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Vietnamese folk religion ( vi, tín ngưỡng dân gian Việt Nam, sometimes just called ,
Chữ Hán Chữ Hán (𡨸漢, literally "Chinese characters", ), Chữ Nho (𡨸儒, literally "Confucian characters", ) or Hán tự (漢字, ), is the Vietnamese term for Chinese characters, used to write Văn ngôn (which is a form of Classical Chinese ...
: ) is the
ethnic religion In religious studies, an ethnic religion is a religion or belief associated with a particular ethnic group. Ethnic religions are often distinguished from universal religions, such as Christianity or Islam, in which gaining converts is a prima ...
of the
Vietnamese people The Vietnamese people ( vi, người Việt, lit=Viet people) or Kinh people ( vi, người Kinh) are a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to modern-day Northern Vietnam and Southern China (Jing Islands, Dongxing, Guangxi). The native la ...
. About 86% of the population in Vietnam are associated with this religion. Vietnamese folk religion is not an organized religious system, but a set of local worship traditions devoted to the , a term which can be translated as "spirits", "gods" or with the more exhaustive locution "generative powers". These gods can be nature deities or national, community or kinship
tutelary deities A tutelary () (also tutelar) is a deity or a spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of "tutelary" expresses the concept of safety and ...
or ancestral gods and the ancestral gods of a specific family. Ancestral gods are often deified heroic persons. Vietnamese mythology preserves narratives telling of the actions of many of the cosmic gods and cultural heroes. The Vietnamese indigenous religion is sometimes identified as Confucianism since it carries values that were emphasized by
Confucius Confucius ( ; zh, s=, p=Kǒng Fūzǐ, "Master Kǒng"; or commonly zh, s=, p=Kǒngzǐ, labels=no; – ) was a Chinese philosopher and politician of the Spring and Autumn period who is traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages. C ...
. is a distinct form of Vietnamese shamanism, giving prominence to some
mother goddess A mother goddess is a goddess who represents a personified deification of motherhood, fertility goddess, fertility, creation, destruction, or the earth goddess who embodies the bounty of the earth or nature. When equated with the earth or t ...
es into its pantheon. The
government of Vietnam The Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (), also known as the Vietnamese Government or the Government of Vietnam (), is the executive branch and body of the State administration of Vietnam. The members of the Government are appoi ...
also categorises as a form of Vietnamese indigenous religion, since it brings together the worship of the or local spirits with
Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
,
Confucianism Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China. Variously described as tradition, a philosophy, a Religious Confucianism, religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, ...
and
Taoism Taoism (, ) or Daoism () refers to either a school of philosophical thought (道家; ''daojia'') or to a religion (道教; ''daojiao''), both of which share ideas and concepts of Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmony with the '' Ta ...
, as well as elements of
Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
,
Spiritism Spiritism (French: ''spiritisme''; Portuguese: ''espiritismo'') is a spiritualist, religious, and philosophical doctrine established in France in the 1850s by the French teacher, educational writer, and translator Hippolyte Léon Denizard R ...
and
Theosophy Theosophy is a religion established in the United States during the late 19th century. It was founded primarily by the Russian Helena Blavatsky and draws its teachings predominantly from Blavatsky's writings. Categorized by scholars of religion a ...
.


