Theism, Spirits, and Magic
No records address the Chuy religion, though Chinese annals depict some manifestations of religious rites and magic. A narration about the Chubans tells about sorcerers, able to cause frost and rainstorm. During a war with the Rouran, Chuban sorcerers incited a snowstorm against them, making the Rouran so frostbitten they had to stop their campaign and retreat. A similar legend is later told about the Eurasian Avars sorcerers in their war with the Francs, and Naiman sorcerers against Chingis-Khan.
The reigning clan of the western Turkic, initially Manichaean Chigil (Persian cihil "forty") tribe was Shato (Persian Sada "Hundred"), which later founded the Chinese state Hou-Tang (Later Tang, 923-936) in Northern China, and adopted a Chinese surname Li. The Shato had a predominant Dragon cult. Later Tang's founder Li Keiun also came from the Dragon tribe. The annals even noted that the Shato were praying "old services following the custom of the North" at the Thunder-mountain, at the Gates of Dragon. Within China, Chuy Shato became active adherents and protectors of Buddhism and Taoism, and initiated construction of many Buddhist temples. Subsequent to Shato, most of these temples were demolished.
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“The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)