Research On The Relationship Between Searching Deities And The Chinese Ancient Sorcery And Strology

Chinese stories had been greatly developed as a literature style in the period of the Wei, Jin, the Southern and Northern Dynasties . Under the background of the Metaphysics and the Fairy thoughts, two kinds of typical stories appeared in the period. One was Stories recording Spirits and the other was Stories recording Anecdotes. The former reflected the literati' s life style and the latter represented the spiritual aspect of people. "Searching Deities" , written by Gan Bao, also appeared under the influence of the Metaphysics , Buddhism and Taoism. It reflected the culture of ghost worshipping with rich fairy stories in the Wei, Jin and Han Dynasties, especially the sorcery and the astrology. In his book, Gan Bao record the activity of alchemists and wizards. There were many kinds of the activities in the book, including Red worshipping , application of the spiritual beings , Magic Figures, the divination, etc. This phenomenon was a kind of the religious culture formed by the Ancestors during the long period when they struggled with the nature. In the book, Gan Bao not only reflected the culture but also reflected the particular religious thought. Influnced by the theory of yinyang-wuxing and Dong Zhongshu' s idea of tian-ren-gan-ying, Gan Bao wrote many stories in which many ghosts and people became good friends. But these stories represented the spirits of Confucianism, which also reflected the trend of harmony between Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. This book not only refelected the culture of ghost worshipping but also brought about Educational Significance .