I read your tweet on how Wei Ying’s Guidao is orthodox cultivation based on real Guidao and that it’s descended from Bashu witchcraft. I’m very interested in that. Can you elaborate on it? What parts of WWX’s Guidao are based on real-life folklore? I’ve also seen people talk about how his cultivation is bad because it locks souls in their dead bodies. That doesn’t sound too credible to me, but I don’t know enough to be sure.
Hmm… I’m not sure what you want me to elaborate on exactly. It’s a lot of materials to cover. Dry materials at that.
In any case, Guidao 鬼道 (Path of the Dead, Ghost Path) is a real-life orthodox cultivation. WWX’s Ghost Path, aside from sharing the name, has two main aspects that draw directly from real-life basis: 1/ the summoning, nurturing, and utilizing of ghosts or wraiths (in the novel, those would be the ghost lady and the ghost child that killed Wang Lingjiao and Wen Zhuliu. In the Donghua, they are represented as ghost brides), and 2/ commanding fierce corpses.
These two aspects are drawn from two different sources.
I. Maoshan Sect’s Guidao:
As I mentioned in the tweet, the ghost path belongs to one of the three main fulu orthodox schools of Daoism: the Maoshan Sect (the other two being Quanzhen and Zhengyi)
The earliest mentions of Ghost Path are in Han and Jin history records as well as the Three Kingdoms: Zhang Lu biography texts. These texts talk of a Daoist named Zhang Lingzhi, whose Daoism is called Guidao 鬼道. Zhang Lingzhi taught the people the way of ghosts and dao and raised an army. His soldiers and generals were called ghost soldiers and ghost generals. Zhang Lingzhi’s Daoism was itself descended from Bashu ethnic group witchcraft. Zhang Lingzhi founded the 天师道 Tianshidao School.
(Citation: Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences - “巴蜀的“鬼道”如何变成了道教?” - How did Bashu’s ghost path become Taoism? http://www.sass.cn/912/default.aspx If you want to dig deeper, you can contact the academy directly for their research paper.)
Tianshidao School underwent several name changes over the year. To this day, they are known under the name (or descended, as some would say) Maoshan Sect in Jiangsu Province.
Maoshan sect has four major specialties: talisman, array, sorcery, and the nurturing of ghost familiars. After the cultural revolution, Maoshan sect lost a lot of its scriptures and relics. But it has been around for literally thousands of years. So there are still things there. It’s not the titan it used to be, but it’s still very much a cultural icon. There are numerous movies, books, and games that draw from Maoshan history and legends. One of them happens to be a movie cited as MXTX’s inspiration for aspects of MDZS in the recent Subaru magazine.
(Mr. Vampire, the movie cited in Subaru magazine features the adventure of a Maoshan Daoist)
II. Tujia 土家族 ethnic group’s stiff corpse driving sorcery - Hunan:
The other aspect of WWX’s ghost path: the commanding of dead corpses by a warlock. In the same Subaru interview, MXTX also talked of folk legends of Jiangshi (stiff corpse, or commonly translated as Chinese hopping vampire) serving as the basis for her fierce corpse, ranging from things like general abilities, toxicity, and tricks like using rice gruel to cure their poison.
Jiangshi has been around since the Ming dynasty, but tales of warlock with the ability to command them originate from the Tujia ethnic group in Hunan.
A jiangshi warlock process the corpses, plaster them with paper talismans to restrain their ferocity, tie them in a row, and leads them using a bell that the warlock continuously rings.
(Hoppy hoppy! It's edgiest conga train!)
Well, I don’t think I need to point out the similarity between the real-life Tujia warlock and WWX’s corpse commanding ability.
This specific sorcery was created in a time of war, when young men died in far-off lands. Their families, wanting to bury them in their home soil, would pay a warlock to go fetch their corpses and walk these corpses all the way back to their home province.
These legends might seem very fantastic but the corpse walking part is a very real job that still existed until the last 50 years. It’s featured in Liao Yiwu’s real-life journalism record “The Corpse Walker”
(It's a really thrilling read. I got the physical copy over 13 years ago while I was in my last year at university. I recommend it.)
III. How does Tujia warlock (and WWX) supposedly command corpses?
Regarding the whole, did WWX lock people’s souls inside their dead bodies. Uh…. I don’t think so.
Why?
Because Chinese beliefs about souls are different from Western beliefs. In Chinese lore, a person has three souls and seven spirits (三魂七魄). The three souls represent the positive aspects of a person, with one soul literally being a divine spark. The seven spirits represent earthly taints and degradations and are bound to the body. When a person dies, the three souls will go to the heavens, the next life, and the underworld, respectively. The seven spirits, on the other hand, dissipate after death after 49 days.
This belief is shared in other Sinosphere nations as well and is featured in other media franchises. If you read Inuyasha, you will remember the Jewel of Four Souls and the Four Souls concept being a close relative to three souls seven spirits. In Vietnam, there is folklore of Ba Hồn Bảy Vía and rituals on how to call a person's soul home.
It’s these seven spirits that create Jiangshi. If the spirits do not completely dissipate, the corpse turns into a Jiangshi, a literal life vampire that has only the worst aspect of the dead person and who is forever hungering for life energy. It is these seven spirits that a Tujia warlock (and WWX) controls.
When you have this context, you can put the creation of Wen Ning in a different perspective, and why is it that it's such a big deal he retains his consciousness as a corpse.
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