Fu talisman (符)
A Daoist talisman: a strip of paper written in a script meant for the gods to read, not people. Daoists use fu (符) to summon deities, command demons and protect a place, and wear them, post them or burn them.
Meaning
The word first meant a tally. Henri Doré, a Jesuit missionary whose Researches into Chinese Superstitions came out in English from 1914, explains that fu, “bamboo slips made to tally with a corresponding part”, came to mean a charm of any form “on wood, metal, linen or paper, written or engraved”, and Fabrizio Pregadio, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, compares it to the original meaning of the Greek symbolon. In Daoist teaching as Pregadio describes it, writing is how people speak to the gods, who, in Anna Seidel’s phrase, “neither speak nor listen, but write and read”. Talismans are traced in graphs “hardly comprehensible to humans but intelligible to the gods”. They have counterparts in heaven, so they identify whoever holds them in front of the gods; they give the power to summon deities and to control demons, and they protect a space. They are worn on the body, fixed at the four directions, placed along the path to a house, or burned and the ashes drunk in water. The Metropolitan Museum of Art writes that Daoism still provides talismans and ritual services for the everyday life of its followers.
Origin and history
Talismans are older than Daoism. Pregadio traces them to the wu, the mediums or healers of early China, who dealt with demons and gave out protective talismans, practices that went on throughout the history of Daoism. One of the early bodies of Daoist scripture was based on talismans, chiefly the Sanhuang wen (Script of the Three Sovereigns), and the alchemist, before building a laboratory, protected the ritual space with them.
Doré, describing the charms he saw in China in the early twentieth century, read each one as an official document: “a mandate, an injunction, emanating from a god”, because “the Chinese world of spectres is modelled after the administrative system of the country”. Imperial orders were issued under seal on yellow paper and marked in cinnabar, and charms copied them: printed on yellow paper and sealed with the seal of Lord Lao, the deified Laozi (Doré’s text has “Lao-kiln”), or of Zhang Daoling. A charm usually opened with the word Ch’ih, “to order or command”, and no word was more frequent. One that called on a god might have a rough sketch of him at the top. Thunder was drawn as a spiral giving off a flash, and stars as dots joined in clusters. The charm closed as an imperial edict did: “let the law be obeyed, let this order be respected and executed forthwith”. Doré wrote to condemn the practice, calling it “silly devices” of Taoists and Buddhists alike.
Fu (符) and fu (福)
The talisman is not the fu of the New Year. That is 福, good fortune, the character pasted upside down on doors; the talisman is 符. The two words sound alike, and Chinese pictures play on the sound: Werner explains that the stag and the bat in pictures of the god of longevity “both indicate fu, happiness”. The two can meet on one sheet. Doré notes that charms meant to bring felicity, longevity and peace carry those words at the top.
Read next
- Next in Taoist symbolsCraneIn Daoist art the crane is the immortals’ bird. It was believed to live a thousand years and to carry immortals to heaven, and white cranes on Daoist robes and carvings stand for long life and immortality.
- The same shape in Sacred geometryGolden ratio and golden spiralThe golden ratio, φ, about 1.618, is what you get by cutting a line so that the whole is to the longer part as the longer part is to the shorter. The golden spiral is drawn through a rectangle with its sides in that ratio. Luca Pacioli called it the divine proportion in 1509; many modern claims about it, from the Parthenon to the human body, have no evidence behind them.
See also
Upside-down fu (福), Yin yang (taijitu), Bagua (the eight trigrams), Eight Immortals, Peach of immortality, Laozi riding an ox.
Sources
- Religious Daoism, Fabrizio Pregadio, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2.1 Exorcism and “Shamanism”; 3.2; 5.3 The Function of Writing
- Researches into Chinese Superstitions, vol. III, Henri Doré, S.J., translated by M. Kennelly (Shanghai: T’usewei Printing Press, 1914–), Internet Archive (University of Toronto), Introduction, pp. III–VI
- Daoism and Daoist Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (December 2011), The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Myths and Legends of China, E. T. C. Werner (London: George G. Harrap, 1922), Project Gutenberg, ch. IV, The God of Longevity
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves, lines or squares and rectangles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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