SECTION 2:I

MAGICAL MOUNTAINS

ANCESTRAL ABODES

by Hugh M. Lewis

The mountains are the most prominent physical features underlying the rich symbolic heritage of traditional Vietnamese culture, providing not only the main back drop of the Vietnamese stage, but the scenery for the entire Southeast Asian theater. Distinctions between highlander and lowlander are the most common cultural theme throughout Southeast Asia, and these often subtle and dramatic differences of cultural patterning are primarily differences of environmental setting. Mountain chains serve not only as permanent cultural barriers separating distinctive culture areas of Southeast Asia, but their north south alignment also determines as well the prevailing directionality of culture-contact and culture-change—facilitating the flow of culture, commerce and communication north and south. All traffic flowed north to south.

Vietnamese saw in the varying shapes and undulating flows of the hills and ridges manifestations of dragons. The dragon is a dominant symbol for the land of Vietnam itself, a male political symbol conferring a sense of Vietnamese identity inherent in their relationship to the environment, an emblem of group identity in a common country legitimating power and authority over the land. It is the totemic emblem of Vietnam itself, symbolizing power, immortality and imperial sovereignty, and thus defining the territorial integrity of the Vietnamese people. A special emblem worn by the emperor, "Vietnamese legend has it that the dragon was the procreator of the ethnic Vietnamese stock." (Whitfield 1976:158)

The dragon in Vietnamese mythology is a synthesis of often antagonistic elements of water and earth—these disparate, dialectical elements compose a common theme not only of Vietnamese mythology, but of mythology throughout Southeast Asia, and merge into a single symbolic synthesis in the form of the Dragon. It represented the fertile lowland plains, the product of union between mountains and waters, and thus symbolized the synthesis of lowland civilization. In Vietnamese folklore, this synthesis became known as Long-do or "Dragon’s belly." This was the popular name for the geographical and spiritual center of the Vietnamese realm, near Hanoi. It connoted the realm’s spiritual center of gravity." The seat of political stability, its theme was well elaborated by emperors in a special spirit cult. "Coiled Dragon" was also "geomancer’s shorthand for the spiritual powers of the earth." It is only fitting that the dwelling places of Gods and culture heroes apotheosized by legend and myth, should also be the burial abode of the people’s ancestors, who can watch over their descendants activities from the neighboring heights. Geomancers, "experts in studying terrain t apprehend its spiritual nature….believed that supernatural power originated in the highlands of Tibet and flowed down along mountain ranges through 'dragon’s veins.'" (Taylor 1983:290) These dragon veins branched out carrying spiritual energy to all parts of the earth. Its energy was not evenly distributed, but collected in certain locations marked by the peculiarity of the local terrain, where spirits dwelled. If a person buried one’s ancestors in such a spot, that person "could obtain special powers in pursuing his ambitions." The spiritual powers of the earth influence human events for benevolent or malevolent ends. "If one would benefit from these powers one must understand and respect them….a society can flourish only if it is in harmony with the elemental forces of the land." (Taylor 1983:284-5)

"Magic landscaping" or Feng Shui ("Wind and Water"), or "the art of divining earth-lines and (earth) rays," employed a geomantic compass to indicate the direction of two main "winds", the Beneficient Blue Dragon Wind and the Pernicious White Tiger Wind, for locating important sites, "in order to receive the breath of the universe properly from all sides" to make them propitious for certain events. Geomancy "is characteristic of the Asian world deeply impregnated by metaphysical beliefs" which are deeply rooted in the earth and natural order."

Important things for consideration are the dragon’s den, alluvial formations, and water courses. The dragon is "represented by the brink of a stream flowing round the grave and the configuration and outlines of the hills that surround the burial ground. The dragon’s den is the grave pit into which the coffin is lowered. He brooks and streams near by are called water courses, and the land bordering these are called alluvial formations." (Yang 1945:88) Mountains are "the underpasses of dragons, and a good feng-shui expert will weigh the state of change of the universe and decide which range of hills the dragon spirit is moving through and how far he has reached." (Bloodworth 1966:215)

Besides placating disturbed spirits, geomantic beliefs allow individual cosmological reorientation corresponding to "the stars and constellations governing the world" in relation to the physical surroundings in order to attract favorable influences. "Build (or dig) there, and fortune is yours dead or alive, for there is nothing luckier than to be on top of a dragon and his lair." (Bloodsworth 1966:215)

The prosperity of descendants, the future rise or fall of a family group, is directly dependent upon the nature of the ancestral burial site, its peacefulness for the ancestors, for "the prosperity of a family is dependent not more upon the efforts of the living than upon the goodwill of the dead." (Soothill 1951:164)

