The Cultural Environment of Maogusi's Origin (Part 1)
Section 3: The Cultural Environment of Maogusi's Origin. Put plainly, Maogusi grew up in a wu cultural environment. It relies on wu, and wu runs throughout its performance—one could say Maogusi and wu culture are symbiotic. An overview of wu: every cultural phenomenon arises from certain cultural backgrounds.
This article has been compiled from historical materials on 'Zhangjiajie Tour Guide Network' (33519.com · Specialty Foods / Cuisine / Customs section). Prices, business hours, administrative divisions, and statistical data mentioned in the text may already be outdated. Before traveling, please refer to the latest announcements from merchants, scenic areas, and local competent authorities; the parts involving folk legends and folk customs are local historical and cultural anecdotes, provided for cultural reference.
Section Three: The Cultural Environment in Which Maogusi Arose
The cultural environment in which Maogusi arose was, plainly put, one in which it grew up within a shamanic culture. Maogusi relies on shamanism, and shamanism runs through its performance from beginning to end. It can be said that Maogusi and shamanic culture have a certain symbiotic quality.
An Overview of Shamanism
The emergence of any cultural phenomenon is supported by certain cultural backgrounds, and the emergence of Maogusi was also supported by a culture; the culture that supported Maogusi was shamanic culture. "Every culture is a system constituted by local knowledge. This local knowledge system includes not only written aspects such as law, politics, economics, art, and aesthetics, but also various unwritten moral norms and theoretical systems circulating among the people concerning human relations and understandings of the world, as well as understandings of fairness and justice embodied in various folk beliefs, and so on. Therefore, every culture has its own rationality and logic." In the Tujia areas where Maogusi prevails, no true phenomenon of totem worship has yet been discovered among them. But in their minds there is an image that can never be erased, namely the shamanism and deities in which they believe extremely strongly. Shamanism has a long history in Tujia areas. When Maogusi had just been born, shamanic customs were extremely prevalent, and shamanism ruled the entire spiritual world of the people. What shamanism is still has no fully convincing definition. Xu Shen said in his Shuowen Jiezi: "A shaman is a invoker. A woman who can serve the formless and bring down gods by dancing." On careful examination, this is not an accurate definition either. Strictly speaking, it is only an interpretation of the behavior of the shaman practitioner, and has not yet touched upon shamanism itself and its essence.
Shamanism is the propeller of humanity's entry into the origin of civilized society. The study of shamanism is the main path to understanding primitive culture. Treating shamanic culture as the dominant form of primitive culture and regarding it as the earliest stage of the development of religion and science is not only the consensus of sociologists and anthropologists; some folk artists also know this truth. On September 26, 2007, the author interviewed Zheng Yongxiang, a Nuo religion shaman of Longtanhe Town, Taoyuan County, Hunan Province. Zheng told the author: "In the human world, shamanism came first and heaven came later. The oldest shamanic Nuo culture evolved from shamanic religious culture into Nuo culture." Zheng's statement seems somewhat biased, but it shows that shamanism lit the torch of human civilization and played a driving role in the earliest spiritual awakening and intellectual activation of humanity. When humanity was asleep, in a hazy state, and then rubbed open its bewildered eyes and suddenly awoke, one can imagine how great the surprise and how great the joy must have been. Since humans began walking on two feet, the information in the brain has continuously increased. In the state of primitive survival, humans began to examine spring, summer, autumn, and winter, began to examine the beauty of color, the traces of the sun and moon, the warmth of care, and the light of wisdom, learned to use fire, and praised the gifts of nature. The sharpening of thought rose to the stage of spiritual aesthetics, and shamanic culture was born in this period. The origin of shamanic culture must still begin with ancient primitive people. In the age of the great flood, primitive people lived in caves, ate wild fruits and animal meat, wore tree bark, and made a living by gathering wild fruits and by fishing and hunting. At that time, people's living environment was extremely harsh, and they had to face various life-and-death challenges at any time. Wind like knives and frost like swords, flying sand and rolling stones could threaten life; poisonous snakes and fierce beasts, birds of prey and vicious dogs were even more harmful to safety; moreover, natural disasters such as typhoons, droughts, earthquakes, and plagues endangered their lives at any time. They needed to strive at every moment and stay vigilant day and night; they prepared to face enemies all day and continued to meet battles throughout the year. This was a cruel reality, but people could not simply wait for death. They had to think of new methods to cope with the attacks of various natural enemies and the harm of natural disasters. Cruel natural selection drove the evolution of human instincts. Society must develop and humanity must progress; this is the inevitable law of historical development. At that time, people evolved very noticeably in physiological instincts. Those with great and enduring strength, speed and agility, coordinated movements, and balanced body and mind gradually appeared and increased. Among these many outstanding talents, there was one even more prominent and wondrous figure, whom people called "Wu" (the shaman). Humanity's first name began with "Wu." A great founder, "Wu," was born in this period, and shamanic culture appeared from this period. In fact, calling him "Wu" was a title given in later historical development. At first, he was merely a wise man among the primitive group, a person with a developed mind. In order to reflect people's enthusiasm, later a system was implemented in which prey was distributed according to the amount of effort contributed, and this system is still practiced even now. When Tujia mountain people hunt, the first person to hit the prey gets the prey's head, the second person to hit the prey gets the prey's neck, and the amount of prey obtained decreases in turn; the remaining prey is divided one portion per person among those who took part in the hunt. Hunting is extremely dangerous and tiring work, so the shaman invented even more ingenious ways and methods.
