Daoist Chinese wizards were invoking Saint George

[MorganBlack]

Within Daoism, the Lüshan school is regarded as a heterodoxy; until recent years, its members were not allowed to participate in national Daoist rites such as the Luotian Dajiao.

I assume you are not arguing for orthodoxy here. Because making a charge of heterodoxy on an occult forum would be damn weird.

With all due respect to anyone's orthodox lineages and ritual purity codes, it would be completely missing the point of practical sorcery.

The Orthodoxy exists for priests in temples to maintain state-sanctioned doctrine. The Sangha in Theravada Buddhism, or formal monastic Daoism - exists to maintain social order, institutional purity, and state-sanctioned doctrine and community practices and observances. All good. But the magician, sorcerer, and the folk practitioner, and the cunning man have always sat to the side of the temple walls. Or outside, collecting the dirt and whatever tools gets the job done.

If a Fujian folk ritualist finds that an incantation to St. George gets the job done alongside Daoist talismans... they use it. If a Thai Ajarn finds that binding a Baphomet image into Prai ash collected from over 100 different graveyards, they do it. See below

See Eliphas Levi's Baphomet syncatized directly into the traditional spirit-matrix withinn a Buddhist culture. The Ajarn treats Baphomet as an autonomous, overarching deity capable of fulfilling human desires, commanding the subordinate prai spirits, rather than a foreign or contradictory symbol. Such is how it has always been with magicians. I refer everyone to the PGM for Western examples of magical syncratism.

 

[Sabbatius]

I would like to see the document itself, translated. I have no clue if it is a syncretic manuscript or if it is actually Christian. The reason being is the word "probably" is used which means plausibility to "we don't really know for sure." There was a large Nestorian population that spread from India into China and conversions did happen, even into the Chinese Royal Families including Nestorian Emperors. The veneration of St. George was early in the spread of Christianity.

 

[NIHILFIRMVM]

I assume you are not arguing for orthodoxy here. Because making a charge of heterodoxy on an occult forum would be damn weird.

With all due respect to anyone's orthodox lineages and ritual purity codes, it would be completely missing the point of practical sorcery.

The Orthodoxy exists for priests in temples to maintain state-sanctioned doctrine. The Sangha in Theravada Buddhism, or formal monastic Daoism - exists to maintain social order, institutional purity, and state-sanctioned doctrine and community practices and observances. All good. But the magician, sorcerer, and the folk practitioner, and the cunning man have always sat to the side of the temple walls. Or outside, collecting the dirt and whatever tools gets the job done.

If a Fujian folk ritualist finds that an incantation to St. George gets the job done alongside Daoist talismans... they use it. If a Thai Ajarn finds that binding a Baphomet image into Prai ash collected from over 100 different graveyards, they do it. See below

See Eliphas Levi's Baphomet syncatized directly into the traditional spirit-matrix withinn a Buddhist culture. The Ajarn treats Baphomet as an autonomous, overarching deity capable of fulfilling human desires, commanding the subordinate prai spirits, rather than a foreign or contradictory symbol. Such is how it has always been with magicians. I refer everyone to the PGM for Western examples of magical syncratism.

This is not a matter of denouncing them as heretical from an occult perspective, but of “denouncing them as heretical from a religious standpoint,” because first you must understand that China’s Daoist system is not completely decentralized; it mainly consists of two systems, the “Zhengyi” and “Quanzhen” schools, while the “Lüshan” school, strictly speaking, does not belong to Daoism but is a composite of Daoist ritual techniques, Tantric yoga, and local traditional witchcraft. Therefore, in Daoist contexts, they are regarded as heretical.

And, more strictly speaking, the Daoist priests depicted in this article are not Daoist priests; in fact, they are also different from the Lüshan school. Rather, they are a kind of “Manichaean adherents who have lost their self-identity, mistakenly believe themselves to be Daoist priests, and have incorporated lineage worship.” It is unreasonable to classify them as Daoist priests. They adhere to a Manichaean variant that we call “Mingjiao”—but their beliefs also differ from those of Mingjiao elsewhere.

Moreover, what they use is merely an incomplete, abbreviated fragment from the final section of the Sogdian version of The Passion of Saint George. They do not know that they are worshipping Saint George, and the name Saint George does not appear in the original incantation manuscript but in a general register of other worship rituals—of course, to stress again, they do not know that this is Saint George.

The more important reason is that the text includes Jesus—in Manichaean worship in southeastern China, Jesus is a very important object of ritual veneration.

