| 英文摘要 |
The purpose of this paper is to do a restudy of David Jordan’s ethnographic field in the 1970s, the Hall of the Wondrous Dharma in Matou, Tainan county. The Hall of the Wondrous Dharma began as a small spirit-writing group in the 1940s,and evolved into a local geomancy historical event in the 1950s, moving into a high peak in 1960s, and declining after the 1980s. Using Bryan Wilson’s sociological typology of sects, I try to shed light on Chinese spirit-writing halls. The thaumaturgical, manipulationist, and reformist types of action in Wilson’s typology are especially relevant to my analysis. I characterize the spirit-writing hall as a way that thaumaturgical action begins to move toward the manipulationist and reformist types of action in Chinese popular religious contexts. Finally, I offer a dual plausibility model to explain how different spirit-writing halls build their plausibility from folk religion’s. The dual plausibility model of corresponding plausibility and discrepancy plausibility can help us to understand the developmental trajectory of the spirit-writing hall in the Chinese cultural and social complex. |