Old Wine in a New Bottle A New Set of Oracle Slips from China

Abstract

Temple oracle slips or lingqian 11i€ is the name given to a divination system whose oracles are expressed in verse. The oracular poems are inspired by a deity and revealed to a medium either through dreams, or dictated to him while he is in a state of trance. 1 The system, whose origin may be traced back to the Song dynasty, 2 is still popular today, not only because it is easily accessible but, more importantly, because devotees believe that it provides answers to most of life's urgent problems. In fact, so great has been the success of this mantic system that it has spread beyond the confines of China to Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, as well as to Japan and even to the United States. All sectors of the population still seek advice and guidance from this source. But in order to obtain a reply devotees must formulate their requests to the god who inspired the slips. Their prayers must be accompanied by offerings and the burning of incense and paper money.3 However, given that the poems tend to be obscure they often require oral explanations by a diviner or written explications before yielding a meaningful response. Oracle slips playa vital role in fostering a temple's reputation. Devotees who are satisfied with a deity's answers help to attract new worshippers to the temple. Consequently, all temples try to provide a set of oracle slips. Their importance is such that even today a newly built temple either commissions a set or, if it is an offshoot of an established temple, requests the use of the mother temple's own set. Thus one now finds the set and explanatory booklet of Huang Daxian's }fi*1ili Hong Kong temple in New York's Chinatown. In principle, given that sets of slips are mediumistic texts, each set should be an original creation, a gift from a particular god to his worshippers. In practice, as Werner Banck has shown, sets may be appropriated from another temple. or adapted from an existing ancient 1Most existing slips date from the Qing dynasty, and Richard Smith has shown that at that time