The pantheon · Seasonal
Ghost Month and the open gate
For one lunar month the gate of the underworld is said to stand open, and the living make offerings to the dead who have no one to make them.
08-01 – 09-20
The seventh lunar month, falling roughly across August and September, is Ghost Month. Its fifteenth day is the Ghost Festival — Zhongyuan in Daoist reckoning, Yulanpen in Buddhist.
Both traditions arrive at the same practice from different premises: offerings are made for the dead who are unattended, whether because their line has ended or because no one remembers them. That the two traditions converge here, from an Indian sutra and a Chinese ritual calendar respectively, is a good illustration of how the syncretic layers formed.
Popular custom attaches a long list of things not to do during the month. We record them as custom, which is what they are.
Figures in this observance
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