Originally started as a Spiritualist club (with the above cipher, the first three letters of the alphabet) by a group of clerks working for the colonial government to hold ouija sessions and practise mediumship, within a year, whilst conducting a séance, members received a revelatory message heralding a future universal religion, leading to the formal founding of Caodaism (Đại Đạo Tam Kỳ Phổ Độ, The Great Faith for the Third Universal Religion) on this day in 1926—a syncretic movement that incorporates the ethical precepts of Confucianism, the belief of karma and transmigration of Buddhism, Taoist duality and the centralised hierarchy of Catholicism. 
The first disciple, named first pope Ngô Văn Chiêu for the Holy See in Tây Ninh, declined the role as spiritual leader, never intending for his interest and study in the occult to become a mass movement—retiring to the countryside for a life of seclusion and the first pontiff accepting the job only agreeing to do so provided he be referred to as the Acting Pope for the duration of his reign. The three saints and prophets of Đức Cao Đài are counted as Sun Yat-sen, physician and revolutionary who founded the Kuomintang and lead to the overthrow of the Qing dynasty, Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm, sixteenth century poet and government administrator, later revered as the oracle of the splinter faction known as the School of Teaching Goodness and author Victor Hugo, whose turn to spiritism and deism after retiring from writing and self-imposed exile on the Channel Islands informed much of doctrines of Caodaism. Banned during the French-Indochina war and during Communism as subversive to the state, the church was finally allowed to reconstitute itself in 1997 in Vietnam, practised by the diaspora and numbering around six-million adherents.
The first disciple, named first pope Ngô Văn Chiêu for the Holy See in Tây Ninh, declined the role as spiritual leader, never intending for his interest and study in the occult to become a mass movement—retiring to the countryside for a life of seclusion and the first pontiff accepting the job only agreeing to do so provided he be referred to as the Acting Pope for the duration of his reign. The three saints and prophets of Đức Cao Đài are counted as Sun Yat-sen, physician and revolutionary who founded the Kuomintang and lead to the overthrow of the Qing dynasty, Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm, sixteenth century poet and government administrator, later revered as the oracle of the splinter faction known as the School of Teaching Goodness and author Victor Hugo, whose turn to spiritism and deism after retiring from writing and self-imposed exile on the Channel Islands informed much of doctrines of Caodaism. Banned during the French-Indochina war and during Communism as subversive to the state, the church was finally allowed to reconstitute itself in 1997 in Vietnam, practised by the diaspora and numbering around six-million adherents.
synchronoptica
two years ago: Suddenly plus more boating adventures
three years ago: more hikes through the vineyards plus Hamas attacks Israel
four years ago: absinthe banned in Switzerland, the Feast of Sergius and Bacchus plus assorted links to revisit
five years ago: a cool ghoul and your ghost host, the Cyrus Charter, a bird wife plus a catalogue of invasive toys
six years ago: most senior US government officials in quarantine, a typing tutor, a birdhouse apartment plus more historic maps
seven years ago: a minimum wage machine
eight years ago: more links to check out, East Germany’s Tag der Republik, a visit to an automotive and aviation museum plus himpathy and related neologisms
