From this point on, I will use the distinction between ritual that involves interpersonal transaction and ritual that does not to restrict the phenomena I analyze. The following two chapters include two case studies of Chinese rituals that involve interpersonal transaction, which together will allow me to reach two conclusions. The first is that the specialized vocabulary we have grown accustomed to, reserved for interactions with spirits (‘magic’, ‘charms’, ‘exorcisms’), can be shown to be often unnecessary and somewhat misleading when applied to Chinese activities. If a particular ritual is interpersonal, the appropriate vocabulary for its description is to be found in some sphere of ordinary life. The second conclusion is that interpersonal ritual, whether it involves interactions among human persons or between humans and non-human (i.e., spiritual) persons, often utilizes whatever ways of acting people see as most effective in controlling other people in everyday life. In the Chinese case, where there are formal positions of political authority, interpersonal ritual frequently involves forms of political control. This is a refinement on Durkheim's now platitudinous conclusion: that ‘religious’ objects, beings, and acts are modeled on society and its subdivisions (1915). The refinement suggested for the Chinese data is that at least some ritual acts involving non-human entities take their logic more narrowly from the political sphere. They put into operation ways of controlling other entities that occur in political acts in everyday life.