TL;DR: Who decides whether a hau dong session follows proper ritual norms is not the management authority but the practising community, namely the dong thay (medium master) and the ban hoi (ritual community). The dong thay teaches and transmits practice, and the ban hoi preserves and nurtures it, including rituals such as the fire dance for purification. Since UNESCO inscribed the Practice of the Mother Goddess worship of the Three Palaces in 2016, this role has gained another layer: the community must both keep old norms and adjust practice to match the heritage title, amid commercialisation pressure and disputes over who has the right to define what is correct.
Who are the dong thay and the ban hoi in hau dong practice?
A dong thay (medium master) is someone who came to the Mother Goddess first, has more spiritual experience, and understands Mother Goddess ceremonies and ritual practice better than other followers; a ban hoi is the community of people practising around one dong thay. Within a ban hoi, the dong thay acts as the one who "leads those who come later", guiding and transmitting practice to their disciples.
Many Vietnamese in general, including Mother Goddess followers, tend to emphasise practice while lacking theoretical understanding of the religion: they attend ceremonies but know little about the legends, doctrine or symbolic meaning. For newcomers to the Mother Goddess religion, understanding of the pantheon, the legends of the saints, the rituals and their functions is often vague. It is the dong thay who fills that knowledge gap when they join the ban hoi.
Who decides if a hau dong session is done correctly?
Short answer: the practising community decides, and within that community the dong thay and ban hoi are the ones who keep the norms. Mai Thị Hạnh's fieldwork, focused largely on ban hoi in Ha Noi, shows that teaching is carried out by the dong thay, while the ban hoi operates as a practising community where practices are preserved, nurtured and transmitted.
Notably, before any management document existed, norms were already maintained through teacher-disciple relations within the ban hoi. The dong thay not only teaches how to open a shrine and initiate a medium, but also corrects how to conduct ceremonies, how to dress, and how to behave inside and outside a hau dong session. The ban hoi is both a place of learning and a place of mutual reminding. In other words, the standards of a hau dong session are formed from within the practising community, not imposed from outside.
Did this role change after 2016?
Yes, but not in the direction of management agencies replacing the community's decision-making. After the Practice of the Mother Goddess worship of the Three Palaces was inscribed by UNESCO as a representative intangible cultural heritage of humanity, many dong thay were troubled because society still held prejudices, labelling practitioners as "dong bong", "temperamental", or even "crazy". They sought to dispel prejudice by collecting and clarifying the true values of the belief, spreading this first to their own ban hoi community.
Many dong thay hold that to be a child of the Mother Goddess without understanding the Mother Goddess, to practise without understanding, is to practise incorrectly, causing distortions and an unfavourable view from society. Thus, after recognition, it is the practising community itself that sets additional standards for itself, rather than waiting only for top-down guidance.
What does the fire dance mean in hau dong?
The fire dance, also called mua moi, is a motif that appears quite frequently in the stages of the len dong ritual. From the time this ritual was described in detail in the 1959 documentation by Nhất Lang and M. Durand, the fire dance was already recorded, with Durand calling it the flickering torch dance.
What does the fire dance mean?
According to Nguyễn Ngọc Mai, in the len dong ritual, for the medium to enter a state of ecstasy, music, stimulants and colour all play a role, but music by itself has no religious property. What makes the ritual religious is the binding of music with the element of fire. Mediums express that it is fire that creates the environment of transformation from the profane to the sacred, that is, spirit possession and purification.
According to the author, the robes are not what create religious meaning or the environment of transformation between Profane and Sacred; rather, the flame together with the capacity of the red face-covering cloth to absorb cosmic vitality is the decisive factor. In ordinary len dong (hau vui), in len dong to capture spirits and heal, or in len dong to certify an altar and transmit dharma to followers, fire is always present from beginning to end. Fire is used in the mua moi dances, that is, dancing with fire torches or with very large burning incense bundles; together with swords, sabres, flags and fans, fire torches are indispensable material in any len dong session.
This understanding is one researcher's interpretation of the ritual's religious meaning, not a declaration by the practising community about what they believe when dancing with fire.
Why was hau dong banned and later recognized?
The len dong ritual went through periods of prohibition before being recognised as heritage. This is a historical process, not a single turning point. As a monograph, Nguyễn Ngọc Mai's work on the len dong ritual presented that history, along with both cultural values and issues such as commercialisation.
After recognition, alongside pride there came post-honour worries. Researchers, cultural managers and the practising community itself feared that many would exploit the heritage honour to "insure" the "trading of gods and saints" and the "commercialisation of hau dong". To respond to this situation, measures are needed to protect and purify the practice of Mother Goddess worship.
How has heritagisation changed the role of those who keep the norms?
Through heritagisation, a practice once considered superstition has become an object of veneration, bringing with it disputes over the sacralisation of heritage in Vietnam. When a practice is sanctified as heritage, the question of who has the right to define what is correct becomes more complex: not only the practising community, but also cultural managers, researchers and the public have a voice.
This does not mean the dong thay and ban hoi have lost their role. According to the conclusion of Mai Thị Hạnh's research, the ban hoi holds the role of practising community, tasked with preserving, nurturing and transmitting practices; theoretically, the lesson drawn is that the community's role must be respected, as heritage subjects, and they should be seen as the core force in heritage protection.
What is still debated about hau dong today?
Commercialisation and "insuring" practice
The greatest concern after recognition is the exploitation of the heritage title to commercialise hau dong. This is a concern of researchers, managers and the practising community alike, not the judgement of any one party. It must be said clearly: this article does not conclude that any particular gia dong is a "distortion", nor does it use the word "distortion" as a verdict. The documents record that within the community there is concern about such phenomena, and that concern is itself a fact about the community's life.
Who has the right to define what is correct?
This is where the sources show a process of contestation, not a single answer. Salemink describes how heritagisation brings religious disputes around the sacralisation of heritage and human rights in Vietnam. Mai Thị Hạnh instead emphasises the core role of the practising community in heritage protection. The two approaches do not contradict: one describes the forces competing to define, the other proposes that the practising community must be treated as central.
How do the sources compare?
| Source | Type | Data scope | Main content |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mai Thị Hạnh (2019) | Peer-reviewed article, level A | Fieldwork data mainly at ban hoi in Ha Noi | Role of dong thay and ban hoi in teaching and adjusting practice after UNESCO recognition |
| Nguyễn Ngọc Mai (2014) | Peer-reviewed article, level A | Len dong ritual in the northern delta | Form and meaning of the fire dance ritual in gia dong |
| Nguyễn Ngọc Mai (2017) | Academic book, level A | History of the len dong ritual | History from prohibition to recognition, cultural values and the issue of commercialisation |
| Salemink (2020) | Academic book chapter, level A | Disputes around heritagisation in Vietnam | Sacralisation of heritage and the accompanying religious disputes |
Where is the evidence still lacking?
The studies cited here are based mainly on fieldwork in Ha Noi and the northern delta. There is no equivalent study on dong thay and ban hoi in the south among the cited sources. Therefore conclusions about the role of dong thay and ban hoi should not be generalised nationwide without data from other regions.
So who keeps the norms of hau dong?
The norms of hau dong are kept and changed by the practising community. The dong thay is the teacher, the ban hoi is the practising community that preserves, nurtures and transmits. Heritagisation adds a new layer of standards: after recognition, the community not only keeps old norms but sets higher demands for itself, while facing commercialisation pressure and disputes over who defines what is correct.
To understand more deeply the heritage context and the issues around Mother Goddess worship, one can read the article Mother Goddess Worship of the Three Palaces: UNESCO Heritage and Harmful Distortions to Distinguish.
