Possession by Ghosts was considered a common cause of illness in early Chinese medicine and referred to incidences when a person's behaviour suddenly changes to the detriment of their health. It was believed that people who died unprepared while still having attachments to this world would linger. Their lust for life would make them attracted to people with similar desires whereupon they would invade the person's Heart clouding their Shen and push them to extremes of behaviour that would ultimately lead them to their own deaths.
Types
There were four main types of ghosts in ancient Taoism:
- Hungry Ghosts (餓鬼 E Gui) : Caused by the ghost of someone who committed suicide or died an unhappy violent death, especially of their entire family leaving no one to venerate them. Being unhappy themselves, they will often be found in bars and places where emotional people drown their sorrows. They cause addictions or singular obsessions to develop suddenly which take over the person's life to exclusion of all else until it drives them to a similar fate of suicide or death by violence.
- Wandering Ghosts (游魂野鬼 You Hun Ye Gui) : Literally "Wandering Souls and Wild Ghosts", these come from those who died in accidents while travelling. They would often be picked up by the roadside and account for people who return from a journey changed and dissatisfied with their old life, needing new adventures until they too die while travelling, far from the ancestral shrine.
- Charming Ghosts (魅鬼 Mei Gui) : A craving for love caused by the ghost of someone who was either licentious or infatuated to the point of self-destruction and still cannot not bear to part with the object of their desire upon death. They are often found near places where overt demonstrations of love or lust are made and are attracted to sexually frustrated people where they act like succubi and incubi in western folklore: either appearing as beautiful seducers, obsessing their victim and sapping their Jing-Essence through uninhibited sexual encounters, or appearing in dreams and causing loss of essence through nocturnal emissions. These ghosts were said to be able to transform into animals and there is much cross-over with animal spirits, especially foxes who were famous for their ability to transform into beautiful humans and engage in this vampiric behaviour too.
- Ghost Immortals (鬼仙 Guixian) : One of the earliest texts on internal alchemy, the 鍾呂傳道集 Zhong Lu Chuan Dao Ji, ascribes this fate to people who practise only Yin cultivation methods. They close down the mind, making it dull as ash instead of expanding it and making it radiant, while their bodies become as stiff as wood. This is probably a reference to doing only sitting-forgetting meditation without visualisation and moving exercises. They fail to understand the Tao and falsely believe themselves to have achieved true immortality, ending up as ghostly spirits, unable to enter the heavenly realms and wandering homeless on earth, draining the life energy of the living through possession. Their only escape is to enter a human foetus to be reincarnated as a Human Immortal (人仙, Ren Xian). Based on the theory of the other ghost types, it could explain people becoming consumed by mystical practices making them more dull and disconnected while believing themselves to be enlightened.
Buddhism later imported many more categories and classes into Chinese culture which shall not be discussed here. The theory goes that, left untreated, the victim would be driven to a premature death from suicide, exhaustion of
Jing or driven to some other tragic end and become a ghost themselves.
Traditional Treatments
Treatment was usually exorcism and often the domain of specialist practitioners and not regular doctors, although some case records demonstrate doctors treating the seemingly possessed by expelling Yin pathogens. Certain diagnostic features, including the patient's own symptoms involving seeing ghosts, or having strange aspects to their disease such as bruises appearing out of nowhere (鬼杖 Gui Zhang, "Ghost Caning"), and a pulse that is "suddenly large and then suddenly small, suddenly long and then suddenly short" (Wilcox, 2024), would indicate the presence of ghosts and treatments would often involve:
- Moxa, using a Yang force to counter the Ghosts Yin nature.
- Acupuncture, especially at Sun Si-Miao's 13 Ghost Points and bleeding the Luo that are indicated in the Su Wen ch. 63 for "Strange diseases 奇病."
- Certain herbs, especially ones that clear Yin Pathogens like Dampness and Phlegm obstructing the Orifices of the Heart through purging or vomiting were also used. Li Shizhen's Bencao Gangmu considered ghosts to have a particular dislike for Cang Zhu, while Zhen Liyan recalls Jin Yin Hua and Ren Dong Teng, both parts of the honeysuckle plant, being effective for Ghost Strike (鬼擊) and Transmitted Corpse Consumption (傳屍癆).
