I've always been curious to know why in wuxia/xianxia novels the word "sect" is used instead of, for example, Clan/Guild or whatever. IRL it clearly has negative meaning and every time I tell someone about these kind of fantasy "sects" they misunderstand me at first. Is the word for wuxia sect different from IRL sect in chinese language ? And if so, then why is it "sect" in english ?
Does it ? Since childhood I've been hearing that cults are bad (they definitely are)... and sects are bad as well (now I am not so sure about this one).
Neither of those have a religious connotation. In Jin Yong/Gu Long wuxia, many of the most significant sects fall under either Buddhist or Daoist philosophy. Many of the 派 are literally groups of daoist martial artists with divergent teachings/philosophies to each other.
I don't know if there's another meaning behind it that is lost in translation or if it had another meaning before, but I imagine it was the closest term to the original. You mentioned guild or clan, I imagine based on games or litrpg, but both of those terms already refer to something else in real-world scenarios, with clans having close blood relations or at least familial cores (in fact most wuxia/xianxia have them, and they usually are entities of their own or band together to form larger sects) and guilds are professional associations, which cultivation is not. I guess you could argue alchemical or artifact refining sects being guilds, but it is not what I imagine you meant. Most sects in xianxia/wuxia are based on "daoist" cultivation, so other than actual monasteries, they could be considered as groups of loosely religious practitioners outside of the main religions (daoism is not really a big one), which is a sect by definition. Currently, the term "sect" usually refers to brainwashing cult-like "religions" or something of the like, so it is mostly derogatory.
Sects are formed by groups with shared religious or philosophical beliefs. Members of clans are usually considered to be blood related or of a common descent. Guilds are organizations or unions of workmen and tradesmen allying for mutual benefit and are more loosely tied. As far as I know, they all carry different connotations and are not exactly interchangeable. P.S. If you take away the religious associations, various cultivation sects can be more or less classified as different schools of thoughts.
It's 派系, so no. It's important to remember the setting of the jianghu in the wuxia genre was traditionally a bunch of weirdo martial artists who cut off contact with the secular world and formed their own weirdo society with weirdo rules. The big players are philosophical/religious organisations. It's worth nothing though that the translations aren't 1:1. Sometimes one word will be translated as sect, and then other times it might be translated as school. The reverse of that is that sometimes two different words will be both translated as sect. Usually you have,
It's just as Arkanth said, when I think of a sect outside xianxia, I think of a brainwashing religious cult, but I guess it depends on where you live. Thanks to everyone's explanations, I now understand the meaning much more deeply
You're sort of correct in that "sect" doesn't quite give the same feel as "派" in Chinese. The problem though is that Chinese has other words for "clan" and "guild" and these are often found in the same novel. It comes closer than any of the other compact English-language terms though so there really isn't a better alternative. Welcome to the world of not entirely precise translations! "Sect" is very much still used in its proper meaning - as a reference to religious denomination. The problem is that it's not used very much by itself so it's easy to get an incorrect feel from the word. Instead the most common usage I remember is as a part of "sectarian violence"; most commonly used to refer to tensions in Northern Ireland, but used in other places as well. It is very much a neutral term; or at least it's supposed to be. The cult-like religions that you're thinking of are just referred to as "cults".
Iv'e never thought of the words cult=sect tbh. What you're saying just sound like a cult. A sect just means different school of thought, except it pertains to a more "religious" viewpoint. It might just be a common misunderstanding of word usage for people
I'm with Saori on this, to me, cults are called cults while sects are more subdenominations of an established religion.