Songshan Cihui Temple, Taipei松山慈惠堂

Type

Temples and Abbeys (Gongguan)

Location

Taiwan, China · Taiwan · Xinyi District, Taipei · No. 33, Lane 251, Fude Street, at the foot of Tiger Mountain, one of the Four Beasts Mountains (located in Xinyi District, not Songshan District)

Coordinates

25.0366, 121.5876 Map ↗

School

Daoism in Taiwan

First built

1969 (hall established)/1979 (present site chosen for construction)/1985 (enshrinement of the Golden Mother) · Founding master and temple head Guo Yezi; belongs to the Cihui Temple system of "Mother" worship, which originated in Hualien.

Overview

The Songshan Cihui Temple, Taipei, principally enshrines the Ultimateless Queen Mother of the West of the Jasper Pool, Great Celestial Worthy, whom devotees honor as the "Mother"; the Jade Emperor and the Sovereign Mother of the Earth are enshrined as attendant deities. According to the temple's own account, in 1968 the Queen Mother of the Jasper Pool revealed that she had chosen Guo Yezi to serve as temple master to save and deliver the people, and the temple opened for teaching the following year; the temple's own website records that in its earliest days it consisted of no more than "a single sheet of red paper pasted up, and rice offered in a repurposed milk-powder tin." In 1979 the Mother revealed by divine sign that the temple should be founded at the foot of Tiger Mountain, one of the Four Beasts Mountains, and the Queen Mother's image was consecrated there in 1985, making it the largest "Mother" worship center in Taipei. The building rises up the mountainside in tiered halls, and also includes a God of Wealth Hall, a Wenchang Hall, a Dizang Hall, and a Fude Hall, among others. The Cihui Temple system originated from a lineage founded in Hualien in 1949, and within a short time established more than a thousand branch temples across Taiwan, making it one of the fastest-growing new religious movements in postwar Taiwan; scholars generally classify it under "Mother" worship rather than as a traditional Zhengyi or Quanzhen Daoist school. Devotees typically wear blue-green robes, forming a distinctive visual identity. Its regular festival days fall on the third day of the third lunar month (the Queen Mother's birthday) and the eighteenth day of the seventh month. The temple has been selected among the Ministry of the Interior's "Hundred Sights of Taiwan's Religions."

Highlights

• The Ultimateless Queen Mother of the West of the Jasper Pool
• Founding master Guo Yezi
• Tiered halls rising up the mountainside
• The "Hundred Sights of Taiwan's Religions"