Shanxi Datong Coal God Religion Research

Datong Shanxi coal mining area has a long history of coal industry. Special industry has evolved a unique geographical feature of the coal culture. The worship of Coal God has a close relationship with special historical environment and humanity of the coal mining area, it has spread as a customs activity for a long time, and this activity contains profound folk culture. The mining coal in Datong covers a wide area. This text wants to discuss some ancient and representative coal as the point, such as Yongdingzhuang coal, Wajinwan coal, Laobaidong coal and even some small coals around Datong, also I did lots of field researches in the belief and custom of Coal God to analyze the inheritance and the cultural significance in the new period.The full text divided into five parts. First part is introduction, this part talking about the purpose, significance and the studies about Coal God belief and custom, also introduce the sources of this article and the research methods. The second part is the faith and history study of Coal God in Datong. This chapter starts from the source of coal belief, and simply introduced the general situation about Coal God belief, analyze the backgrounds of nature and humanity. The third part, Datong mining area people spiritual—God Kiln, and its social functions. This part combine some oral and documents materials to describe the shape and address of the God Kiln’s Temples, analyze the belief, the social functions and the importance of people’s living and producing. The fourth part is the festival and taboo of coal-god in the traditional period. Coal God belief and custom has infiltrated into all the aspects of people’s daily lives. The activities of the special fete and taboo show the people’s worship and belief. Some belief and custom forms which almost disappeared are emphasized in this chapter. The fifth part is the situation and analysis about the belief in the transitional period. With the transformation of society, the belief in coal area is generalized into the daily life and also, the circumstances of Coal God belief are changed a lot.As the unique custom in the mining area, belief in the Coal God greatly reflects the psychological characteristics of people, with the modern developments, culture will be injected new elements, this article through the analyze of the coal exploration of folk culture, I hope my research would help and support the further development of Datong coal in theory.