 

[NIHILFIRMVM]

I would like to see the document itself, translated. I have no clue if it is a syncretic manuscript or if it is actually Christian. The reason being is the word "probablywe don't really know for sure." There was a large Nestorian population that spread from India into China and conversions did happen, even into the Chinese Royal Families including Nestorian Emperors. The veneration of St. George was early in the spread of Christianity.

I have read a large number of manuscripts and research findings on Manichaeism (Mingjiao) in southeastern China, so I think I can answer a few questions:

Jingjiao (the Church of the East in China) had two peaks of activity in China, during the Tang and Yuan dynasties, and both were mainly through the Silk Road and originated in Central Asia. The Yuan period was mainly through the nomadic peoples of Central Asia, while the Tang period was mainly through the Sogdians and Persians, not through India.

The material discussed in the image—I have already given a simplified Chinese transcription earlier, but unfortunately it cannot be simply translated into English—has been demonstrated to date from the Tang dynasty and can almost certainly be attributed to Jingjiao (99 percent; why not 100 percent? Because there are too few Tang-era Jingjiao artifacts and traces of activity in southeastern China, and we have to allow for contingency. If we were going purely by comparative research, then it could be affirmed as coming from Jingjiao).

This manuscript was not used independently, but is a small part of a long hymn, and it does not directly mention the name of Saint George.

If we take the hymn as a whole, it is a syncretic passage whose terminology and content encompass Manichaeism, Daoism, Buddhism, and Christianity. If we consider only the Saint George-related hymn, this is an abbreviated version of the final section of the Sogdian Passion of Saint George. The more important reason it was used is that the name of Jesus appears in it.

But Saint George does appear in the general worship list of other rituals (of course, they do not know that this is Saint George), together with a whole bunch of deities you have heard of (such as Mani, Jesus, Guan Yu, and the Four Archangels) and ones you have not heard of.

 

[NIHILFIRMVM]

I assume you are not arguing for orthodoxy here. Because making a charge of heterodoxy on an occult forum would be damn weird.

The reason I am explaining “the question of heresy” here is that I hope to help you understand that this is a highly complex situation, and that, especially from the standpoint of their tradition of religious practice, it should not be understood entirely as syncretism in a Daoist context—a rather modern way of putting it: Hey! Saint George works! Why don’t we give it a try?

Compared with the title and the content discussed earlier, they are not as “syncretistic” as they appear at first impression.

 

[MorganBlack]

Honestly, this is radically over-intellectualizing the point.

Whether a tradition is 10%, 20%, or 80% "syncretic," or whether it evolved through complex local assimilation rather than someone casually saying "hey, let's try Saint George," is completely beside the point. I honestly don't care about the exact percentage of theological overlap or how an academic paper classifies it.

The issue remains that operative magic, at the ground level , absorbs and utilizes materials outside of strict institutional orthodoxy to get results.

Frankly, if it were up to me, I’d kick to the curb the vast majority of post-Blavatsky and post-Eliphas Levi modern "magicK" inventions - all that bolted-on crap usually raided from Asian schools like Daoism or Tantra that has nothing to do with traditional Western magic, yet dominates 95% of modern Western occultism anyway. Most of that isn't "traditional" either. But people use it because it serves a function for them, just like folk practitioners have always absorbed external elements when it suited their work.

So splitting hairs over whether a folk group's absorption of a Christian saint counts as "true syncretism" vs. "complex historical assimilation" doesn't change the basic reality that it isn't strict, orthodox Daoism. Trying to police it with orthodox purity standards on a magic forum is completely missing the forest for the trees.

 

[Firetree]

Hmmm ... I didnt get that at all . I didnt feel 'policed' at all , I thought it was a good explanation ... as pointed out ... from a religious perspective and not a magical one . Also I thought it addressed the thread title well as perhaps 'Chinese daoist wizards' might have been invoking St George (in a round about way ) but did not realize it .

Also I didnt get any clear message that 'magical syncretism ' was being poo-pooed here ... again, it seems a 'religious heterodoxy' explanation .

 

[NIHILFIRMVM]

Trying to police it with orthodox purity standards on a magic forum is completely missing the forest for the trees.

I think you misunderstood. This is an explanation of the phenomenon, not a constraint based on religious orthodoxy.After all, frankly speaking, they are Manichaeans.

Post automatically merged: Today at 6:11 AM

I think you misunderstood. This is an explanation of the phenomenon, not a constraint based on religious orthodoxy.After all, frankly speaking, they are Manichaeans.

In more academic terms, we refer to them as Xiapu Manichaeism (note: this is not to refer to the Lüshan pai).