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Summary:The Miao people have their own religious beliefs. After a long history of development, the religious beliefs of Miao people in different regions have been different. Many Miao people today have converted to Catholicism and Christianity due to the influence of foreign missionaries. But in general, the majority of the Miao people still believe in the primitive religion they had, including nature worship, totem worship, ancestor worship and ghost and god worship.
Nature worship:
- The main natural worship objects of the Miao people are sky, earth, sun, moon, big tree, mountain rock, bridge and so on. In some Miao people in Jinping and Yunnan, whenever crops are headed, Miao people would sacrifice the animals for the sky and the earth to pray for the harvest.
- When the Miao children get sick, their parents would pray to the god of stones
Totem worship:
- Miao people have developed their own totems
- The most usual totems include Phoenix, Maple, Butterfly, Panyu (A dog god in Chinese ancient myth盘瓠), Dragon, Eagle and Bamboo.
- The ancestors of the Miao people in southeast Guizhou worshiped maple as a totem because they believe their ancestors were originated from maple.
- In addition, they also regarded butterflies as totems, and thought that their ancestors were born of a "mother of butterflies".
- The ancestors of the Miao people in the border areas of Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan, and Guizhou still used Panhu(盘瓠)as a totem.
The dog god 盘瓠. It is one of Miao people's totems.
A Miao totem with butterflies and phoenix on it.
Ancestor worship:
- Today, ancestral worship is still very popular among the Miao people. The Miao people in southeast Guizhou mainly worship their ancestor Jiang Yang 姜央, who was transformed from maple trees (or butterflies) to a human.
- To get the protection from ancestors, Miao people usually held ox-sacrifice activities.
- In many Miao areas, each Miao family would have spirit tablets of their ancestors in the middle of their household.
- The biggest festival of ancestor worship is the "Xisong" 西松 festival.
- Usually, when the Miao family encounters things that are considered unlucky, they would kill the chicken to worship the ancestors and ask protections from them.
a spirit tablet
a image of Jiang Yang on the traditional Miao embroidery
Ghost and god worship:
- The Miao people have a long history of believing in ghosts and witches.
- They divide ghosts into two categories: good or evil
- they believe that good God can bless people, so they would offer animal sacrifices for them
- It is believed that Evils hurt humans.
- Thus, wizards, as the intermediaries who can communicate with ghosts and gods, they can expel the evils.
- Even today, wizards are highly respected by the Miao people.
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