zhù yóu
Also rendered: zhuyou (Transliteration; standard in modern TCM English) · invocation (Keeps 祝 as spoken address) · incantation / spells (Zhang Jiebin's later reading; adds magic the text lacks) · explaining the cause of the illness (Wang Bing's gloss in full)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
The treatment of high antiquity, and the word most often mistranslated in this chapter. Wang Bing’s gloss is a definition, not a ritual: 祝說病由，不勞針石而已 — to declare the origin of the illness, with no need for needle or stone. The Newly Collated edition records Quan Yuanqi’s note that zhuyou was a southern deity, and Zhang Jiebin much later takes it as spells and charms. The chapter’s own logic supports Wang Bing: the reason invocation used to work is that the patient’s spirit was whole.
Passages where the term does real work, with the original, pinyin and English on the same line.
Every rendering below is a decision about which reader is being addressed. There is no neutral option.
| Common English | zhuyou, or incantation | Most translations simply transliterate, and those that translate follow Zhang Jiebin's 符呪禁禳 — spells, charms, apotropaic rites. |
| This site | invocation | Wang Bing's gloss is 祝說病由：to speak out where the illness came from. That is an act of speech addressed to the illness's origin, which is what invocation literally means, and it fits the argument of the chapter — invocation works on a person whose spirit is intact, and no amount of it works on one whose spirit is gone. Incantation and spell import the later 祝由科 and make the medicine look like magic. |
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