Cao Dai: A Religion We Didn't Know Existed

Header photo: floor tiles in the Holy See

We took a slightly ‘alternative’ route as we were driving towards Tây Ninh, and found ourselves outside a Cao Đài temple. It wasn’t the large, famous, Holy See; it was a smaller, localised temple.

It was around noon, and there was chanting going on inside. We strolled around the perimeter for a few minutes, and then I got curious, removed my shoes, and popped in through a side door. Men and women were in the main hall standing and turning and sitting and bowing and repeating. They were all wearing white and looked very serious. The singing was coming from somewhere above, and this was performed along with music that would scare small children. I decided to explore further, and began to climb the rear stairs only to find myself amidst a group of chanting women. I made to leave, but one of them motioned for me to come all the way up. She put down a pillow for me to sit on. It was at the edge of a balcony that gave me a view of the worshipers below.

Caroline remained outside, unaware of what I was doing.

As I sat in the middle of the cacophony, trying to appear respectful although I was horribly out of place in my coloured clothes, the woman who’d thrown down the pillow grabbed my wrists from behind and manipulated my hands into the correct prayer position.

If you want to try this at home, look at the palm of your left hand and touch the tip of your thumb to the base of the ring finger. Then make a fist and rotate it so you’re looking at the base of your thumb. The right hand then clasps the left, and the right thumb is pushed into the fleshy part below the knuckle of the left index finger.

A gong sounded and she pushed gently on my back so that I’d bow. Everybody, including me, bowed three times following gong hits. Then we all stood, bowed, turned 180 degrees, bowed, then she pointed down the stairs, signalling that I should leave. Thinking it was over, I exited, but as I left the building the chanting began again and the ritual continued. It had been a very unexpected few minutes.

Cao Đài is practically a new religion. It was founded in Vietnam in 1926, then was forbidden by the new communist government in 1975, then was granted legal recognition again in 2007. Of course, during the down time it was still practiced, but by that time it had broken into a few sects. Some of those sects weren’t happy when the religion was officially reinstated, claiming that the government’s interference with the main branch in Tay Ninh (which is the birthplace and administrative centre of the religion) undermined the faith’s independence. Whether or not I sat with the the main branch of Caodaists or one of the offshoots is unknown.

Regardless of what sect you’re talking about, they all branch from the same seed and are similar at the root. That similarity ropes in other religions too; the Caodaists haven’t strictly made up their own, totally original religion, but instead proudly blend several other faiths: Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Catholicism. One of their primary beliefs is the unity of all religions coming together under one creator in a universal peace. This can only happen once the soon-to-be Pope of Cao Đài reaches enlightenment.

The highest guess for the amount of people practicing Cao Đài is 6 million.

I’ll drop a few photos below and try to explain what’s in them.

We saw four temples including the famous Holy See, and all of them have a tall obelisk at the front rising from a lotus flower.

This is the temple that I was an unwitting participant inside of.

This is the front of the woman’s side, which I’ll explain further down the page.

At the front gate

And this was the front gate of another temple, about 5km down the road. They were also busy chanting, so we didn’t go inside. All the temples have a very similar design and colour scheme.

A large gate looms at the entrance to the Holy See. Me for scale.

This photo and the next are of tombs situated outside the Holy See. They are the final resting places of three early disciples who contributed in some substantial way to Caodaism.

The most important temple in the entire religion.

Inside the temple, the decor treads a thin line between garish and appealing. The prominent feature in this photo is obviously the giant eye on the giant sphere. The eye represents the left eye of god. Why left? Because left is the masculine side and the ultimate creator is male. He has a female counterpart (Yin and Yang) but she cannot be higher than him otherwise ‘chaos ensues’.

Okay. To describe why there are stars on the giant sphere, here’s an excerpt from a collection of Cao Dai Holy Messages, which were sent by God (full name – Cao Đài Tiên Ông Đại Bồ Tát Ma Ha Tát) to the founders of the religion.

Binh, you are assigned to make a universal globe. Do you not know what that is? (Laughter) It is a globe like the earth, understand? The diameter is 3.3 m. It is rather large because the miraculous mechanism of creation is represented in it. Paint it azure, draw the North Star and other stars on the globe. The thirty six heavens and the four great dimensions are not stars. Only 72 earths and three thousand worlds are considered stars, which make three thousand and seventy two stars in total. You must represent that number. Look in the Western books on Astronomy and imitate the pictures of the stars.

For the North Star, you are to draw both the Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.

Above the North Star is the Divine Eye.

Understand?

Yes, well, I think so. Let’s continue.

(I’m ripping this line straight from Wikipedia) … The three colors of the Cao Đài banner represent the three main religions of the world; yellow stands for Buddhism, blue for Taoism, and red for Confucianism.

It’s a little hard to see, but there are seven men depicted in this motif and one woman. They are sculpted images of the prophets of three Asian religions and five branches of world religions. The female is Quan Am, who represents compassion. The males are Thai Thuong Dao Quan (the previous incarnation of Chinese scholar Lao Tzu), Gautama the Buddha, Confucius, Ly Thai Bach (aka Li Po, a 16th century Chinese poet), Quang Cong (A Chinese general), Khung Thuong (aka Jiang Taigonong, a Chinese saint), and Jesus Christ.

(I’m ripping this line straight from this website) … The Divine Eye has 16 rays of light emanating from it. Nine radiate upward representing the nine levels of heaven, and seven radiating downward representing the seven emotions, which believers must control.

This is the ‘Bell Tower’, or Dai, which is the right-hand tower at the front of the building and is the side which men enter. The statue above is of the first Pope, Le Van Trung.

This is the ‘Drum Tower’, or Cao, which is the left-hand tower at the front of the building and is the side which women enter. The statue above is of the first female cardinal, Lam Huong Thanh.

This was our guide at the temple. Like all normal followers he is dressed entirely in white, but has an armband in the colours that I described in an earlier photo. The women also wear white, but their armbands are solid yellow. The painting behind depicts (left to right) Sun Yat Sen (the patron saint of Asian self-determination), Victor Hugo (a French novelist, poet and spiritualist who predicted that he would become the prophet of a new religion which would merge European and Asian mysticism – and he wrote Les Misérables), and finally, Trang Trinh Nguyen Binh Khiem (a poet and prophet who was called ‘The Vietnamese Nostadamus‘ and predicted, among other things, the coming of World War II). In the painting the three men are signing a contract between God and humanity. Epic.

Our guide told us we could return at 6 p.m. to watch the evening prayers.

This time I didn’t take take part, merely spectated. The devotees sat as you see them, cross-legged in rows. Music that I will describe as ‘jarring and terrifying’ played, and occasionally there’d be a succession of three gong hits where the followers would bow towards the great eye – kind of like an Islamic salah with a far-east twist. At the end they stood up. The men faced the women and everybody did a little bow to each other. Then we were told to leave.

I recorded the music on our phone. If you’d like to have a really uncomfortable few minutes, press play.