page_title: Vietnamese folk religion
section_title: Deities
hierarchical_section_title: Vietnamese folk religion / Features / Deities
caption_attribution_description: Tiếng Việt: Đền thờ chính thờ Lạc Long Quân tại đồi Sim, nằm trong quần thể di tích lịch sử đền Hùng (Phú Thọ, Việt Nam).
context_page_description: Vietnamese folk religion or Vietnamese indigenous religion Vietnamese: tín ngưỡng dân gian Việt Nam, is the ethnic religion of the Vietnamese people. About 45.3% of the population in Vietnam are associated with this religion, making it dominant in Vietnam.
  Vietnamese folk religion is not an organized religious system, but a set of local worship traditions devoted to the thần, 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 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. Đạo Mẫu is a distinct form of Vietnamese folk religion, giving prominence to some mother goddesses into its pantheon.
context_section_description: A rough typological identification of Vietnamese gods categorises them into four categories:
  Heavenly gods (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 gods or deified ancestors or progenitors (nhân thần), originally either consecrated by villagers or installed by the Vietnamese or Chinese rulers. They include heroes, founding patriarchs, able men and founders of arts and crafts. This category can include impure spirits (dâm thần).
  Various hierarchical or court-like pantheons inherited from the Taoist patterns, headed by the Heavenly Emperors, 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), Ca Ong the whale god, and the rocks Neak Ta (Ong Ta).
  Some of the most popular gods are: Kinh Dương Vương and his son Lạc Long Quân—who, with his wife Âu Cơ, gave rise to the Vietnamese race—, The Four Immortals (Tản Viên Sơn Thánh, Thánh Gióng, Chử Đồng Tử, and Liễu Hạnh), the Four Palaces' goddesses (Mẫu Thượng Thiên, Mẫu Thượng Ngàn, Mẫu Thoải, and Mẫu Địa Phủ), Trần Hưng Đạo, Sơn Tinh and Thủy Tinh, Bà Chúa Kho, Bà Chúa Xứ, Thần Nông, Bà Đen, Quán Thế Âm, the bà mụ, and others. The Vietnamese mythology is the body of holy narrative telling the actions of many of these gods.
caption: Lạc Long Quân Shrine in Phú Thọ.
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