IThe quick read in five sentences
In a Vietnamese home, the most honored place is usually not reserved for the living. It belongs to those who have passed away. This page is about that altar, about the objects placed on it, and about the way of thinking that built all of it. One thing to keep in mind: customs differ from region to region and from clan to clan, and none of them is wrong.
One. Ancestor veneration is not a religion. It has no founder, no required scripture and no church. It is a folk belief, passed down through practice rather than through books.
Two. Its core is held in four characters, sự tử như sự sinh 事死如事生: serve the dead as you served them in life.
Three. Everything takes place at the family altar (bàn thờ gia tiên), and the central object on that altar is the incense bowl (bát hương). The lamps, the flower vase, the fruit tray and the water cups all revolve around that bowl.
Four. The rites follow the lunar calendar: the first and the fifteenth of every month, each person's death anniversary (giỗ), Tết (the Lunar New Year), Thanh Minh (the tomb-sweeping festival) and Vu Lan (the festival of filial piety). Each household does as much as it can.
Five. The Vietnamese also stretch the idea of ancestry beyond a single household. The whole nation shares one death anniversary, the Hùng Kings' Commemoration Day (Giỗ Tổ Hùng Vương) on the tenth day of the third lunar month, and that belief was inscribed by UNESCO in 2012.
IIA belief with no birthday
Buddhism has the Buddha Shakyamuni and a canon of sutras. Taoism has Laozi and the Tao Te Ching. Ancestor veneration has none of these. Nobody founded it, nobody wrote it down, and nobody can claim to hold its authorized version. Ask what year it began and there is no answer, because it was never born. It grew.
Older than the great religions
When Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism arrived one after another in the Vietnamese lands, the people here had long been burying and making offerings to their dead. Those religions did not bring ancestor veneration with them. What they brought was vocabulary and ritual: Confucianism gave it a theory of filial piety, Buddhism gave it a way of thinking about karma, and Taoism gave it rites for summoning souls and making offerings. This is why a Vietnamese person can go to the pagoda and burn incense for the grandparents without feeling that they are following two religions.
Hồn and phách
The tradition holds that hồn 魂 belongs to yang and governs the spirit, while phách 魄 belongs to yin and governs the bodily form. In everyday speech phách is called vía. The old saying runs hồn governs the spirit, phách governs the body, and the familiar phrase is three hồn and seven vía, that is 三魂七魄. According to one common explanation, at death the phách dissolve gradually with the body, one every seven days, adding up to forty-nine days.
The need to keep the line going
There is one more root, a more practical one. Traditional Vietnamese society was a wet-rice farming society, living clustered by bloodline and by village. A father's fields passed to his sons, a grandfather's trade passed to his grandsons, and the clan's name was a shared name. People saw themselves as one link in a long chain, and ancestor veneration was the way that chain was pulled tight a few times each year.
No written record describes the beginnings of the cult of the dead in the Vietnamese lands. What survives is the graves.
At the Vườn Chuối site in Hoài Đức, Hanoi (now Hoài Đức commune), discovered in 1969 and dug in many campaigns, the largest running from March 2024 to March 2025 over more than 6,000 square metres, archaeologists have uncovered a settlement area and a burial ground with cultural layers running continuously from Phùng Nguyên through Đồng Đậu and Gò Mun to Đông Sơn. Better known still are the Việt Khê boat coffins, discovered in 1961 in Thủy Nguyên, Hải Phòng (the name in use at the time of discovery, no longer a district-level unit), and dated to roughly two thousand to two thousand five hundred years ago. The largest tomb in the group held more than one hundred grave goods, laid inside a hollowed tree trunk shaped into a boat-like coffin.
The conclusion lies in the burial itself: people bury goods with the dead only when they believe the person lying there will still use them. The idea that death is the start of another life was present in this land before the Common Era.
IIICore beliefs
This belief has no creed, but a few ideas run all the way through it and can be found in rich homes and poor ones, in the North and in the South.
The dead are not entirely gone
Death is understood as a change of place, not an ending. People say gone back to the grandparents, gone to the nine springs, returned to the immortals, all phrases that point to a destination. Because there is a destination, the dead can be invited home, and because they can be invited home, the feast on the death anniversary has meaning.