History

The Vietnamese folk religion was suppressed in different times and ways from 1945, the end of the dynastic period, to the 1980s. The destruction, neglect, or dilapidation of temples was particularly extensive in
North Vietnam North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; vi, Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa), was a socialist state supported by the Soviet Union (USSR) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Southeast Asia that existed f ...
during the
land reform Land reform is a form of agrarian reform involving the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution, generally of agricultura ...
(1953–1955), and in reunified Vietnam during the period of
collectivisation Collective farming and communal farming are various types of, "agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise". There are two broad types of communal farms: agricultural cooperatives, in which member- ...
(1975–1986). Debate and criticism of cultural destruction and loss began in the 1960s. However, the period between 1975 and 1979 saw the most zealous anti-religion campaign and destruction of temples. On the eve of the
Đổi Mới (, ; ) is the name given to the economic reforms initiated in Vietnam in 1986 with the goal of creating a "socialist-oriented market economy". The term itself is a general term with wide use in the Vietnamese language meaning "innovate" or " ...
reforms, from 1985 onwards, the state gradually returned to a policy of protection of the religious culture, and the Vietnamese indigenous religion was soon promoted as the backbone of "a progressive culture, imbued with national identity". In the project of nation-building, the public discourse encourages the worship of ancient heroes of the Vietnamese identity, and gods and spirits with a long-standing presence in folk religion. The relationship between the state and the local communities is flexible and dialogical in the process of religious renewal; both the state and the common people are mutual protagonists in the recent revival of Vietnamese folk religion.


Concept of

In Vietnamese folk religion, (
chữ Hán Chữ Hán (𡨸漢, literally "Chinese characters", ), Chữ Nho (𡨸儒, literally "Confucian characters", ) or Hán tự (漢字, ), is the Vietnamese term for Chinese characters, used to write Văn ngôn (which is a form of Classical Chinese ...
: ) has a meaning equivalent to
holy Sacred describes something that is dedicated or set apart for the service or worship of a deity; is considered worthy of spiritual respect or devotion; or inspires awe or reverence among believers. The property is often ascribed to objects (a ...
and
numen Numen (plural numina) is a Latin term for " divinity", "divine presence", or "divine will." The Latin authors defined it as follows:For a more extensive account, refer to Cicero writes of a "divine mind" (''divina mens''), a god "whose numen ev ...
, that is the power of a deity to affect the world of the living. Compound Sino-Vietnamese words containing the term indicate a large semantic field: "sacred", "prodigious manifestation" (see
xian ling ''Xian ling'' () is the notion of a numinous, sacred ('' ling'') presence of a god or gods in the Chinese traditional religion. The term can be variously translated as "divine efficacy", "divine virtue", or also "efficacious response"; these ter ...
), "responsive (to prayers, etc.)" (see ''
ganying ''Gǎnyìng'' or ''yìng'' is a Chinese cultural keyword meaning a "correlative resonance" pulsating throughout the purported force field of '' qi'' that infuses the cosmos. When the idea of ''ganying'' first appeared in Chinese classics from ...
''), "efficacious", "spirit of a person", "spirit of a dead person before 'going over, "spirit of a dead person that has 'gone over. These concepts derived from Chinese ''ling''. is itself a variation of , meaning "constitutive principle of a being", "essence of a thing", " daemon", "
intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can ...
" or "
perspicacity Perspicacity (also called perspicaciousness) is a penetrating discernment (from the Latin perspicācitās, meaning throughsightedness, discrimination)—a clarity of vision or intellect which provides a deep understanding and insight. It takes t ...
". Linh is the mediating bivalency, the "medium", between âm and dương, that is "disorder" and "order", with order (, ''yang'' in Chinese) preferred over disorder (, ''yin'' in Chinese). As bivalency, is also
metonym Metonymy () is a figure of speech in which a concept is referred to by the name of something closely associated with that thing or concept. Etymology The words ''metonymy'' and ''metonym'' come from grc, μετωνυμία, 'a change of name' ...
ic of the inchoate order of creation. More specifically, the linh power of an entity resides in mediation between the two levels of order and disorder which govern social transformation. The mediating entity itself shifts of status and function between one level and another, and makes meaning in different contexts. This attribute is often associated with goddesses, animal motifs such as the snake (an amphibian animal), the owl which takes night for day, the bat being half bird and half mammal, the
rooster The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adult m ...
who crows at the crack between night and morning, but also rivers dividing landmasses, and other "liminal" entities. There are gods such as , and gods such as
Trần Hưng Đạo Trần Hưng Đạo (; 1228–1300), real name Trần Quốc Tuấn (陳國峻), also known as Grand Prince Hưng Đạo (''Hưng Đạo Đại Vương'' - 興道大王), was a Vietnamese royal prince, statesman and military commander of Đạ ...
. is a "cultural logic of symbolic relations", that mediates polarity in a dialectic governing reproduction and change. Linh has also been described as the ability to set up spatial and temporal boundaries, represent and identify metaphors, setting apart and linking together differences. The boundary is crossed by practices such as
sacrifice Sacrifice is the offering of material possessions or the lives of animals or humans to a deity as an act of propitiation or worship. Evidence of ritual animal sacrifice has been seen at least since ancient Hebrews and Greeks, and possibly exis ...
and
inspiration Inspiration, inspire, or inspired often refers to: * Artistic inspiration, sudden creativity in artistic production * Biblical inspiration, the doctrine in Judeo-Christian theology concerned with the divine origin of the Bible * Creative inspirat ...
(
shamanism Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiri ...
). Spiritual mediumship makes the individual the center of actualising possibilities, acts and events indicative of the will of the gods. The association of linh with liminality implies the possibility of constructing various kinds of social times and history. In this way, the etho-political (ethnic) dimension is nurtured, regenerated by re-enactment, and constructed at first place, imagined and motivated in the process of forging a model of reality.


