Ông Trời

Also Known As: 𦎛𡗶, “Mister Sky”; also Trời; Ông Thiên in the south; identified with Ngọc Hoàng Thượng Đế, the Jade Emperor
Region/Culture: Southeast Asia
Mythos: Vietnamese Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He made the earth, the mountains, the rivers and the sea, he sees everything that happens beneath him, and he distributes reward and punishment without exception.
Role in Mythos: Ông Trời is the supreme power of Vietnamese folk religion, the sky itself understood as a person, later given the court, the throne and the title of the Taoist Jade Emperor.
Relation to Humans: He is addressed daily and informally, at outdoor altars, in proverbs and in the reflex cry of “Trời ơi,” by people who expect him to be listening. He is also the last court of appeal, since a wrong that no magistrate will hear is understood to be filed with him instead.

At dusk in the Mekong Delta a man steps out of his house and lights three sticks of incense at a plank set on a post at about the height of his head. There is no statue on it. A cup of clean water, perhaps a plate of fruit, perhaps one flower, and open air above. He clasps his hands and bows, and the smoke goes straight up into the evening, which is the entire point of the arrangement. The altar is called the bàn thông thiên, the board that connects to heaven, and the person he is speaking to is the sky.

Vietnamese uses one word for both. Trời is the weather. It is what rains on the rice, what burns the back of the neck at noon, what turns the paddy water the colour of tin before a storm. Trời is also somebody. Put ông in front of it, the ordinary respectful address you would give an old man in the village, and you have Ông Trời, who made the earth and the mountains and the rivers and the sea and the sun, who gave life to people and animals and plants, and who keeps accounts.

The accounts are the part that matters. He sees everything and knows everything that happens in the world, and reward and punishment reach everyone eventually, which is why the proverb says the net of heaven is vast and loose-meshed and nothing slips out of it. When he is angry at what people have made of the world, the answer comes as weather: storms, floods, a season with no rain in it.

Where he came from, the sources will not agree. One account simply says that before all things there was a god, and leaves it there. Another identifies him with Thần Trụ Trời, the god who dug and piled the earth into a column to hold the sky up off the ground and then scattered the leftover stone into mountains and islands. He has a wife, Bà Trời, and when the two of them quarrel it rains while the sun is still out, which is the kind of explanation that survives because it is useful to have something to say to a child.

For most of the last two thousand years he has been wearing someone else’s clothes. Taoism arrived from China with a fully staffed heaven and a supreme emperor at the top of it, and Trời was identified with the Jade Emperor, Ngọc Hoàng Thượng Đế. The identification gave him everything the indigenous sky lacked. He acquired nine heavens, a palace with an armoured doorkeeper, a court of civil mandarins and military generals arranged exactly as the emperor’s court at Huế was arranged, an army for putting down rebellious gods, and a family. He acquired the golden dragon robe and the tasselled crown and the audience tablet. In the mother-goddess religion of Đạo Mẫu he became Vua Cha Ngọc Hoàng, the royal father of the goddess Liễu Hạnh. Vietnamese Buddhists recognised him as Đế Thích, Śakra, lord of the second heaven.

None of it displaced the older thing. The farmer at the outdoor altar is not petitioning a bureaucracy. He is talking to the sky, and the sky is called ông.

At the imperial level the same address was made once every three years and it was enormous. South of Huế the Nguyễn emperors built the Đàn Nam Giao between 1806 and 1807, three stacked terraces, the top one round for heaven and the two below it square for earth and for humankind, and there the emperor sacrificed to Trời as the single delegate of every person in the country. It was the greatest ceremony the dynasty performed, and the best documented. The last one was held in 1945. The terraces are still there, and the rite has been staged again as part of the Huế festival since 2002.

The best-loved story about him has none of that dignity. A drought went on so long that the fields cracked and the streams stopped, and a toad decided to go up and complain. On the road it acquired a crab, a swarm of bees, a fox, a bear and a tiger. At the gate of heaven the toad put the crab inside the great water jar, hid the rest behind the drum, and beat the drum itself. Heaven sent out its rooster; the fox took it. Heaven sent its hound; the bear took it. Heaven sent the thunder god, who went to the jar to wash his face and got the crab’s claws, and when he ran the bees stung him. Trời came out and found a toad on his doorstep.

He lost the argument. Rather than fight, he made an arrangement: when the land needs water, the toad is to croak, and the rain god and the wind god will be sent down. Children still learn the rhyme that the toad is heaven’s uncle, and that whoever hits the toad is picking a fight with the sky.

His powers are simply everything, which makes them less interesting than his limits. He does not appear. He acts through delegates, and the delegates are a civil service, with the delays and the pettiness that implies. He can be petitioned, argued with, embarrassed at his own front door by an amphibian and six animals with a plan, and he can be moved to change policy by a case well made. He punishes, but the punishment arrives as season and disaster rather than as a hand out of the clouds, which means it can always be read as bad luck by anyone who prefers to read it that way.

He also gave his name away. When Catholic missionaries needed a Vietnamese word for God they took this one, and Đức Chúa Trời is what Vietnamese Christians have called their deity ever since. Léopold Cadière, who spent his life documenting Vietnamese religious practice, wrote that when the people around him called on Trời they might well be reaching for the same being he meant by God. It is a strange fate for a sky. The word is still ordinary. Anyone stubbing a toe in Hanoi tonight will shout Trời ơi, and mean nothing by it, and mean the oldest thing in the country.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Ông Trời?

Ông Trời is the supreme sky god of Vietnamese folk religion, whose name means roughly “Mister Sky.” He is credited with making the earth, mountains, rivers, sea and sun, and with giving life to people, animals and plants. He watches everything that happens in the world and distributes reward and punishment accordingly.

Is Ông Trời the same as the Jade Emperor?

Ông Trời and the Jade Emperor became the same figure, but they did not start out that way. Ông Trời is the indigenous Vietnamese sky god, and under the influence of Taoism from China he was identified with the Jade Emperor and given the title Ngọc Hoàng Thượng Đế. The Taoist identification supplied him with a heavenly palace, a court of mandarins and generals, and the imperial dragon robe he is pictured in.

How do Vietnamese people worship Ông Trời?

Households in southern and central Vietnam worship him at a small outdoor altar called the bàn thông thiên or bàn thờ ông thiên, a board set on a post at about head height in front of the house, usually holding water, fruit or flowers rather than an image. Incense is burned there at dusk so the smoke rises to heaven with the prayer. At the imperial level, the Nguyễn emperors sacrificed to Heaven at the Đàn Nam Giao esplanade south of Huế, a rite performed until 1945.

What is the story of the toad who sued Heaven?

In the Vietnamese folktale Cóc kiện Trời, a toad leads a crab, a swarm of bees, a fox, a bear and a tiger up to the gate of heaven to demand rain during a long drought. The animals ambush and defeat heaven’s rooster, hound and thunder god, and Ông Trời agrees to terms rather than continue the fight. He tells the toad to croak whenever rain is needed, and he will send the rain god and the wind god. This is why Vietnamese children learn that the toad is heaven’s uncle.

What does Ông Trời look like?

Ông Trời has no described appearance in his original Vietnamese form, because he is the sky itself. Where he is depicted, the image is the borrowed one of the Jade Emperor: a robe embroidered with a golden dragon, a crown hung with red tassels and coloured beads, and a flat audience tablet held in both hands as he sits on a throne. His household altars usually carry no image at all.