Wednesday, March 25, 2026 · 天火 · tianmu.org
Southeast Asia
✦ ─── ⟐ ─── ✦
Texts
Cao Dai — The Great Faith of the Third AmnestyAn ethnographic introduction to Cao Dai — the Vietnamese syncretic religion founded in 1926 through spiritist revelation, which synthesizes Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Christianity into a unified cosmology while venerating figures from Victor Hugo to Sun Yat-sen among its divine saints.Nat and Phi — The Way of the Spirit WorldAn ethnographic introduction to the animist spirit traditions of mainland Southeast Asia — the Burmese cult of the Thirty-Seven Nats, with its spirit mediums, divine pantheon, and pilgrimage center at Mount Popa, and the phi spirit traditions of Thailand and Laos, including spirit houses, guardian cults, the remarkable Ghost Festival of Loei, and the Lao soul-calling ceremony of the baci. Traditions that Theravāda Buddhism absorbed, formalized, and never quite extinguished.Phật Giáo Hòa Hảo — The Way of Purified BuddhismAn ethnographic introduction to Hòa Hảo Buddhism — the Vietnamese prophetic religion founded in 1939 by the nineteen-year-old visionary Huỳnh Phú Sổ, which simplified Buddhist practice to the point where any peasant farmer could practice at home without clergy, temples, or ritual equipment, and which became one of the most politically consequential religious movements in twentieth-century Southeast Asia.