A Living Institution with Its Own Published Canon

Cao Dai maintains several million adherents primarily in Vietnam and among the Vietnamese diaspora internationally, and its central religious authority has published its own scripture and prayer texts as an organized religious canon, meaning Cao Dai prayer content, unlike some traditions catalogued in this atlas, exists in an officially published and institutionally sanctioned form rather than being restricted through oral or initiatory transmission alone, though this entry still limits itself to describing rather than reproducing that specific published material, consistent with the general treatment this atlas extends to actively maintained, institutionally published religious canons rather than reflecting any particular restriction unique to Cao Dai. Cao Dai's distinctive eye-in-a-triangle symbol, representing the Supreme Being, and its practice of formally honoring a diverse pantheon of historical and religious figures, including Victor Hugo, Confucius and Jesus Christ, as spiritual saints within its own theological framework, reflect the religion's consciously syncretic founding vision of unifying what its founders regarded as the essential truths across major world religious traditions.