​​Mother Goddess Worship in Vietnam

A role for spirits in the wider ecology of life

springboards for reflection

There's a resurgence of mother goddess worship in Vietnam today. It's been happening for several decades now.  This is good news. It helps all of us remember that the larger ecology of life includes terrestrial ecology to be sure, but also an experiential ecology whereby we "feel the feelings" of beings who may well exist in other dimensions of what Whitehead calls the "extensive continuum."  Mother goddesses, for example. Perhaps the eternal Companion of whom Whitehead speaks, the One in whose heart the universe unfolds and who is often addressed as God, may herself be revealed through mother goddesses.

In any case the resurgence also humbles us. It helps us realize how paltry our images of ecology are, if we limit ourselves only to what we consider "measureable" in quantitative terms.  What's needed in colleges today is an integrative studies major: biology, anthropology, and philosophical cosmology, all in service to compassionate communities and ecological civilizations.  Any takers?

​- Jay McDaniel, October 3, 2021

A Young medium prepares for Hau Dong

​Hau Dong dancing  

​The three Mother Goddess-Mother of water, forest and sky

"In Mother Goddess worship, Hau Dong (loosely means ‘to mount the medium’ or ‘to go into a trance’) is the most important step. During the ceremony, mediums (who are traditionally chosen by deities at birth) and their assistants will don bright costumes, make offerings to Buddha, perform folk dances and petition the goddesses to descend and possess their bodies. When spirits are believed to have entered the body, the medium will appear to change personalities. From that point onward, all actions and words are said to be those of the spirit." (Vietnam Online)

Fjelstad, Karen & Nguyen Thi Hien (eds). Possessed by the spirits: mediumship in contemporary Vietnamese communities. 186 pp., figs, illus. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 2006. £19.95 (paper).

Book Review in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 15, 630-674 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2009

​This collection of essays on the rapidly increasing phenomenon of Vietnamese spirit mediumship comes with a comprehensive introduction by the editors and a masterly summarizing conclusion by Laurel Kendall. Both editors contribute their own essays while Fjelstad also collaborates with another contributor, Lisa Maiffret, on a separate paper. Another main contributor, Kirsten Endres, also contributes to a further joint essay with Viveca Larsson. The collection is extensively cross-referenced.

The essays, based largely on recent field research, veer between the more ethnographic and the more theoretically orientated, but all show a thorough knowledge of their subject and raise interesting questions about mediumship in general, its relations to personal transformation, the state, and gender. From a practice until very recently condemned as ‘superstitious’, the cult seems to be moving towards a more ‘theatrical performance representing Vietnamese national culture’ (p. 13). Fjelstad and Maiffret also deal with its transnational aspects as (mostly US) mediums begin to travel between California and Vietnam.

In the concluding essay, Kendall notes that the contributors have gone well beyond an earlier paradigm, derived from the work of Ioan Lewis, which would have portrayed these largely female cults of the ‘mother goddess’ as a peripheral form empowering women by comparison with the more male exorcistic possession cult associated with the heroic historical figure of Tran Hung Dao. These two main forms of mediumship now appear to be merging, as the introduction (p. 10) notes and Pham Quynh Phuong’s paper argues. And after some serious disavowals and understandable reluctance to indulge lightly in cross-cultural comparisons, Kendall does nevertheless draw out some most suggestive ‘resonant’ threads (p. 164) across other East Asian (and Southeast Asian) societies, particularly those influenced by Mahayana Buddhism, where dancing musical female mediums communicate with the spirits of the deceased or cultural heroes and deities, from Burma and Thailand to China, drawing on her own work on Korean mediumship.
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It is clear that the rituals examined here largely form part of a modern, or made-over, tradition, and there has been considerable recent work on them around and since the time this book was prepared, such as the special issue of Asian Ethnology (formerly Asian Folklore Studies) in 2008 (67: 2), entitled ‘Popular religion and the sacred life of material goods in contemporary Vietnam’ (ed. L. Kendall), and the work of Philip Taylor which many of the contributors refer to. Several of the contributors, like Barley Norton and Pham Quynh Phuong, have their own books out and form some of the dominant voices in this field.

Ngo Duc Thinh provides a compelling overview of the history of this ‘mother goddess worship’, while Pham Quynh Phuong provides ethnographic details of the relationship between the ‘Saint Tran’ cult and that of the mother goddess possession cults. Norton’s piece on music and gender is also of great interest, arguing that mediumship provides flexible opportunities for transgressing gender boundaries while still remaining contained within stereotypical gender frameworks. Several essays discuss the recent concern with ‘materialism’ and the sense of nostalgia displayed by some modern mediums for the recent past, when most popular religious practices were severely suppressed (e.g. Fjelstad; Larsson and Endres).

