The Lady of Linshui

A majority of the next blog entries will be about:

The Lady of Linshui: A Chinese Female Cult

Brigitte Baptandier, The Lady of Linshui: A Chinese Female Cult, trans. Kristin Ingrid Fryklund (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008)

"This anthropological study examines the cult of the Chinese goddess Chen Jinggu, divine protector of women and children. The cult of the "Lady of Linshui" began in the province of Fujian on the southeastern coast of China during the eleventh century and remains vital in present-day Taiwan. Skilled in Daoist practices, Chen Jinggu's rituals of exorcism and shamanism mobilize physiological alchemy in the service of human and natural fertility. Through her fieldwork at the Linshuima temple in Tainan (Taiwan) and her analysis of the narrative and symbolic aspects of legends surrounding the Lady of Linshui, Baptandier provides new insights into Chinese representations of the feminine and the role of women in popular religion."

http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=4857          --   Source

"Brigitte Baptandier is Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), in the Laboratoire d'ethnologie et de Sociologie comparative, at Université Paris X, Nanterre, where she teaches Chinese anthropology. She also teaches at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) in Paris."

  # Religion — Asian
   # Anthropology — Asia
   # Asian Studies
Series link:     # Asian Religions and Cultures        #shaman

Brigitte Baptandier, The Lady of Linshui: A Chinese Female Cult, trans. Kristin Ingrid Fryklund (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008)