Among commoners, the imagined empire of a monarch or local official sustained both rebellion and conformity. The local god was an imagined monarch or local hero-official who could perform well the harmonisation of heaven with earth; sustain good order and be responsive to petitions complaining of unfair and oppressive officials, the hardships of drought and flood; and provide some security in the uncertainties of health, fertility and prosperity in ever changing conditions.

The spirit imperium
What is so intriguing in the imagery of imperial rule pictured and performed in the temples and rituals of popular cults is how similar it is to the pomp of imperial rule, and yet how much it differs from the rituals and personae of actual imperial rule. The titles of the gods of popular cults are often ones that were actually bestowed on them by emperors. Prints of the pantheon present gods in a hierarchy like that of the imperial bureaucracy. The most territorial gods are represented by titles that are also imperial offices. Spirit mediums in trance inform petitioners which god presently holds the post. Gods are represented in a cosmological empire from celestial bodies to the rivers and mountains, particular trees or rocks, down to the purgatorial courts judging the merits and misdeeds of those who have died.

Yet most popular temples were built without imperial sanction, against the law but nevertheless tolerated. Quite unlike the temples of the state, its male authority, and reverence for heroes of official histories, popular temples were built according to the manifestation of responsive power, and often the most responsive were female, like Guanyin, and unruly, such as Nazha the trickster who rebelled against his father.

Nazha is pictured as a barefoot, well-muscled boy with one foot perched on a fire wheel on which he travels with the speed of wind. Like many of the gods of popular cults, the story of Nazha, the Third Prince, is collected in a Ming dynasty (1368-1644) compilation of legends called the Register of the Investiture of the Gods (Fengshen Yanyi). Set in the time of a golden age to which the Confucian classics also refer, the title refers to the emperors of that golden age conferring titles upon the heroes and heroines of the stories. The gods' powerful responsiveness is told in stories that extol their virtues in the end--after rebellions and unusual or foreshortened lives--as accomplishments of Confucian, Daoist or Buddhist merit. Yet the compilation is not included in any of the imperial canons, not even in the collection of Daoist works. Very many of the stories bear the hallmarks of having been produced through spirit-writing, as a revelation by the spirits of their own stories, a practice that has continued from the Ming dynasty until today. They also bear the hallmarks of epic story-telling, performed in tea houses to this day. In other words, the collection is a classic of popular, not official, culture and religion, and is published outside all the imperial canons as one of the most popular items for non-official literacy by printing presses that are commercial, not of the state.

A game of political learning
The location of temples of popular cults such as that of Nazha are linked not by administrative rank or the relations of taxation but according to tributary relations of pilgrimage to centres of the cult. In other words, the power to respond, which these cults celebrate, is multiplied in several centres of authority with no ultimate centre, whereas imperial authority exists in a hierarchy reaching just the one centre of authority. The costumes of these popular gods are like those of imperial generals and scholars, but variations make them archaic--somewhere in a more distant past. They are partly invented, like the costumes and gestures of battle, trial, and departure for imperial examinations that are staged for the entertainment of the festive community and its gods. Their archaic imagery and rituals of deference to authority have continued until the present, despite the fact that for nearly a hundred years there has been no emperor. Its dissimilarity from the current reality is therefore even more striking now than it was. Even so, people often explain to a foreigner how the local god is like the local official or police chief. The desire for fairness and responsiveness from those in positions of authority remains, though it is less often fulfilled in political fact than it is acted out in rituals.

	Imperial symbolism of the gods
	Stephan Feuchtwang The musical band of Shiding, northern Taiwan, playing outside the Palace of Accumulated Harmony in 1967. The self-organisation of the popular cults is in the margins of the imperial symbolism of the gods. The most basic ritual organisation is a compact formed around a burner of incense. It is an association in which the burner is passed in rotation around the members' households. With it comes responsibility for arranging offerings to the god or goddess and a feast for the compact's members. The most important purpose of such an association is mutual support and defence, the formation of a band of militiamen to form a watch against thieves or bandits. In the imagery of the state at festivals, these are the bands that perform military dances, often with lions or dragons, showing their prowess in the service of the god and clearing the way for his or her passage. They are the god's soldiers, demonic and fearsome, somewhere in the zone between gods and ghosts. There was no such category in the objects of the state cults, in which the military feats of generals and the virtues of scholars were celebrated. In the imagery of the state prevalent in popular religion, the self-organisation that popular religion itself provided came at the margin between the commanding and protecting gods and the demons that they commanded and controlled.