- Ritual actions to restore the natural order with an exaggeration of normal behaviour were also used. Van Straten (1983) reports the most common remedy for sexual ghost or demon possession was prolonged intercourse without climax with a human partner. The idea was to re-orientate the desire back to the human sphere without harming the already depleted Jing.
Modern Concepts
These possession disorders were removed from TCM and covered by the pattern of Phlegm Misting the Heart. By depersonalising the attacking force it turned the ghost's insubstantial mist-like Yin nature into a physiological mechanism. The Ghost Points and occasional historical names for diseases are the only explicit references left in most modern acupuncture texts. The notion of depleted Jing being the cause for disease remains more widespread.
In modern classical Chinese medicine the concept is making a reappearance. John Anderson (2019, The Way of the Living Ghost) considers that many people begin their path toward becoming a ghost while still alive through unhealthy attachments and trauma. The characteristics of such a disorder are:
- A lack of radiance (Shen/Spirit)
- Lack or impairment of social interrelationships
- Lack or impairment of nourishment or assimilation either physically or experientially
This results in a cycle of attempting to fulfil an unquenchable hunger but which ultimately leads to a kind of inertia whereby we fail to move forwards in life and achieve our destiny (
命 Ming). To support this he points to some of the alternative translations of
鬼 Gui which include "sly, crafty or damnable" and how it is used in various compound forms to refer to living people such as:
- Drunkard, alcoholic (酒鬼 or 醉鬼 Jiu Gui or Zui Gui) : lit. wine or alcohol ghost
- Chain smoker (煙鬼 Yan Gui) : lit. smoking ghost
- Gambling addict (賭鬼 Du Gui) : lit. gambling ghost
- Sex maniac (色鬼 Se Gui) : lit. lustful ghost
- Glutton (饞鬼 or 饿鬼 Chan Gui or E Gui) : lit. gluttonous/lecherous ghost or hungry ghost
- Miser or penny pincher (小氣鬼 or 吝嗇鬼 Xiao Qi Gui or Lin Se Gui) : lit. a small Qi ghost or a stingy miserly ghost
- Paranoid, overly-suspicious (疑神疑鬼 Yi Shen Yi Gui) : lit. suspicious spirit, suspicious ghost
- Live aimlessly (鬼混 Gui Hun) : lit. ghost confusion
- Various derogatory terms such as 内鬼 Nei Gui, a traitor (lit. inner ghost); 冒失鬼 Mao Shi Gui, a reckless person (lit. rash or hasty ghost); 吸血鬼 Xi Xue Gui, a vampire, leech or cruel exploiter (lit. blood sucking ghost); 搗蛋鬼 Dao Dan Gui, a trouble-maker (lit. trouble making ghost); 窮鬼 Qiong Gui, a wretch (lit. exhausted ghost); 討厭鬼 Tao Yan Gui, a disgusting slob (lit. begging to be despised ghost)
These all suggest that the concept of the ghosts is far from absent in modern Chinese culture, but that it may require a rethinking of the concept away from the conventional western notion of a dead person's spirit and towards the notion a person whose spirit is dying while they are still alive, for which he coins the term a "living ghost" 生命鬼
Sheng Ming Gui.
One way to unite these theories is the ancient idea that disease was primarily due to external evil influences (邪氣 Xie Qi) which had overwhelmed a person's inner corrective energy (正氣 Zheng Qi). In ancient beliefs this corresponded to demonic forces, 邪 Xie still translating as "demonic, evil". Some cultures even hold accidents to be due to dark magic (e.g. Evans-Pritchard, 1932) meaning any traumatic event is initiated by an evil force. Whether the initiator, an opportunist attracted to the suffering or (to modernise) the experience itself, the psychological effects of trauma can be seen as an evil that has been able to enter the body, just like other conditions like Bi syndromes or Cold Damage. This may be especially true of shock which the Su Wen, ch. 39, says deranges the Qi, weakening our defence to external attacks so that it may go directly to the Blood and Shen, precipitating the behaviours outlined by Anderson and his Living Ghost theory.
