Nuo folk religion

Model humanity: Main philosophical traditions: Ritual traditions: Devotional traditions: Salvation churches and sects: Confucian churches and sects: Nuo folk religion, or extendedly, Chinese popular exorcistic religion, is a variant of Chinese folk religion with its own system of temples, rituals, orders of priests, and gods that is interethnic and practiced across central and southern China but is also intimately connected to the Tujia people.

[2] One of the most distinguishing characteristics of Nuo folk religion is its iconographic style, which represents the gods as wooden masks or heads.

This is related to its own mythology, which traces the origin of Nuo to the first two humans, who were unjustly killed by beheading and have since then been worshipped as responsive divine ancestors.

[4] When a Nuo ceremony is performed, the ancestral couple is represented by carved wooden statues erected in front of the temple, while all lesser gods are placed behind them.

[13] Nuo cosmology is based on a yin and yang theory, clearly represented in mythology, otherwise explainable as a world in which potentiality and actuality, supernature and nature, form a complementary and dialectical duality which is the order of the universe.

Nuo mythology also tells of a highest goddess, Tiānxiān (天仙 "Heavenly Immortal"), who is directly involved since the origin of humanity in triggering this dialogue between the spiritual and the material.

The Kyōgen actor Nomura Mannojō noted that Chinese nuo 儺 practices were the 8th-century source for the Japanese tsuina 追儺 or setsubun ("ritual to exorcise evil spirits on the last day of winter"), and proposed that supernatural power links the Chinese nuo performer fangxiangshi and the Japanese gigaku masked character Chidō 治道 ("govern the way"), who leads a ceremony.

The royal traditions of the Nuo folk religion in Korea were introduced in the 6th year of the reign of Jeongjong of Goryeo.

12 people who led this team of exorcists wore a red hat and special clothing called sochang and had a whip.