Nine types of flowers used to boil bath water for the Lady of Sam Mountain

Hundreds of women from inside and outside the province came to participate in making water to bathe the Lady with 9 types of flowers - Photo: BUU DAU

On May 20, the Management Board of Sam Mountain Temple, Chau Doc City, An Giang Province organized the boiling of nine types of flowers to prepare for the Ba bathing ceremony taking place at 0:00 on May 21.

The Ba bathing ceremony is one of the important traditional rituals in the national festival of Ba Chua Xu Mountain Sam with 3 main parts: preparing water to bathe Ba; bathing Ba; changing clothes and crown for Ba.

From 6am, more than 100 people from local volunteer groups were present at Ba Chua Xu Temple on Sam Mountain. Dressed in yellow shirts and yellow hats prepared by the Sam Mountain Temple Management Board, they began to assign tasks from washing flowers, separating petals, lighting fires... to boiling water.

Like every year, the bath water for Ba is boiled from nine types of fragrant fresh flowers such as: red lilies, yellow chrysanthemums, white lilies, gerberas, royal poincianas, butterfly orchids, roses, jasmine, and lotus.

The Ba bathing group consists of nine women selected by the Sam Mountain Temple Management Board.

These people will participate directly from the stage of preparing flowers, separating petals and cooking water to bathe the Lady.

Flowers chosen to cook water to bathe the statue of the Lady are those with bright colors and a natural, gentle fragrance.

Ba Chua Xu bath water of Sam mountain is made from 9 kinds of flowers combined with boiled water - Photo: BUU DAU

The pot used to boil water for her bath is a copper pot, kept separately and wiped carefully before use. Each copper pot holds more than 100 liters of water. The water used to boil the flowers is pure filtered water. Fresh flowers after separating the petals will be put into the pot, each pot has enough for nine types of flowers.

Ms. Anh Duong - the administrator of Sam Mountain Temple - said that for many years she has been involved in boiling water to bathe the Lady on the occasion of the Sam Mountain Lady Festival.

According to Vietnamese tradition, men are "seven" and women are "nine", so they must choose nine types of flowers to boil with pure water to bathe the Lady. The unit mobilized the people in the area to pick familiar flowers, the rest were brought down by visitors from Saigon.

"Depending on the number of visitors, the amount of water used to bathe the Lady will change. Every year, nine barrels of water are boiled. After boiling, it is left to cool, then mixed with aromatic oil and given to visitors who come to worship the Lady," said Ms. Anh Duong.

FIGHTING

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/chin-loai-hoa-dung-nau-nuoc-tam-cho-ba-chua-xu-nui-sam-2025052016550507.htm