traditionsFulu — Taoist talismanic craft符籙

The unreadability is the point, and its own scholars say so. Yang Zhaohua notes that a number of the earliest Taoist talismans were simple and legible, and that later examples became deliberately cryptic in order to signal their divinity. James Robson and Gil Raz hold that the incomprehensibility of the written forms is central to a talisman's perceived authority and is one of talismanic script's defining features. Ge Zhaoguang of Fudan University calls it a linguistic archaism, a veil of unfathomable otherworldliness designed so that only a small number of qualified clergy can produce them.

That had already settled by the Eastern Jin (317–420). Ge Hong wrote in the Baopuzi that successful use of a talisman did not depend on whether the user could decipher the script, so long as the inscription itself was right. By then illegibility was a sign of divine authority rather than a defect.

Style varies by sect, and so does everything else: the characters differ from sect to sect, each sect has its own incantations and its own mudras for making them, and even the invocations used for a single deity vary between sects. The method of writing is passed in secret from a Taoist priest to their disciples and treated as a craft for communicating with local deities and spirits. The fulu pai — the informal grouping of priests across schools who work this way — take their name from it.

The medical strand has an institutional history. Talismanic technique has been used in China alongside medicine, meditation, acupuncture, astrology and massage, at least as far back as the Eastern Han, when the Way of the Taiping used it to heal. In medical writing it is called zhuyou, and it held official support between the Sui and the late Ming, declining after rival acupuncture practices were recognised by the imperial court as a medical discipline in the sixth century. Traditional Chinese medicine rejects zhuyou; Chinese folk healers still use it widely; and with the arrival of Western psychology in the 20th century it began to be read as a Chinese counterpart to hypnosis.

The craft also travelled, and two other traditions in this atlas are downstream of it. Fulu were incorporated into Chinese Buddhism; they inspired Japan's ofuda, by way of Onmyodo; and Korea's bujeok comes out of the same stock. Coin talismans carry fulu at the beginning and the end of the inscription, and many of them have not been deciphered — one specimen has talismanic script written beside Chinese characters suspected to be its gloss.

The household end of it is a different character and a different logic. Fu (福), good fortune, is mounted on doorways at Chinese New Year, printed on a square of red paper or stitched in fabric, and hung upside down: in nearly all varieties of Chinese the words for 'upside-down' and 'to arrive' are homophones, so an inverted fu reads as 'good luck arrives'. The practice dates to at least the Song dynasty and the account describes it as universal among Chinese people regardless of income.

Structure only, because the making is transmitted in secret. A priest of a particular sect writes the characters, using that sect's forms, incantations and mudras, on paper, cloth or metal. The result is displayed, carried, burnt, or — in the medical use — dissolved or otherwise administered. A lu, a register, records which priests hold which skills, so the entitlement to write one is a matter of record inside the tradition rather than of talent. Coin charms carry the script cast into metal instead of brushed, with fulu opening and closing the inscription.

Live in Taiwan, mainland China and the Chinese diaspora, in temples and in folk healing. Popular accounts of fulu are published for general readers, including by Taiwanese temple-culture sites, while the sect-specific forms stay inside the sects. The New Year fu on a red square is everywhere Chinese New Year is kept. Museum and numismatic collections hold large runs of charm coins whose inscriptions remain unread, which is the tradition's own design working on its own evidence.