Abstract
This article analyses the place and value of occult arts in the healthcare market of Republican China (1912–1949). Medical historiography has long neglected the resilience of such occult arts as talismans, astrology and divination in the context of China’s search for modernity. Focusing on the production, trade, and consumption of goods and services related to talismanic healing, I give voice to Chinese occultists by investigating the formation of a ‘market of the occult’ in the Republican era. I adopt a global perspective to clarify the changes that occult healing underwent following the popularisation of new printing technologies, mass media and transnational spiritualism in early twentieth-century China. Erstwhile embraced in secrecy, the occult was now being made public. Cheap manuals, wide-circulation newspapers and book catalogues reveal that in contrast to past studies that herald the disenchantment of the world as the hallmark of Chinese modernity, occult healing did not simply survive but thrived in the face of modern science and technology.
Highlights
Luis Fernando Bernardi JunqueiraIndividual testimonials served to counterbalance the fact that even as a printed (1⁄4 public) text, Yu’s manual remained remarkably effective: oral transmission, divine inspiration and the study of esoteric manuscripts were no longer necessary as long as one followed the instructions recorded in printed word
The fascination occult healing and the spirit world exerted over the burgeoning community of Chinese spiritualists—many of whom were concerned with the modernisation of China—indicates that these groups constituted the main target readership of the Press’s manuals
That period marked the peak of the Chinese spiritualist movement: fostered by a prosperous print culture, dozens of spiritualist groups devoted to the study of the occult were running throughout urban China by the mid-1920s
Summary
Individual testimonials served to counterbalance the fact that even as a printed (1⁄4 public) text, Yu’s manual remained remarkably effective: oral transmission, divine inspiration and the study of esoteric manuscripts were no longer necessary as long as one followed the instructions recorded in printed word The publication of such talismanic manuals as Yu Zhefu’s Compendium was part of a larger market formed around a growing interest in occult matters. Knowles (1861–1959) for hypnotherapy and attention focus, was announced together with The Occult Arts of Radio-Hypnosis (Baiguang dianqiu qishu), an ‘acclaimed manual that has already been translated into dozens of Western languages’.81 Praising it as an ‘innovative science popular among intellectuals and used as a powerful pathway by electrical engineers, spiritualists, philosophers, physicians and psychologists worldwide’, the Press urged readers to personally experience what radio-hypnosis had to offer in terms of mind-reading, healing, clairvoyance and necromancy.. The fascination occult healing and the spirit world exerted over the burgeoning community of Chinese spiritualists—many of whom were concerned with the modernisation of China—indicates that these groups constituted the main target readership of the Press’s manuals
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