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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.