The penultimate contribution (Larsson and Endres) emphasizes the importance of the ‘ritual community’ in which mediums are embedded (as do Fjelstad and Maiffret), and this is perhaps a topic one would have liked to learn more about from this collection, in which fieldwork seems often to be based on interviews with individual mediums. Other contributions deal with the vital importance of the therapeutic value of mediumship (Endres; Nguyen Thi Hien; Fjelstad and Maiffret), and again one would like to hear more of the medical system involved in the initiations of mediums and their diagnoses of illness. Kendall, in conclusion, notes the long association of ‘economics and a popular religion’ (p. 179) in these areas – which is pointed to by Nguyen Thi Hien’s examination of paper offerings and competitiveness between mediums under the impact of the market economy – and the continuing significance of the imagined pre-modern state (the ‘historical imaginary of the pre-modern state’, p. 181) in these novel, or revived, ritual formulations. Beyond the rational gates of bureaucracy, a popular ritual economy flourishes, yet now its performance elements appear to lend themselves to its inscription within a national story. This collection well approaches what Kendall (p. 168) notes as the ‘messiness, openness, and geographical and ontological fluidity’ of popular religion. The collection includes nice black-and-white illustrations.

Nicholas Tapp Australian National University

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​
​Hau dong – An Age-old
​ Spirit Possession Ritual

Reposted from the Vietnam Pictorial website.  Click here.
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​Story: Vinh Hung
Photos: Vu Hieu 
Sept. 29, 2010
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"The ritual to worship Mother, or the Mother Goddess Religion, is one of the main religions in Vietnam which originated from the thousand-year-old age of matriarchy. From the 16 th century, based on the ritual to worship the Goddesses, it developed into the worshipping of the Three (or Four) Mother Goddesses with Mother Goddess Lieu Hanh being in the ancestral tablet. Hau dong , a spirit possession ritual of the Mother Goddess religion, is a folk religious performance that holds both spiritual and folk artistic meanings.

The ritual to worship Mother, or the Mother Goddess Religion, is one of the main religions in Vietnam which originated from the thousand-year-old age of matriarchy. From the 16th century, based on the ritual to worship the Goddesses, it developed into the worshipping of the Three (or Four) Mother Goddesses with Mother Goddess Lieu Hanh being in the ancestral tablet. Hau dong, a spirit possession ritual of the Mother Goddess religion, is a folk religious performance that holds both spiritual and folk artistic meanings.

Hau dong is a combined ritual with various folk artistic values in terms of literature, music, dancing, fine arts, performing art and folk festival. The performers, called spirit mediums, are thought to be able to contact directly with the spirits, while the ceremony attendants (the audience) hope to have contact with the spirits to ask for their blessing.
Hau dong is often held in temples or palaces where there is always a solemn religious space for worshipping and making offerings to the holy beings. The ritual of mother worship is symbolized through the statues, folk paintings, decorations and costumes in five colours representing five basic elements (metal, wood, water, fire and earth according to Eastern philosophy). 

​Hau dong is performed on a stage in front of the Mother Goddess' altar, which is called a spiritual stage. The head of a Hau dong ritual can be either male or female and is believed to have a spirit within who performs on the stage covered with a mat and is helped by two assistants in charge of changing the medium's costumes to be appropriate to each session. A band of musicians sit by the stage playing flutes, drums and a two-stringed zither and are accompanied by two or three singers who sing when the spirit crosses over to the medium. For each Hau dong performance there may be several spirits who, one after another, incarnate into the medium to dance and distribute offerings to the audience. When the medium gets into a trance, a session begins. In general, there are about 36 sessions for one Hau dong, each representing a spirit, a goddess, a mandarin or a sacred object.

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The dances in a Hau dong performance comprise various forms of the dancing art. In each session the dances represent the characteristics of the spirit. If he is a general, the dances will be martial arts moves – quick and strong – with military weapons and flags, and if she is a mountainous goddess, normally an ethnic woman, the medium will dance with fans or just bare hands in ethnic musical tunes. The fans are made with leather and in colours of white, green, red or yellow, each suited to the palace decoration of each goddess. A session for a prince will have dances with a lance, a cudgel or a bow and arrows, while for a princess' session, the dances are very charming when the medium wears beautiful costumes, dancing with fans and flowers, pretending to embroider or row a boat... In imitating dances, the audience will see the medium mimic riding a horse, rowing a boat, or carrying loaded baskets. Dancing props are a sword, fans, oars, scarves,flags, etc.

