The Goddess Mazu Has Many Homes: Place, Experience, and Autoethnographic Encounter With the Sacred

This paper asks how researchers can fruitfully and respectfully approach traditions of the sacred. It centres on the author’s efforts to use autoethnography to interact with the Chinese sea goddess Mazu at Nansha Tianhou Temple in Guangzhou, China. Combining methods and concepts from folklore and human geography, the paper takes an experience-centred and relational approach to religion, belief, and the supernatural while understanding the sacred in terms of excess. The paper argues that reflexive, autoethnographic openness to experiences with the sacred can help researchers understand how people are influenced by the sacred and how this influence is productive of culture, society, and place. Through the autoethnographic study at the heart of this paper, the author experiences Mazu (who transcends folklore, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism) as a complex and multifaceted figure, combining a young woman, a tutelary deity, and the imperial Tianhou (Queen of Heaven). The author’s interactions with Mazu prompt thoughts about home and belonging, highlighting subjectivity and divine agency in the experience of the sacred.