Nearly all the gods petitioned and honoured in popular temples and on domestic altars have stories of extraordinary lives, usually beginning as a man or a woman in a particular historical moment but continuing to show powers beyond their death. A statue or picture of a deity is inaugurated by a ritual that 'opens' the senses of the image to see and hear petitions and to respond to them. The more pure and lofty the deity, the less it is ascribed this power to respond, and the less are their food offerings like the food that is eaten at feasts.

The food offerings most like ordinary food are also offered to ancestors and to the demonic orphan souls of forgotten or neglected ancestors. Demons are capable of indiscriminate harm as well as luck in love, gambling and other risky endeavours. Gods are reputed to have extraordinary demonic power but put it to beneficial use--not to harm but to protect from harm, to control the malicious forces of human and non-human demons and to respond as upright power-holders would.

Rituals of communication with gods are similar in their pattern to an audience with an honoured and powerful guest. In sequence they are a preparatory cleansing, invitation, greeting, presentation of offerings that are sacrificial and tributary gifts, petition and the naming of those making the offering, thanks for accepting the gifts and petition, feasting, theatrical entertainment, and a farewell that includes a desire for a promised return. Aspects of this same pattern are enacted outside the temple in the most spectacular parts of territorial festivals. One is the greeting of a visiting figure of the same god from a more powerful temple, led by lion and dragon dancers and other figures that cleanse the path of malign influences. A similar procession and cleansing embarks in the reverse direction, taking the local figure on a pilgrimage to the more powerful temple.

A Temple Festival In Meifa, Fujian Province
August 1992, the annual festival of the local protector deity, The Great Master of Ritual Method (Fa Zhu Gong).

Wang Mingming

The head of the family of Daoist masters at the altar table with slips of red paper.

Mastery of fa (ritual and magical method) is the art and discipline of Daoists. The local family that conducted rituals in the region called themselves masters of ritual method (fashi). Here the head of that family sits at the altar table in the temple writing slips of red paper to be pasted as protective markers at various places during the rites of the day. Later, gowned and with a top-knot in the form of a sacred flame, he performs a rite including the intonation of a Daoist scripture, accompanied by his family. Daoists are always trained in musical and indeed other arts. He stands before the same altar table where earlier he sat writing, but is now addressing the local deities, with Fa Zhu Gong (black face) in the centre and the higher celestial deities beyond.

Wang Mingming

He performs a rite including the intonation of a Daoist scripture.

These are depicted on the pair of hanging scrolls in the background brought by the Daoists. Before the deities are placed sweet and pure food offerings, whereas the pigs placed in front of the temple are for the array of local gods represented by the statues.

During the day, people from every household in the village carry spirit money, firecrackers and ordinary food offerings to tables and benches in front of the temple, in readiness for offerings to orphan ghostssummoned from purgatory and limbo.

Wang Mingming

Statues of local gods in front of and lower than the highest gods of the Daoist.

Later in the day, after offerings to the gods have been completed, one of the younger members of the family of Daoist ritual experts consecrates the offerings to orphan ghosts. A woman shows her grandchild how to place hands together when making the offering to the spirits. The head Daoist blows the horn at the main gate of the temple to summon ghosts, and the stage is prepared for the evening's entertainment. In the evening, the first performance by the actors is a rite of obeisance in the temple.

Another great spectacle is the presence of tables of offerings outside the temple, particularly those intended
for orphan souls temporarily released from purgatory.
This offering is made just before the food is taken back
home by each household for its own feast.

Wang Mingming

A woman shows her grandchild how to place hands together when making the offering to the spirits.

What gives these rituals and spectacles of greeting, presentation, and seeing off their excitement and drama is that if they are not magnificent enough, the dirtiness of the place and the insufficiency of offerings will be a loss of face for the territorial community that is putting itself on display. The shadow of magnificence is the fear of offence to the deity and the potential punishment (disease and other misfortune) that will follow. This is what officials, imperial and republican alike, have condemned for almost two thousand years as excessive.