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Stone Power

March 4, 2024 / John D. / 0 Comments

Readers of this blog will know of the fascination Green Shinto has with the sacred rocks of Japan, known as iwakura. No one I have asked, including several Shinto priests, can explain their significance, and books ignore them altogether. Yet they often stand at the heart of a shrine, and in many cases are said to be the very reason for the establishment of the place as sacred. The topic has been addressed in several previous postings, but an article in Sacred Hoop magazine covering the use of sacred stones in shamanism casts them in a new light. For one thing there is the historical background, stretching back to a time before homo sapiens even emerged. For another there is explanation of their origin as a natural ‘god-given’ phenomenon. A third point of interest is the suggestion some stones ‘flash’ to attract attention. I believe this may be tied to the mirror rocks in Japan (kagami iwa), which are often found at sacred sites. A fourth point is the commonality of Native American thinking with Shinto, unsurprising given the former’s supposed origins in East Asia. Finally, the last paragraph may help explain the tradition in Japan of keeping sacred rocks secret or hidden from view. In the past this would have been a powerful element of mystery, and still today the tradition is maintained in such shrines as the ancient Omiwa Jinja in Nara Prefecture, claimed by some as the oldest shrine in Japan.

Mt Miwa casts a protective eye over the settlement below it. The mountain is a ‘goshintai’ (sacred body) for Omiwa Jinja and worshipped directly. The sacred rocks on it are not to be touched or photographed.

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Extracted from ‘Stone Power’ by Nicholas Breeze Wood Sacred Hoop no. 123, 2024

The oldest example of a stone which had caught someone’s eye is the Makapansgat pebble, a naturally formed stone which resembles a
face, or a skull, around 8cm high, discovered in a cave in the Makapan
Valley, in South Africa. It was found in remains of human habitation which has been dated to around three million years ago.

The stone shows no evidence of having been worked, no tool marks, and is therefore a naturally formed pebble which someone found and prized. Naturally formed stones are the origin of the famous Zuni stone fetishes, from the Southwest of the USA, which are carved to resemble animals, the original one
however were ‘nature carved’ and highly prized as sacred stones.

Inland Sea natural rock said to represent the hawk sent by Amaterasu to help guide Jimmu in his voyage of conquest for the Yamato

Such stones – and also naturally shaped bits of wood or roots – have long been prized as sacred objects, within which a spirit resides, or which a spirit has touched in some way. They are natural treasured gifts from our Grandmother the earth. Of course, stones don’t have to be of a special or unusual shape, they can come in special circumstances which make them special.

In Native American traditions, the Lakota call such special stone woti, they are ‘rock friends’ powerful rock spirits who protect a person. They come in unusual
ways, often brightly flashing light at a person to draw their eye so the stone is found. Carried in small bags or suspended on cord, they are worn close to the body, specially in times of danger, and many Native American warriors – both historically and in modern times, will carry such a rock.

The Crow Nation, who lived close to the Lakota on the Great Plains, often made elaborate ‘nests’ for their medicine stones, which they wore on cords around
their necks. These nests were generally beaded and hung with larger glass trade beads, which provided additional decoration.

Stones can be used as a temporary home for a soul part during soul-retrievals; the shamanic practitioner carries the stone in some way while they are on their shamanic journey, and the spirit of the stone will then accompany them on their journey and be with them in the ‘dark world’ – the ‘spirit world’ – when they find the lost soul part of the client. Then, the soul part is ‘popped’ into the stone, and the journeyer returns to the ‘light world’ – the every day – and gives the stone to the client, who keeps it close to themselves while the soul part fully returns and is integrated. The client should really keep the stone close, perhaps putting it into a small cloth or leather bag which they wear around their neck.

In many traditional healing rituals the client avoids touching – or sometimes even seeing – the released energy container, so as to avoid taking back the heaviness again.

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For more on rocks, see here or click the button under Categories in the right-hand column.

Pair of iwakura at Achi Jinja in Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture

Japanese animism

February 14, 2024 / John D. / 0 Comments

Interesting article in the Japan News by a former Japanese diplomat, Kagefumi Ueno. It begins by noting the recent upturn in the number of pet funerals, and widens out to conclude with observations about modernity and tradition in the Japanese mindset.

