The sanctity of goddesses: an insight into the worship of Bà Tổ Cô in Northern Vietnam

In Vietnam, a country where religious expression is widespread, many gods and goddesses are commonly worshipped. Among those, Bà Tổ Cô (Family Goddess) is widely worshipped in the North of Vietnam due to her exceptional background as unmarried, young, and having spiritual roots, unlike other national and heroic figures. This article examines the sanctity of the Family Goddess by decoding the terms, worshippers, beliefs and practices, sacred encounters and supports. The research is a final result of decade-long field trips, archival study, and in-depth interviews with various stakeholders. The research findings show that the veneration of the Family Goddess in Northern Vietnam is a continuity of a long-standing tradition of worshipping female deities in Asia and thus emphasising the need to maintain this unique intangible heritage as a crucial part of Vietnamese cultural diversity.

Gender and Pan-Species Democracy in the Anthropocene

There are diverse historical trajectories in human societies’ relationships with the non-human world. While many small place-based groups have tried to retain egalitarian partnerships with other species and ecosystems, larger societies have made major transitions. In religious terms, they have moved from worshipping female, male or androgynous non-human deities, to valorising pantheons of deities that, over time, became semi-human and then human in form. Reflecting Durkheimian changes in social and political arrangements, movements towards patriarchy led to declining importance in female deities, and the eventual primacy of single male Gods. With these changes came dualistic beliefs separating Culture from Nature, gendering these as male and female, and asserting male dominion over both Nature and women. These beliefs supported activities that have led to the current environmental crisis: unrestrained growth; hegemonic expansion; colonialism, and unsustainable exploitation of the non-human world. These are essentially issues of inequality: between genders, between human groups, and between human societies and other living kinds. This paper draws on a series of ethnographic research projects (since 1992) exploring human-environmental relationships, primarily in Australia, the UK, and New Zealand, and on a larger comparative study, over many years, of a range of ethnographic, archaeological, theological, and historical material from around the world. It considers contemporary debates challenging Nature-Culture dualism and promoting ‘rights for Nature’ or—rejecting anthropocentricity to recognize an indivisible world—for the non-human communities with whom we co-inhabit ecosystems. Proposing new ways to configure ethical debates, it suggests that non-human rights are, like women’s rights, fundamentally concerned with power relations, social status, and access to material resources, to the extent that the achievement of ‘pan-species democracy’ and greater equality between living kinds goes hand-in-hand with social, political and religious equality between genders.

Gender Transformation of Kwan Yin in Central China: The Mother Stereotype

Kwan Yin, although typically depicted as female in Chinese literature and artworks, is originally a male deity Avalokite?vara in India. This essay examines the process, reason, and impact of Kwan Yin’s feminization in the ancient Chinese context and argues that her gender transformation is a transformation to the mother stereotype. The essay mainly relies on primary source of Buddhist texts and folklores of Kwan-Yin in China and secondary sources researching the gender transformation of Kwan-Yin through historical and sociological lens. The essay concludes that while the female Kwan Yin’s popularity could be seen as gender empowering, the mother stereotype she and female deities of other religions embody in fact dismisses woman’s individual value.

The Udmurt Pantheon and the Udmurt Worldview

The research gives an overview of the Heavenly (in/inma/immu/inmu, lit: ‘heaven/heavenly earth’) area, its construction, and its gods. Udmurt narratives about the creation of the world are related to biblical subjects and images. In their folklore we find the image of a heavenly stove and heavenly table, i.e. the constellation of Ursa Major. The supreme deities include the creator God (Inmar, Kuaz’, Kyldys’in/Kylchin) and the female deities (Kaldyk-mumy/Kaltak, Shundy-mumy, “Mother-Sun / Mother of the Sun”, Invu-mumy “Mother of Heavenly Water / Heavenly Grace”, Invozho-mumy “Mother-Invozho, Goddess of Summer Feast Time, i.e. Transitional Time”, Gudyri-mumy, Thunder-Mother, Muz’’yem-mumy, Mother-Earth).

