From Chapter 1: Shamanic Origins (3000–800 BCE)

Five thousand years ago, a tribal people settled along the shores of the Yellow River in northern China. These people had not developed a national identity, nor did they venture far from the banks of the river that carved its path through the dusty plateau. Their daily activities consisted of hunting, fishing, tending their herds, and planting small plots of wheat and millet. At night they gathered by their fires and looked up into the mysterious dome of faint, twinkling lights. Sometimes the howling of wild animals in the dark would remind them of having lost their herds to powerful beasts; at other times they would recall fleeing from the raging river that overflowed its banks and wiped out their crops. But they would also talk about how their chiefs pursued the wild animals and fought back the floods. These chieftains possessed unusual powers: they had mastery over the elements, the rivers bent to their will, plants and animals yielded their secrets to them, they talked with invisible powers, and they traveled across the sky and beneath the earth to gather knowledge that would help the tribe. The greatest of these chiefs was Yü.

The Legendary Yü
Legends tell us that Yü was no ordinary mortal. He had no mother and he came directly from the body of his father, Kun. Kun was selected by the tribal leader, Shun, to battle the floods. When Kun failed, he was punished by the powers, and his dead body was left abandoned on a mountain side. For three years, Yü lay inside his father's dead body. When Kun was revived, he was transformed into a brown bear, and he opened up his own belly and brought out his son, Yü. Immediately, Yü also changed himself into a bear, and we are told that, throughout his life, Yü shape-shifted between man and bear, and always walked with a shuffle that was known as bear's gait. In the Chou dynasty, a thousand years after the legendary times of Yü, priests still dressed in bearskins and grunted and shuffled as they danced the gait of power to honor Yü the Great.

We are told that, when Yü grew up, he carried on the work of his father. Yü was able to succeed where his father had failed because the sacred powers gave him the mythical book Shui-ching (The Book of Power over Waters). Yü also journeyed frequently to the stars to learn from the celestial spirits. The Pace of Yü, a dance of power that carried Yü to the sky, is preserved in the Taoist texts. These movements were danced by generations of Taoist priests, mystics, and sorcerers, and by the practitioners of the internal martial arts today.

Yü was able not only to assume the shape of animals, he also trusted and understood them, and in return they yielded him their secrets. When the flood waters receded, Yü saw a tortoise emerge from the river. On its shell was the pattern of the Lo-shu pa-kua that described the nature of flux and change in the universe. This pattern was to become the basis of the divination arts of China.

Everything that legend has attributed to Yü characterizes him as a shaman. Mircea Eliade, in his classic study on shamanism, described the following features as part of the shamanic experience: flight to the sky, the journey underground, the dance of power, ecstasy and sudden revelation, the power to converse with animals, power over the elements, healing, and knowledge and use of plants. In fact, in ancient Chinese society, there was a class of people, called the wu, whose abilities resembled those typically attributed to shamans. This has led Eliade to identify the wu of ancient China as shamans.

Yü was a wu, or shaman, and he lived in a society where shamans were important members of the tribal community. His father, too, was a shaman capable of shape-shifting into a bear. Shun, the tribal king who rewarded Yü's success in taming the flood with a kingship, was also a shaman. It was said that Shun was the first person to journey to the sky, and he was taught by the daughter of his predecessor, Yao.

Shamanism in Literate China
Shamanism entered a new phase in ancient China with the development of literacy and a sedentary society. By the twelfth century BCE, in the early part of the Chou dynasty, kings and nobles employed shamans as advisers, diviners, and healers. Shamanism became an institution, and shamans were expected to exercise their ability as a duty. Shamans employed by the state or by individuals were expected to fulfill certain functions, and failure in an assignment was often punishable by death. The historical records of the Chou dynasty document many failures of shamans, suggesting that many so-called shamans did not have the powers of Yü. Although they dressed in bearskins and danced the Pace of Yü, these ceremonial shamans did not acquire the power of the animal spirit in the dance.

Duties of Shamans in Chou Society
During the Chou dynasty, the duties of the shamans were inviting the spirits, interpreting dreams, reading omens, rainmaking, healing, and celestial divination.

1. Inviting the spirits. A major task of the shamans of the Chou dynasty was to invite the spirits to visit the mortal realm and offer themselves as a place for the spirit to stay temporarily. The visitation of the spirit generally began with a dance, which put the shaman in a trance and allowed the spirit to enter the shaman's body. This is different from possession, in which the spirit enters the body of the possessed, which then causes the trance. The shaman's trance is the state of consciousness necessary for the visitation, rather than the result of the visitation. As Eliade asserts, this is the hallmark of a shamanic experience, making shamans different from psychic mediums and sorcerers, whose magic is based on possession.

2. Interpreting dreams. Dreams are considered to be carriers of omens, and one of the shaman's tasks is to interpret these messages from the spirits. In ancient China, the dream was also linked to the shaman's journey to the other realms. The ceremony of summoning the soul of the dead was conducted by a shaman called "the dream master." This suggests that although dreams of nonshamans were messages from the spirits, they were not under the dreamer's control, whereas the dreams of the shamans were journeys to other realms of existence in which the shamans were in full control of the dream journey.

