In the High Medical College at Court, in the T'ang Dynasty, there
were four classes of Masters, attached to its two High Medical Chiefs:
Masters of Medicine, of Acupuncture, of Manipulation, and two Masters
for Frustration by means of Spells.
Soothsaying and exorcism may be traced far back to the fifth and sixth
centuries B.C.
In times of epidemic the specialists of Wu-ism, who act as seers,
soothsayers and exorcists, engage in processions, stripped to the waist,
dancing in a frantic, delirious state, covering themselves with blood by
means of prick-balls, or with needles thrust through their tongues, or
sitting or stretching themselves on nail points or rows of sword edges.
In this way they frighten the spectres of disease. They are nearly
all young, and are spoken of as "divining youths," and they use an
exorcising magic based on the principle that legions of spectres prone
to evil live in the machine of the world. (De Groot, VI, 983-985.)
The Chinese believe that it is the Tao, or "Order of the Universe,"
which affords immunity from evil, and according to whether or no the
birth occurred in a beneficent year, dominated by four double cyclical
characters, the horoscope is "heavy" or "light.
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