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Conclusion
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Conclusion The shape-changing Wutong, lurid caricature of polymorphous sexuality , seems out of place in the urbane Song world, from which radiated waves of Confucian learning that brought rational reflection and sober faith in human perfection to the farthest reaches of the empire. Or at most the Wutong spirits might appear to be a vestige of an earlier era of benighted custom and rustic ignorance.Yet the Wutong cult was very much a part of its age, giving expression to the lures of wealth, ambition, and desire that epitomized the convulsive changes in social mores taking place during the Song and afterward. Song religious culture was charged with ostentatious emotion and lurid spectacle: witness the grisly tortures meted out by the Courts of the Ten Infernal Kings, the penitents in Dongyue processions who turned themselves into “living flesh lamps” by hanging flaming braziers from hooks impaled in their arms and chests, Miaoshan’s sacrifice of her eyes and arms to heal her father’s horrible affliction, and the swarms of beggars dressed as the ghostly lackeys of Zhong Kui who materialized on every household’s threshold on the eve of the New Year. This riot of sensation, real or imagined, bespoke a profound elaboration of the preoccupation with sin, death, and atonement that had emerged in the Han period. The baroque cult of death fixated on the torments of infernal punishment gave force and immediacy to the notion of a cosmos predicated on moral equilibrium . Yet astringent Confucian homilies did little to relieve eschatological anxieties. Growing despair over the burden of sins accumulated 257 over many lifetimes clashed with Confucian faith in human improvement. The Confucians’ stoic belief in chance destiny likewise provided thin gruel for souls hungry for a less impoverished life, either in the mortal world or beyond. Transformations wrought by death had been central to Chinese religion since earliest times. Exalted rulers of the Shang and early Zhou eras, supreme over mortal men, lived in thrall to intemperate ancestors and their ravening appetite for sacrifices. From the Han onward, as the dead themselves became subject to divine judgment and punishment, deceased ancestors evoked more pity than fear. The ancestors still compelled reverence , but no longer inspired awe. The charismatic majesty that had once captivated their living descendants faded before the terrifying prospect of summonses from the stern underworld tribunes delivered by the oxheaded and horse-headed minions who did their bidding. As in the past, though, the local cults of Song vernacular religion coalesced around human figures transfigured by death. Most gods, especially those honored as local tutelary deities, were initially envisioned as ghosts, spirits of dead humans whose unspent life force lingered in the mortal world. In death these spirits retained the charismatic power they manifested in their mortal lives—as officials and warriors, but also as mediums and seers. Miraculous demonstrations of these powers (lingyan) prompted human beings to worship them, not simply out of reverence, but perhaps most importantly to appease these troubled spirits. Gods deemed responsive (linggan ) to the entreaties of mortals (entreaties that were invariably mediated by sacrifice and pledge) achieved recognition as patrons of local communities. Yet just as the Song imperial state displaced military force with civil authority, the “dead generals” of earlier local cults became subordinated to a new pantheon composed of civil officials invested with bureaucratic authority, ruling not through brute will but rather in accordance with a strict canon of laws. Power and station in mortal life translated into exalted position in death. Civil magistrates were believed to maintain their dignity in the afterlife by virtue of appointment to the infernal government or as local chenghuang (the two most bureaucratized parts of the divine world, we might note). Yet charismatic individuals of humble station might also ascend to the ranks of the gods, serving their communities as tudi spirits. Chinese of the early imperial era looked out upon an enchanted world populated by august mountain gods, fiendish fairies and goblins, ancient stones and trees that might suddenly come to life, ghosts of the unshriven dead lurking around grave sites, and resident spirits inhabiting every 258 Conclusion [54.167.52.238] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:31 GMT) patch of ground. Mortals could carve out their own domains only by appeasing the multitude of spirits upon whom their farms and homes trespassed with timely sacrifices and prudent reverence. The progress of settlement in south China during the Song...