3. Reading omens. Another task of the shaman was to observe the changes in nature, predict the course of events, and decide whether it was auspicious or not to engage in a certain activity. Thus, shamans in the Chou dynasty were adept in the knowledge of the I-ching (the classic work of divination from ancient China known as the Book of Change) and were the forerunners of diviners.

4. Rainmaking. It was also the task of the shaman to pray for rain. The rainmaking ceremony involved dancing and singing. The Chinese word for spirit (ling) consists of three radicals: one meaning rain, another (showing three mouths), chanting, and the third, shaman. Often, the shaman would be exposed to the sun, using his or her suffering to "persuade" the sacred powers to send rain. Although the specifics of the ceremony have changed down the years, praying for rain has continued to be an integral part of Chinese religious ritual, and today the ceremony is performed by Taoist priests.

5. Healing. Healing was another major task of the shaman. In the earliest times, this was primarily the responsibility of the shamaness. We are told that, in the healing ceremony, the shamaness grasped a green snake in her right hand and a red snake in her left hand and climbed into the mountains to gather the herbs that would restore life and health to a sick or dying person. The ancient Chinese believed that illness was the result of malevolent spirits invading the body; it was therefore logical that the task of healing should fall on the shoulders of the shaman, who had the ability to deal with both good and malevolent spirits.

6. Celestial divination. During the latter part of the Chou dynasty, celestial divination was very popular. It was believed that, given harmony in the skies, there would be peace, prosperity, and harmony on earth. The key to peace and prosperity lay in following the Celestial Way, or will of heaven, and for the Celestial Way to be followed, the meaning of celestial phenomena must be interpreted; thus, shamans were employed in the court to observe the skies and interpret celestial events.

The Shamanic Tradition of Southern China
When shamanism declined in the mainstream society of the Chou dynasty, pockets of shamanic culture remained in regions around the river valley of the Yang-tze and China's southeastern coast. These areas were occupied by three feudal kingdoms: Ch'u, Wu, and Yüeh.

The land of Ch'u was situated along the Yang-tze valley—a region considered barbaric and primitive by the sophisticated northerners of the ruling dynasties. Vast cultural differences existed between the north (Yellow River valley) and the south (Yang-tze valley): the people of Ch'u were passionate; the northerners were reserved; when the northern people abandoned their beliefs in the spirits of the land after they had developed literacy, the southern people continued to believe in the powers of nature.

The lands of Wu and Yüeh, farther to the east, were even more removed from the mainstream of Chou civilization. The shamans of Yüeh used incantations and mantras to ward off malevolent spirits, restrain wild animals, and battle other humans. Moreover, it was in Wu and Yüeh that talismans were used as objects of power. These talismanic scripts later became an integral part of Taoist magic and sorcery.

Throughout China's history, even after the kingdoms of Ch'u, Wu, and Yüeh disappeared as political entities, their regional cultures continued to influence the wider culture's philosophy, religion, and spiritual practices.

The Legacy of Shamanism in Later Developments of Taoism
The most obvious incorporation of shamanic practices into Taoism was found in the religious and magical aspects of Taoism that emerged in the Han dynasty (206 BCE–219 CE). Like the Yüeh shamans, Taoist magicians used incantations and talismans to ward off malevolent spirits and heal the sick. Indeed, the use of water and mirrors to combat malevolent and destructive forces, which can be traced back to the Yüeh shamans, is seen in the practice of Taoist magic today.

Another legacy of shamanism is the Pace of Yü and the flight to the stars. This aspect of shamanism found its way into a form of Taoist mysticism known as Shang-ch'ing Taoism in the fourth century CE and inspired writings that would become a major part of the Taoist canon.

The shamanic journey underground would also become central to Taoist magic and mysticism in the hands of Tung-fang Shuo, a Han dynasty Taoist, who wrote a guide to journeying through the roots of China's five sacred mountains. Today, we find elements of these underground journeys in Taoist ceremonies: priests still enter the underworld to rescue dead souls who have been abducted by malevolent spirits.

An even greater influence on Taoism came through shamanism's impact on the philosophy of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. This influence is often unrecognized, because many scholars consider the Tao-chia (philosophical Taoism) and the Tao-chao (religious Taoism) as opposing branches of Taoist thinking. A little-known entry in Ssu-ma Ch'ien's monumental work of history titled Shi-chi (Historical Records) in the biography of Lao-tzu, reads, "Lao-tzu was a native of Ch'u, of the county of Fu, of the village of Li." Lao-tzu, the founder of the philosophy of Taoism, lived in a society that had a strong shamanic culture. Moreover, several prominent Chinese scholars have also recently noted similarities in language construction between the Tao-te ching and the literature of the Ch'u culture.

Similarly with Chuang-tzu: the Lü-shih ch'un-ch'iu (Lü's Spring and Autumn Annals), a history of the Spring and Autumn Period of the Chou dynasty (770–476 BCE) written during the Warring States (475–221 BCE), tells us that Chuang-tzu came from the township of Mong, in Sung, a vassal state of Ch'u. Ssu-ma Ch'ien, the Grand Historian, concurred; Chuang-tzu, he wrote, was a native of Sung, a small kingdom that got amalgamated into the state of Ch'u. In the next chapter we shall see how Lao-tzu's and Chuang-tzu's philosophy grew out of the shamanic culture that prevailed in regions south of the Yang-tze.