From cat@luckymojo.com Fri Dec 21 20:08:00 2001 Return-Path: cat@luckymojo.com Received: from 192.168.0.2 (e148.nas22.sonic.net [209.204.142.148]) by buzz.sonic.net (8.11.6/8.8.5) with SMTP id fBM47wt26827 for ; Fri, 21 Dec 2001 20:07:59 -0800 X-envelope-info: Message-ID: <3C2409AB.2B90@luckymojo.com> Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 20:18:59 -0800 From: catherine yronwode Reply-To: cat@luckymojo.com Organization: Lucky Mojo Curio Co. X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01-C-MACOS8 (Macintosh; I; PPC) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: nagasiva@luckymojo.com Subject: Archive: Notes on Kami Worship References: <3c22d471.175749961@news.verizon.net> <3C23E7FF.7150@luckymojo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Status: RO Please do not archive this from usenet. Please archive THIS edited version, as he sent me correx. cat --------- From: tight@helpmejebus.WHOREScom (Buttsex Optimus) Newsgroups: alt.magick, alt.lucky.w, alt.magick.tyagi Subject: Notes on Kami Worship\ Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2001 01:57:29 GMT> I ran across this post in the luckymojo archives: http://www.luckymojo.com/esoteric/religion/shinto/cy200008kamiworship.txt -- and have some additions to make, for those who are interested in these things. > ... Shinto, she said, is the official state religion of Japan > and holds as a tenet that the Emperor is descended from the > Sun Goddess. Kami worship, on the other hand, does not hold > this as a tenet. This is a bit more of a schism than a case of two entirely different religions. IIRC around the time that Japan shifted from being tribal to imperial -- the Yamato period [around the third century AD], concentration of power was during the Asuka period [late 500s to 710] or culminating in the establishment of the Imperial capital in Nara (during the Nara period, 710 - 790s] AD) -- the imperial family took steps to consolidate its power on all fronts. One of these fronts was the theological; it was during this period that the imperial family declared that all kami are inferior to the sun kami, or the Sun Goddess Amaterasu Omikami, and that the emperor is a descendent of the Sun Goddess. (The fun part is that around the Meiji period there was an overwhelming drive to establish the geneology as lineal through the male line. Recently the Crown Prince and Princess of Japan had their first and to date only child: a girl. And the mother is 37 or so, and there is a question about whether she can have another child, and so Japan might have a ruling Empress some day despite the efforts of the past!) > ... She was a Kami worshipper, > she said, and expressed some distate for Shinto. Strangely, > she, like many Japanese people, also "prayed and bought > incense" in Buddhist temples (not Zen Buddhist temples, just > regular Buddhist temples) on the major Buddhist festival days. This is also an unusual part of Japanese culture, which has from ancient times despised death in all its forms - a principle of vitalism. Even the records of kings reflect this; when a king becomes a kami, there is no reference ever made to his dying. The life-annihilating aspects of Buddism have always butted heads with the Japanese religious undercurrent of vitalism. Homes with Shinto and Buddhist shrines have *separate* shrines for this very reason. There is some noteable anthropologist or historian who described Buddhism as the religion of the *mind* of the Japanese, but kami-worship was the religion of its heart. (To be taken with as much salt as any quote for which I can't dig up the source.) > ... Basically, as she > explained it, the priests function as blessers and mediators > between the Kami and the people for those festivals held in > temples, but there are also folk-festivals in which the > populace deals directly with the Kami by making offerings > at home. Historically the priests were chieftans of the tribes, and when the imperial family was consolidating power -- well, you know how that went. So the kami-priests are one of the last great representatives of Japan's tribal past. Kami worship shares a few qualities with classical Greek paganism -- there seems to be a kami for everything -- but it's unique in that many of these kami are manifestations of *awe* at particular natural events or objects: great trees, mighty kings and warriors, things like this, as well as the more obvious sun, ocean, moon, and so forth. Appealing to these kami is an indigenous folk-magick in Japan. ("Indigenous" is important - incredible amounts of Japanese custom and religion and politics and metaphysics and so forth were imported wholesale from China and Korea (and from China through Korea.))