Power worship of Bharatiyar songs

Bharathi has sung about the power and Goddesses in his songs. It is noteworthy that most of the deities sung by Bharathi are Female Deities. This article evinces about Bharathi who claims “Sakthi” to be the source of all the powers. The state men and women in worshiping sakthi. She acts as ‘Kalaimagal’ (Saraswathi) when she gives wisdom, she acts as a ‘Thirumagal’ (Lakshmi) when shegives wealth and she acts as‘Mother Sakthi’ (Parvathi) when she gives valor.

CENTŪL KĀḶIYAM'MAṈ VAḺIPĀṬU [WORSHIP OF SENTUL KAALIAMMAN]

Tamils are considering female deities as unique. Tamils are worshipping female deities for long periods. This article is explaining about mother goddesses, Kotravai deity and Kaaliamman temple which located in Sentul, Kuala Lumpur. This article would explain briefly about the history and characteristic of mother goddesses, Kortavai deity and Sentul Kaaliamman temple. This research is a fieldwork and used library research method and observation method as research methods. This paper gives a wide explain about the mother goddesses, Kotravai deity and Sentul Kaaliamman.

Implications of geoarchaeological investigations for the contextualization of sacred landscapes in the Nile Delta

Key elements of sacred landscapes of the Nile Delta were lakes, canals and artificial basins connected to temples, which were built on elevated terrain. In the case of temples of goddesses of an ambivalent, even dangerous, nature, i.e. lioness goddesses and all female deities who could appear as such, the purpose of sacred lakes and canals exceeded their function as a water resource for basic practical and religious needs. Their pleasing coolness was believed to calm the goddess' fiery nature, and during important religious festivals, the barques of the goddesses were rowed on those waters. As archaeological evidence was very rare in the past, the study of those sacred waters was mainly confined to textual sources. Recently applied geoarchaeological methods, however, have changed this situation dramatically: they allow in-depth investigations and reconstructions of these deltaic sacred landscapes. Exploring these newly available data, the paper presented here focuses on the sites of Buto, Sais and Bubastis, by investigating the characteristics of their sacred lakes, canals and marshes with respect to their hydrogeographical and geomorphological context and to their role in ancient Egyptian religion and mythology as well.

Popular Religion in the Pala Period

This article is an iconographic study of four sculptures from northern Bengal, of four female deities associated with Vajrayana Buddhist and Brahmanical cultic and religious practices: Aparajita, Rudra-Camunda, a snake goddess, and Mesavahini Sarasvati. They are housed at the Akshaya Kumar Maitreya Heritage Museum in North Bengal University, the Balurghat College Museum and the Coochbehar Palace Museum—three regional museums in northern West Bengal. Their provenance indicates that they were produced in the heart of the Varendri region, in present-day West Bengal (India) and Bangladesh. This study sheds light on the background in which these images were conceived—that of the co-existence of Vajrayana Buddhist practices and philosophy, several major and minor Brahmanical cults, and other local religious practices whose existence pre-dates both Buddhism and organized Brahmanism.

Some remarks about the origin of BMAC female deities

The article deals with the question of the origin of the BMAC deities found in the high art of Margiana and Bactria especially in glyptic art, for which there are no local precursors in Turkmenistan or Afghanistan. By analyzing the art of the Kerman or Jiroft culture of Southeast Iran, especially the seal finds from Konar Sandal and the intercultural style objects, the direct antecedents of the BMAC pantheon in Southeast Iran could be demonstrated. Both regions have an almost identical pantheon of female deities with similar attributes, same stylistic features and identical attitudes, and they share a common myth that is depicted in the art of both regions. Nevertheless, the goddesses in the BMAC undergo modifications in representation, which concerns hairdo and costumes, but which is particularly evident in the altered depiction of attribute animals, which are now often fused together, and the increased depiction of winged gods and attribute animals.