Ling (Chinese religion)

It is the state or power of gods and divine beings (shen) that is multiplied by their appearance in vision during trance or by location through a ritual of inspiration into the objects that represent them.^[2][1] Their activity, actuality, is xian ling, literally "holy virtue, sacred efficacy, the sacred as manifest", or numen. Ling is a power, like that of the uncanny intelligence of great masters of building or of healing, and is a divine reciprocation for offerings and pledges of devotion to a deity or demon.^[2]

It is the inchoate order of creation, that is the "medium" of the bivalency constituted by the opposite forces of the universe (yin and yang).^[3] Ling is the mediating bivalency, the "medium", between yin and yang, that is "disorder" and "order", "activity" or "passivity", with yang usually preferred over yin.^[3] More specifically, the ling power of an entity resides in mediation between the two levels of order and disorder, activity and passivity, which govern social transformation.^[4] The mediating entity itself shifts of status and function between one level and another, and makes meaning in different contexts.^[4]

Ling has been described as the ability to set up spatial and temporal boundaries, represent and identify metaphors, setting apart and linking together differences.^[5] The boundary is crossed by practices such as sacrifice and inspiration (shamanism).^[5] Spiritual mediumship makes the individual the center of actualising possibilities, acts and events indicative of the will of the gods.^[5] The association of ling with liminality implies the possibility of constructing various kinds of social times and history.^[6] In this way, the etho-political (ethnic) dimension is nurtured, regenerated by re-enactment, and constructed at first place, imagined and motivated in the process of forging a model of reality.^[6]