Confucianism and Taoism

The Vietnamese folk religion fosters Confucian values, and it is for this reason often identified as "Confucianism". Temples of Literature () are temples devoted to the worship of Confucius that in imperial times also functioned as academies. Taoism is believed to have been introduced into Vietnam during the first Chinese domination of Vietnam. In its pure form it is rarely practiced in Vietnam, but can still be seen in places with Chinese communities such as Saigon, where there is a community of Cantonese/Vietnamese Taoist priest residing in the Khánh Vân Nam Viện Pagoda. Elements of its doctrines have also been absorbed into the Vietnamese folk religion. Taoist influence is also recognisable in the
Caodaist Caodaism ( vi, Đạo Cao Đài, Chữ Hán: ) is a monotheistic syncretic new religious movement officially established in the city of Tây Ninh in southern Vietnam in 1926. The full name of the religion is (The Great Faith or theThird Uni ...
and
Đạo Mẫu Đạo Mẫu (, ) is the worship of mother goddesses which was established in Vietnam in the 16th century. While scholars like Ngô Đức Thịnh propose that it represents a systematic worship of mother goddesses, Đạo Mẫu draws together fa ...
religions. According to Professor Liam Keelley during the Tang dynasty native spirits were subsumed into Daoism and the Daoist view of these spirits completely replaced the original native tales. Buddhism and Daoism replaced native narratives surrounding Mount .


Indigenous religious movements


Caodaism

The Cao Đài faith ( vi, Đạo Cao Đài "Way of the Highest Power") is an organised
monotheistic Monotheism is the belief that there is only one deity, an all-supreme being that is universally referred to as God. Cross, F.L.; Livingstone, E.A., eds. (1974). "Monotheism". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2 ed.). Oxford: Oxfor ...
Vietnamese folk religion formally established in the city of Tây Ninh in southern Vietnam in 1926.The full name of the religion is Đại Đạo Tam Kỳ Phổ Độ ("Great Way
f the F, or f, is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ef'' (pronounced ), and the plural is ''efs''. His ...
Third Time fRedemption"). Followers also call their religion Đạo Trời ("Way of God"). Cao Đài has common roots and similarities with the Tiên Thiên Đạo doctrines. Cao Đài (, literally the "Highest Lord" or "Highest Power"), is the highest deity, the same as the Ngọc Hoàng, who created the universe. He is worshipped in the main temple, but Caodaists also worship the Mother Goddess, also known as the Queen Mother of the West (Diêu Trì Kim Mẫu, Tây Vương Mẫu). The symbol of the faith is the Left Eye of God, representing the dương (masculine, ordaining, positive and expansive) activity of the male creator, which is balanced by the yin (âm) activity of the feminine, nurturing and restorative mother of humanity.


