overlooked. The character 医 (yī, "medicine/doctor") in its ancient form (毉) contains the character 巫 (wū, "shaman") at the bottom. The earliest Chinese doctors were shamans who healed through spirit communication and ritual.
As Chinese medicine developed into a more systematic, empirical practice, the shamanic elements were gradually stripped away — but not entirely. Concepts like qi (气), meridians (经络, jīngluò), and the balance of yin and yang have roots in shamanic cosmology. The acupuncture needle may be a descendant of the shaman's ritual implement.
The Enduring Legacy
Shamanism is the substrate of Chinese religious culture. Every later development — Daoism, Buddhism, Confucian ritual, folk religion — was built on shamanic foundations. The wu's techniques of trance, spirit communication, and ritual healing were not abandoned; they were transformed, institutionalized, and given new theological frameworks.
When a Daoist priest writes a talisman, he's using a technology that descends from the wu's ritual inscriptions. When a spirit medium in a Taiwanese temple enters trance, she's doing what the wu did three thousand years ago. When a Chinese family burns incense for their ancestors, they're maintaining a practice that began with shamanic offerings to the dead.
The wu danced between heaven and earth. Their descendants are still dancing — in temples, in villages, in the spaces between the official religions where the old practices persist, quiet and stubborn and very, very old.
The character 巫 still shows a figure with outstretched arms, connecting what's above with what's below. After three thousand years, the connection holds.