The ancestors watch over their descendants
The grandparents do not stand outside their descendants' lives. A grandchild sitting an exam prays to them. A son coming home from work far away first goes to the main room to report to the altar. A funeral or a wedding in the family must be announced there. The relationship runs both ways: the ancestors protect and bless, and the descendants keep the incense burning. It is not a bargain, though. People also light incense on days when they ask for nothing.
Serve the dead as you served the living
Literally: serve the dead as you serve the living. The tradition traces this line to the Confucian classics, where it is usually followed by serve the departed as you serve those still here. It governs almost every detail on the altar. Why offer rice and soup? Because the grandparents ate rice when alive. Why pour water and offer betel and wine? Because they drank water, chewed betel and drank wine when alive. Why prepare a full tray on the death anniversary? Because that is the day a loved one is invited home.
Merit left for later generations
The fourth idea looks forward. The Vietnamese believe that what a person does in one lifetime leaves merit (phúc đức) or leaves karma for the descendants. The proverb the father eats salt, the son goes thirsty speaks of the bad side. The proverb a green tree has green leaves, kind parents leave virtue to their children speaks of the good side. The Buddhist influence is plain here, but the way it is expressed is entirely familial: merit is reckoned for the whole line.
The departed move into another mode of presence and still need to be cared for.
Those above protect, those below keep the incense burning.
Treat the departed exactly as they were treated while alive.
The good and bad deeds of one life are believed to flow down to later generations.
Practice differs by region and by clan, and each is valid within its own bounds.
IVThe family altar
The family altar is where this belief takes physical form. Even a thatched hut with mud walls has a raised plank with an incense bowl on it. A spacious house may give it an entire room. The section below describes the objects most often seen and the meanings people attach to each one. It is not a required template.
Objects usually found on the altar
| Object | Meaning usually given |
|---|---|
| Incense bowl (bát hương) | The central object, where the spirits of the dead are held to descend. A simple household has one bowl. Many homes set out three, for the deities, the ancestors and the family's unmarried dead (bà cô ông mãnh). |
| Portrait or spirit tablet | A photograph of the departed, or a spirit tablet 牌位 bearing their name and dates. Many southern homes use a panel inscribed Cửu Huyền Thất Tổ 九玄七祖, the nine generations and seven ancestors. |
| Lamps or a pair of candlesticks | Placed on either side, usually explained as the sun and moon, and also as the light that guides the spirits home. |
| Flower vase and fruit tray | Arranged vase to the east, fruit to the west: a vase of flowers on one side, a pedestal tray of five fruits and betel on the other. |
| Set of water cups | Three or five cups of clear water, the most minimal offering, one that every household can manage. |
| Bronze censer | Also called a lư hương, used for burning agarwood on major occasions. Part of a three-piece or five-piece altar set. |
| Pair of cranes on tortoises | The crane stands for heaven, the tortoise for earth, together a wish for the ancestors' lasting peace. |
| Incense holder | A tube holding unlit incense sticks. Small homes often leave it out. |
| Horizontal board and paired couplets | Common in clan halls and old houses, rare in apartments. |
Three regions, three arrangements
This is where every claim of the type a proper altar must look like this deserves a second hearing. The regional differences come from house architecture, climate and the history of migration.
In the three-bay house with two side wings, the altar sits in the central bay facing the front door. Jackfruit wood, vàng tâm wood and ironwood are favored. The altar set is fuller, with a bronze censer, a pair of cranes and the three-bowl arrangement often seen.
Leans toward solidity and restraint. The nhà rường timber houses of Huế give the central bay to the altar, with a shrine shelf built into the architecture. Tending the graves at year's end and the clan death anniversary carry more weight here than elsewhere.
Favors the altar cabinet (tủ thờ), a large block of carved or mother-of-pearl inlaid wood that serves both as the altar and as the main piece of furniture in the front room. Many homes venerate the Cửu Huyền Thất Tổ panel.
The altar always takes the highest and cleanest place. The form differs, but the rank given to it is the same.
Why it sits where it does
In the traditional three-bay house, the central bay is the most honored: it faces the front door, receives the light and the good breeze, and is where distinguished guests are received. Placing the altar there puts the ancestors in the position of head of the household, while the living withdraw to the two wings. The arrangement states an order: in this house, the departed still hold the upper rank.
