Study On The Sorcery Culture And Wizard Ritual In Ancient China

Sorcery culture is a kind of longest and the most abundant content culture in china.As an important constituent part of Chinese traditional culture, sorcery culture has hadthe profound influence on Chinese literature, art, astronomy, medicine, music, danceand even people’s thinking mode and the value idea. But at present the research aboutthe witch culture is still at the initial stage and has not formed a across-the-aboard andsystematic system, especially for the research of wizard ritual. This article attempts tostudy on the sorcery culture and wizard ritual in ancient China in-depth.The paper can be divided into two parts: the Introduction and the main text, TheIntroduction mainly discusses the goal of the research and the significance as well as theresearch of domestic and foreign at present situation. The main text divides into fivechapters: The first chapter mainly introduces the concrete connotation and historycontext of sorcery culture, as well as its social function. The second chapter introducesthe generating methods and the two modes of inheritance and the basic conditions of theancient wizard, than summarizes the ancient wizard’s five main social functions. Thethird chapter generalizes the definition of witchcraft on the basis of the previous theoryfirstly, than carries on the reorganization according to each kind of classificationregarding present witchcraft, and according to the people’s emotion and attitude, dividesChina’s ancient wizard activities into four types: catered witchcraft, drivable witchcraft,defendable witchcraft, injured witchcraft. The fourth chapter introduces the connotationof ritual and sacrificial ritual, analyzes the differences between wizard ritual andsacrificial ritual by comparison. The fifth chapter is the core of this thesis. This chaptersums up the five basic elements of wizard ritual: the selection of time and location, thewizards’ preparation and dress, the wizard tools; the wizard sacrifice; language andaction, and analyzes the five basic elements by examples in the ancient works, thaninvestigates forms and characteristics of ancient Chinese wizard ritual.