Đạo Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương ("Way of the Strange Fragrance from the Precious Mountain") is a religious tradition with
Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
,
Taoist Taoism (, ) or Daoism () refers to either a school of philosophical thought (道家; ''daojia'') or to a religion (道教; ''daojiao''), both of which share ideas and concepts of Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmony with the '' Tao ...
,
Confusianism Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China. Variously described as tradition, a philosophy, a religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, a way of governing, or a ...
,
Zen Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...
,
Yiguandao Yiguandao / I-Kuan Tao (),; ko, 일관도, Ilgwando; th, อนุตตรธรรม, . meaning the Consistent Way or Persistent Way, is a Chinese salvationist religious sect that emerged in the late 19th century, in Shandong, to become C ...
elements, originally practiced by the mystic Đoàn Minh Huyên (1807–1856) and continued by Huỳnh Phú Sổ, founder of the
Hòa Hảo Hòa Hảo is a religious movement described either as a syncretistic folk religion or as a sect of Buddhism. It was founded in 1939 by Huỳnh Phú Sổ (1920–1947), who is regarded as a saint by its devotees. It is one of the major religio ...
sect. The name itself refers to the Thất Sơn range on the Vietnamese-Cambodian border, where Huyên claimed to be a living
Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist tradition, he was born in L ...
. During a
cholera Cholera is an infection of the small intestine by some strains of the bacterium '' Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea that lasts a few days. Vomiting an ...
epidemic in 1849, which killed over a million people, Huyên was reputed to have supernatural abilities to cure the sick and the insane. His followers wore amulets bearing the Chinese characters for Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương, a phrase that became identified, retrospectively, with the religion practiced by Huyên, and the
millenarian Millenarianism or millenarism (from Latin , "containing a thousand") is the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming fundamental transformation of society, after which "all things will be changed". Millenarian ...
movement associated with the latter. The faith has roughly 15,000 adherents mostly concentrated in the provinces of An Giang, Đồng Tháp, Bà Rịa–Vũng Tàu, Long An, Sóc Trăng,
Vĩnh Long Vĩnh Long () is a city and the capital of Vĩnh Long Province in Vietnam's Mekong Delta. Vĩnh Long covers and has a population of 147,039 (as of 2009). The name was spelled 永 隆 ("eternal prosperity") in the former Hán Nôm writing syst ...
,
Tiền Giang The term ''tiền'' ( Hán tự: 錢) is used to refer to various currency-related concepts used in Vietnamese history. The name is a cognate with the Chinese ''qián'' (錢), a unit of weight called " mace" in English. It can refer to a unit ...
and
Bến Tre Bến Tre () is the capital city of Bến Tre Province, in the Mekong Delta region of southern Vietnam. Located southwest of Ho Chi Minh City, the city covers an area of 65.75 km2 (25.39 sq mi) and has a population of 124,499 at the ...
.


("Way of the Mother") refers to the worship of the (the
Mother Goddess A mother goddess is a goddess who represents a personified deification of motherhood, fertility goddess, fertility, creation, destruction, or the earth goddess who embodies the bounty of the earth or nature. When equated with the earth or t ...
) and the various mother goddesses, constituting a central feature of Vietnamese folk religion. The worship of female goddesses by the Vietnamese dates back to
prehistory Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The us ...
. It is possible that the concept of a Mother Goddess came to encompass the different spirits of nature as one only spirit manifesting itself in a variety of forms. Along history, various human heroines, emerged as protectors or healers, were deified as other manifestations of the Mother Goddess. As a distinct movement with its own priesthood (made of
shaman Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spir ...
s capable of merging the material and the spiritual world), temples, and rituals, was revived since the 1970s in North Vietnam and then in the newly unified country. In the pantheon of the is viewed as the supreme, originating god, but he is regarded as abstract and rarely worshipped. The supreme goddess is . The pantheon of the religion includes many other gods, both male and female.


