page_title: Animal worship
section_title: Whale
hierarchical_section_title: Animal worship / Hunting cults / Whale
caption_attribution_description: Tiếng Việt: Bộ cốt cá voi trong dinh Vạn Thủy Tú ở thành phố Phan Thiết, tỉnh Bình Thuận, Việt Nam.Hiện nay, đây là bộ cốt cá voi lớn nhất Việt Nam và cả vùng Đông Nam Á vẫn còn nguyên vẹn (dài 22m, nặng 65 tấn).
context_page_description: Animal worship is rituals involving animals, such as the glorification of animal deities or animal sacrifice. When a god is respected or worshipped by means of a representative animal, an animal cult is formed. Animal cults may be classified according to their outward form or according to their inward meaning, which may of course undergo transformations.
  The classical author Diodorus explained the origin of animal worship by recalling the myth in which the gods, supposedly threatened by giants, hid under the guise of animals. The people then naturally began to worship the animals that their gods had disguised themselves as and continued this act even after the gods returned to their normal state. In 1906, Weissenborn suggested that animal worship resulted from man's natural curiosity. Primitive man would observe an animal that had a unique trait and the inexplicability of this trait would appeal to man's curiosity. Wonder resulted from primitive man's observations of this distinctive trait and this wonder eventually induced adoration. Thus, primitive man worshipped animals that had inimitable traits. Lubbock put forward a more recent view.
context_section_description: Whales were little understood for most of human history as they spend up to 90% of their lives underwater, only surfacing briefly to breathe (Bird 2007). Many cultures, even those that have hunted them, hold whales in awe and feature them in their mythologies.
  A prevalent whale cult in Japan occurs around the coastal area. There are cemeteries with memorial stones dedicated to the whales which were hunted and killed to feed the people (Naumann, 1974, p. 4).
  Buddhist epitaphs mark these stones which implore that Buddha be reborn as a whale (Naumann, 1974, p. 4). Along with these memorials, there is evidence that whale embryos, found in a deceased mother's womb, were extracted and buried with the same respect as a human being (Naumann, 1974, p. 5). For certain shrines, the bones of a perished whale were also deposited in the area (Naumann, 1974, p. 5).
  In Alaska, there are cultures that have ceremonial tributes whales after they are captured in a hunt (Lantis 1938, p. 445). Some tribes bring the hump, the fins, or the nose of the whale into their camps or the whaler's house. These parts are meant to represent the entirety of the whale and are honored as such during the festival (Lantis 1938, p. 445). The bones of a whale are also given ritual treatment. The Alaskan tribes that participate in such acts believe that their ceremonies protect the whale's soul from injury and the soul can then be free to return to the sea (Lantis 1938, p. 445).
  In China, Yu-kiang, a whale with the hands and feet of a man was said to rule the ocean (Siebert 2011, pp. 15–16).
  In the Tyrol region of Austria, it was said that if a sunbeam were to fall on a maiden entering womanhood, she would be carried away in the belly of a whale (Frazer 1913, p. 72).
  Paikea (also maori name for humpback whales), the youngest and favourite son of the chief Uenuku from the island of Mangaia, in the present day Cook Islands, was said by the Kati Kuri people of Kaikoura to have come from the Pacific Islands on the back of Tohora (maori name for southern right whales) a whale many centuries before.
  The whale features in Inuit creation myths. When 'Big Raven', a deity in human form, found a stranded whale, he was told by the Great Spirit where to find special mushrooms that would give him the strength to drag the whale back to the sea and thus return order to the world (Siebert 2011, pp. 15–16).
  The Tlingit people of northern Canada say that the orcas were created when the hunter Natsihlane carved eight fish from yellow cedar, sang his most powerful spirit song and commanded the fish to leap into the water (Heimlich & Boran 2001, p. 7).
  In Icelandic legend a man threw a stone at a fin whale and hit the blowhole, causing the whale to burst. The man was told not to go to sea for twenty years, but in the nineteenth year he went fishing and a whale came and killed him.
  In East African legend, King Sulemani asked God that he might permit him to feed all the beings on earth. A whale came and ate until there was no corn left and then told Sulemani that he was still hungry and that there were 70,000 more in his tribe. Sulemani then prayed to God for forgiveness and thanked the creature for teaching him a lesson in humility (Siebert 2011, pp. 15–16).
  Some cultures that associate divinity with whales, such as some Ghanaians and Vietnamese, coastal Chinese except for southernmost region, Japanese (also known as Ebisu), occasionally hold funerals for beached whales; a throwback to Vietnam's ancient sea-based Austro-Asiatic culture.(Viegas 2010) See also the below-mentioned Ebisu in fish part for more details. In some lore, whales have been told to work for Ryūgū-jō as well.
  Indigenous Ainu tribes on Hokkaido refereed killer whales as Repun Kamuy, "God of Sea/Offshore" in their folklore and myths that the deities will bring fortunes (whales) to coastal people.
  
  The Bible mentions whales in Genesis 1:21, Job 7:12, Ezekiel 32:2. The "sea monsters" in Lamentations 4:3 have been taken by some commentators to refer to marine mammals, in particular whales, although most modern versions 
caption: The largest whale skeleton in Vietnam at Vạn Thủy Tú temple, one of Vietnamese Whale worship in Vietnamese folk religions
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