Cao Dai

[kiwimac]

Is anyone here a practitioner of Cao Dai? If so can you tell me more about your faith, I know you have a pope and reverence Victor Hugo as a saint but thats it and I would like to know more.

Kiwimac

 

[jerzybg]

Maybe this website will be helpful for you:
Cao Dai

 

[hindupridemn]

Cao Dai seems to be a syncretic religion. I know they revere the left eye, it being the window to the soul since the heart is on the left side. It's relatively young, starting in the late 1800s. Mixes Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Catholicism, traditional Vietnamese beliefs, and maybe more.

 

[Gaura Priya]

I wish there were more people who practiced Caodaism... it just seems like a beautiful faith!

 

[Midnight Pete]

I wish there were more people who practiced Caodaism... it just seems like a beautiful faith!

What is Cao Dai? I've never head of it.

 

[aþalwulf88]

I've always wondered about the relationship of Cao Dai and freemasonry. For instance, the use of the eye enclosed by a pyramid seems to be directly borrowed from the Masons.

They've also got an interesting group of Saints:

Sun Yat Sen (1866-1925), leader of the Chinese Revolution of 1911
Victor Hugo (1802-1885), French poet
Trang Trinh (1492-1587), Vietnamese poet and prophet.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

Interesting!

 

[Bob Dixon]

So, why do they see Victor Hugo as a saint?

 

[Gaura Priya]

So, why do they see Victor Hugo as a saint?

Because he was French...

 

[Sylvan]

I believe there are Cao Dai practitioners here in Portland Or, based on what a friend who works in the Vietnamese refugee community has told me, but it would be hard to separate them out from Buddhists or other native Vietnamese (and Hmong) syncretisms without knowing the language. Non-christian Vietnamese have been taught to hide their religions from Americans through decades of colonial and missionary oppression both brutal and subtle. So while sometimes you catch a glimpse of a huge kwan-yin statue in someones front yard, or realize the compound-like vegetarian restaurant you are eating at is a actually run by buddhist nuns, for the most part in my experience non-christian Vietnamese in the U.S. keep to themselves.

Beautiful temple pictures online, and I am very interested in how Victor Hugo managed to make their list of primary saints.

e: Whaaa? I had no idea it was so widespread at one time.

During its heyday, in the 1940s and early 1950s, the Cao Dai claimed millions of adherents, mustering a huge army that controlled a wide stretch of southwestern Vietnam along the Cambodian border, which it ruled as a Cao Dai fiefdom. More than half the residents of Tay Ninh province were Cao Dai followers.

Very cool.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

Is it pronounced as Cow Day?

 

[Breathe]

Is it pronounced as Cow Day?

More like "Cow Dye" [audio here].

 

[Vayasya]

In Vietnamese, the full name of Cao Đài is "Đại Đạo Tam Kỳ Phổ Độ" which means "Great Religion of The Third Period of Revelation and Salvation" and God is usually refered to as "Đức Cao Đài", meaning "Venerable High Altar". Cao Đài emerged in the Vietnamese city of Tây Ninh in the 1920's. During the First and Second Indochina Wars, members of Cao Đài as well as many other Vietnamese sects, were active in political and military struggles, both against French colonial forces and Prime Minister Ngô Đình Diệm of South Vietnam.
Due to their opposition of communist forces leading up to the fall of Saigon, the practitioners were oppressed and Cao Đài practice was made illegal. Although in 1997, Cao Đài gained legal recognition. My family came from where all this was happening so I wouldn't doubt I have family in Vietnam who are Cao Đài.

 

[BrightWhites]

I've always wondered about the relationship of Cao Dai and freemasonry. For instance, the use of the eye enclosed by a pyramid seems to be directly borrowed from the Masons.

Good observation actually, a lesser adveratised fact of cao dai is that part of its formation was heavily spearheaded by French Freemasons. As for everyone elses question, to my understanding cao dai is commonly understood as poetic and metaphorical ritual to unite vietnam and the earth. Though they are not atheistic persay, and believe everything they say, that seems to be the intent. Cao Dai seems to accept that you can decide to believe in something because it contributes to a good society, though I could be completely off base there, as ive never met anyone online or otherwise who identified that way.