Skip to content

Ceremony of carrying the spirit tablet into the main hall and announcing to the ancestors

Also called: Nhập linh vị, Nhập thần chủ, Giải bàn vong, Rước bát hương lên bàn thờ gia tiên, Hợp tự

  • Funeral and mourning rites

Culture and belief A record of custom.

Prayer text for Ceremony of carrying the spirit tablet into the main hall and announcing to the ancestors3 texts, kept in Vietnamese, with an English summary.

By custom, when mourning ends the spirit tablet of the deceased is copied out, carried from the mourning altar up to the main altar and placed on the lower row, and the children and grandchildren announce it to the ancestors so that the deceased is worshipped together from then on.

At a glance

When it is held
Immediately after the đàm tế (end-of-mourning) ceremony; pagodas and many households in Nam Bộ do it after 49 days
For whom
Ancestors at the main altar; household deities
Who makes the offering
The tín chủ (the person making the offering) or a descendant

Each family and each region may do it differently.

The offering tray

Region:

Nationwide

Folk practice, Address to the ancestors

When
Immediately after the đàm tế (end of mourning) at the mourning altar
Where the offerings are set
The main altar where the ancestors are worshipped
OfferingNotes
Objects
The newly copied spirit tablet, covered with red paper or clothRequired

Buddhist, Address to the ancestors

When
After 49 days
Where the offerings are set
The ancestors' altar
Offering
Other
A tray of rice

South

Southern Vietnam (Nam Bộ, no finer detail in the source), Folk practice, Address to the ancestors

When
After 49 days, or on the occasion of tiểu tường or đại tường, depending on each household

Steps of the rite

Used across Vietnam, Folk practice, Address to the ancestors

  1. Đàm tế at the mourning altar
  2. Burning the old spirit tablet together with the black band wrapped around the photo frame and the sacrificial oration
  3. Carrying the spirit tablet, incense bowl and portrait up to the main altar and placing them on the lower row
  4. Announcing to the ancestors

Used across Vietnam, Buddhist, Address to the ancestors

  1. Preparing a tray of rice and inviting the spirit of the deceased back so that the children and grandchildren may worship at the ancestors' altar
  2. Inviting the portrait and the incense bowl of the deceased up to the ancestors' altar
  3. If the ancestors' altar already has an incense bowl, then only three incense sticks are taken from the incense bowl of the deceased and inserted there

Southern Vietnam (Nam Bộ, no finer detail in the source), Folk practice, Address to the ancestors

  1. Installing the thần chủ (spirit tablet) of the deceased on the altar together with the thần chủ of the forebears
  2. By the fifth generation of descendants (about a hundred years later) a lễ mai thần chủ is held and the thần chủ is taken away for burial

Communities and regions

Sources

  • Văn khấn trong lễ tang (vankhan.vn)
  • Sau 49 ngày, có cần để bàn vong và cúng cơm hàng ngày? (phatgiao.org.vn)
  • Sự hỗn dung văn hóa trong tín ngưỡng thờ cúng tổ tiên ở Nam bộ (giacngo.vn)

Part of the open datasets Types of Vietnamese offering rites and Vietnamese offering procedures, licensed CC BY 4.0.

More ritesDeath anniversaries, Tết, the home, business, the life cycle, village and ethnic rites.