The Wu as Physicians? The Making of Chinese Medicine, Part 1: The Shang Dynasty
by Johan Hausen
In Mister Lü’s Spring and Autumn [Annals], a text on cosmology from the late Warring States period, we find the statement in the chapter ‘Wu Gong’:
巫彭作醫，巫鹹作筮。
Wu Peng acted as a physician, while Wu Xian was a diviner by milfoil.
The traditional pairing of Wu Peng and Wu Xian, two of the earliest representatives of the wu in Chinese legend, reflects the close ties between the practices of divination and healing. That intimate link is clearly apparent in the very first recorded case of healing in China, the oracular/divinatory medicine inscribed on oracle bones for King Wu Ding, who reigned from 1254 to 1197 BCE, and whose afflictions were caused by his ancestors. Divination from turtle shells (‘plastromancy’) and scapular ox bones (‘scapulomancy’), mainly in the Shang dynasty and tapering out into the subsequent Zhou Dynasty, sought to ascertain the ancestral culprit, i.e. the causative agent of disease in the king’s ancestry, through prognosticatory arts. Due to this overlap of divination and medicine, as witnessed in the art of iatromancy, i.e. healing through divinatory skills, the two will be placed on an equal footing here. This essay will focus, therefore, on the extent of the wu’s role in the medical practices of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, a key question that has yet to be fully explored. Previous studies have tended to focus on later dynasties and have only tangentially considered the relationship between the wu and healing, almost exclusively in terms of exorcism, so this essay is the first to place a special emphasis on, and take a broader approach to, this crucial issue
-From The Legacy of Chinese Shamanism: The Wu and their Successors (Purple Cloud Press forthcoming, please sign up here: www.purplecloudinstitute.com/register for our newsletter)
Post-Scriptum: The Greater Master of Fate’ (Dasiming 大司命) chapter of the Li Sao Tu depicts a shamanka in possession by a male spirit.
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