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Nature-centric rock worship (photos by John Dougill)

Kagefumi Ueno writes: “Even in historically non-Christian Asian countries such as China and Korea, I understand that they seldom offer funeral services for pets, possibly for cultural reasons. In part they tend to notionally distinguish people from animals, which could be described as anthropocentric. In contrast, the Japanese, who are generally much less anthropocentric or more nature-centric, draw such distinctions less sharply.

Indeed, it is not only pets whose souls the Japanese revere. They revere or soothe the souls of many categories of dead animals — ranging from animals sacrificed for medical testing to fish or shrimps or whales that are caught and eaten, to police dogs and so forth.

They do this through religious ceremonies called kuyo — also held for deceased human beings — that are by and large officiated by Shinto or Buddhist clergy. They pay tribute to the animals’ sacrifice. Even today kuyo ceremonies for animals take place almost everywhere in Japan. For example, if you visit the Tsukiji Namiyoke Jinja shrine in Tokyo, you can see stone monuments for the fish, clams, eggs and even kombu seaweed that were once sold at the nearby Tsukiji Market.

Nor is the inclusion of kombu so unusual. The Japanese hold kuyo ceremonies even for inanimate objects — used utensils such as needles and kitchen knives, used medical syringes, used pens and brushes, used factory machinery and so forth — in order to thank these objects for the services they offered for a long time, just before they are disposed of. It is to soothe their spirits or souls.

While I was serving as the Japanese ambassador to Guatemala over 20 years ago, a Guatemalan government minister who was of Mayan origin told me that indigenous Mayan people similarly practice religious ceremonies to thank machinery for its hard work just before it is scrapped. Like them, the Japanese sometimes regard even lifeless things as people by sensing their souls. Moreover, they also sense divinity even in the lowliest insects or smallest plants. Many scholars call this mind-set animistic, pantheistic or polytheistic.

Below the surface of the popularity of pet funerals, one may perceive a very animistic or pantheistic ethos or sentiment at the basic stratum of Japanese culture. It is a trait the Japanese may share with Mayans or some of the indigenous peoples of North America.

This animism or pantheism has significant visible, tangible aspects as well as non-visible, abstract aspects.

Sacred waterfall at Nachi, in Wakayama Prefecture

First, at a visible, tangible level, the Japanese as nature worshippers adore mountains, springs, lakes, waterfalls, rocks, majestic trees, the observable planets, and so forth, much like the Mayans, Pre-Christian Celts or Australian Indigenous people. These things are deemed to be divine or sacred. That’s why many Shinto shrines are in the vicinity of those sacred things to facilitate the worship of their divinity.

Against this backdrop, many classic works of Japanese literature — notably the Manyoshu , a compilation of classic waka poems of the eighth century, and haiku by 17th-century poet Matsuo Basho — are not seldom manifestations of such animistic or pantheistic sentiment.

Second, at a more abstract or spiritual level, the Japanese tend to identify themselves with Mother Nature or the Universe and have a sense of unity with Nature or a sense of belonging to it. They believe that they can reach the ultimate spiritual stage only when or after they become absorbed by or melted into Nature by discarding their self or ego. A Mayan or a pre-Christian Celt might share a similar cosmovision.

It should now be clear that at the basis of today’s Japanese civilization lie two distinctive elements, namely the animistic ethos on one hand and modernism and rational thinking on the other. Hence, contemporary Japanese civilization could be interpreted as a hybrid of two very distinctive and sometimes contradictory things, namely, pre-modernity and modernity. Whereas their pre-modern half urges people to revere souls of waterfalls, trees or mountains in an animistic manner, their rational half urges them to take a scientific approach, setting aside animistic mentality. It is a kind of dualism or hybridity. The two halves sometimes clash. However, more often they coexist without conspicuous conflicts.

It may be a source of wonder or amazement that the 150-year process of modernization and industrialization of Japan did not substantially extinguish the people’s animistic mentality. Thus, even today, Japanese high technology is taken care of by those who abound in animistic ethos. Don’t take it as a contradiction.”

Collection space for the kuyo (soul pacification) of old dolls

Setsubun

February 1, 2024 / John D. / 2 Comments

Feb 3 is Setsubun and a time for throwing beans at demons. (Beans represent vitality, demons represent evil spirits that cause illness and ill fortune.) The event takes place at shrines, temples and in people’s homes.