Human material civilization is constantly renewed and transformed, yet its spiritual civilization can also endure and flow on for a long time. The mind's mode of thinking can remain ever new through the ages, displaying spiritual activity under self-awareness and possessing a deep vitality. Through the condensation and creation of thought, perception and experience accumulate into a vast system of concepts and a system of knowledge. Later humanity had religion, and religion also originated from shamanism. Zhang Guangzhi, using the term "Maya-Chinese cultural continuum," held that an important characteristic of Chinese culture is continuity: many cultural and social elements continued from barbaric society to civilized society, among which what mainly continued were the relationship between humans and the world and the relationship between humans and nature, handing down the prehistoric worldview, shamanism, communication among heaven, earth, humans, and gods, and the political power monopolized through such communication. This view means that the origin of Chinese spiritual civilization is quite ancient. In prehistoric times, the corresponding relationship between the human mind and the external universe had already been established, with attention to the natural order between humans and heaven and earth, as well as the supernatural order between humans and ghosts and gods. It shows that early humans, when facing individual life, not only tightly grasped the survival motives and demands of biological instinct, but also opened the spiritual function of the mind, with no small amount of effort and results in seeking to transcend themselves, affirming that the form of life exceeds the material domain of the body and still needs to enter the spiritual domain of purposive existence, value existence, and transcendent existence.
Witchcraft is the survival experience and technique of early humans. Its historical status and value have been evaluated differently in academia. Most scholars start from a scientific standpoint: some believe witchcraft was the midwife of the birth of science and technology, while others hold that witchcraft hindered the popularization and development of science and technology. These arguments share a common cognitive blind spot, namely linking witchcraft with science and taking science as the only criterion of truth, ignoring the possibility that witchcraft and science can be disconnected and that there need be no causal relationship between them. That is, witchcraft is witchcraft and science is science; each has its own different domain and scope. When the boundary between the two can be clearly grasped, witchcraft will neither promote nor hinder the development of science. When science is no longer the only criterion for testing human civilization, witchcraft cannot be regarded as an erroneous mode of human behavior, nor as a negative product of humanity's process of understanding nature. So-called "erroneous" and "negative" carry subjective value judgments, ignoring the inner rationality of human spiritual activity, or even outright denying the cultural phenomena of various spiritual domains. Although witchcraft is a technique, in terms of its content it leans toward psychologically meaningful operations; it need not conform to scientific principles and scientific experiments. It is not a question of technical right or wrong, but involves sacred beliefs and the spiritual domain.
Some scholars say: "Witchcraft, viewed from the perspective of 'high religion,' of course does not count as religion, or can only count as 'low religion.' But it is indeed useful for studying early religion, especially for studying the origins of ritual and fangshu (arts and techniques). For example, witchcraft includes two branches, imprecation and divination; the former developed into ritual, the latter into fangshu—this is fairly obvious. But we should note that witchcraft still existed after ritual and fangshu became developed, especially exerting great influence among the common people, and it has always been associated with the concept of 'heterodox ways' (similar to what the West calls 'paganism' or 'evil cults'). Since the Han dynasty, legal codes have prohibited it with all urgency, fearing that someone might use it to incite rebellion (mainly out of consideration for national security, not religious consideration). Moreover, even though it is all witchcraft, the circumstances of the pre-ritual-and-fangshu era and the post-ritual-and-fangshu era are very different. Later witchcraft submitted to ritual and fangshu, was disparaged and suppressed; its good side (white magic) was replaced, while its evil side (black magic) was exaggerated and highlighted, and its overall image was 'demonized.' For example, regarding the witches of the Han dynasty, Mr. Lin Fushi of Taiwan has done research. In the Han dynasty there were Hu witches in the north and Yue witches in the south, and various kinds of witches throughout the country. These witches not only had low status and had long been appendages of the invocators, ancestral priests, and diviners, but were also frequently persecuted, similar to the witch hunts of medieval Europe (but not religious persecution—rather government persecution). The shamanistic explanation can neither explain the latter type of witchcraft nor explain ritual and fangshu, especially the relationship between ritual, fangshu, and the state, as well as their social and political significance. This is why I do not agree with using shamanism to explain everything."
Witchcraft is the earliest complete set of spiritual activities of humankind. It is built on thinking activity with "human" as the subject, developing a view of life based on the "humanization of nature," that is, personifying all things in heaven and earth from the perspective of human life, believing that all things in heaven and earth are like humans, thus forming a worldview in which all things have life, all things have action, and all things have feeling, with humans and nature existing together in a world similarly endowed with life, activity, emotion, and value. Under the mode of thinking in which humans and nature feel as one, there arose the belief in animism as the basis for human spiritual existence. The so-called animistic view, also called the view that all things have spirits, firmly believes that all natural things are indistinguishably imbued with spirit, and further, on the basis of the actual life form of humans, constructs a supernatural world of spirit entities. These spirit entities transcend the natural attributes of things and possess powerful life force; they have relationships with humans of closeness or hostility, friendliness or aversion, and can bring good or ill fortune, life or death. When people face such powerful supernatural forces, they develop the desire to communicate with spirit entities and beg for blessings, as well as behavioral methods to control spirit entities and pursue benefit while avoiding harm.