Ancestors and the Dao: Gary Seaman, Neidan, Trance Dancing, and Emperor of the Dark Heavens, Doc: Blood, Bones and Spirits (China, 1974) and Constance A. Cook

The film says Taiwan China but it's incorrectly labeled as Thailand

spirits of ghosts are drawn out into a ritual chair, then the bones of the person whose determined to be offended are dug up, the body restored in clay, and a shaman performs other rituals to appease the spirit.

This is a "po Soul" ritual - from Daoist Neidan alchemy.

https://archive.org/details/BloodBonesAndSpirits

http://ethnographics.org/

So Gary Seaman is listed as having several other docs in China.

Blood, Bones and Spirits (36 minutes)

1974

Blood, Bones and Spirits (36 minutes) The daughter-in-law of this family is childless. A spirit seance reveals that her barrenness is the result of the curse of an uncle who died with no offspring of his own. The uncle's grave must be renovated and a grandson of the family adopted out to him. This is done under the direction of a shaman, possessed by a god called the Emperor of the Dark Heavens.

Only Half-Way to Godhead: The Chinese Geomancer As Alchemist and Cosmic Pivot

Gary Seaman

Asian Folklore Studies

Vol. 45, No. 1 (1986), pp. 1-18 

 

 and

 

 Fascinating info!



And so Geomancy as alchemical holographic reality:




http://www.premier.com.tw/Touring/EmperorOfDarkHeaven.htm

Lin Zhao'en (1517-1598) set out to popularize Confucianism by combining Confucian studies with Daoist inner alchemical techniques and Buddhist Chan philosophy into something he called the Three in One Teachings. Despite periods of clandestine activity since its inception, the Three in One cult has undergone a remarkable revival in post-Mao China: today Lin is worshipped throughout Southeast China and Southeast Asia as Lord of the Three in One in over a thousand temples by tens of thousands of cult initiates. Many of the temples have been restored since 1979, when China began to experience an explosive resurgence of popular culture and religion. In this book, based on ten years of field work, Kenneth Dean vividly documents the reemergence of this cult, which seeks to transmit a universal vision of truth yet retains a strong local appeal through its healing rituals and spirit mediumism. Although the Chinese government still tries to suppress these resurgences in the interest of modernization, the cult's locally based networks appear in this account as unstoppable social forces.

 https://books.google.com/books?id=01QOqLpZbfEC&dq=%22emperor+of+the+dark+heavens%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Chinese Medicine and Healing: An illustrated history

 The authors investigate processes that contribute to historical change, such as competition between different types of practitioner—shamans, Daoist priests, Buddhist monks, scholar physicians, and even government officials. Accompanying vignettes and illustrations bring to life such diverse arenas of health care as childbirth in the Tang period, Yuan state-established medical schools, fertility control in the Qing, and the search for sexual potency in the People's Republic.

 Ancestors, Kings and the Dao - Constance A. Cook

Ancestors, Kings, and the Dao outlines the evolution of musical performance in early China, first within and then ultimately away from the socio-religious context of ancestor worship. Examining newly discovered bamboo texts from the Warring States period, Constance A. Cook compares the rhetoric of Western Zhou (1046–771 BCE) and Spring and Autumn (770–481 BCE) bronze inscriptions with later occurrences of similar terms in which ritual music began to be used as a form of self-cultivation and education. Cook’s analysis links the creation of such classics as the Book of Odes with the ascendance of the individual practitioner, further connecting the social actors in three types of ritual: boys coming of age, heirs promoted into ancestral government positions, and the philosophical stages of transcendence experienced in self-cultivation.
The focus of this study is on excavated texts; it is the first to use both bronze and bamboo narratives to show the evolution of a single ritual practice. By viewing the ancient inscribed materials and the transmitted classics from this new perspective, Cook uncovers new linkages in terms of how the materials were shaped and reshaped over time and illuminates the development of eulogy and song in changing ritual contexts.

Part I. 1. Establishing the Zhou tradition: Memorial feasts and the rise of eulogy to Zhou kings -- Memorial feasts and founder sacrifices -- Zhou founder kings: a case of King Wen, the ancestor, and King Wu, the son -- Creating the nation -- Divine models -- Ancestors and the hunt -- Summary -- 2. Kings, ancestors, and the transmission of De: Transitions and setting the pattern -- The founder king as earth deity -- Summary -- 3. Song of heirs: Royal inscriptions: the king as heir -- Regional heirs control the sacred narrative -- Lengthy bronze narratives and the role of the king -- Summary -- 4. Eulogy and the rise of the musical performance: Training the Xiaozi -- The ancient eulogy or praise song -- Eulogy in ritual performance -- Summary -- Part II. The Zhou way after the Zhou: 5. Transitions and bronze inscriptions: Archaic rings -- Western -- Northern -- Southern -- Northeastern -- Summary -- 6. The new old Zhou way: Notes on the transmission of odes and A song of King Wen -- Summary -- 7. From ancestor worship to inner cultivation: Notes on the bamboo text the lute dance of Zhou Gong -- Musical performance and textual production -- Reexamining the great preface -- Inner feeling, outer decorum -- The odes as Dao: cultivating the intention -- Summary -- 8. Coming-of-age rituals: Performing the capping ritual -- Ritual and music as a method for "completion" -- Coming-of-age narratives in the eastern Zhou -- Remnants of promotion narratives in warring states texts -- Summary.

Summary

"Traces the rise of poetry from eulogies in BCE excavated texts and outlines the evolution of musical performance within and away from the context of ancestor worship. Compares the rhetoric of bronze inscriptions with later uses of similar terms in newly discovered bamboo texts from the Warring States period"--