section_path: Sociological typology/Philosophical and ritual modalities/Wuism and shamanic traditions
section_name: Wuism and shamanic traditions
paragraph_text: Wuism and shamanic traditions
  
  "The extent to which shamanism pervaded ancient Chinese society", says Paul R. Goldin (2005), "is a matter of scholarly dispute, but there can be no doubt that many communities relied upon the unique talents of shamans for their quotidian spiritual needs". The Chinese usage distinguishes the Chinese wu tradition or "Wuism" as it was called by Jan Jakob Maria de Groot (Chinese: 巫教 wūjiào; properly shamanic, with control over the gods) from the tongji tradition (Chinese: 童乩; mediumship, without control of the godly movement), and from non-Han Chinese Altaic shamanisms (Chinese: 薩滿教 sàmǎnjiào) that are practised in northern provinces.
  
  According to Andreea Chirita (2014), Confucianism itself, with its emphasis on hierarchy and ancestral rituals, derived from the shamanic discourse of the Shang dynasty. What Confucianism did was to marginalise the "dysfunctional" features of old shamanism. However, shamanic traditions continued uninterrupted within the folk religion and found precise and functional forms within Taoism.
  
  In the Shang and Zhou dynasty, shamans had a role in the political hierarchy, and were represented institutionally by the Ministry of Rites (Chinese: 大宗伯). The emperor was considered the supreme shaman, intermediating between the three realms of heaven, earth and man. The mission of a shaman (Chinese: 巫 wu) is "to repair the dis-functionalities occurred in nature and generated after the sky had been separated from earth":
  
  The female shamans called wu as well as the male shamans called xi represent the voice of spirits, repair the natural dis-functions, foretell the future based on dreams and the art of divination... "a historical science of the future", whereas shamans are able to observe the yin and the yang...
  
  Since the 1980s the practice and study of shamanism has undergone a massive revival in Chinese religion as a means to repair the world to a harmonious whole after industrialisation. Shamanism is viewed by many scholars as the foundation for the emergence of civilisation, and the shaman as "teacher and spirit" of peoples. The Chinese Society for Shamanic Studies was founded in Jilin City in 1988.
  
  Nuo folk religion is a system of the Chinese folk religion with distinct institutions and cosmology present especially in central-southern China. It arose as an exorcistic religious movement, and it is interethnic but also intimately connected to the Tujia people.