Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (15 page)

Sorcery under Statutes on Ritual

Under Statutes on Ritual, most of the judicial activity concerning
what we would call "sorcery" is dealt with under the subcategory
"Sacrifices." Here, in statute 162, are proscribed sorcerers (shih-wu wu is a term associated with shamans) and "evil arts" (hsieh-shu), such
as (i) "purporting to call down evil spirits" (hsieh-shen); (2) writing
charms or reciting incantations to spiritually charge water for ritual
use (chou-shui); (3) practicing spirit-writing (a kind of prognostication); (4) wantonly using the designation Maitreya (the Buddha-messiah), White Lotus Society (a general term for messianic popularBuddhist sects), and all "techniques based on deviant ways and
perverse principles" (tso-tao i-tuan chih shu); or (5) possessing diagrams
or images, burning incense and gathering followers, meeting at night
and dispersing by day, and falsely claiming to be practicing benevolence in order to delude people.1) Grouped with offenses against the
proper conduct of imperial sacrifices, the statute clearly is aimed at
communication, through sacrifical offerings, with spirits outside the
imperial cult and the pantheon of imperially sanctioned deities.

How seriously did the framers of this statute fear such ritual
offenses? Did they really fear rival channels of communication with
the spirit world? Shen Chih-ch'i, an early eighteenth-century commentator, suggests otherwise: the statute, he writes, "emphasizes the
element of `delusion of the people' (huo-chung)." Simple people,
aroused by heterodox teachings, may create disturbances and "give
rise to chaos."" He is telling us that social order and state security
are really the state's main concerns. Not surprisingly, this statute was
the legal peg that supported numerous substatutes aimed at sectarians: here are grouped the substatutes for the relentless prosecution,
during late imperial times, of allegedly subversive popular sects, particularly after the Eight Trigrams revolt of 1813. Although the editors' choice of entries in the Conspectus of Penal Cases (HAHL) was
based on jurisprudential interest rather than on frequency of occurrence, it is suggestive that twenty cases out of twenty-four dealt with
sectarian prosecutions. 12

Lest it be assumed, however, that this statute related exclusively to
state security, note that it was used to prosecute two early nineteenthcentury cases of sexual deviance involving transvestite monks: the
first dressed as a female and deceived a married woman into adultery
(and tried unsuccessfully to deceive another); and the second became
involved in a homosexual triangle that ended in one lover's
denouncing him to the authorities. Both. monks were convicted of
"deluding" people by means of sorcery, which suggests that the court
considered the nature of the sexual lure (transvestitism) to be sufficiently unnatural as to fall under the sorcery prohibition.13

Sorcery prosecutions under "Sacrifices," then, convey a mixed message: the Ch'ing state viewed unauthorized traffic with spirits as a
threat to public order and used the statute to attack sectarians. Nevertheless, the statute was also considered useful for remedying cases of
personal injury, at least in cases where the defendant employed
unnatural sexual lures. In both respects, the state's officially agnostic
position about the existence or efficacy of the unauthorized communication is suggested by the prominence of the "delusion" principle in the case record: in prosecuting sorcery, the main objects of
attack were said to be its social results. Nevertheless, the fact that
these sectarian prosecutions were categorized under "Sacrifices" suggests that the unauthorized link to the spirit world-whether real or
spurious-shaped the actual topography of this battleground.

By contrast to the "Sacrifices" heading, which emphasizes communication with spirits, "Ceremonies" emphasizes the concrete ritual
behavior of men. Grouped among statutes governing official conduct
at state rituals, official dress codes, and rules for court astrologers,
we find a prohibition against sorcerers' (shu-shih) residing in official
households and foretelling the future, particularly "the reigning
dynasty's bad or good fortune." The official commentator states that
this constitutes "meddling in affairs of state," and that it might cause
"ordinary people to think upon allegiance or defection." 14 Although
the Conspectus includes no cases under this category, a substatute of
the K'ang-hsi reign forbids "people who study astronomy" (not in
official employ) to foretell the future and thereby "delude" people,
which indicates that it was far from a dead statute.15 Again, the
"delusion" principle protects the Code from appearing to place credit
in the reality of the socerers' link to the spirit world.

