Abstract: The traditional beliefs in gods, ghosts and spirits of the Yi people recognize and understand the traditional belief culture of gods, ghosts and spirits from the perspectives and methods of people's long-term emotional tendencies and value orientations of everything in the world, and classify them, according to these emotional tendencies and value orientations, into three major categories - protecting oneself, differentiating self and identifying with oneself - that have become the core objects of the primitive religious beliefs of the Yi people. This article briefly examines the categories of the Yi people's traditional beliefs in gods and ghosts, and discusses their cultural implications. It contends that gods and ghosts, gods and spirits, ancestors and gods, gods, ghosts and spirits, and the traditional hierarchy of gods of the Yi people form the traditional social hierarchical system of the ancient Yi people that is used to construct, fix and continue the traditional social hierarchy of the ancient Yi people.

Key words: the Yi people, god, ghost, spirit, belief category, cultural implication