Religious Thought in Pre-Qin China

  Due to the limitations of the development level of productive forces, ancient ancestors believed that all things have spirits. This led to the worship of nature, totems, souls, and ancestors, which gradually evolved into the integration of ancestors and celestial gods, forming the prototype of the supreme god.

  In primitive society, ancestors regarded the sun, moon, stars, wind, rain, thunder, lightning, mountains, rivers, and peaks as being dominated by gods, thus generating a sense of awe and paying homage to them. In addition, they believed that the soul does not perish after death, which further gave rise to the worship of ghosts and gods. As a result, various funeral rituals and ceremonies for sacrificing to and exorcising ghosts gradually took shape.

  By the Shang Dynasty, this kind of nature worship had developed into the belief in God and the Mandate of Heaven, and a celestial god system centered on God was gradually formed. When encountering matters, witches and sorcerers would seek answers from God through divination. The primitive worship of ghosts and gods had evolved into ancestor worship based on blood ties and combined with patriarchal relations, with ancestor worship activities held regularly. During this period, there emerged specialized religious professionals—witches and sorcerers—who communicated between ghosts, gods, and humans. Among them, witches invoked gods through singing and dancing and had a set of witchcraft involving spells to exorcise ghosts; sorcerers pleased gods with words and served as masters of ceremonies responsible for welcoming gods and praying in religious sacrificial activities. They treated diseases for people, divined good and bad luck, drew talismans, and chanted incantations. At this time, both the state and society were dominated by witches and sorcerers.

  In the Zhou Dynasty, the worship of ghosts and gods further developed, and the worshipped ghosts and gods formed three systems: celestial gods, human ghosts, and earth deities. Moreover, the worship of ancestral spirits was placed on a par with the sacrifice to heaven and earth, known as "respecting heaven and honoring ancestors." The reason why Taoism later became a polytheistic religion stems from the ancient worship of ghosts and gods. The later Taoist rituals of fasting and offering sacrifices mainly originated from the ancient rituals and systems of sacrificing to ghosts and gods.

  In addition, the early civilization of rites and music must also be mentioned. People would hold sacrificial activities to worship gods, and such activities were inseparable from the civilization of rites and music. With the "collapse of rites and music" during the Spring and Autumn Period, this civilization gradually moved from the upper class to the common people and was inherited by later folk alchemists and witches. After the establishment of Taoism, it evolved into Taoist fasting and sacrificial rituals. Therefore, a considerable part of the civilization of rites and music from the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties was preserved by Taoism. In fact, Taoism is the inheritor of the civilization of rites and music.