The Ritual Construction of Confucian Gods in Imperial China: The Case of Vast Heaven High God

Contrary to modern scholarly claims that Confucians rarely spoke about gods and spirits, official histories contain detailed records of court discussions on proper sacrifice to the gods of an extensive imperial pantheon. During China’s “premodern” era, ritual officers of the court formulated the liturgies devoted to gods on the basis of canonical precedent—privileging the voice of Confucius—and conducted regular cult feastings to the gods at imperial altar terraces and temples. I read the historical records of these rites as discursive constructions of the cosmos and the gods that circulated through it. Ritual officers of the imperial court cited classical passages as the locus classicus of Suburban Sacrifice to the highest deity of the official pantheon called Vast Heaven High God. In doing so, they articulated a multivalent conception of Vast Heaven High God as both a cosmogonic force and an ancestral deity that posed logistical challenges to building the proper ritual spaces to feast this god. My analysis of the rites conducted at Suburban Sacrifice divulges a conception of the relation between built ritual space and the celestial realm of the cosmos where High God circulates that is indexical rather than metaphorical. Ritual officers of the court construed Round Terrace as a microcosm of Vast Heaven where the most powerful celestial agents, including High God, were arranged in a proper hierarchy in order to facilitate their access to cult feastings.