In Chapter 2, I briefly mentioned a women I interviewed who paid her Daoist master NT$20,000 for a three-day ceremony. She attended all three days of this ceremony at an apartment temple in the city of Douliu, about 70 kilometers south of Taizhong.

Asatru is practised all over Northern Europe and also in North America. Like Druidry, it is organized into bodies with sub-groups, the hearths.

The Tricameron…comprised…a “Senate”…and a “Praetorate,” a sort of quadruple troika or duodecimvirate: twelve men and women who implemented the Senate’s decrees, declared war or peace, and…spent most of the time squabbling amongst themselves for power.

Such was the life of John Ruan through the summer of 1929. He had enjoyed a Tom Sawyeresque childhood and learned that hard work and ingenuity paid handsome monetary rewards.