The rules for choosing the spot are therefore fairly consistent everywhere: a place that is high, clean and quiet, with a solid wall behind, and not next to the bathroom or the kitchen.
VThe incense bowl and the three sticks
If everything on the altar had to go and only one thing could stay, the Vietnamese would keep the incense bowl. An altar may lack a censer, cranes, a portrait, even a table, but as long as the incense bowl remains, the veneration continues. People picture it as the place where the spirits descend, so it is honored in a different way from everything else.
Why three sticks
Three is the most familiar number, and several explanations exist side by side. None is official, because this belief has no body that issues official explanations.
The Confucian reading takes the three powers 三才: heaven, earth and humanity. The Buddhist reading takes the Three Jewels 三寶, the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, or else discipline, concentration and wisdom. Some places read it as the three times, past, present and future. Others explain it more plainly: three is an odd number, and odd numbers belong to yang.
Alongside three sticks, a single stick is used for everyday offerings, and five sticks are often seen at major ceremonies and at temples and palaces of the spirits. All three ways are accepted.
Setting up a new incense bowl
Bốc bát hương is the act of consecrating a new incense bowl, usually done when moving into a new home, when replacing an old bowl that has broken, or when setting up an altar for the first time. The method varies a good deal between regions and between ritual masters. The common outline is this: the new bowl is washed clean, and in many places wiped with ginger wine. Inside goes what is called the core of the bowl (cốt bát hương), which depending on the place includes a packet of seven treasures, seven precious things in symbolic form, and a slip of paper with the name and dates of the person venerated. The bowl is then filled in one of two common ways: with clean-burned glutinous rice straw ash, the northern habit, or with carefully washed white sand, the habit in many southern places. Who does the setting up depends on the household. Some invite a ritual master or ask the pagoda, others let the eldest member do it themselves.
Common taboos
The rule mentioned most often is never move the incense bowl casually, because once a bowl has been installed it is considered settled in its place. Next is keeping the bowl always clean, never letting the spent incense stems pack so thickly that they cover the mouth of the bowl. Removing the spent stems is usually done at the end of the year, and many households choose the day of the Kitchen Gods' offering. Every region also has taboos of its own, so an unfamiliar taboo should be understood as the custom of one particular area.
This is where things get overstated. The three-bowl arrangement, with the deities in the middle and the ancestors and the family's unmarried dead on either side, is a common layout in the North and in homes with a fuller altar. It is one arrangement, not a condition for the veneration to count. A great many Vietnamese families, past and present, keep a single shared incense bowl, and that way sits fully within the tradition.
VIDeath anniversaries and festivals
Ancestor veneration follows the lunar calendar in three rhythms: the monthly rhythm, the yearly rhythm and the rhythm of a human life. No household keeps all of it, and the offerings differ widely from one region to the next.
| Occasion | What is usually done |
|---|---|
| The first and the fifteenth of every lunar month | The sóc and vọng offerings, sóc 朔 being the day of no moon and vọng the day of the full moon. Change the water, change the flowers, light incense. |
| The Kitchen Gods' day, twenty-third of the twelfth lunar month | Seeing the Kitchen Gods (Táo quân) off to heaven. Many households take the chance to clean the altar. The North releases carp, the other two regions have their own rites. |
| Welcoming the ancestors, afternoon of the last day of the year | A feast tray invites the ancestors home for Tết. In many homes this is the most formal meal of the year. |
| The three days of Tết | Incense and lamps are kept burning without pause, and rice and water are offered at the altar at every meal. |
| The hóa vàng send-off | Seeing the ancestors off after Tết, burning votive paper and taking down the offerings. The day is not fixed: some households do it on the third, some on the fourth or fifth, some wait until the New Year pole comes down. |
| Thanh Minh | During the Thanh Minh solar term, around early April. Descendants go out to tend the graves, clear the weeds, rebuild the mound and light incense. Many southern areas instead tidy the graves at the year-end chạp mả. |
| Đoan Ngọ, fifth day of the fifth lunar month | Known in folk speech as the festival for killing insects. Offerings of the season's first fruit, fermented sticky rice and ash-water rice cakes. The offerings differ markedly between regions. |
| Full moon of the seventh month, Vu Lan | The day of filial gratitude, and also the occasion for offerings to wandering souls. Many households prepare two trays: one for the ancestors indoors, one for all wandering spirits out in the yard. |
| Clan death anniversary | The whole clan gathers at the ancestral hall. Each clan sets its own date. There is no shared one. |
| Individual death anniversary | On the exact lunar date of death, once a year, at the home of whoever keeps the family incense. |
How the giỗ date is reckoned
The giỗ date is the date of death in the lunar calendar, not the solar date and not the date of burial. Many places also keep an announcement offering on the afternoon before, called the tiên thường day, and hold the main anniversary on the following day, called the chính kỵ day.