Sorcery under Statutes on Criminality

Under the "Ceremonies" statutes, penalties against sorcerers who
foretell the future are relatively light-only one hundred strokes of
the heavy bamboo. Once we move into the section of the Code that
deals with "Rebellion and Robbery," however, they bear the death
penalty. Placed just after "Rebellion" and "Treason" is a statute that
states, "Those who concoct books or sayings of sorcery (yao-shu yaoyen) involving prophecies (ch'an-wei) are to be jailed awaiting decapitation." A 1740 substatute effectively increases the penalty to immediate decapitation, the same as for treason.'s The distinction, we are told, is one of intent. Though the kind of sorcerers prohibited by the
"Ceremonies" statute are only swindlers, the harm they do society
being incidental, those prosecuted under "Rebellion" are making
predictions "with the intention of deluding people and plotting sedition." This looks like serious business, but in fact the statute seems
to have been used to prosecute rather marginal cases-mostly unauthorized possession of spells for medicinal purposes or personal protection; and in those, the statute generally was applied analogically
rather than directly." We can only assume that the antisectarian
statutes under "Sacrifices" took care of all serious sedition cases, and
that this old statute (which dates from the seventh century) was
largely obsolete.

Of the three statutes dealing with sorcery under "Homicide," the
first two are repetitions of material in the "Ten Abominations." The
first is "dismembering a person to extract vitality."18 The horror
evoked by this crime is indicated by the penalty of "death by slow
slicing," the same as for killing one's parents or grandparents, and
indeed the same as for rebellion (the penalty for treason is only
decapitation). If the victim has only been injured rather than killed,
the penalty is the same. If the crime has been set afoot but nobody
has yet been injured, the penalty is merely decapitation. The official
"Commentary" distinguishes this crime from mutilation after a
murder, which is merely committed out of hatred for the victim. This
crime, however, is done "in order to practice sorcery (yao-shu) for
deluding people. Therefore it is treated with special gravity."

It seems odd to find the "delusion" theme displayed even in the
case of so horrible a crime. Was the statute actually applied to counter
the social effects of sorcery-that is, the use of sorcery to spread
disorder in society? The only instance in the Conspectus suggests otherwise. It concerns a Chekiang case in which a seventy-year-old male
was convicted of sucking the "vital bodily essence" (thing-sui) from
sixteen baby girls, of whom eleven died. Apparently no actual sorcery
was performed with the "essence," which is probably why the trial
judge applied this statute analogically. In its emotional impact, the
case seems similar to the sex crimes described earlier, even if more
revolting: it was grossly unnatural, and the sorcery statutes were the
remedies nearest to hand. In an impassioned edict on the case, the
Chia-ch'ing emperor used the term "human demon" (jen-yao), the
ideographs of a term for sorcerer (yao-jen) reversed.19 Here was no
concern with "delusion" or social disorder, but revulsion at a crime
so unnatural that only a sorcery statute could deal with its inhuman quality.20 Related cases cited by the editors of the Code include "luring
children" by means of spells and incantations so that their bodily
essence might be extracted, or buying corpses of children to burn
for medicine. In an eighteenth-century case, this statute was used to
prosecute a man who murdered someone to obtain his gall bladder
for concocting a cure for leprosy. Documents on the case mention
no biodynamic sorcery as such, though the statute seems quite
apposite otherwise.21 The inhuman, indeed quasi-cannibalistic quality
of these crimes suggests a violation of fundamental taboos. Did such
violation in turn suggest a connection with the supernatural and so
justify their prosecution under sorcery statutes? Although even in
these cases "delusion" is brought in to debunk the efficacy of sorcery,
the effect on the public was considered quite different from the mass
"delusion" practiced by sectarian sorcerers on their converts and
prosecuted in the "Ceremonies" category. Here, forces of darkness
were unmistakably at work.