or just is an organised Vietnamese folk religion founded in the late 1800s. It has roughly 80,000 followers scattered throughout southern Vietnam, but especially concentrated in Tri Tôn District.Đôi nét về đạo tứ ân hiếu nghĩa
gov.vn


The or is a group of five religions that have Tiên Thiên Đạo roots in common with, yet pre-date and have influenced,
Caodaism Caodaism ( vi, Đạo Cao Đài, Chữ Hán: ) is a monotheistic syncretic new religious movement officially established in the city of Tây Ninh in southern Vietnam in 1926. The full name of the religion is (The Great Faith or theThird Uni ...
. means the "Way of Light". They are part of the broad milieu of Chinese-Vietnamese religious sectarianism. After the 17th century, when the
Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last ort ...
saw its power decline, a large number of Minh sects started to emerge in
Cochinchina Cochinchina or Cochin-China (, ; vi, Đàng Trong (17th century - 18th century, Việt Nam (1802-1831), Đại Nam (1831-1862), Nam Kỳ (1862-1945); km, កូសាំងស៊ីន, Kosăngsin; french: Cochinchine; ) is a historical exon ...
, especially around
Saigon , population_density_km2 = 4,292 , population_density_metro_km2 = 697.2 , population_demonym = Saigonese , blank_name = GRP (Nominal) , blank_info = 2019 , blank1_name = – Total , blank1_ ...
. The Chinese authorities took little interest in these sects, since, at least until the early 20th century, they limited their activities to their temples. They were autonomous structures, focusing on worship, philanthropy and literature. Yet they had embryonic Vietnamese nationalistic elements, which evolved along the development of their political activity in the early 20th century. Five movements appeared in southern Vietnam in the 19th and 20th centuries: Minh Sư Đạo ("Way of the Enlightened Master"), ("Way of the Enlightened Reason"), ("Way of the Temple of Light"), ("Way of the Foreseeable Kindness") and ("Way of the New Light"). The founder of was Âu Kiệt Lâm (1896–1941), an intellectual of half Chinese and half Vietnamese blood, and a shaman, capable of transcending the cultural barriers of the two peoples. The primary deities of the pantheon of the sects are the Jade Emperor () and the Queen Mother of the West (). Symbolic, liturgical and theological features of the sects were shared with the Caodaist religion. From 1975 onwards, the activities and temples of some of the religions have been absorbed into sects of Caodaism, while others, especially and , have remained distinct.


The ("School of Teaching Goodness") emerged in the 1990s in the Vĩnh Bảo District, a rural area of the city of
Hải Phòng Haiphong ( vi, Hải Phòng, ), or Hải Phòng, is a major industrial city and the third-largest in Vietnam. Hai Phong is also the center of technology, economy, culture, medicine, education, science and trade in the Red River delta. Haiphong ...
. A local carpenter known simply as "Master Thu" claimed to have been visited at night by the spirit of 16th-century sage
Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm ( Hán tự: 阮 秉 謙; 1491–1585) was a Vietnamese administrator, confucianist, poet, prophet and later a saint of the Cao Dai religion and of the new religious movement known as School of Teaching Goodness. B ...
, who ordered him to build a shrine in his honor. Thu owned some land, where he built and inaugurated in 1996 a shrine to Khiêm. By 2016, it had attracted more than 10,000 visitors, and Thu had organized around the channeled messages of Khiêm a new religious movement with thousands of followers.