Here’s Wikipedia’s succinct overview of the custom and its origins:

“Setsubun is the day before the beginning of Spring in Japan. The name literally means “seasonal division”, but usually the term refers to the Spring Setsubun celebrated yearly on February 3 as part of the Spring Festival. In its association with the Lunar New Year, Spring Setsubun can be and was previously thought of as a sort of New Year’s Eve, and so was accompanied by a special ritual to cleanse away all the evil of the former year and drive away disease-bringing evil spirits for the year to come. This special ritual is called mamemaki (literally “bean scattering”). Setsubun has its origins in tsuina, a Chinese custom introduced to Japan in the eighth century.”

For an explanation of the beans, click here.
For some interesting facts about the festival, see here.
For a description of the festival at Kyoto’s Yasaka Jinja, see here.
For a photo story of Setsubun at Shimogamo Jinja, see here.

Purification of place prior to a Shugendo ceremony

The Shugendo ceremony involves smoke from burning pine as wooden prayer tablets are thrown into the flames to be ritually burnt

Maiko descend from the stage after distributing lucky beans at Yasaka Jinja in Kyoto

Geisha join senior parishioners to throw lucky beans at Heian Jingu in Kyoto

Demons personifiying all things bad appear at many festivals

Eating a specially fat sushi roll (ehomaki) in the year’s lucky direction is a Setsubun custom

Priests at Shimogamo Jinja show there’s a religious aspect to all the jollity

Matsuo Taisha Setsubun (4)
Setsubun is here (3)
The Plague (3)
Shimogamo First Zodiac Festival (Hatsuetosai) (2)

Shimogamo Sunday

January 29, 2024 / John D. / 0 Comments

Big queue for the little ‘hokora’ dedicated to the dragon, this year’s zodiac animal

A month has passed since New Year, so I was surprised to find Shimogamo bustling with visitors despite the cold of a 7C afternoon. There has certainly been a noticeable upturn in numbers and the reason is not hard to discern. It is one of three shrines recently highlighted on television as one of the few places in Kyoto to worship at a subshrine to the dragon, this year’s Chinese zodiac animal.

Watching the various activities and jolly atmosphere brings to mind questions about whether it is all religious in essence, or simply a custom, or even just superstition? The answer is far from clear. On the one hand is the sheer number of people evident on such occasions, nearly all of whom pay respects, toss a monetary offering into the collection box, and buy an amulet or votive plaque (ema). On the other hand there are surveys that suggest that only five percent or less actually “believe” in the kami to which they are nominally praying. More often than not, worshippers have no idea of the name of the kami.

Water brings to light the invisible ink fortunes

In Western terms a parallel can be found in the celebration of Christmas. In the UK for instance, nearly everyone takes part in some kind of festive activity, yet few would claim to be practising Christians. Indeed, for many if not most the celebration has nothing to do with a belief in Jesus or God. It is more a matter of custom, shaped by the culture in which it takes place.

So it is that certain things are taken for granted by Japanese visitors to a shrine. It is customary to wash your hands before entering the compound as a symbolic purification of body and mind. It is customary to pay respects by bowing as you enter through the torii. It is customary to make an offering, however little, and it is customary to give thanks to the presiding kami. It is customary too (though not obligatory) to purchase a protective amulet or other goods from the shrine office.

Queue at the shrine office to buy amulets and prayer tablets (ema)

Behind the Japanese shrine visits lies a strong respect for tradition and ancestry. The custom of kami worship has been practised for over a millennium, though standardisation only came after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Participation in shrine visits is not so much about kami worship, however. It is more a matter of communal compliance, fosgtered by a sense of belonging and what it means to be Japanese.

Post-shamanic cultures take their form from the role of the shaman in ancient times. It involved not only contacting the spirit world, but preserving the tribal identity by knowledge of the history and mythic past. Shinto shrines perform a similar role, for the annual round of festivals and rituals honour the way of those who came before. How appropriate then that this year should be the turn of the dragon. Living in the watery depths, the mythical creature has wings which allow it to soar into the high sky. In this way it unites heaven and earth, a messenger from the gods and ancestral spirits that guide Japan even into the present day.

