| Description |
The Then Cấp sắc Initiation Ritual is a religious ceremony for those who work in the Then profession, and only after being awarded the Then certificate will the practitioner be allowed to practice. The practitioner is Master Tào - the shaman - who presides over all rituals in community life.
Tào Lài and Tào Săng are two types of Tào, distinguished by ceremonial attire. The Tào profession is passed down through family and lineage. Tào must read and write Han characters fluently in order to read worship books. There are four levels of identity equivalent to four levels of Tào. A teacher with a higher rank will perform the ceremony for a lower person. The offering consists of 2 parts: the part for the ritual and the part for the Teacher. The teacher is the one who makes the decision to grant the distinction and assigns seals and practice tools to the person receiving the distinction. Ceremony space both indoors and outdoors. The process of ritual practice is an attractive and rich spiritual theater performance.
The Then Cấp sắc Initiation ceremony includes the following steps: inviting Master Tào and Master Then to perform the ceremony; worship the midwife; Master Tào set up an altar in the main room; Recruitment ceremony; pig slaughter ceremony; offering ceremony (incense offering, flower offering, lamp offering, wine offering, fruit offering, gold coin offering, cake offering), peace offering ceremony and color granting ceremony. Master Then with the lute invites you through Then gates such as Lord of the Soil and the Ground, Kitchen God, Ancestor Gate, Midwife Gate, Buddha Gate, Khảm Hải Gate, General Gate, and finally Rinh Nam Gate.
After that, Master Tào and Master Then - the spiritual parents - performed the ceremony of granting soldiers and horses, granting identity, and granting clothes (reading the identity, granting clothes, hats, bathing the aura (washing the face), and searching the aura. (clothing for Then) and enlightenment) for the recipient. After completing the task, Master Tào and Master Then took the recipient out to the yard to swear to the Jade Emperor to maintain Then's professional ethics.
The final rituals of the rank are bringing offerings to Then gates, sweeping hot pots to offer wine to greet soldiers and generals, Giải vẻ ceremony to cleanse impurities in the house and continuing to march through Then gates, Soul Retrieval ceremony. When passing through Then gates, Bioc offering dance (marble smooth dance), military return ceremony (sending off the gods). |
