Virgin Mothers and Hell-bent Sons: Daoist Rituals for Delivering Mothers from Blood Lake Hell

Colloqium talk by Professor Jessey Choo (Rutgers University). A UCLA Center for the Study of Religion event cosponsored by the Center for Buddhist Studies.

In medieval China there appeared a curious and apparently misogynous belief, namely, that all women were condemned to a special hell after death because their menses and blood from childbirth polluted all entities upon contact. Despite their offense being biological and involuntary, women faced the inescapable punishment of drinking from a pool of their own bloody discharge for all eternity. It was a cruel fate for all those born female. Yet surprisingly, the belief enjoyed widespread popularity among women that transcended religious, socio-economic, and cultural boundaries. This lecture examines a particular group of Daoist rituals that claimed to be efficacious in breaking women out of this bloody hell know as the Blood Lake. Founded on the legends of virgin mothers and their sons, in which these mothers invariably conceived without having sex and died during or immediately after childbirth, these rituals were essential to the sons’ success in rescuing their mothers from this hell. By highlighting the virgin birth and the mother-son bond, this soteriology completely removed the father from the picture, therefore undermining the patrilineal principle that was the linchpin of the “Confucian” social order. Thus assisted by Daoist theologians and ritualists, women were able to claim an unalienable right to their children and carve out a space of their own where they were the sole objects of devotion.

Jessey J.C. Choo, received her Ph.D. (2009) from Princeton University and is now Assistant Professor of Chinese History and Religion at Rutgers University. Specializing in the cultural history of the Chinese middle period (200–1000 CE), she studies four interrelated areas: women and gender, memory and identity, childbirth and death rituals, and entombed epigraphy. She is currently completing two monographs: “Inscribing Death: Burials, Texts, and Remembrance in Late Medieval China, 500–1000 CE,” and “Blood Debts: Childbirth, Filial Piety, and Women’s Salvation in Chinese Religions, 500–1500 CE.” is a cultural historian specializing in medieval China (ca. 200–1000 CE).

Cost : Free but RSVP to csr@humnet.ucla.edu