Wedding photo near the entrance gate to the shrine compound

Hatsumiya mairi – first shrine visit for the youngster, already being reared into the Japanese tradition

One of the shrine’s plum trees was in blossom, alarmingly early

The shrine’s large-scale ema showing what all the commotion is about

Winter Thoughts

January 26, 2024 / John D. / 2 Comments

Winter gives us respite to turn inward and reflect

With snow in Kyoto the other day, thoughts turn to the beneficial role of winter in the annual round. Rainer Maria Rilke was a prolific letter writer, whose insights into life have been much treasured, and the extract below comes from a 1922 letter to a young woman named Heise reflecting on what winter teaches us about life’s riches (tr. by William Needham). For Shinto, living in the here and now, enjoying the paradise on earth is something to be grateful for in the depths of winter, just as on the sunniest of spring days…

Tending my inner garden went splendidly this winter. Suddenly to be healed again and aware that the very ground of my being — my mind and spirit — was given time and space in which to go on growing; and there came from my heart a radiance I had not felt so strongly for a long time… You tell me how you are able to feel fully alive every moment of the day and that your inner life is brimming over; you write in the knowledge that what you have, if one looks at it squarely, outweighs and cancels all possible privations and losses that may later come along. It is precisely this that was borne in upon me more conclusively than ever before as I worked away during the long Winter months: that the stages by which life has become impoverished correspond with those earlier times when excesses of wealth were the accustomed measure. What, then, is there to fear? Only forgetting! But you and I, around us and in us, we have so much in store to help us remember!

Lining up to pray for ‘good connections’ at a Shimogamo Jinja subshrine

Another person to explore the benefits of winter was Henry Thoreau, as a recent edition of Brainpickings makes clear. The writer considered winter’s rewards in a meandering meditation entitled “A Winter Walk” (in his Excursions). It captures something of the sense of awe that underscores the nature worship of Shinto.

Writing in the winter of 1843, the twenty-five-year-old Thoreau awakens to a snow-covered wonderland and marvels at the earthly paradise:

The wind has gently murmured through the blinds, or puffed with feathery softness against the windows, and occasionally sighed like a summer zephyr lifting the leaves along, the livelong night. The meadow-mouse has slept in his snug gallery in the sod, the owl has sat in a hollow tree in the depth of the swamp, the rabbit, the squirrel, and the fox have all been housed. The watch-dog has lain quiet on the hearth, and the cattle have stood silent in their stalls. The earth itself has slept, as it were its first, not its last sleep, save when some street-sign or wood-house door has faintly creaked upon its hinge, cheering forlorn nature at her midnight work, — the only sound awake twixt Venus and Mars, — advertising us of a remote inward warmth, a divine cheer and fellowship, where gods are met together, but where it is very bleak for men to stand. But while the earth has slumbered, all the air has been alive with feathery flakes descending, as if some northern Ceres reigned, showering her silvery grain over all the fields.

This quieting of the outside world, this kindling of the inner hearth, is winter’s great reward for Thoreau. A century before Albert Camus captured the essence of winter’s treasures — “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

Thoreau writes:

There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill…. What fire could ever equal the sunshine of a winter’s day, when the meadow mice come out by the wallsides, and the chicadee lisps in the defiles of the wood? The warmth comes directly from the sun, and is not radiated from the earth, as in summer; and when we feel his beams on our backs as we are treading some snowy dell, we are grateful as for a special kindness, and bless the sun which has followed us into that by-place.

This subterranean fire has its altar in each man’s breast, for in the coldest day, and on the bleakest hill, the traveller cherishes a warmer fire within the folds of his cloak than is kindled on any hearth. A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter, summer is in his heart. There is the south. Thither have all birds and insects migrated, and around the warm springs in his breast are gathered the robin and the lark.

Thoreau believed that “every walk is a sort of crusade.” As he walks through the meadows blanketed in white, up the hills draped with snow-bowed branches, through a world enveloped in delicious quietude and covered in a “pure elastic heaven,” he returns to the invaluable inward focus which winter alone invites — a quiet conquest of one’s interior world. A century before Rilke painted winter as the season for tending to one’s inner garden, Thoreau wrote:

In this lonely glen, with its brook draining the slopes, its creased ice and crystals of all hues, where the spruces and hemlocks stand up on either side, and the rush and sere wild oats in the rivulet itself, our lives are more serene and worthy to contemplate.

In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts, whose windows and doors are half concealed, but from whose chimneys the smoke cheerfully ascends.

On Christmas Day of 1856, he issues an exhortation central to his philosophy and his daily practice:

Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.

Four days later, Thoreau amplifies his point:

We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. We must make root, send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day. I am sensible that I am imbibing health when I open my mouth to the wind. Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always. Every house is in this sense a hospital. A night and a forenoon is as much confinement to those wards as I can stand. I am aware that I recover some sanity which I had lost almost the instant that I come [outdoors].

There is nothing so sanative, so poetic, as a walk in the woods and fields even now, when I meet none abroad for pleasure. In the street and in society I am almost invariably cheap and dissipated, my life is unspeakably mean. No amount of gold or respectability would in the least redeem it, — dining with the Governor or a member of Congress!! But alone in distant woods or fields, I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related, and that cold and solitude are friends of mine. I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get by churchgoing and prayer. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.

In the embrace of winter, we see from Thoreau’s words, is not simply a health-restoring remedy, but deep spiritual insight into the wonder and grandeur of the universe. It’s this sense that Shinto does so much to celebrate and treasure.

Snowman at Shimogamo Jinja, celebrating the joys of midwinter

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Naked (Wo-)Man Festival

January 24, 2024 / John D. / 0 Comments

The report below, featured in today’s Independent newspaper, prompts the question of what the women will be wearing when they partake for the first time in a Naked Festival with over a millennium’s worth of tradition . As can be seen in the picture below, the men are not naked but wearing fundoshi (loin cloth). The festival should rightly be called, The Near Naked Festival.

Quote:

A shrine in Japan that organises the famous Naked Man festival will allow women to participate for the first time in its 1,250-year history.

A group of local women in Inazawa, in Japan’s Aichi prefecture, are all set to join the annual Hadaka Matsuri, held in February at the Konomiya shrine.

While the women will remain fully clothed and avoid the traditional violent clash of near-naked men in loincloths, they will participate in the naoizasa ritual, which will require them to carry bamboo grass wrapped in cloth into the shrine grounds.

Men typically wear a minimal ensemble, consisting of a Japanese loincloth known as a fundoshi and a pair of white socks called tabi. The festival, celebrating the abundance of harvest, prosperity, and fertility, kicks off around 3.20pm local time.

The Mainichi reported that this is the first time a group of about 40 local women will be a part of the ancient event.

(courtesy Aichi prefecture offiicial tourism site)

Shimogamo Update

January 23, 2024 / John D. / 0 Comments

Entrance to Kosaki no yashiro and the newly (re-)created stone-lined pond.

Regular readers of this blog will know that our local shrine is the World Heritage site of Shimogamo Jinja in Kyoto. Over the more than thirty years I have been living close to it, I have noted the many changes that the shrine has undergone. Most of these have been improvements or additions in order to increase the attraction of the shrine to worshippers, on whose money it depends. It seems to be working. There are far more visitors these days than there used to be. (See this post for previous additions, such as a rugby subshrine. )

There is a big new project in the heart of the Tadasu forest, a remnant it is said of the original wild forest that once covered the whole river basin. A large portion of the woods has been cleared in order to make what looks like walkways and a stone lined pond. In Japanese fashion nature has been modified and beautified.

The entrance to this ‘nature park’ leads through a series of torii to a small shrine named Kosaki no yashiro. Originally it stood in the area between present-day Kyoto University and Tanaka Shrine, indicative of how far Shimogamo’s reach once was, but over the years the Kosaki Shrine suffered damage from fire and was destroyed in the Onin War (1467-77) which devastated Kyoto. In 2014 it was reconstituted here at Shimogamo as part of their shikinen sengu (regular renewal).

However, the highlight of the cleared area is the Hojoki hut of Kamo no Chomei. The author is thought to have lived in this part of the precincts. The model of his famous hermitage has been relocated from the nearby Kawai Jinja, where it stood in the shrine’s compound. Now it has a more atmospheric setting, surrounded by trees and with stone steps leading to it across a stream and up to the hut set on a slight incline. It looks more appropriate, closer to how the original would have been when Chomei lived on a hill outside the capital.

For the moment the Shimogamo clearing is still off-limits, and it is uncertain when it will be open to the public. Something to look out for on your next visit, perhaps, to what is slowly turning into a Shinto theme park.

A model of the famous retreat of Kamo no Chomei. The original was situated on a hill outside the capital. Chomei’s book Hojoki has inspired countless hermits and nature lovers down the centuries.

For further reading about Kamo no Chomei together with pictures of his Hojoki hut, please see here.

For an account of other changes and additions at Shimogamo, see here.

For electronic use by the shrine, click here.

For more about Kawai Jinja next to the site, click here.

Green Shinto