Features


Deities

A rough typological identification of Vietnamese
Gods A deity or god is a supernatural being who is considered divine or sacred. The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greater ...
categorises them into four categories: * Heavenly Deities ( thiên thần) and nature gods (nhiên thần) of grottoes, rocks and trees, rivers and oceans, rain and lightning, generative or regenerative powers of the cosmos or a locality, with geo-physical or anthropomorphic representations (sometimes using iconographic styles of Buddhist derivation). *
Tutelary Deities A tutelary () (also tutelar) is a deity or a spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of "tutelary" expresses the concept of safety and ...
or deified
ancestor An ancestor, also known as a forefather, fore-elder or a forebear, is a parent or ( recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent and so forth). ''Ancestor'' is "any person from w ...
s or
progenitor In genealogy, the progenitor (rarer: primogenitor; german: Stammvater or ''Ahnherr'') is the – sometimes legendary – founder of a family, line of descent, clan or tribe, noble house, or ethnic group.. Ebenda''Ahnherr:''"Stammvater eines ...
s (nhân thần), originally either consecrated by villagers or installed by the Vietnamese or Chinese rulers. They include
hero A hero (feminine: heroine) is a real person or a main fictional character who, in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, courage, or strength. Like other formerly gender-specific terms (like ''actor''), ''her ...
es, founding patriarchs, able men and founders of arts and crafts. This category can include impure spirits (dâm thần). **
Thành hoàng Thành hoàng (Chữ Hán: 城隍) or Thần hoàng (神隍), Thần Thành hoàng (神城隍) refers to the gods that is enshrined in each village's communal temple in Vietnam. The gods is believed to guard the village against disasters and bring ...
() means the tutelary deity that is enshrined in each village's communal temple in Vietnam. The deity is believed to guard the village against disasters and bring it fortune. * Various
hierarchical A hierarchy (from Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an important ...
or court-like pantheons inherited from the
Taoist Taoism (, ) or Daoism () refers to either a school of philosophical thought (道家; ''daojia'') or to a religion (道教; ''daojiao''), both of which share ideas and concepts of Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmony with the '' Tao ...
patterns, headed by the Ngọc Hoàng, the immortals (tiên), the holy sages (thánh), including the local "divine ensembles" (chư vị). They are mostly Vietnamese formations, but often with sinicised motifs. * Deities of Cham, Khmer, and other Southeast Asian ethnic origin, such as Po Yan Inu Nagar (
Thiên Y A Na :''See also Lady Po Nagar'' Thiên Y A Na (Chữ Hán: 天依阿那) is a Vietnamese goddess. She is worshipped in the Vietnamese folk religion and Đạo Mẫu, the mother goddess religion. She is also known as Lady Po Nagar, the Cham deity from ...
), Cá Ông the Whale God, and the rocks Neak Ta (Ông Tà). Some of the most popular Deities are: Kinh Dương Vương and his son
Lạc Long Quân Lạc Long Quân (Chữ Hán:貉龍君; "Dragon King of Lạc"; also called Sùng Lãm 崇纜) is a semi-mythical king of the Hồng Bàng dynasty of ancient Vietnam. Quân was the son of Kinh Dương Vương, the king of Xích Quỷ. He is the ...
(who, with his wife
Âu Cơ Âu Cơ (Chữ Hán: ; ) was, according to the creation myth of the Vietnamese people, an immortal mountain snow fairy who married Lạc Long Quân (), and bore an egg sac that hatched a hundred children known collectively as Bách Việt, ancest ...
, gave rise to the Vietnamese race), The Four Immortals ( Tản Viên Sơn Thánh, Thánh Gióng,
Chử Đồng Tử Chử Đồng Tử (Chữ Hán: 褚童子) is the name of a famous Vietnamese divine being, one of " The Four Immortals" "Tứ bất tử" in traditional Vietnamese mythology. In legend Chử Đồng Tử appeared on a yellow or golden dragon to Tr ...
, and
Liễu Hạnh Princess Liễu Hạnh ( vi, Liễu Hạnh Công chúa, chữ Hán: 柳杏公主) is one of The Four Immortals in Vietnamese folk religion, and also a leading figure in the mother goddess cult Đạo Mẫu, in which she governs the celestial rea ...
), the Four Palaces' Goddesses (
Mẫu Thượng Thiên Mẫu Thượng Thiên (Chữ Hán: 母上天) or Mẫu Đệ Nhất (母第一) is one of the four heavenly mothers in the Four Palaces in Vietnamese folk religion.Hy V. Luong ''Tradition, Revolution, and Market Economy in a North Vietnamese Vil ...
, Mẫu Thượng Ngàn, Mẫu Thoải, and Mẫu Địa), Đức Thánh Trần, Sơn Tinh and Thủy Tinh, Bà Chúa Kho, Bà Chúa Xứ, Thần Nông, Ngọc Hoàng, Bà Đen, Quán Thế Âm, Táo Quân, the
Bà mụ The Mười hai Bà mụ (Chữ Nôm: 邁台婆妈), or Thập nhị Bà thư (Chữ Hán: 十二婆姐), "Twelve Midwives" also called Mẹ Sanh (or Mẹ Sinh, 媽生) are deities from Vietnamese mythology and folk religion In religious studie ...
,
Kim Quy Kim Quy (Chữ Hán: 金龜) (“Gold Turtle”, also spelled Kim Qui) is a mythical golden turtle god appearing in several Vietnamese legends. In one legend, he appears to the early Vietnamese ruler An Dương Vương (d. 179 BC) and gives him o ...
and others. The Vietnamese mythology is the body of holy narrative telling the actions of many of these Deities.


