The Numinous Dancing Wu
Last week we lightly explored the significance and physiology of dreaming in the tradition of Chinese medicine, which offers a nice segue into the fifth entry into Wu Woo Wednesday in which we’ll meditate on the “Wu” in WWW. As I mentioned at the start of this series, “In Chinese, Wu is translated as a number of words. A few relevant to this series include: Five (wǔ), as in five spirits or elements, shaman (wū), and dance (wǔ), which is also symbolic in the context of the five elements/spirits.”
The Wu is one of the threads we can follow to better understand the relationship between Chinese medicine and Taoism that so many modern book covers of TCM like to insert as an interesting entry point, without further detail. There’s a gap there that’s frequently glossed over so that a link to Taoism is made, without knowing (or crediting) what the link actually is. Below, I’ve pieced together a few thoughts and materials from various sources and experts in the field of East Asian history, medicine, cosmology, and archaeology that elaborate on the culture and history (or herstory) of the Wu.
With the darkness of yin currently still ruling the sky and the recent culmination of the new moon in Taurus (yesterday), it’s a nice time to explore the feminine origins of Chinese cosmology and medicine that have and are vastly overlooked in a modern world that’s troubled by its own preponderance of yang.
Venus in Gemini rules this lunar cycle inviting us to play in the realm of language, articulate the symbolic imagery inseparable from the flesh and bones of our warm body, and to sing about our sensual, earthly experiences in creative new ways.
Taurus is a sign highly concerned with embodied experiences, while Gemini —a double bodied sign— possesses a liminal quality by falling at the end of the season. The new moon points to physical, tangible, and bodily processes that Venus in Gemini encourages us to take pleasure in through communication, creativity, and social means. The voice carries endless potential under this lunation cycle as Taurus is connected to the throat and Gemini the air currents and charge that allows messages and sound to travel.
Divination, sound/song, trance, and dance were the methods used to facilitate healing in early East Asia, and its these practices that are vastly overlooked or even denied by modern institutions teaching TCM, even though it is the root and significant substance of the medicine (which wasn’t called “traditional Chinese medicine” until the revolution of the mid 1900’s).
The central deity of the shamanic tradition of early Taoism and the one that preceded Taoism—the Chinese Taoism that it eventually came to be— was a female deity called Xiwangmu, Royal mother of the west. Xi [west] Wang [royal] Mu [mother].
“Her appearance to various female shaman was the basis of the creation of Taoism as she would appear to and possess young (pre-pubescent) girls who would do all the healing in the village and all the prophesying. This went on about 8,000-9,000 years before records started to be made and those girls were called “Wu”. Though Wu is often translated as shaman, it’s implication is ‘nothing girls”.” LM Essentially, they were open channels for the spirit world, and more specifically for Xiwangmu who is said to live in copper mountain...a clear Venus association.
The Wu were witches. The Wu were dancers.
...”She enacts her role in a space between the bright celestial regions, where the sun and moon are eternal, and the darkness of the underworld. She is part of the vertical axis by which the soul travels to the heavens.” SE
For modern practitioners of Chinese medicine to brush this off as old superstitious ways of the primitive past is to be disconnected from what they’re trying (or claiming) to practice. I’m not saying you have to practice magic or mediumship, but I am saying that the ranking of Taoist priests is still based on the degree of spirits one is able to control or be in relationship with. By the end of this post, you’ll see the clear connection between the Wu and this Taoist priest/priestess dynamic.
Though there were male Wu often called “xi”, there are interesting and major significations of the Wu being female considering that it’s hypothesized that they might have been one of the biggest influences in the creation of nation states and the transition from nomadic to agricultural societies. With Uranus in Taurus, we’re seeing shifts in our agricultural structures and climate as agriculture is largely offensive to the earth spirits… were being asked to make necessary changes and adjustments that also require new negotiations, exchanges, and shifting boundaries.
First and foremost, the Wu controlled the weather. Without the weather, we wouldn’t be here. There wouldn’t be any ancestors without the negotiation with earth spirits over the land and the crops that grew from them. Without those contracts in place, without the Wu, there’d be no us.
The roots of Chinese medicine and cosmology have millions of people and thousands of years of practice backing it up. And while overlooked, it’s the Wu who really helped that process along. Here we see Venus as ritual, invocation and union, healing, and magic in contrast to modern Mars medicine of cutting, separation, surgery, sterility, and the pursuit of an ideal or perfection. Neither is necessarily good or bad or better and both can be found soon the other as witnessed in the concept of yin and yang.