First, final and ordinary anniversaries
The first anniversary (giỗ đầu), in the old term tiểu tường, is held one full year after the death. Mourning has not ended, the descendants still wear mourning dress, and the rite is nearly as solemn as the funeral.
The final anniversary (giỗ hết), in the old term đại tường, is held at two full years. Only after this rite does the family end mourning, take down the separate altar of the newly deceased, and move the portrait or spirit tablet up to the shared family altar.
The ordinary anniversary (giỗ thường), in the old term cát kỵ, meaning the auspicious anniversary, is held from the third year onward. Descendants wear everyday clothes, and the feast becomes a family reunion.
The moment for ending mourning, however, differs between families. Some keep the full three years of old custom, others do it more briefly after the forty-ninth day or the hundredth day.
VIIThe clan hall, the genealogy and the clan head
The altar at home looks after a few recent generations. To reach further back, the Vietnamese have another level of organization, the clan (dòng họ): an institution with a place, a written record, a head and a day of assembly.
The ancestral hall and the genealogy
The từ đường 祠堂, commonly called the clan hall (nhà thờ họ), is a separate building raised to venerate the founding ancestor and the successive generations of a clan. It also keeps royal patents and the stories of forebears, and it is where the whole clan sits down to discuss shared business, reward children who do well at school and settle disputes within the clan.
The gia phả 家譜 is the genealogy, a book recording the generations in order: taboo names, titles and offices, dates of birth and death, burial places, spouses and children. In practical terms it is the clan's giỗ calendar. Without it, the dates are forgotten within a few generations. In emotional terms it tells a person which generation they stand in. As a source, many old genealogies have become historical records of village life and migration.
The clan head and the incense-and-fire land
The clan head (trưởng họ), also called the tộc trưởng, usually belongs to the senior branch. He presides over the clan's rites, keeps the genealogy and looks after the ancestral hall. In the past the role also carried authority in the upbringing of the clan's children. Today what remains is mostly ceremonial.
To give the veneration a source of upkeep, old law set aside a category of property called hương hỏa 香火, literally incense and fire. This was usually land, so that its yearly yield could pay for the death anniversaries and the repair of the hall, and it could not be divided or sold like ordinary property. The Quốc triều hình luật of the Lê dynasty, commonly called the Hồng Đức code, contains specific provisions on hương hỏa land, showing that the monarchy saw ancestor veneration as something the law should protect.
Why the genealogy is coming back
Decades of war and displacement broke the thread of many clans: genealogies were burned, lost, or survived only in the memory of a few elders. In the past few decades the reconnecting of lineages, the rebuilding of ancestral halls and the holding of clan death anniversaries have revived quite strongly, both in Vietnam and among the Vietnamese abroad. Rising living standards have made building a hall feasible, people living far from home want an anchor, and there is a very new reason as well, digital tools: lineages are now typed up, drawn as charts and posted in the clan's online groups.
VIIIFrom family ancestors to the nation's ancestor
Here comes a step that few cultures have taken as fully as the Vietnamese: taking the very pattern of household ancestor veneration and applying it to an entire people. The Vietnamese also have a shared National Ancestor (Quốc Tổ) and a shared death anniversary.
The tenth day of the third month
The Hùng Kings' Commemoration Day falls on the tenth day of the third lunar month, centered on the Hùng Temple on Nghĩa Lĩnh mountain in Phú Thọ province. But the observance is not confined there: many đình (communal houses), temples and shrines across the country that venerate the Hùng Kings also hold rites that day, while a family far away may simply light a single stick of incense. The most quoted folk verse runs Whoever travels upstream or down, remember the ancestors' day, the tenth of the third month.
