Chu (Taoism)
Daoist term for ritual kitchens, banquets, and inner alchemy.
Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons
Chu (廚, lit. 'kitchen') is a Daoist term used for various religious practices, including communal Kitchen banquet rituals in Way of the Celestial Masters liturgy, the legendary Mobile Kitchen (xingchu) associated with Daoist transcendents, and the Five Kitchens (wuchu) representing the Five Viscera in neidan meditation techniques. The term encompasses ritual banquets, communion with divinities, and food proscriptions such as grain avoidance.
- field
- Daoist religious practice
- known_for
- Communal Kitchen banquets, Mobile Kitchens, and Five Kitchens meditation
- associated_with
- Way of the Celestial Masters, Daoist transcendents, neidan meditation
Lore & Background
The chu Kitchen feast, also known as fushi ('good luck meal'), was a religious banquet involving preliminary fasting and purification before consuming vegetarian food and wine. Hosted by families on occasions of births and deaths, it was prepared for a ritually-fixed number of parishioners and accompanied by specific ritual gifts to the Daoist priest. The earliest textual record is the c. 499 Zhen'gao, which mentions Xu Mi offering a Kitchen meal to five persons. These banquets have a pre-Daoist antecedent in popular Chinese folk religion, where chu was used for ceremonial meals honoring the God of the Soil. Orthodox Daoists criticized and sometimes banned these chuhui ('cuisine congregations') for making immoral animal sacrifices, yet adapted and codified the custom.
Reader's Guide
The chu Kitchen feast became a regular element of organized Daoist religious traditions, though scholars do not know the date when it was introduced into the liturgy. The Way of the Celestial Masters celebrated chu festivals at New Year and the annual Three Assemblies, when parishioners would host feasts in proportion to their auspicious events and means. The chu sacrament had three levels: Superior Kitchen for a boy's birth, Middle Kitchen for a girl's birth, and Inferior Kitchen for a death. Participants observed purification including fasting and abstention from sex, with rituals lasting one, three, or seven days. The term also appears in Chinese astronomy as Tiānchú (Celestial Kitchen), an asterism in Draco. The semantic field of chu extends to granaries, visualization of the Five Viscera, and grain avoidance techniques, where Mobile Kitchens were brought by Jade Women and Golden Boys.
Did You Know?
- The chu Kitchen feast was also known as fushi, meaning 'good luck meal'.
- The earliest textual record of a Kitchen meal is from the c. 499 Zhen'gao, mentioning Xu Mi offering a meal to five persons.
- The Way of the Celestial Masters celebrated chu festivals at New Year and the annual Three Assemblies in the first, seventh, and tenth lunar months.
- In Chinese astronomy, Tiānchú (Celestial Kitchen) is an asterism in the constellation Draco.
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