Les Oracles du Cao Ðài

Book

A new book by Jérémy Jammes has been published by Les Indes Savantes : Les Oracles du Cao Ðài - Étude d’un mouvement religieux vietnamien et de ses réseaux (foreword by Georges Condominas), 614 pages.
ISBN : 978-2-84654-351-4 (36 €)

Caodaism has long attracted a range of sometimes pejorative labels, such as “Secret Society”, “politico-religious cult” and “Vietnamese syncretism”, which give a distorted picture of the religious movement and its identity. Caodaism has proved permeable to western influences such as freemasonry, spiritualism and theosophy. However, it also played a critical activist role in political debates during the colonial period and its political influence persisted in Cochin China and then South Vietnam until 1975.
Who is behind the figure of Master Cao Ðài ? Why do Caodaists worship Victor Hugo, Joan of Arc and Jesus alongside Asian deities ? How did spirit-mediumship oracles interfere in the lives of adepts and in the geopolitics of this religion ? How was Caodaism connected to secret societies and other religious and redemptive societies that appeared in China at the same time ? What is the relationship between today’s Cao Ðài community - which has more than two million believers in Vietnam and overseas - and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam ?

Drawing on methodologies derived from disciplines of history, social anthropology and sociology of religions, Jeremy Jammes spent fifteen years conducting field research on the Cao Ðài. This included interviewing Cao Ðài officials, missionaries and adepts, collecting their biographies, decrypting their (often esoteric) writings, and entering a complex social network made up of religious and political alliances and competition. Far from being monolithic, Caodaism and its community of followers have, from 1920 until the present day, comprised a constellation of symbols, networks and power dynamics ; one which gives us a new insight into Vietnam.

The author

Dr Jérémy Jammes is currently working in Bangkok as Deputy Director of the Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia, in charge of the publication work. He has been spending many years in the region, especially in Vietnam and in Cambodia. His 2006 PhD dissertation subject was on the Vietnamese religious movement called Cao Dai. His others social anthropological research fields cover also conversion strategies in Christianity and new religious movements, Southeast Asia geopolitics and security studies.

Book details