The significance of offering a bunch of bananas as an incense, does it bring more luck when merging multiple bunches of bananas into a larger one?

The meaning of bananas in ancestor worship

Among the types of fruit used in ancestral worship, bananas are the most common fruit seen on the ancestral altar.

Especially during Tet, Mid-Autumn Festival, Qingming Festival… bananas cannot be missing from the five-fruit tray of many families, especially according to the worship customs in the North. Every Lunar New Year, every household must go hunting to find beautiful, curved bananas that are big enough to encompass all the other fruits on the ancestral altar. Bananas represent abundance and togetherness with their clustered fruit form in one bunch. Bananas symbolize luck, curved bananas like hands sheltering and embracing all the other fruits on the five-fruit tray symbolize the protection of ancestors for the family. On the ancestral altar during Tet, bananas are the most prominent and central fruit with its green color, symbolizing wood, and the other fruits are arranged to form the five elements of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth.

Because bananas have the attracting property, lighting banana incense is believed to attract wealth and bring good luck to the homeowner. Because of the role of bananas in the fruit tray, there is a fact that sometimes you cannot buy bananas that are as big and curved as desired, so many people want to use nails or string to connect multiple small bunches of bananas together to make them big enough to encompass all the other fruits.

Does combining multiple bunches of bananas into one large bunch attract more wealth than one bunch?

Many families want the fruit tray to be big and beautiful, showing care and abundance. However, it is not always possible to buy large and wide banana bunches. Especially when bananas are out of season or expensive, and when going to the market late.

In that case, if you want to combine 2-3-4-5 small banana bunches into one large bunch to encompass more fruits and make the fruit tray bigger, is it advisable?

In terms of aesthetics, stacking multiple banana bunches side by side to form a larger bunch looks beautiful and ensures the desired size like the homeowner wants.

However, this combining has some issues:

– What material is used to combine them? Do you use nails, iron nails, iron wire, or adhesive…? Combining with sharp objects like nails or metal can be unfavorable in terms of feng shui. According to feng shui, the ancestral altar should limit metal materials because they can disrupt the qi field in the worship area. Sharp objects make the worship area lack spirituality and create negative energy.

– How many bunches are combined? According to feng shui, the worship items are usually odd numbers 1-5-7-9 and avoid even numbers because odd numbers represent yang, while even numbers represent yin. When lighting incense, odd numbers should be chosen to represent development, while even numbers represent decline. Therefore, if you combine 2-4-6 banana bunches together on one worship tray, it may violate feng shui principles.

– Does the combined banana bunch ensure the stability of the fruit tray during the worship process? If it is loose, it can cause the tray to fall and break during worship, causing psychological unease and unfavorable signs.

Therefore, you should pay attention when deciding to combine multiple banana bunches together during worship to ensure feng shui compatibility.

When buying banana incense, you should also pay attention to:

Choose the right type of bananas for each region: People in the South do not worship bananas because the curved bananas resemble bowing, which is believed to bring bad luck. People in the North pay attention to bananas but choose long-known bananas, not Western bananas, because the short-shaped bananas are not curved and cannot encompass many fruits on the five-fruit tray. People in Hue avoid known bananas and choose Ngự bananas, Mật bananas, and Sứ bananas.

Bananas need to be appropriately ripe: Banana incense should choose ripe green bananas that are not too young but not ripe, because if the bananas are too young, the fruits are not plump and look ugly, while ripe bananas are prone to fall and break during worship. The color of ripe bananas is not harmonious in the fruit tray. Green bananas combined with other colored fruits create the five elements.

Avoid choosing even-numbered bunches: Many people only choose beautiful bunches of bananas without paying attention to the number of fruits. But beware, many people choose odd numbers, as odd numbers represent growth. Of course, to count it evenly, not every bunch has an odd number of fruits.

Avoid choosing curved and unbalanced bunches: Curved and unbalanced banana bunches are both aesthetically unpleasant and not feng shui favorable. That’s why housewives put effort into choosing worship bananas.

Information for reference and contemplation