The Wu · Shamans
of Ancient China

Whoever looks at the Shang-dynasty oracle-bones in a Chinese museum sees the oldest witnesses of Chinese shamanism. On these turtle shells, heated between 1300 and 1046 BCE with glowing bronze rods to read the cracks as oracles, we meet the Wu (巫) — the shamans of ancient China. They are the oldest by-name documented spiritual practitioners of Chinese history. And they are the root of what later became Daoism as world religion.

This article deepens a theme from the Daoism overview "Daoist Shamanism · Wu, Inner Alchemy, Immortals".

The sign 巫

The script-sign for Wu is one of the oldest there is. It is attested in the Shang oracle-bone inscriptions. In its original form it shows two figures meeting on a vertical axis. The axis joins above and below — Heaven and Earth. The figures are the Wu and the spirit-counterpart he calls. The sign is a pictorial concept of what shamanism is: encounter between the human world and another world on a vertical axis.

For Shamanic Worlds this sign is central. It is our logo-kanji. It joins the East Asian depth of our work with the universal principle of shamanism.

The functions of the Wu

What did the Wu concretely do? Archaeological finds and early texts give clues:

• Ancestor consultation · the most important function · the king consulted the ancestors through the Wu in all major decisions
• Oracle with turtle shells and animal shoulder blades · through heating, cracks appeared that were read as answer
• Rain rituals · in drought times the Wu danced or even symbolically burned themselves to bring rain
• Illness-banishing · in sickness evil spirits were called out and driven away
• Encounter with deities · in trance the Wu could speak with heavenly powers
• Song and dance · ritual movement was central, not supplementary

Especially interesting: in early texts there were male and female Wu. The female Wu (more precisely nüwu) were especially responsible for spirit-communication. In later Confucian writings the Wu were increasingly depicted negatively — often as "merely" female and therefore suspect. That contempt is a later development. In the early stratum the Wu are respected figures at court.

The king could not rule without the Wu. Every major decision was run through them · and any decision made without them was considered endangered.

The Step of Yu

One of the most fascinating traditions concerns the Yubu (禹步), the "Step of Yu". The mythical Great Yu was a culture hero who ordered the waterways of China. He walked with a particular, limping step — according to mythological account he became so exhausted in his work that he could no longer walk straight.

This step became a ritual pattern. Daoist priests perform the Yubu to this day at certain ceremonies. The step imitates the starry sky — one constellation after another is "visited" with the foot. The practitioner thereby becomes a small copy of cosmic striding.

The Yubu is historically connected with the early Wu. It is perhaps the oldest preserved ritual step-sequence of Chinese tradition. Many later patterns derive from it — the circle-walk of Bagua Zhang carries traces of it too. See Bagua Zhang · the circle as shamanic martial art.

The Wu and the Chinese soul-maps

In the Wu traditions also arose the first Chinese concepts of what a human soul is. The distinction of Hun (魂, "heavenly soul") and Po (魄, "earthly soul") — two soul-parts that go separate ways at death — is preserved from this early stratum. The Wu was the specialist who knew how to handle both, how to travel in the trance-state into the world of the Hun and how to stabilise the Po.

The shift to Daoism

Over time the role of the Wu shifted. In the Zhou dynasty (from 1046 BCE) the old shamanic practices were increasingly systematised. Written texts replaced oral transmission. Hierarchies formed. From the independent Wu came specialised priests, astrologers, physician-priests. When philosophical Daoism arose with Laozi and Zhuangzi (6th–4th century BCE) it gave the old Wu practice a new language.

The organised religious Daoism from the 2nd century CE took up many Wu elements. Talismans, conjurations, ancestor work, spirit-communication — all of that lived on in Daoist forms. The modern Daoist priest is in many ways a descendant of the old Wu, even if he himself does not always see it that way.

The Wu today

In certain rural regions of China — especially in southwest China, among the Miao, Yao, and other peoples — shamanic traditions have survived that clearly carry Wu features. Shamans there work with trance, with song, with ancestor-communication, in a form closely related to what the Wu did 3,000 years ago.

For Western practitioners these traditions are hard to access directly. But their spirit lives on in the broader Daoist shamanism, in body arts, in Fu talismans, in meditative work with Qi.

The Wu at Shamanic Worlds

In the practice at Shamanic Worlds the Wu are no historical theme but a living background. The sign 巫 as logo, the trance-drum work, the ancestor invocation, the body as instrument — all that stands in their lineage. Whoever works with the Daoist strand works implicitly also in the tradition of the Wu.