Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

What links the millennia-old practice of Chinese talismanic healing with nineteenth-century Western hypnosis? A group of early twentieth-century Chinese intellectuals found their answer in “Spiritual Science” (xinling kexue 心靈科學). Introduced from Japan to China in the 1900s, Spiritual Science belonged to the wide variety of transnational religious movements, particularly spiritualism and occultism, that washed over the world in the fin de siècle. Supporters of these movements sought to integrate religion and science, the modern and the traditional, as a means to challenge the supremacy of reductive materialism. Reinterpreting old practices and worldviews in the light of modern science and technology, proponents of Spiritual Science, or “spiritualists,” devoted themselves to the scientific study of the spirit, paranormal phenomena, and psychic abilities. As one of the hallmarks of Spiritual Science, hypnosis was largely portrayed in the Chinese press as an innovative branch of medical science and a powerful psychotherapy technique. Meanwhile, claiming that such traditional occult arts as talismans and prayer worked on the same basis as Western hypnosis, Chinese spiritualists called for a scientific study of Chinese talismanic traditions and their recognition as an indigenous method of psychotherapy. Based on textual evidence and fieldwork with talismanic healers, I investigate the claims of Chinese spiritualists regarding the relationship between Chinese talismanic healing and Western hypnosis. I argue that their claims should be analyzed vis-à-vis contemporary transnational religious networks, and this case study helps us reconsider traditional conceptions of religion, science, secularism, and modernity more broadly.