Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 Read Online Free PDF Page B

the common ingredients were these: the human soul can,
under certain conditions, be separated from the body of its owner;
one who obtains another's soul can use its force for his own benefit;
the stealing of a soul (soulstealing, chiao-hun) can be brought about by sorcery, either by reciting spells over some physical entity that has
been detached from the victim's body, such as a man's queue-tip or
a woman's lapel, or by placing the victim's written name on or under
a piling that is to be driven into the ground and/or calling the victim's
name while driving such a piling; the victim may be stupefied by
dusting or blowing a powdered drug (mi-yao) on him, so he cannot
resist being clipped; victims are very likely to be male children; victims
will sicken and die.

    In a patrilineal society with high infant mortality, the protection of
children (particularly males) is one of life's highest priorities. Since
the etiologies of most diseases were either unknown or misapprehended in Ch'ing times, sorcery could never be ruled out when a
child fell sick. Sorcerers would likely be persons who customarily
dealt with the supernatural (such as Buddhist monks or Taoist priests)
and who might reasonably be supposed to possess means of manipulating otherworldly affairs (charms or spells, perhaps written down
in mysterious books).
    What did provincial bureaucrats really think of all this? Here are
three possibilities. Bureaucrats may have believed that rumors that
soulstealing sorcery was being practiced were pure bunk: no such
activity was occurring. Or they may have supposed that though some
malefactors might really be clipping queues or placing victims' names
on bridge pilings, such practices were mere folk superstition, incapable of actually stealing souls. It is also possible that officials thought
that sorcery not only was being practiced but in fact was, or could
be, effective.
    The way provincial officialdom handled the spring sorcery cases
suggests that they felt awkwardly balanced between dutiful caution
and agnostic scorn. When suspected soulstealers were brought before
them, careful investigation had to follow. After all, a magistrate or
provincial judge could not be seen to scoff at a crime so detested by
the general public, particularly when sorcery in a number of analogous forms was prohibited by the penal code, as we shall see in
Chapter 4. And of course there was always the outside chance that
sorcery might really exist; who could certify that it did not? But the
decisive factor was surely the potential for general panic. If evil men
were trying to practice sorcery, they had already ignited dangerous
popular fears and must be harshly punished. In the event, all the
sorcery suspects were released for lack of evidence, and their accusers
shown up as fools or perjurers. Judges must have risen from their courtrooms with discreet sighs of relief and retired to tea, confirmed
in their scorn for the fears of the ignorant mob.

    Were those fears put to rest? Not likely. Whether a judge was a
believer or an agnostic, to punish the accusers, rather than the
accused, made him look soft on sorcery. 'Whatever the mental state
of particular bureaucrats, the official reaction to sorcery hysteria was
to get the case out of the streets and into the courts. Public disorder
in one's jurisdiction was an unmistakable sign of incompetence or
neglect. It could break an official career even more surely than failure
to fill tax quotas. Though a crowd might be mollified if a stranger
were lynched, no official wanted such a blot on his copybook. Of
course a suspected sorcerer could be prosecuted under the Ch'ing
Code, which made certain occult practices a capital crime. But since
all capital sentences had to be reviewed by the highest court in the
realm and ultimately by the monarch himself, the evidence had better
be good. If judicial inquiry turned up perjury or slander, the only
recourse was to punish