Download or read book Workshop on Divination and Portent Interpretation in Ancient China written by and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fortune tellers and Philosophers written by Richard J Smith and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-28 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing an analysis of Chinese divination as a means of organizing and interpreting reality, Richard Smith examines a wide variety of mantic techniques - from the use of the hallowed Yjing to such popular practices as siting (geomancy), astrology, numerology, physiognomy, the analysis of written characters, meteorological divination, the use of mediums (including spirit-writing), and dream interpretation. As he explains the pervasiveness and tenacity of divination in China, the author explores not only the connections between various mantic techniques but also the relationship between divination and other facets of Chinese culture, including philosophy, science and medicine. He discusses the symbolism of divination, its aesthetics, its ritual aspects, and its psychological and social significance, pointing out that in traditional China divination helped to order the future, just as history helped to order the past, and rituals the present.
Download or read book Chinese Mathematical Astrology written by Ho Peng Yoke and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2004-03-01 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though there are a number of well-written works on Chinese divination, there are none that deal with the three sophisticated devices that were employed by the Chinese Astronomical Bureau in the eleventh century and for hundreds of years thereafter. Chinese experts applied the methods associated with these devices to both weather forecasting and to the interpretation of human affairs. Hidden by a veil of secrecy, these methods have always been relatively little known other than by their names. The first work in any language to explore these three methods, known as sanshi (three cosmic boards), this book sheds light on a topic which has been shrouded in mystery for centuries, having been kept secret for many years by the Chinese Astronomical Bureau.
Download or read book Society and the Supernatural in Song China written by Edward L. Davis and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2001-06-01 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Society and the Supernatural in Song China is at once a meticulous examination of spirit possession and exorcism in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and a social history of the full panoply of China's religious practices and practitioners at the moment when she was poised to dominate the world economy. Although the Song dynasty (960-1276) is often identified with the establishment of Confucian orthodoxy, Edward Davis demonstrates the renewed vitality of the dynasty's Taoist, Buddhist, and local religious traditions. He charts the rise of hundreds of new temple-cults and the lineages of clerical exorcists and vernacular priests; the increasingly competitive interaction among all practitioners of therapeutic ritual; and the wide social range of their patrons and clients.
Download or read book In Search of Personal Welfare written by Mu-chou Poo and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first major reassessment of ancient Chinese religion to appear in recent years, this book presents the religious mentality of the period through personal and daily experiences.
Download or read book Shamanism 2 volumes written by Mariko Namba Walter and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2004-12-15 with total page 1088 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to worldwide shamanism and shamanistic practices, emphasizing historical and current cultural adaptations. This two-volume reference is the first international survey of shamanistic beliefs from prehistory to the present day. In nearly 200 detailed, readable entries, leading ethnographers, psychologists, archaeologists, historians, and scholars of religion and folk literature explain the general principles of shamanism as well as the details of widely varied practices. What is it like to be a shaman? Entries describe, region by region, the traits, such as sicknesses and dreams, that mark a person as a shaman, as well as the training undertaken by initiates. They detail the costumes, music, rituals, artifacts, and drugs that shamans use to achieve altered states of consciousness, communicate with spirits, travel in the spirit world, and retrieve souls. Unlike most Western books on shamanism, which focus narrowly on the individual's experience of healing and trance, Shamanism also examines the function of shamanism in society from social, political, and historical perspectives and identifies the ancient, continuous thread that connects shamanistic beliefs and rituals across cultures and millennia.
Download or read book The Original Yijing written by Richard Alan Kunst and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book These Bones Shall Rise Again written by David N. Keightley and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2014-08-12 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These Bones Shall Rise Again, brings together in one volume many of David N. Keightley's seminal essays on the origins of early Chinese civilization. Written over a period of three decades and accessible to the non-specialist, these essays provide a wealth of information and insights on the Shang dynasty, traditionally dated 1766–1122 or 1056 BCE. Of all the eras of Chinese history, the Shang has been a particularly elusive one, long considered more myth than reality. A historian with a keen appreciation for anthropology and archaeology, Keightley has given us many descriptions of Shang life. Best known for his analysis of oracle bones, he has looked beyond the bones themselves and expanded his historical vision to ponder the lives of those who used them. What did the Shang diviner think he was doing? The temerity to ask such questions and the insights they have provided have been provocative and, at times, controversial. Equally intriguing have been Keightley's assertions that many of the distinctive features of Chinese civilization were already in evidence during the Shang, 3000 years ago. In this collection, readers will find not only an essential reference but also the best kind of thought-provoking scholarship.
Download or read book The Journal of Asian Studies written by and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Society and the Supernatural in Sung China written by Edward Lawrence Davis and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 754 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Taoism Death and Bureaucracy in Early Medieval China written by Peter Samuel Nickerson and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 698 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book New Sources of Early Chinese History written by Edward L. Shaughnessy and published by Institute of East Asian Studies University of California - B. This book was released on 1997 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Metamorphic Image written by Elizabeth Childs-Johnson and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book On Their Own Terms written by Benjamin A. Elman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In On Their Own Terms, Benjamin A. Elman offers a much-needed synthesis of early Chinese science during the Jesuit period (1600-1800) and the modern sciences as they evolved in China under Protestant influence (1840s-1900). By 1600 Europe was ahead of Asia in producing basic machines, such as clocks, levers, and pulleys, that would be necessary for the mechanization of agriculture and industry. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Elman shows, Europeans still sought from the Chinese their secrets of producing silk, fine textiles, and porcelain, as well as large-scale tea cultivation. Chinese literati borrowed in turn new algebraic notations of Hindu-Arabic origin, Tychonic cosmology, Euclidian geometry, and various computational advances. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, imperial reformers, early Republicans, Guomindang party cadres, and Chinese Communists have all prioritized science and technology. In this book, Elman gives a nuanced account of the ways in which native Chinese science evolved over four centuries, under the influence of both Jesuit and Protestant missionaries. In the end, he argues, the Chinese produced modern science on their own terms.
