Many people
know that a phurpa can be used to subjugate harmful spirits. But not many
people aware that in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), acupuncture can also
be used to control and even kill ghosts. This method is called鬼門十三針, or literarily “the 13
needles of ghost
gates” and it is said to be originated from a famous Tang Dynasty physician,
Sun Si Miao (孫思邈).
According to an acupuncturist,
Mr. Tan; the gist of using acupuncture in exorcism is not to harm the spirit
but the aim is to strike a peaceful deal. The order of pricking needles to acupuncture
points is as below one needle after the other:
鬼宮，鬼信，鬼壘，鬼心，鬼路 etc.
(Acupuncture points on the palms, thumbs, toes, palm bases, feet angles
etc.)
The piercing of needles
should be continuous until the spirits beg for forgiveness through the mouth of
the person they possessed. Unless the situation is called for, it is best to
avoid injuring or killing these spirits. However, if any spirits are killed in
the acupuncturing process; they relatives will enter the possessed person’s
body and speak through his/her mouth identifying their identities. At times
these indignant spirits will cause the person to stop eating or over eating.
If this situation really
happened and these spirits deny heeding any advices; then the only method would
be to catch them and imprison them in a container. However, not all spirits are
easy to deal with and not all spirits keep to their promises. These situations
are very troublesome hence not many acupuncturists are willing to do this type
of exorcism these days.
Exorcism with acupuncture was
once quite popular in old mainland China as there were many cases of all sorts
of spirit possessions: snakes, foxes, weasels, ghosts just to name a few.
There is another version of
treatment similar to the above acupuncture method but without using the needles.
This type of treatment belongs to “The Science of Zhu You” (祝由科): Instead this method use
special characters called “flowery characters” (花字).
