ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a source-centered approach to introduce the spirit world from the Neolithic period to Han times. Recognizing the nearly universal attributes of spirits as being immaterial, intangible, and invisible, as well as the practical demand of materializing the unseen, three analytical lenses – presencing, practicing, and discoursing – are devised and employed in the analysis of the modes of action that human actors take to interact and communicate with the agentive spirits. As a result, different types and layers of references to spirits – due to different levels of social complexity, the appearance and spread of writing as a transforming technology, and different ways of source preservation (received and excavated) – amalgamated in the sources are unfolded. However, sources of different genesis and nature are not mutually exclusive but necessarily inform one another in the realm of ideas and constitute one another in practice. Therefore, while the spirit world may have been a timeless and stable aspect of early China, the concerns and techniques of those who acted upon and wrote about spirits shifted along with changes in the culture and institutions in early China.
