The pantheon is organised by realm, and the realms are colour coded so that a visitor can read an altar without being told anything. Heaven is red, the mountains and forests are green, the waters are white, and earth is yellow. Each is a palace with its own mother goddess at its head, and the arrangement is usually called the religion of the four palaces, though three are named more often than four because the earth realm is sometimes folded into the others.
Below the mothers the hierarchy is populated and specific. There are five great mandarins, then a rank of dames, then the princes, then the damsels and the young attendants, and each figure has a realm, a colour, a costume, a manner and a repertoire of gestures. Many of them are identified with historical or semi-historical persons, generals and court figures and local heroes, which gives the pantheon a strongly national character.
Lieu Hanh stands at the centre of the devotional literature. She is described as a heavenly princess who came down to live among people more than once, is counted among the four immortals of Vietnamese tradition, and her principal temples in Nam Dinh province are pilgrimage sites. The cult of the Tran dynasty general Tran Hung Dao is closely associated with the tradition and is sometimes treated as a parallel current with its own mediums rather than as a part of it.