A Hau dong stage can be as small as the size of a mat, hence conventional and stylized forms are used in dancing. All body movements are performed in such a skilful way that the audience will feel that the spirit is on the stage in front of them, in the body of the medium. In addition to the body performance, the literary value of the Hau dong is reflected through the songs, dances, tales and verses rich in philosophy, music and humanity.
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A Role for Spirits in the
Wider Ecology of Life

A Whiteheadian appreciation of Hau Dong
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Do spirits exist?  For Whiteheadians the question is an empirical question, not a metaphysical question.  They may exist as agents in their own right, or they may be figures of the imagination, but not agents. 

For Whiteheadians the question is: What does the evidence suggest?  This question need not be settled.  What is important is to be open to the possibility and sensitive to cultures in which spirits play a prominent role.  Vietnam, for example.

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​In Vietnam as in many cultures around the world, reality consist of "realms."  The three realms of Vietnam are heaven, water, and mountainous forests.  One of the goddesses is Liễu Hạnh: a nymph who descended to earth, lived as a human and became a Buddhist nun.  Is she, too, part of the ecology of life? 

Whitehead helps us be open to this possibility and to recognize that the very soul of the universe, God, may work through folk religions in general, and goddess religions in particular.  With his notion of an extensive continuum of multiple regions, only a few of which are in three-dimensional space, Whitehead's philosophy invites us to consider more carefully the idea, found in folk religions around the world, that there are spirit worlds as well as three dimensional worlds.  And with his idea that in human experience we can "feel the feelings" of other actualities empathically, such that their feelings become our own, Whitehead's philosophy also invites us to consider more carefully the possibility that, in some circumstances, we (or a medium) might feel the feelings of spirit and thus be "possessed" by them.  It is likewise possible that the energies of some of these spirits are female, not male, at least as felt by people, in which case they are, as it were, mother goddesses. 

Such thoughts can provide a lens for appreciating and learning from Hao Dong, an age-old spirit possession ritual in Vietnam.   We need not, and ought not, think of these rituals as quaint but superstitious.  The very word "superstition" carries with it an ignorance and arrogance, typically Western and characteristic of scientism.  With help from Whitehead, we can be even more open to the possibility that, in the rituals themselves, something real is happening. 

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The value of this approach is twofold.  It helps us honor the perspectives of the people who undertake and enjoy the rituals, and it widens our own sense of "ecology."  Too often in the modern west "ecology" has been restricted to what can be seen with the eyes and measure scientifically.  And yet, for most people in the world, ecology has been more than this.  It has included spirit worlds as well as physical worlds.  And, of course, it has included human beings as they negotiate relations between both spiritual and the physical.   Whatever other factors may shape the life of a medium in Vietnam and the ritual community of which she is a part, be they economic or political or cultural, we best recognize that, as she awakens to a realm of the imaginal, she may well be awakening to spirits that truly exist and from which we, too, need guidance. 

And if we believe in God, we best recognize that God may well work through mother goddesses, too: that they themselves may be among the most important forms of divine energy we can receive today, to move past the assaults we now inflict on one another and the earth, all in the name of development.  True development - the kind that is life-affirming - includes a requires a wider ecology and a deeper appreciation of life.  Yes, of course, it includes openness to mother goddesses.

Jay McDaniel, Oct. 3, 3021

"To meet spiritual needs, everyday wishes and gain help in achieving good health and success communities in Viet Nam worship the Mother Goddesses of Three Realms: heaven, water, and mountains and forests. The Mother Goddesses include Liễu Hạnh (a nymph who descended to earth, lived as a human and became a Buddhist nun) referred to as the Mother of the World, and other spirits considered legendary heroes. The traditional practice involves daily worship and participation in ceremonies, rituals like the spirit possession ritual and festivals such as Phủ Dầy that take place at temples dedicated to the Mother Goddesses. These activities associated with the practice help to maintain part of the community’s history, cultural heritage and identity with some aspects incorporating traditional costumes, music and dance. Bearers and practitioners are members of the public, temple guardians, ritual priests, spirit mediums, assistants and musicians who transmit knowledge and skills orally to newcomers and family members. The practice of shared values and strong beliefs in the compassion and grace of the Mother Goddesses provides a basis for social relations connecting members of participating communities. The worshipping of the Mother Goddesses also contributes to the appreciation of women and their roles in society."

UNESCO: https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/practices-related-to-the-viet-beliefs-in-the-mother-goddesses-of-three-realms-01064#identification​