Wushanshe’s Essential Journal of Spiritualism and Its Spiritualist Discourse and Practice in Early Republican China

Title

Wushanshe’s Essential Journal of Spiritualism and Its Spiritualist Discourse and Practice in Early Republican China

Author

Ping-i LI

Page

115-156

DOI

10.6163/TJEAS.202212_19(2).0004

Abstract

This paper aims at examining the publication of Essential Journal of Spiritualism (Lingxue yaozhi靈學要誌) and spiritualist discourse and practice of the Society of Awakening to Goodness (Wushanshe悟善社), one of the redemptive societies in early republican China and later renamed New Religion to Save the World (Jiushi xinjiao救世新教). The article is comprised of four sections: First, I present the publication and dissemination of Lingxue yaozhi, along with its imitative relation to Lingxue congzhi靈學叢誌 by the Shanghai Spiritualism Society上海靈學會, and distinguish the meaning of “spiritualism” from Wushanshe’s standpoint. Second, I discuss how Wushanshe interpreted the mechanism of spirit-writing and transformed it into a modern type of spiritualist practice. Third, drawing on the records of taking spirit photographs, I investigate how Wushanshe made use of the technique of spirit photography and made sense of the religiosity of those spirit photos. Last, placing the case of Wushanshe’s spiritualism within the context of spiritualist trends in early republican China as well as the Debate of Science and Metaphysics (科玄論戰) in 1923-24, I reflect on its relation and position to other spiritualist societies and its impact on the contemporaries’ impression of “metaphysics” (Xuanxue玄學).

Keyword

Spiritualism, Society of Awakening to Goodness, New Religion to Save the World, Spirit-writing, Spirit photography, The Shanghai Spiritualist Society

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