Since all families want their ancestors to be buried in a good spot and want their children to be prosperous, they all listen to the geomancer’s words as if they were listening to an oracle, and as a consequence, his directions are always followed very punctiliously. (Yang 1945:88) Vietnamese generals viewed military strategy as related to geomancy—the favorable location of an encampment or fort, an auspicious or inauspicious day to engage in combat. Even Vietnamese emperors regularly placed much importance in geomancy—"dangerous tombs" would be officially disinterred for fear that the deceased’s descendants might accumulate magical power to challenge imperial authority. The ancestral tombs of criminals were regularly desecrated as a common form of punishment. Most Vietnamese "villagers make an effort to orient their houses and kitchens in the prescribed manner," (Hickey 1964:40) and those too poor to hire a geomancer did not hesitate to purchase a talisman to ward off evil spirits and to follow basic geomantic precepts.

The geomancers pretend that when a family’s graveyard is surrounded by water courses and hills wherein a dragon lurks, then all their ancestors buried there will draw from the bowels of the earth a mysterious fecundity which will be transmitted to their descendants….(Yang 1945:88)

The traditional equivalent of a real estate agent, a geomancer fit in well with a cultural and symbolic universe that did not define itself in fixed, finite territorial boundaries with structural continuity over time, rather in terms of "spheres of influence" emanating from certain common sources with relative structural contiguity over distance more apropos in delimiting cultural-groupings, dealing in terms of "people-space." Geomancy served to legitimate and reinforce common, shared symbolic metaphors of political sovereignty and perpetuity of power in relation to land-holdings, in the daily life of the Vietnamese people. Directly related to customary practices and belief’s associated with the cult of ancestor worship and with patrimonial inheritance and land-holdings, in a land were social/environmental conditions created heavy population pressure in relation to the land-holding of a lineage, these associated symbolisms formed a symbolic complex reinforcing patterns of land acquisition and retention "for one’s ancestors" and for one’s descendants where partible inheritance patternings and life’s misfortunes made such retention the exception rather than the rule.

Pedagogical Anthropological interpretation is most certainly at its best and its worst in explaining magico-religious belief and practice fairly obvious in functioning of this ceremonial symbolic complex. Immense anxiety is associated with possession or utilization of new land where land is the only guarantee of social security. Eric Wolf’s thesis of an individual and group coping mechanism that helps "men to deal with the inevitable and irreducible crisis of life, of failure, of sickness, of death" (1966:96) and "link individual experience to public concern" cannot be discounted, conferring general social significance to selection pressures impinging upon an individual household and reinforcing social ties by upholding right living. "It aids in the management of tensions which arise in the course of transactions between men and reinforces the sentiments upon which social continuity depends." (Wolf 1966:97)

Of course, it is important not to question the rituals which provide the structure for our social life, even if the problem may only be unavoidable making magico-religious means a last resort, a just in case persuasion, or a couldn’t hurt reminder. The unavoidable fate to be alleviated by geomancy was the potential loss of lineage-land because of unavoidable environmental and social circumstances. In its deep roots it may even have been quite sophisticated signaling system, for ritualizing good or sound intentions or exonerating wrong or poor intentions unavoidably involved with new land-holdings in a zero-sum universe of limited good, or for regulation of settlement patterns or land distribution in relation to the population, sanctioning "expansionism" and checking cancerous involution.

"Peasant societies are based on important but shifting relations between individual units which are households; and the number of such relations between households bulks large in the total number of all relations….Hence we would expect a strong emphasis on supernatural sanctions for behavior in peasant communities in which structural tensions between domesticate groups are often strong and yet must be muted in interest of coalition formation or neighborly coexistence. These communities are, moreover, very conservative in this regard. (Wolf 1966: 99)

Science runs deep in trying to understand systems of magic and divination. There is Moore’s explanation (1965:73-74) of divination systems as probabilistic "mixed" or "statistical" strategies of chance optimization, or Klein’s interpretation (April 1983: 156-7) as a kind of alternative left brain/right brain concrete socio-cultural calculus employing "appositional transform operators" about ambiguous events or complex relations. "These rules consist of equivalence sets of abstract and concrete terms that are markers of classification categories covering the whole range of traditional Chinese world knowledge. He images and their commentaries encode a structuring of the Chinese universe in terms of naturalistic, social and metaphysical concepts that are derived from the early philosophies as well as from Confucianism and Taoism…." And then there is Roy Rappaport’s classic analysis (1967: 18) "ritual cycles….play an important part in regulating the relationships of these groups with both the non-human components of their immediate environments and the human components of their less immediate environments….this regulation helps to maintain the biotic communities existing within their territories, redistributes land among people and people over land, and limits the frequency of fighting."