Worship
Starting from Fujian, worship of Mazu spread to the neighboring coastal provinces of Zhejiang and Guangdong, and thence to all coastal areas of mainland China. With emigration and especially the Chinese diaspora of the 19th and 20th centuries, it further spread to Taiwan, Vietnam, Ryukyu, Japan, and South East Asia; the role of Mazu as patron of the seas ensured that newly arrived immigrants often erected temples to her first, to give thanks for arriving safely. Today, worship of Mazu is also found in other countries with sizeable populations from these regions. In total, there are around 1,500 Mazu temples in 26 countries of the world.
Read more about this topic: Mazu (goddess)
Famous quotes containing the word worship:
“I have always been a friend to hero-worship; it is the only rational one, and has always been in use amongst civilized people—the worship of spirits is synonymous with barbarism—it is mere fetish.... There is something philosophic in the worship of the heroes of the human race.”
—George Borrow (1803–1881)
“Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to this hour I bear the scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence wilt thou be kind; and e’en for hate thou canst but kill; and all are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan,—mere Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards; because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth; because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufacturers and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)