Forms of worship and practices

The of the gods, as it is appropriated for social construction, is also appropriated in self-cultivation. It provides a locus for dialectical relations, between the individual and his or her social others, and between the self and the spirits, to intersect and overlap. This is especially true of the experiences provided through shamanic practices such as . Within the field of self-cultivation, action of self-empowering is expressed in a cluster of Vietnamese terms: "to correct", "to improve", as in "self-perfecting with meditation", "to cultivate gentleness/wisdom", or "to correct", "to repair"; the word "to repair", "to correct", as in "correction", "repair", or "to cure an illness"; the word "to rescue", as in "to cure", "to heal", in "to save souls", and "to save the country". The practice of self-cultivation knits together the individual and the social in an orientation of discourse and action. The individual project gives rise to a matrix of potentials, with which the individual deals with personal crises by constructing new meanings, seen as modalities of perfectibility.


Places of worship

Vietnamese temples are generically called (meaning "temple") in Vietnamese language. In the northern regions, the miếu are temples hosting the "main worship" of a deity and usually located at secluded places, while or are temples for "emissary" or "secondary worship" located nearer or within habitation places. In southern regions the two categories tend to blur. Nhà thờ họ are family shrines of northern and middle Vietnam, equivalent to the Chinese
ancestral shrine An ancestral shrine, hall or temple ( or , vi, Nhà thờ họ; Chữ Hán: 家祠户), also called lineage temple, is a temple dedicated to deified ancestors and progenitors of surname lineages or families in the Chinese tradition. Ancestra ...
s. Another categorisation proposed by observing the vernacular usage is that miếu are temples enshrining nature gods (
earth god An Earth god is a deification of the Earth associated with a figure with chthonic or terrestrial attributes. In Greek mythology, the Earth is personified as Gaia, corresponding to Roman Terra. Egyptian mythology have the sky goddesses, Nut a ...
s, water gods,
fire god This is a list of deities in fire worship. African mythology Yoruba mythology * Ogun, fire god and patron of blacksmiths, iron, warfare, metal tools * Ọya, goddess of fire, wind, transforms into buffalo, fertility * Shango, god of thunder and ...
s), or family chapels (); are shrines of
tutelary Deities A tutelary () (also tutelar) is a deity or a spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of "tutelary" expresses the concept of safety and ...
of a place; and are shrines of deified heroes, kings, and other virtuous historical persons. Actually, other terms, often of local usage, exist. For example, in middle Vietnam one of the terms used is cảnh, and in Quảng Nam province and Quảng Ngãi province a native term is khom. ("palace") refers to a templar complex of multiple buildings, while one single building is a . In English, in order to avoid confusion with Vietnamese Buddhist temples, đền and other words for of the Vietnamese folk religion's temples are commonly translated as "shrine".


See also


References


Sources

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External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vietnamese folk religion Folk religion Religion in Vietnam