Ancient Chinese witchcraft

Author: Kong Qingjia
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-06-01
Features: One of the features of this book is that it focuses on the typical aggressive witchcraft as the research object, i.e., the kind of witchcraft that directly alters the natural, social, and personal life processes. Some works on the history of witchcraft suffer from poor organization and overly extensive content, which is largely related to an unclear research scope. The limitation made in this book may help avoid such flaws. The research interest of this book is to classify and organize ancient witchcraft specimens, explaining the form and origin of each type of witchcraft. The research work carried out around this purpose mainly includes the following three aspects: classifying and categorizing the various aggressive witchcraft in ancient China, paying attention to revealing the morphological differences and internal connections among different branches of the same type of witchcraft; conducting a detailed examination of the historical process of the formation, development, evolution, and decline of each witchcraft; explaining the cultural background that allows a witchcraft to flourish, as well as its impact on ancient Chinese social life, and providing as complete references and in-depth analysis as possible for some typical events or cases.