A single statute, number 289, combines the crimes of making or
using magical poison from harmful insects (tsao-hsu ku-tu), harming
people by spells or incantations, and inflicting "captive spirits" (yenmei) on others.22 The official "Commentary" specifies such "techniques" as harming one's enemies by drawing or fabricating human
images and piercing their hearts or eyes; or summoning spirits (chaokuei) by carving spells on seals or burying them. However, the "Commentary" specifies that all such crimes should be prosecuted under
the statute on premeditated murder. Indeed, the Conspectus does not
offer examples of' prosecutions that employ this particular sorcery
statute directly.21 The poison cases mentioned in the commentaries
to the Code all concern ordinary chemical agents, not supernatural
potions, and were in fact prosecuted under different statutes. To
judge from the apparent scarcity of case material, it appears that this
ancient statute on harming people by magic, which echoes the fifth
of the "Ten Abominations" (crimes outside the [civilized] way), had
fallen out of use by late imperial times. The kinds of sorcery it
prohibits, though clearly part of folk belief, were not discerned by
trial judges in the cases before them.24

The State and the Supernatural

The ambiguous picture of state purposes in combating sorcery mirrors the ambiguous position of the state in matters supernatural. On
the one hand, the state was itself involved in communication with the spirit world through many channels. It had its own cults of Heaven,
Earth, and assorted nature deities, along with the welter of popular
deities it had co-opted into its religious system. Through its in-house
astrologers, it was constantly involved in reading the omens of the
skies. As to the reality of man's link to the spirits, it could hardly take
an agnostic stance. On the other hand, to join open combat with
competing cults would dignify them by admitting the reality and
efficacy of their links to the spirit world. The language of the Code,
its commentaries, and its case record leave no doubt that sorcery was
practiced. Practicing it, however, could not be presented as other
than futile: calling forth spirits that would not come when called, for
the sake of "deluding" people into illegal combination and perhaps
into revolt.

Posting the "delusion" disclaimer prominently throughout the sorcery statutes was, we can only infer, a formulaic act to deny that the
state accepted the reality-or the power--of rival deities. That the
state placed its antisectarian laws firmly under "Sacrifices," however,
shows how flimsy this denial was in comparison with the underlying
mental divisions under which human activity was perceived. Even
under the "Rebellion" rubric, some of the Code's most powerful strictures are directed against crimes of cognition (foretelling the future),
even though they are decorously shielded by the "delusion"
disclaimer.

We can, I believe, find in the "delusion" disclaimer the principal
origin of the panic factor that has emerged so prominently in this
account of how the Throne dealt with both sorcery and tonsure
offenses. The common people were the mediating link between
cosmic forces and practical politics. The withdrawal of Heaven's
blessing from a failing dynastic regime was signaled by popular disturbances. Conversely, the solidity of the Mandate was signaled by
public contentment and quiescence. Sorcery, in this sense, can be
seen as the "black" counterpart of the imperial cult. Just as the
legitimate sacrifices conveyed to the public an image of firm and
worthy control, so sorcery might convey an image of instability and
imminent crisis. The representation and the reality were inseparable.
No point in asking whether sorcery practices were "really" loosening
the dynasty's grip: the popular reaction to sorcery was what counted.
Public disturbances, like astrological omens, were both signs and
instruments of Heaven's displeasure. Since words, too, were signs
and instruments, it is no wonder the panic factor was handled so gingerly, even in internal government communications! Here indeed
was the occasion, as the commentator noted, for people to "think
upon allegiance or defection."25

Yet the state's concern with sorcery was by no means limited by
considerations of its political security. "Sorcery" was also used in a
metaphorical sense to highlight crimes of particular horror, which
involved some of the deepest taboos (such as cannibalism). Chinese
jurists were stuck with the Nuremberg conundrum: some crimes were
so inhuman that no human agency could plausibly punish them. Yet
they had nevertheless to be punished. That may explain why sorcery
statutes found a place in the application of the penal code to crimes
considered particularly loathsome, whether or not sorcery itself could
be clearly demonstrated. Certain laws, such as the sorcery clauses in
the "Ten Abominations," were so hard to apply to the real world that
they generated practically no case record. Their retention in the body
of the Code itself is further evidence that imperial Chinese jurists, for
all their disclaimers, believed that there was always likely to be something nasty going on out there between humans and spirits. Such
unauthorized traffic with the world of shadow threatened both the
security of the state and the moral foundations of society-which, in
imperial rhetoric, were radically linked. Hence it is important to
remember, as we consider the panic of 1768, that the Throne's campaign against sorcery cannot neatly be filed away under "political
security."