“The strong pattern of female shamans in Eastern Asia has been erased from history that most people know. Yet women predominated in shamanism of ancient China, Japan, and Korea, and have been persisted into modern times in eastern Siberia, Korea, Manchuria, Okinawa, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines.” MD
Scholars and sinologists delineate Wu as “a depiction of shamans dancing around a pillar or the long sleeves of a shaman’s robe swirling as she dances. MD. The Chinese word for Spirit (ling) consists of three radicals: one meaning rain, another (showing three mouths) chanting, and the third, shaman.” EW
“Some archaic Da Chuan forms show hands making an offering which is received from above. Possibly the oldest glyph from which the Wu character arose represents a quadant of the directions (sifang), and was also influenced by a glyph meaning “dance,” showing a person with outstretched arms in long sleeves. Dallas McCurley interprets it as representing a whirling dance that transported shamans to altered states of consciousness...
The Wu prepared herself to receive divinity by purifying herself with perfumed water, putting on ceremonial robes, and making offerings. Then, with a flower in her hand, she mimed her journey by a dance accompanied by music and songs, to the sound of drums and flutes, until she fell exhausted. This was the moment of the presence of the god who answered through her mouth.” MD
The Wu were also big dreamers, which was the atmosphere for divination to come through.
“The earliest records of Chinese poetry are songs of the Wu. It was a lot of blues.
These were girls who lived in millet growing villages and when they went into trance they were taken to mountaintop kingdoms in the sky. Everyone had bodies of light. The food just came to you if you liked it— it just went into your mouth upon looking at it. They’d come back to the villages and get the blues because it was right back to millet porridge, cloth shoes, and hoping it doesn’t flood (which was the main reason for them being sent out to trance, to see if the river was going to flood). Xiwangmu became identified with the rivers that all come from the west in China, from the Himalayas.
Anytime Wu and eventually taoists saw her, they realized she was surrounded by tornadoes of energy. (A portent with certain contexts if you dream of tornadoes like this). They realized later they were large entourages of jade ladies. It just so happens at that time that the Han dynasty court was created being created then and all these young girls were brought to meet the emperor.
The jade lady analogy was parallel to the world. The celestial and imperial world were merging. For the next 1,000 years all the poets were familiar with xiwangmu and the jade ladies who came to dictate their poetry. There was a visitation in all art. The reason [art] it’s beautiful is because it isn’t from here. The artist is simply a medium...The jade ladies came in the aftermath of great deities.
So if xiwangmu visits you in a dream during an astrologically timed event or events, she’ll depart and jade ladies by the tens of thousands will start to visit you over the next few weeks. These are inspirational visitations and they’re directors of portent in dreams.
They travel in purple light as amethyst is their main manifestation as their robes are made of purple light. They don’t talk, they whisper. They don’t walk, they float.” LM
They’re innocently playful, but they challenge you by nudging to to release desire and learn what true pleasure and appreciation is. They bring opportunities for ecstasy, and beyond that, true dreaming or the capacity to fiddle with your own end of life transition if/once you manage to resolve ancestral predispositions. The jade ladies and the ways of the Wu offer is such. They offer connection to knowing what we really are, not what we should strive to become.
“The visions of the Wu became the whole tradition of song writing, because the teaching were all done by song. There was no written language. Eventually those songs became the meter for Chinese poetry, when men started copying down what the Wu said. They started getting scripture, which were teachings channeled by Wu from Xiwangmu, and they were called Tao ren (Taoist).” Seven to nine centuries later of these purple way/ purple teachings eventually became the rewriting of Taoism. LM
Edit: As of January 24, 2022 this entry and following entries that were part of the series called “Wu Woo Wednesday” are being left with the title following the designated category of “WWW” posts. This has been done in response to and out of respect for the word Wu and its meaning as “shaman” in the Chinese language. This post script is here to create accountability rather than to erase a poor choice and to show respect for the culture, people, medicine, and ancestors of East Asia.
References and acknowledgments:
Dashù, Max, Wu: Ancient Female Shamans of Ancient China, 2011
The Shamanic goddess Xiwangmu. 2008, Online
Erickson, Susan, “Twirling Their Long Sleeves, They Dance Again and Again…Jade Plaque Sleeve Dancers of the Western Han Dynasty.” Ars Orientalis, Vol 24 (1994), pp 39-63 Published by Freer Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian Institution and Department of the History of Art, University of Michigan
Mccurley, Dallas, “Performing Patterns: Numinous Relations in Shang and Zhou China”, TDR, Vol 49, No. 3 (Autumn 2005), MIT Press, pp 135-156
Liu, Ming, “Sleep, Dream, and the Dao of the Night”, Da Yuan Circle
Wong, Eva, The Shambala Guide to Taoism. Online