Paper short abstract:

Based on the case of Chinese esoteric divinatory knowledge, this paper explores as how body-based esoteric techniques are now widely transmitted through videos on social media, thus redefining the social basis of both masters/teachers and disciples/students in contemporary societies.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines changing patterns in the transmission of traditional knowledge in contemporary Chinese societies, based on the case of esoteric knowledge and know-how in the field of Chinese divinatory arts. Specialists of divinatory arts rely on body-based techniques to perform computation and assimilate, manipulate, and transmit complex notions. In the long history of divinatory arts in China, such techniques constituted a secret know-how that was selectively transmitted from master to disciple. However, starting in the 1990s in Taiwan, some practitioners sought to establish a new paradigm of sharing divinatory knowledge. They launched a popularization process that questioned traditional modes of knowledge transmission and reformulated concepts and theories to make them fit modern societies’ expectations. This process went a step further more recently with the boom of social media. Based on a mixed methodology combining digital ethnography and anthropological fieldwork among practitioners of horoscopy in Taiwan and China, this paper examines tensions in the vulgarization process of esoteric knowledge. In particular, I explore how body-based esoteric techniques are now widely transmitted through videos on social media such as You Tube and Bilibili. I analyze to which extent social media technologies challenge or complement body-technologies, threaten or nourish the strategic disclosure or concealment that characterizes esoteric practices, and redefine the social basis of both masters/teachers and disciples/students in contemporary societies.