Daoist Ritual Manuals in Vietnam: Activating Stars and Trigrams

This paper examines visual representations—charts, talismans and drawings—in Daoist ritual manuals from the collection of approximately 200 Chinese-language manuscripts originating from the Sino-Vietnamese borderland and, supposedly, belonging to ritual specialists of Zhuang and Yao ethnic minority groups (now stored in private collection in Taiwan), dates on several manuscripts show that these copies were made in the first half of the 20th century in Vietnam, manuscripts served for the needs of living and deceased members of rural community. Visual representations either serve as “instructions” to be followed by officiating priest, or as representations of ritual action per se.