Ceremony
Receiving orders from clients, villain hitters require human-shaped papers with or without some information of specific people. As part of the ceremony, they beat the papers with shoes or other implements. The whole ceremony of villain hitting is divided into 8 parts:
- Sacrifice to divinities (奉神):Worship deities by Incense and Candle.
- Report (稟告):Write down the name and the date of birth of the client on the Fulu (符籙). If the client request to hit a specific villain, then write down or put the name, date of birth, photo or clothings of the specific villain on the villain paper.
- Villain hitting (打小人):Make use of a varieties of symbolic object such as the shoe of clients or the villain hitter or other religious symbolic weapon like incense sticks to hit or hurt the villain paper. Villain paper can also replaced by other derivative such as man paper, woman paper, five ghost paper etc.
- Sacrifice to Bái Hǔ (祭白虎):The hitter have to make sacrifice to Bái Hǔ if they want to hit villain on Jingzhe. Use a yellow paper tiger to represent Bái Hǔ, there are black stripes on the paper tiger and a pair of shape tooth in its mouth. During the sacrifice a small piece of pork is soaked by blood of pig and then put inside the mouth of the paper tiger (to feed Bái Hǔ). Bái Hǔ won't hurt others after being full. Sometimes they will also smear a greasy pork on Bái Hǔ's mouth to make its mouth full of oil and unable to open its mouth to hurt people. In some regional sacrifice the villain would burn the paper tiger or cut off its head after making sacrifice to it.
- Reconciliation (化解)
- Pray for blessings (祈福):Use a red Gui Ren paper to pray for blessings and help from Gui Ren.
- Treasure Burning (進寶):Burn the paper-made-treasure to worship the spirits。
- Zhi Jiao (擲筊) (or so-called "cup hitting" ):Zhi Jiao, to cast two crescent-shaped wooden piece to undergo the Zhi Jiao ceremony.
Read more about this topic: Villain Hitting
Famous quotes containing the word ceremony:
“Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”
—Henry James (18431916)
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
—William Butler Yeats (18651939)
“We are nothing but ceremony; ceremony carries us away, and we leave the substance of things; we hang on to the branches and abandon the trunk and body.”
—Michel de Montaigne (15331592)