- 1470undefined
- 1917undefined
- 2007undefined
- 2012undefined
Why this is worth noticing
Many peoples have a founding hero, but most see that figure as a king or a god. The Vietnamese see the Hùng Kings as their own ancestors, and hold the anniversary exactly as a household holds one: with a date, an offering tray and descendants gathering in numbers. The offerings at the Hùng Temple are the same ones placed on the family altar, bánh chưng and bánh giầy, the square and round rice cakes. In other words, this is a family altar enlarged to the size of a nation.
IXLiving alongside other religions
A Vietnamese family may, all at once, visit the pagoda on the full moon, choose dates and hours the Taoist way, keep the Confucian order of elder and younger, and light incense for the grandparents every evening. The people in that house do not see four things layered on top of one another. They see one way of life. The reason is that ancestor veneration contests no religion's territory: it does not explain the cosmos, does not promise an afterlife, and does not ask anyone to give up any belief.
With Confucianism
This is the closest relationship. Confucianism makes filial piety 孝 the root of every virtue and treats sacrifice to the ancestors as a duty. Much of the vocabulary of the altar is borrowed from it: spirit tablet, presiding celebrant, tiên thường, chính kỵ, tiểu tường, đại tường. Confucianism gave this belief a scholarly framework it did not originally have.
With Buddhism and Taoism
Buddhism, on arriving in Vietnam, did not ask anyone to abandon the ancestral altar. It joined itself to it. The Vu Lan festival on the full moon of the seventh month is where the two meet most clearly: a Buddhist rite whose content is gratitude to one's parents. In many Vietnamese homes the Buddha altar is set higher than the family altar, and the two coexist without any friction.
The Taoist trace lies in ritual and in the choosing of dates: picking an auspicious day to consecrate an incense bowl, to rebury remains or to move into a new house, and the rites for summoning souls, dispelling misfortune and making offerings to the stars.
With Catholicism
The Catholic case has a history of its own, and it is set out here by the dates of the documents. During the dispute usually called the Chinese Rites controversy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Holy See issued documents forbidding the faithful to take part in rites honoring ancestors, because at the time those rites were understood as acts of worship.
- 1939undefined
- 1964undefined
- 1965undefined
- 1974undefined
- 2019undefined
Today many Vietnamese Catholic families keep an ancestral altar below the altar of God, burn incense and hold death anniversaries. The official understanding distinguishes between the respect shown to ancestors and the worship reserved for God alone.
XThrough the eyes of feng shui
The altar is the single most discussed item in home feng shui, and also the one with the most contradictory advice. This section tries to separate two layers: the principles that exist in books, and the taboos passed on by word of mouth.
Sitting and facing
Feng shui distinguishes the sitting direction (tọa), the direction the back rests against, from the facing direction (hướng), the direction the front looks out. The most common method is Bát Trạch, the Eight Mansions: the head of household's birth year gives a personal trigram (cung phi), which sorts people into the East Four group, matching the four directions Khảm, Ly, Chấn and Tốn, and the West Four group, matching Càn, Khôn, Cấn and Đoài. The altar is advised to face one of the head of household's favorable directions.
From here the books disagree. Many masters hold to auspicious sitting, auspicious facing, meaning the altar both rests against a good direction and looks toward a good direction. Some others apply to the altar the rule inauspicious sitting, auspicious facing, which is normally used for the kitchen stove. When two pieces of advice contradict each other, it is not because someone is wrong. It is because there are two schools.
Places advised against
| Place to avoid for the altar | Reason usually given |
|---|---|
| Under a crossbeam or joist | A beam overhead is likened to a weight pressing down, called hoành xà áp đỉnh, the crossbeam pressing on the crown. |
| Directly facing the bathroom door | An unclean place facing a pure one. The practical reason is smell and damp. |
| Backed against the kitchen or bathroom wall | The kitchen belongs to fire and is held to disturb stillness. The practical reason is heat and moisture. |
| Under a staircase or beneath an upstairs bedroom | People walking above the altar is seen as disrespect. The practical reason is vibration and dust. |
The altar in an apartment
The apartment poses a problem that traditional architecture never met: no central bay, low ceilings, exposed beams, and someone else's floor overhead. Architects note that there is as yet no standard for altar space in apartments.
