Fulu

The brush moves fast, and whatever it is writing is not quite writing. A character begins, recognisable for a stroke or two, then its tail runs on down the slip in a long loop, doubles back, coils like smoke, and ends in a knot of lines that no dictionary lists. Above it sits a cluster of small circles joined by lines, a constellation. Below it, a formula every literate ghost in China is expected to understand: an order to comply at once, as the statutes require. The priest lifts the brush. The paper is dry in a breath. A sheet of scribble to the untrained eye, it is now a legal instrument, and it is addressed to the dead.

That is the first thing to grasp about a fulu. It is paperwork. The word joins two things: fu, the talismans themselves, and lu, the registers that list the divine officers a priest is entitled to command. The older word is the telling one. Long before it meant a charm, a fu was a tally, a token of bamboo, bronze, jade or gold made in two halves. A ruler kept one half and gave the other to a general or an official. When an order arrived, the halves were fitted together, and if they matched, the order was real. Armies marched on the strength of a matched fu. It was the most serious piece of documentation the old Chinese states possessed, and it stood beside a small family of split tokens used for contracts, credit and tax.

Sickness, in the same centuries, was widely understood as an invasion. Something hostile had entered the body or the house and occupied it. What does one send against an invader? The token that moves troops. By the Eastern Han dynasty the fu had crossed over. Jars placed in graves of that period carry written fu among their protective inscriptions, meant to settle the tomb and keep the dead and the living out of each other’s affairs. The new Daoist communities of the same era built their talismans on the pattern of imperial official documents, with the heavens as the issuing office and the priest as the clerk who held the matching half.

Heaven has its own account of the matter. According to Daoist scripture the talismans were never invented at all. They formed by themselves in the sky at the beginning of things, condensing out of cloud into great coiling signs. A high deity looked up and copied the heavenly writing down, and Taishang Laojun, the deified Laozi, together with other immortals passed it on to the human world. This is why the script looks as it does. The strokes wind and trail because they are transcribed cloud, and the style is still called cloud seal script.

One early episode shows the thing at work on a large scale. Late in the second century, in the plague-ridden last decades of the Han, a healer named Zhang Jue gathered followers by the hundred thousand for his Way of Great Peace. The histories report his method. The sick confessed their faults, and then drank water into which a talisman had been burned, the ash turning grey in the bowl, the taste of smoke on the tongue. Those who recovered were counted as believers. In 184 his movement, heads bound in yellow cloth, rose against the dynasty. The rebellion failed. The talisman water outlived it by roughly eighteen centuries.

By the time Ge Hong wrote his Baopuzi, around the year 320, talismans were a library. He counts fifty-six kinds of great talismans, running to more than five hundred scrolls, and treats them as essential kit for anyone going into the mountains, where spirits were thick on the ground and an unprepared walker could expect trouble. He also settles a question that must have been asked often. The person carrying a talisman does not need to be able to read it. If it was written correctly, it works. The earliest talismans were in fact fairly plain and legible, and they grew more cryptic with time. That was deliberate. A document meant for spirits gains nothing by being clear to the neighbours.

The uses multiplied. A talisman of the Celestial Master goes up on the door at the Dragon Boat festival, in the hot fifth month when sickness was most feared. Small cloth bags with a folded talisman inside are worn against the skin in many parts of China. Bronze charms shaped like coins carry a few signs of talismanic script at the start and end of a plea to Lei Gong, the thunder god, to strike down whatever is bothering the owner. Talismanic healing held a place in official Chinese medicine from the Sui dynasty to the late Ming. The practice travelled too, and stands behind the paper ofuda of Japan and the bujeok of Korea.

What a fulu can do follows from what it is. It is an order with heaven’s seal on it, so it can summon the divine officers named in a priest’s register and set them to work. It can expel a ghost, close a house to harm, cool a fever, protect a traveller or quiet a grave. In the great liturgies it does heavier work still, fixing the five directions of the altar and carrying petitions upward. Over the centuries it grew from a small thing carried for protection into a tool of full ritual.

Its limits are a bureaucrat’s limits. A talisman is only as good as the authority behind it. It must be authentic, drawn in the correct form by someone who has been given the register and with it the right to issue commands, and the knowledge of how to write and read the signs is passed privately from master to disciple. A copy made by someone with no standing is just ink. And a talisman does nothing alone. It commands officers, and the officers do the work. Even in the spirit world, somebody has to answer the letter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a fulu?

A fulu is a Daoist talisman, a slip written with special cloud-like characters that acts as an order to spirits. The word joins fu, the written talismans, and lu, the registers that list the divine officers a priest may command. Fulu are used to summon spirit officers, drive out ghosts, heal sickness and protect homes and people.

Where do fulu come from?

Daoist scripture says the talismans condensed out of clouds in the sky and were copied down and passed to humans by Taishang Laojun and other immortals. Historically the fu began as a two-part tally used in the Warring States and Han periods to authenticate official and military orders. By the Eastern Han dynasty the same form was being used against spirits and sickness, modelled on imperial documents.

How are fulu used?

Fulu are pasted over doors, worn in small bags, and used in Daoist rituals to summon divine officers and send petitions. In the old healing rite a talisman was burned and its ash mixed into water for the sick person to drink. Zhang Jue, leader of the Yellow Turban movement in the second century, is reported to have healed followers this way.

Why can nobody read a fulu?

The script on a fulu is built from stretched, stacked and altered Chinese characters mixed with star diagrams and other signs, in a style called cloud seal script. Early talismans were fairly legible, and later ones were made cryptic on purpose. Ge Hong wrote around 320 that a correctly made talisman works even if the person using it cannot read it.

Who is allowed to make a fulu?

In Daoist tradition a working fulu is written by an ordained ritual master who has received the lu, or register. The register is the proof of ordination and gives the right to command the divine officers named on the talisman. The methods of writing and reading the signs are passed in secret from master to disciple.

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