The Witches of Zhuang
By Xu Xiaoming Institute of Religious Studies of Sichuan University
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Good morning everybody, My major is minority religious studies. I would like to share the traditional religious culture of Zhuang with all of you.
My topic is the witches of Zhuang. I will expound in the following three parts:
1. The looks of witches.
2. The works of witches
3. The social effects of witches
1. The looks of witches.
Generally speaking, when we talk about the witches, some uncomfortable images will appear in our minds: an ugly unpleasant old woman who is believed to have magic power, especially to do evil things. Who wears a black pointed hat and flies on broomstick.
On the contrary, the image of witches is showed differently in Zhuang’s cultures.
1.1 The way they are addressed.
In general, our researcher calls them “The oral ritual masters” or “the spirit medium”, when they perform the rituals, instead of using any scriptures, they just speak, chant and sing. They can chant for the whole night, almost lasting 8 hours. As “spirit medium”, they let the gods land on their body and they speak for the gods in the ritual.
People call them “Meh slingq”[me6ɬi:ŋ3], “yah gim”[ja6kim1], or “meh moet”[me6mɔt8]. The meaning of “yah slingq” or “yah gim” is “the intelligent ladies ”. “meh moet” is referred to “the queen of ants”, when they perform the rituals, people sitting around them, like the ants sitting around their queen.
1.2 Their looking.
The look is a very important factor to these ladies. They have gorgeous looking, elegant manners and eloquent expression, usually, brilliantly dressed. A brilliant witch is very popular in society of zhuang. She has many fans just like a movie star.
2.The works of witches
Witches play an important role in society of Zhuang. They do many jobs.
2.1 Ritual master.
They master the rituals from birth’s to death’s, from family’s to public’s. Some of them are very busy; they work about 300 days per year, except the first day and 15th day of each month of the lunar calendar.
2.2 Arts
Witches use many arts to perform the rural, including chanting, singing, dancing, and paper cutting, etc. We know that Zhuang people are good at singing. A good singer, especially a good master singer, is called “king of queen”, she is always a witch.
2.3 Doctors , mediators and educators.
In Chinese religious cultures, A Taoist is always a Doctor .It is the same in Zhuang. To show how effective of their spell, Witches always use the methods of medicine. Actually, we know that the word of “medicine” also refers to “spell” in English. Apart from that, Witches is also a psychologist, they lessen people’s stress by performing ritual.
Sometimes, they are mediators and educators, they use persuasive and educative chant to mediate many disputes and teach people how to respect each other.
3. Conclusion: The social effects of witches
In conclusion, witches have high position in society of Zhuang. The social effects of witches are as following.
3.1 Who keep the social harmony.
They mediate the relationship between human being and nature, people and their society, people and people, people and their inner world. In this way, the society of Zhuang exists in harmony.
3.2 Who improve women’ social position.
They get the power of mundane society by controlling the power of religions. Thus they can share the equal rights with men in society of Zhuang.
3.3 Who carry on the traditional cultures.
What they chant is part of oral literature of Zhuang. The paper cuttings, folksong art, dancing are important part of arts of Zhuang.
That is all. Thank you for you attention.
发表于 2012-12-9 10:12:17
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