Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768

by Philip A. Kuhn

  On July 2g Hungli dispatched urgent court letters to all province chiefs, announcing the Shantung arrests and demanding that the master-sorcerers be tracked down. He now considered that the sorcery uncovered in Shantung was a menace to the empire as a whole, not just to the lower Yangtze provinces. Accordingly these orders were issued to top provincial officials nationwide. How, exactly, did Hungli understand the soulstealing threat? On what basis was he mobilizing the provincial bureaucracy to confront it? These criminals, whose traces are "hidden and hard to detect," use their evil arts to "delude and ensnare good subjects (mi-yu shan-liang)." They constitute a "great injury to local communities." Here Hungli pictured the Throne as carrying out a mission to protect the people from supernatural harm. For such a view there existed a solid legal basis: the numerous penal sanctions against sorcery included in the Ch'ing Code.

  Sorcery in the Ch'ing Code

  In view of its own dominating position in. the empire's ritual life, it might seem odd that the state saw sorcery as a serious threat. Yet it did so, as evidenced by the penal code's stern provisions on the subject. Surely it was the central role of ritual in certifying the dynasty's mandate to rule, as well as sanctifying state authority on all levels, that made officialdom so protective of its special rights to communicate with the spirit world-and so determined to regulate how others did so. The fear of sorcery is by no means straightforwardly expressed in the Code, however. Sorcery is not treated as a single category, but is distributed under a number of headings and subheadings with a wide range of meanings and associations. An outline of the areas where the Code treats manipulation of the spirit world will locate the particular offenses we have seen in the 1768 cases:'

  Categories under Which Sorcery Is Prohibited in the Ch'ing Code

  The Ten Abominations (shih-o)

  • Crimes outside the [civilized] way (pu-tao) Statutes on Ritual (li-lu) [Offenses within the purview of the Board of Rites]

  • Sacrifices (chi-ssu)

  • Ceremonies (1-chih)

  Statutes on Criminality (hsing-Iii) [Offenses within the purview of the Board of Punishments]

  • Rebellion and Robbery (tsei-tao)

  • Homicide (jen-ming)

  Sorcery under the "Ten Abominations"

  The "Ten Abominations" occur in the preamble to the Code and are duplicated later in various substantive statutes. They were a general statement of principle and not for jurists to apply directly. In this privileged position, they signal one of the culturally deepest levels of Chinese legal thought and are in fact drawn almost wholly from the T'ang Code of A.D. 653. Acts that we would call "sorcery" come under the "uncivilized" subheading and include: "dismembering a person to extract vitality" (ts'ai-sheng che-ko-cutting out ears and entrails for achieving biodynamic powers); making poison (tsao-ku) by magical means (as distinct from purely chemical agents, such as poisonous herbs); and inflicting "captive spirits" (yen-mei) upon a victim by means of incantations. All are acts or conspiracies against persons, not the state.`' If the deepest levels of revulsion against sorcery are assumed to be reflected in this preamble, their wholly nonpolitical nature is astonishing in the light of what follows.

  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 p
rophecies (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 la
ws, 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."

  What to Do about Soulstealing?

  What did this elaborate legal code mean for the prosecution of soulstealing, and where did the particular offenses of 1768 fit within it? Every public officer who dealt with soulstealing, including Hungli himself, was surely aware of the extent and variety of the Code's prohibitions against the "evil arts." When Hungli said that soulstealing did "great harm" to the common people, he must have assumed that it could be prosecuted under the law. But under exactly which law, in this welter of definitions and prohibitions, would an eighteenth-century jurist have put it? Soulstealing as such is not mentioned by the Code, so prosecution would have required analogic reasoning, a common recourse when a particular variant of a crime was not covered by specific legal penalties.

  Communicating with "evil spirits" (statute 162) might have seemed inappropriate, because the "spirits" involved were simply the souls of the victims. A more plausible basis for prosecution would have been the statutes on practicing hiodynamic sorcery by "extracting vitality" (statute 288) or on injuring people by charms or incantations (statute 289 [3]). If human hair contains vitality, as I will suggest in Chapter 5, then cutting it off and using it for magical purposes may have stirred the same revulsions as the quasi-cannibalistic perversions mentioned earlier. If the common man shared the jurist's horror at such practices, then prosecuting soulstealers under those statutes would have soothed the feelings of all concerned. Here the reader may wonder why we cannot discover how soulstealing was classified in ► 768 by simply turning to the record of sentences against convicted soulstealers. A fair question indeed. The difficulty is that the soulstealing prosecution of i 768 generated no case record of sentences. The reasons for this odd situation will emerge as the story moves along.