Goddess on the Rise : : Pilgrimage and Popular Religion in Vietnam / / Philip Taylor.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter UHP eBook Package 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Taylor, Philip,
• Place / Publishing House: Honolulu : : University of Hawaii Press, , [2004]; ©2004
• Year of Publication: 2004
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (344 p.)

Since the early 1990s, the shrine of Ba Chua Xu, the Lady of the Realm, has become the most visited religious site in southern Vietnam, receiving more than a million visitors annually. Mother, benevolent creditor, healer, relationship advisor, business consultant, the Lady of the Realm is one of a group of goddesses whose shrines attract devotees from all corners of rural and urban society. Goddess on the Rise follows these pilgrims' pathways, taking readers on a journey through a cultural landscape of popular rites, beliefs, and exegesis into a world where female deities reign supreme. Philip Taylor's in-depth study of pilgrimage introduces readers to the practical expectations, passions, and controversies that surround the goddesses, bringing to life the effervescence, creativity, and flux of modern Vietnamese religion. He offers important insights into people's everyday experience of the profound economic, cultural, and social transformations underway in this socialist country.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: An Outline of the Quest -- 1. Spiritualizing the Borders -- 2. The Ethnicity of Efficacy -- 3. Embodying Market Relations -- 4. Reinscribing Rural Religion -- 5. Familiar Journeys -- 6. The Experience of Festival -- 7. Magical Fame and Symbolic Ambiguity -- 8. The Lady and the Buddha -- 9. Goddess of Freedom -- Epilogue: On Pilgrimages and Freedom in Late-Socialist Vietnam -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index