Mazu (Tianhou)

Mazu’s secular name was Lin Mo, born on Meizhou Island in Putian, Fujian, during the late Five Dynasties and early Song dynasty. From birth she displayed extraordinary spiritual gifts: she mastered astronomy and meteorology, possessed intimate knowledge of tides and currents, and frequently sailed out in storms to rescue imperilled fishermen. She ascended to heaven at the age of twenty-eight. Locals erected a temple in her honour, venerating her as the ‘Spiritually Eloquent and Virtuous Maiden’. Successive imperial courts conferred ever-higher titles upon her—from ‘Lady’ to ‘Consort’, then ‘Celestial Consort’, and finally, during the Kangxi reign of the Qing dynasty, ‘Empress of Heaven’. Her cult spread widely through Fujianese migrants and maritime merchants, reaching northward to Tianjin and southward across Southeast Asia; today over ten thousand Mazu temples stand worldwide, and in 2009 the Mazu belief and customs were inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.