Anyone with even a passing familiarity with Daoism will recognize the prevalence and importance of scripts and scriptures in Daoist ritual practice: from talismans, spells, petitions, and chants, to written paper burnt then ingested and gestural writing traced in the air. Bumbacher's concise volume masterfully traces the earliest history of various forms of sacred writing in Daoism. In six succinct chapters, the historical roots of Daoist talismans, charts, registers, scriptures, and petitions are traced to prototypical documentation and credentialing practices used in political, economic, bureaucratic, and military administration. These earthly institutions are replaced by a Daoist celestial bureaucracy, the locus of numinous power, which is invoked through writ and writing to variously quell malevolent spirits, pacify perturbed ancestors, cure disease, and invoke protective deities. This ground‐breaking work on Daoist apotropaic writing features a trove of important findings, not least, an explication of the logic of ingesting burnt talismans, the links between meditation, visualization, and bureaucratic protocols, and the early evidence for the Daoist “book cult.” In the final chapters, Bumbacher raises important questions with regard to the possible Buddhist origins of certain Daoist traditions such as the idea of receiving textual transmission in altered states of consciousness, the discovery of scriptures hidden for later times, the ritual recitation of scripture, and the idea of the primordial origin of scriptures. The brief concluding reflection on the category of “magic” offers an important theoretical perspective. Without doubt, this slim volume will be mandatory reading for scholars of Daoism and Chinese Buddhism.
