This work, originally published in 1988 in French as La Dame-du-bord-de-l'eau, retains the structure of its French original but has incorporated new research since 1988. The book is a fascinating study of the cult of Lady Linshui, or Chen Jinggu, a female shaman whose life story can be traced to the eighth century. As a leading deity of the triad cult of the Three Ladies of Mount Lü sect (Lüshan pai or Sannai pai), which integrated elements of therapeutic and exorcist traditions of several Daoist sects and esoteric Buddhism, Chen Jinggu protects women and children and influences female communities of spirit mediums. Her cult received state canonization during the Song and enjoys popularity in Fujian and Taiwan in the present day. With Chen Jinggu, Baptandier addresses the central questions of what it means “to be a woman” and how we should understand the original prominence of the feminine that has disappeared in the ritual traditions of Daoism and Chinese popular religion.

The book is divided into two major parts. The first part discusses the major divinities in the temples dedicated to Chen Jinggu through a close reading of the Linshui pingyao zhuan (History of the Pacification of the Demons of Linshui), a lengthy text that claims its origin in the fifteenth century and has various modern editions in Taiwan and Fujian. Baptandier shows that Chen Jinggu has assumed multiple divine titles, as the goddess of pregnancy (chapter 2), the goddess of the Bridge of a Hundred Flowers (chapter 3), and the Lady of the Birth Register (chapter 6). As such, her cult has intricate connections with divinities ranging from the Cinnabar Cloud Monkey (chapter 4), the Thirty-Six Pojie (chapter 5), the god of the soil, the god of the Eastern Peak, the Sovereign of the Azure Clouds, the Queen Mother of the West, and the Lady Seventh Star (chapter 6).

The second part contextualizes the themes and characters in the Linshui pingyao zhuan in actual religious practices and rituals concerning women, maternity, and childhood. Chen Jinggu protects women in the different stages of pregnancy and childbirth (chapter 7) and looks after children from the moment of conception to the age of sixteen (chapter 8). As each woman is believed to be a flower in the celestial land and each child is to overcome life-threatening “passes” before reaching adulthood, women and children entrust their well-being to Chen Jinggu through the rituals of “cultivating the Flowers” and “crossing the passes” performed by the Red Head masters and mediums of the Mount Lü sect (chapter 9).

Ideas of internal alchemy, which aims at reaching the ultimate union of opposites through a “journey in reverse,” or ni, to the “the embryo of immortality” (p. 241), dominate all aspects of Chen Jinggu's cult. Many divine characters of the cult experience a journey in reverse by way of ritual death and rebirth. These divinities also have demon doubles, who are the opposites through which they transform themselves into higher beings. Chen Jinggu, for example, was born together with the White Snake Demon—as blood and hair of the single Bodhisattva Guanyin. Her death in childbirth was caused by the demon. By subduing her demon double and reuniting with it in death, Chen Jinggu overcame her bad death, as well as her kinship roles in the Confucian tradition, and became a female divinity. Baptandier argues that this cult represents the fundamental conflict between the role of women's fertility to ensure the Confucian patriline and their alchemical pursuit of an immortal self. Women could assume a prominent place in Chinese religions only through a social and biological rejection of their roles in male lineages. The career of a female medium in modern Taiwan demonstrates the contemporary currency of Chen Jinggu's legacy (chapter 10).

Baptandier's assumption of Chinese ritual traditions as “of Daoism and the popular religion that is a manifestation of it” (p. 2), however, raises questions. To what extent did Daoists use ideas of internal alchemy to reinvent the medium cult of Chen Jinggu? What is the role, if any, of popular Buddhism in shaping the cult? Readers would like to learn more about the historical trajectory of the cult's development in modern times and whether the cult's symbolic meanings have changed for its followers. A Chinese glossary would be very helpful, especially when the meanings of many characters and terms are critical for the author's argument.

Overall, this book is full of insightful analysis. It greatly enriches our understanding of the symbols of the “feminine” and the role of women in Chinese religious culture. We should also thank Kristine Ingrid Fryklund for a lucid translation. The book is a must-read for scholars and graduate students of gender and Chinese religions.