Discourses of Efficacy in the Ritual Use of Daoist Talismans

Abstract Producing and manipulating talismans is a part of many Daoist rituals, from discrete procedures to long and complex liturgical programs. Therefore, the success of a rite depends in part on the efficacious application of the talismans used within it. Ritual manuals describing the production of talismans contain detailed instructions for rendering those talismans efficacious, and the discourses used within those instructions thus serve to define the parameters of ritual efficacy for the Daoists who carry them out. These discourses can be broadly divided into discourses of objective efficacy, which posit that ritual efficacy derives from conditions external to the ritualist, and discourses of subjective efficacy, which focus instead on the practitioner’s internal dispositions. Here, I examine the different forms that these discourses can take and the ways in which they are employed within Daoist ritual texts, arguing that discourses of subjective efficacy emerged as a form of ritual criticism.