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Ritual Weapons of Chinese Folk Religion
I'm unsure how many people are familiar with the concept of spirit-mediums (Ch: jitong, 乩童; Hokkien: tangki 童乩) in Chinese folk religion. For those who don't know, they are believed by their respective communities to channel the spirits of gods and bodhisattvas, giving believers direct access to the divine. What's interesting is that they use the "Five Treasures" (wu bao, 五寶), a prescribed set of ritual weapons, to inflict wounds on themselves. Self-mortification serves two purposes: 1) The weapons are believed to charge the medium with spiritual power when the blades/spikes pierce the flesh. This aids the medium in his battle against malevolent forces; 2) The resulting holy blood is believed to ward off evil. It is often smeared on paper talismans to call on heavenly forces.
The main reason I'm making this thread is to share a picture of a set of Five Treasures that I just acquired in Wanhua District, Taipei City, Taiwan. These are by no means heirlooms. But the quality of the weapons is not important, only their intended use in folk rituals. These include a spiked ball, a spiked mace, a sawfish nose sword (the biological product has been replaced here by a modern metal variant), a seven-star crescent moon axe, and a seven-star jian.
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Fascinating topic, ghostexorcist. Worthy of your forum name!
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Originally Posted by
ghostexorcist
Cool! It's a shame you lost track of it. It's interesting that a vendor was selling them in the US. I've only seen them used in said rituals here in Taiwan and Singapore.
I'm sure it's somewhere. I just can't remember if I passed it on or kept it. My former office is stored in maybe a half dozen boxes and it pains me to search through those. Still sad about losing the print mag and my full time position there. It was a great job while it lasted and I'm grateful that I'm still doing some of it part time for the web.
Tiger Claw got a lot of fascinating samples over the years - we have designated buyers in China that seek out new possible products (although I'm not sure what's happening with that now due to the pandemic). Many of the samples, like that axe, were of interest to people like us, but there's no market for them. Consequently they'd end up in the Tiger Claw parking lot sales, unless I spotted them and grabbed them.
You know, I always wanted to run more stories about ritual weapons and martial arts in folk religion. I feel that's a major influence on Kung Fu that's sorely overlooked, just like Chinese opera.