Give over a small room entirely, if the apartment is large enough.
The most common choice in small apartments. Mount it on a load-bearing wall, avoiding light partitions and avoiding a spot directly under a beam.
Choose a solid wall corner, away from the walkway and not facing the bathroom door.
Use smokeless incense, or light incense only on the sóc and vọng days and on death anniversaries. Many buildings forbid burning votive paper inside apartments.
Yin dwellings and yang dwellings
The yang dwelling 陽宅 is the feng shui of the homes of the living, and the yin dwelling 陰宅 is the feng shui of the graves of the dead. The two branches are not separate, because they speak of the same lineage, and the traditional view holds that when the graves are at peace, the descendants benefit.
From this comes the principle what is settled, leave settled: ancestral graves should not be moved or substantially rebuilt without compelling reason, and their upkeep is done at Thanh Minh or at the year-end chạp mả. Reburial customs also differ widely: many northern areas practice sang cát, exhuming and reburying the bones after a few years, while many southern areas bury once and leave it there.
The layer with books behind it. The personal trigram, the East Four and West Four groups, sitting and facing, the Eight Mansions method. These have a system of reasoning and books to consult.
The layer with both a feng shui reason and a practical one. Not under a beam, not facing the bathroom door, not against the kitchen wall. Strip away all the esoteric part and the reasons of smell, heat, damp, vibration and dust remain. This is the layer most worth following.
The word-of-mouth layer. Very detailed taboos that change from village to village and master to master, and whose source usually cannot be traced. They have the value of local custom. They should not be mocked, and they should not be treated as law either. The simple advice is: ask which layer you are listening to.
XIChanges in life today
This belief was built in a society of villages, fields, the three-bay house and many generations under one roof. All three are changing: urban Vietnamese now live in apartments, in nuclear families, and very many work hundreds of kilometers from their home village. The section below records the changes under way, with no praise or blame attached.
From an altar room to an altar cabinet, from an altar cabinet to a wall-mounted shelf about a meter wide. Many homes now keep only the incense bowl, the water cups and the flower vase.
People far from their home village set up a bàn thờ vọng, an altar facing toward home. This is an old custom, now spreading again because of migration and the Vietnamese communities abroad.
Merging the anniversaries of several forebears into one day, or moving them to the nearest weekend so the descendants can come. This causes debate: some clans accept it, others keep the exact dates.
Descendants far away join the anniversary by video call, or ask someone back home to prepare the offerings on their behalf. Some pagodas take bookings for rites and prayers for the dead over the internet.
Depositing a spirit tablet or ashes at a pagoda so that the monks tend the incense and pray for the departed. Common in families with no one to carry on the incense line, or in apartments where an altar is impractical.
Many families are reducing or dropping it on their own initiative. In early 2018, the central body of the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha issued official letter no. 31 asking pagodas to guide monks, nuns and lay Buddhists to stop burning votive paper at Buddhist places of worship.
On the whole, the form has shrunk but the core has not. A young person in a thirty-square-meter apartment, lighting one smokeless incense stick on a wall shelf on the last evening of the year, is doing exactly what their great-grandfather did in the central bay of a three-bay house.
XIICommon misunderstandings
Because this belief has no authoritative text, it is surrounded by confident claims whose sources cannot be traced. Below are the questions asked most often.
These are two different categories. Remembering and honoring the people who gave one life is a moral custom, recognized by Vietnamese law as a folk belief and inscribed by UNESCO in its form as the cult of the National Ancestor.
No old text sets any quantity for this. In practice the regions differ greatly: some burn a lot, some hardly burn any, and some Buddhist families have chosen to drop it altogether.
The size of the altar is chosen according to the size of the home and, if the household wishes, according to the Lỗ Ban ruler. No rule says bigger is better. An altar too large for a small room actually breaks the very thing feng shui warns against, loss of proportion.
With Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism there has never been any conflict. With Catholicism, since the 1939 instruction and the communiqués of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Vietnam from 1965 onward, veneration of ancestors is permitted within the framework described above.
Both are correct, in different circumstances. One stick is the everyday practice. Three are used on the sóc and vọng days, on death anniversaries and at festivals. In a closed apartment, lighting one stick is also a matter of fire safety.
