Ondel-Ondel

One of the prominent folk arts of the Betawi people of Indonesia are the Ondel-Ondel puppets/costumes. These large colorful figures are donned by dancers at various festivals and cultural events. While today it is more of a cultural practice, these figures come from folk beliefs, where they seem to have originally represented the ancestors who watch over the people and protect them from evil spirits. Here are Ondel-Ondel figures and mask by Kosmas Santosa and Dendi Pratama.

Happy New Year

Cai Shen is a god of prosperity in Chinese folk tradition, later venerated in Taoism and some forms of Buddhism. Today figures of Cai Shen (here by rack911) are often included in Chinese New Year decorations as tokens of good luck for wealth in the year to come.

Happy New Year

Chinese New Year isn't actually here for a few weeks yet, but 2012 is the year of the dragon (here by ArzLan). The Chinese zodiac is one of those cultural practices that doesn't have any real religious significance now, as far as I can tell, but the origins go way back to days where folk tales and folk religion were tied together. Various origin tales I found have the gods or God choosing the animals of the zodiac, and one origin story specifically says Buddha made this choice.

Dragon Dance

I often go back and forth on whether I should feature cultural practices that have some origin in religious belief at some point in the distant past. In some cases the LEGO creation is just too good to miss, as in Legohaulic's recent dragon dance scene. References to dragons go back 7,000 years in Chinese culture. Dragons were at some points seen as mythical beings associated with rivers, oceans, the weather, or other phenomena. There were temples devoted to the local dragons, where supplicants could ask for rain, or safe sea-journey, or for the river to not flood. Dragon imagery can be seen in temples and other religious art. Over time dragons became a symbol of China, of the emperor, of power, and dragons worked their way into Chinese culture. One aspect of this is the dragon dance, going back almost two millennia, where many dancers carry a long dragon puppet/costume through the streets as part of cultural festivals. Okay, so this is a pretty long ways from a religious MOC, but, as I said, it's way too cool for me to ignore: