Tag: shrine origins

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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Pair of iwakura at Achi Jinja in Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture

Inari origins

October 10, 2019 / John D. / 0 Comments

The main approach to Fushimi Inari leads to the magnificent romon gate
(photos on this page by John Dougill)

The following is excerpted from a translation of the sixth chapter of Bruno Lewin s Aya und Hata Bevolkerungsgruppen Altjapans kontinentaler Herkunft Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1962 Studien zur Japanologie, vol. 3, translation by Richard Payne with Ellen Rozett (Pacific World, New Series, No. 10, 1994)

One of the most wide-sweeping impacts on folk Shinto was the Inari cult initiated by the Hata, which consists of the worship of the deities of the crops. The point of origin of the cult was the Inari Shrine, in the District of Yamashiro and situated in the territory of the old royal domain of Fukakusa. Concerning the establishment of this shrine, the Yamashiro-fudoki reports:

Hata no Kimi Irogu, a distant ancestor of Hata-no-Nakatsue no Imiki, had amassed rice and possessed overflowing wealth. When he made a target (for archery) from pounded rice, this transformed itself into a white bird, which flew up and alighted atop a mountain. There it again became rice and grew upward. Inenari (“becoming rice”) is given therefore as the shrine’s name.

In addition the Jingi-shiryo clarifies this, saying that Irogu, moved by this wonder, in the fourth year of Wado (711) erected a shrine there and worshipped the transformed rice plant, on account of which the shrine was called Inari « inenari. Accordingly, the shrine is of a comparatively late date, though there can be no doubt that the Hata as long-standing cultivators of rice had long possessed the cultic worship of the rice gods, but now mixed with the cult of Inari shrine worship of the Japanese food deity Ukemochi-no-kami. In the Inari shrine the deities Uka-no-mitama-no-kami, Saruka-biko-no-kami and Omiya-nome-no-mikoto are worshipped. Uka-no-mitama is the main deity of the shrine, identical with Ukemochi.

Torii tunnel at Fushimi Inari, signifying passage into the spiritual realm

During the middle ages, the worship of the rice and food deities in the Inari cult spread over the whole of Japan. One can still count about 1,500 Inari shrines, most of them small field and village shrines, in which the fox whom one frequently comes across in the fields, is also worshipped, either as messenger of the deity or even as an incarnation of the deity itself.

The Inari shrine of Fukakusa is considered to be the mother shrine of all of these cultic sites. Its priesthood descended without exception from the prosperous Hata families of the surrounding area. From the Heian era the priests have borne the status name of Hata no Sukune . Gradually there separated out from amongst them more branch families: the Nakatsue, Nakatsuse , Onshi, Matsumoto, Haraigawa, Yasuda, Toriiminami and Mori.

The Inari shrine forms a triangle with the shrines of Kamo and Matsuno’o, in the middle of which was placed the final capital, Heian kyo. All three cultic sites enjoyed the support of the Imperial palaces and were visited in the course of history again and again by individual emperors to venerate the divinities there. The integration of the Hata with the history of these powerful shrines shows what a prominent position they possessed in the territory around Heian kyo. We can well assume that Kammu-tenno, in shifting the capital, allowed himself to be guided by the effort to remove himself from the immediate of the Yamato aristocracy and to lean instead on the rich and loyal, though politically unambitious, Hata clans.