There is no general rule about frequency. Some households light incense every evening, some only on the sóc and vọng days and on death anniversaries, and some people away for a whole year come home and light it once. What the elders usually insist on is keeping the altar clean.
?Quick Questions
Which direction should the family altar face
The common method is Bát Trạch, the Eight Mansions: the head of household's birth year gives a personal trigram, sorting people into the East Four group, matching the directions Khảm, Ly, Chấn and Tốn, and the West Four group, matching Càn, Khôn, Cấn and Đoài, and the altar is placed toward one of the head of household's favorable directions. Be aware that there are two schools: one holds to auspicious sitting and auspicious facing, the other applies inauspicious sitting and auspicious facing to the altar, so two masters can give different advice without either being wrong. The less contested part is choosing the spot: a solid wall behind, high and dry, quiet, not under a crossbeam, not facing the bathroom door, not against the kitchen wall.
How many incense sticks should be lit
Both one stick and three are correct, depending on the occasion. One stick is the very familiar everyday practice, and it is also safer in a closed home. Three sticks are used on the first and fifteenth of the lunar month, on death anniversaries and at festivals. Five sticks are often seen at major ceremonies and at temples and palaces of the spirits. The meaning of the three sticks also has several coexisting readings: the three powers of heaven, earth and humanity in the Confucian reading, the Three Jewels of the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha in the Buddhist reading, or the three times of past, present and future.
How the giỗ date is reckoned
The giỗ date is the lunar date of death of the person being commemorated, not the solar date and not the date of burial. Each year the calendar has to be checked to find which solar date that lunar date falls on. Many households keep an announcement offering on the afternoon before, called the tiên thường day, and hold the main anniversary the next day, called chính kỵ. For someone who died on the last days of a short lunar month, families handle it differently, so ask the elders of the clan.
How do the first, final and ordinary anniversaries differ
The first anniversary (giỗ đầu), in the old term tiểu tường, is held one full year after the death, while mourning is still in force. The final anniversary (giỗ hết), in the old term đại tường, is held at two full years. After this rite the family usually ends mourning, takes down the separate altar and moves the portrait or spirit tablet up to the shared family altar. The ordinary anniversary (giỗ thường), in the old term cát kỵ, is held from the third year onward and repeated every year. The moment for ending mourning differs between families, some keeping the full three years and others doing it more briefly after forty-nine days or one hundred days.
How is a new incense bowl set up
The method varies a good deal between regions and between ritual masters. The common outline is this: wash the new bowl clean, and in many places wipe it with ginger wine. Place the core of the bowl inside, consisting of a symbolic packet of seven treasures and a slip of paper with the name and dates of the person venerated. Then fill it with clean-burned glutinous rice straw ash, the northern habit, or with carefully washed white sand, the habit in many southern places. The person doing it may be a ritual master, the pagoda, or the eldest member of the household. All three are common.
How many incense bowls does a family altar need
There is no required number. The three-bowl arrangement, with the deities in the middle and the ancestors and the family's unmarried dead on either side, is common in the North and in homes with a full altar. A great many families, past and present, keep a single shared incense bowl, and that way sits fully within the tradition. Households in small apartments usually choose one bowl for simplicity.
Where to put the altar in an apartment
Architects note that there is as yet no standard for altar space in apartments, so each household finds its own way. The common approaches are: give over a small room entirely if there is enough floor area, use a wall-mounted altar fixed to a load-bearing wall, avoiding light partitions and a spot directly under a beam, or place a standing altar cabinet in a solid corner of the living room. Avoid facing the bathroom door and avoid the walkway. As for smoke, many homes use smokeless incense or light incense only on the sóc and vọng days and on death anniversaries, and many buildings forbid burning votive paper inside apartments.
On what day are the spent incense stems removed and the altar cleaned
Removing the spent stems is usually done at the end of the year, and many households choose the Kitchen Gods' offering day, the twenty-third of the twelfth lunar month, once the Kitchen Gods have been seen off. An odd number of stems is usually left in the bowl. The rule mentioned most often is not to move the incense bowl while cleaning, because once a bowl has been installed it is considered settled in its place. The exact day and the method differ by region and by household.