Author: John D. (Page 167 of 202)

Pagan connections 2): Sacred trees

July 24, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

Sacred grove at Shimogamo Shrine

Shinboku
Go to visit a Shinto shrine and you’ll surely find a shinboku – a sacred tree favoured by the kami. But what makes some trees sacred and others not? It’s a question I’ve often asked priests about, and the answer varies from place to place. Mostly it’s simply a case of tradition: the trees were identified in ancient times and the original reason has long been forgotten.

Sometimes however there is an obvious singularity about the tree. It may be unusually large or flourishing, expressive of natural vitality. It may occupy a special position, marked by an unusual event or adjacent to a shrine. It may have been struck by lightning, signifying descent of the kami. And, in keeping with the Siberian shamanic tradition, it may have a distinctive shape such as a split trunk or phallic and vulvic features.

Shinto is sometimes described as a nature religion though it’s far more than that, and the idea of tree spirits certainly play an important part. The Association of Shrines has been lamentably slow in picking up the environmental cause, showing a greater concern with nationalistic and emperor-centred issues, yet there are signs in its promotion of ‘sacred groves’ that it is awakening to the implications of a ‘sacred tree’ philosophy (see here).

Pagan prayer ribbons at a beech grove by Avebury stone circle

Tree spirits
By contrast with Shinto, the burgeoning neo-pagan movement has been driven by ecological concerns from at least the 1970s, when I was a member of PAN (Pagans against Nukes). The idea that trees are more than simply beautiful or useful led to the stereotype of ‘tree-hugging hippies’, keen to commune with the spirit of nature. But where does such a notion have its ‘roots’?

Tree worship is such a huge subject that perhaps the best thing is to quote from Wikipedia to show how deep it is rooted in the human consciousness:

“Human beings, observing the growth and death of trees, the elasticity of their branches, the sensitivity and the annual decay and revival of their foliage, see them as powerful symbols of growth, decay and resurrection. The most ancient cross-cultural symbolic representation of the universe’s construction is the world tree.

The image of the Tree of life is also a favourite in many mythologies. Various forms of trees of life also appear in folklore, culture and fiction, often relating to immortality or fertility. These often hold cultural and religious significance to the peoples for whom they appear. For them, it may also strongly be connected with the motif of the world tree.

Other examples of trees featured in mythology are the Banyan and the Peepal (Ficus religiosa) trees in Hinduism, and the modern tradition of the Christmas Tree in Germanic mythology, the Tree of Knowledge of Judaism and Christianity, and the Bodhi tree in Buddhism. In folk religion and folklore, trees are often said to be the homes of tree spirits. Historical Druidism as well as Germanic paganism appear to have involved cultic practice in sacred groves, especially the oak. (The term druid itself possibly derives from the Celtic word for oak.) “

Prayer ribbons round the Holy Thorn at Glastonbury, with the famous Tor rising in the background

Wisdom
In Celtic folklore trees were the physical representation of the wisdom of the earth, as if drawing on the deep unconsciousness of the world below to rise up towards the light. (No doubt a similar notion underlies the biblical Tree of Knowledge.) In restoring reverence for the spirit of the tree, neo-paganism is thus reclaiming a connection to nature.

Like sacred trees, humans are born out of mother earth and are dependent on its whims and providence. It’s a concept that informed ancient kami worship, but one that is often lost in the shrunken groves of modern shrines with their formulaic rituals and concrete carparks.

Perhaps it’s high time to restore the sacred tree to a place of centrality. Not just once a year with a sacrilegiously chopped down Christmas tree, but everyday and in every way. The woods were mankind’s earliest temples, and from them derive the World Tree, the Bodhi Tree, the Tree of Knowledge and the very Tree of Life. Blessings and gratitude indeed.

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For more on sacred trees, see here and here and here.

Pagan connections 1) Sacred rocks

July 24, 2012 / John D. / 2 Comments

Sheep seek succour from the Avebury stone circle

Avebury stone circle
There are sacred rocks (iwakura) all over Japan, but I’ve never seen a date put on them. The supposition is that they date to the Yayoi Age (300 BC-300 AD), when waves of immigrants brought new gods and forms of worship. By contrast, the megaliths of Britain are much older, and the great circle of Avebury where I recently attended a seminar dates back to approximately 2600 BC.

Avebury is constructed on a massive scale, and compared to the contemporaneous Stonehenge it’s like a cathedral to a church. Both were erected in different stages, and Avebury’s final form featured a circular ditch with a massive diameter of 420 meters. Inside it is an outer stone circle of 98 (possibly 99) large sarsen stones, enclosing two smaller circles. In the middle once stood a large obelisk, 5.5 meters high.

A wall containing standing stones from the Avebury circle, which was fellled, heated over fires and broken into building blocksroken into

In the fourteenth century, at the prompting of the Christian priest, villagers destroyed some of the large rocks to use in walls and housing. (The death of a surgeon when a rock fell on top of him persuaded the villagers that the devil was protecting the monument.) Markers now indicate where the fallen stones would once have stood.

In keeping with the demonisation of pagan ways, Christians came to refer to a chair-like ledge in one of the rocks as the Devil’s Seat. Our seminar leader, Peter Knight, thought it might have served in fact as seat for the shaman welcoming pilgrims who had travelled from outer parts for one of the great seasonal festivals that took place at the stone circle.

'Stone seeker' Peter Knight, authority on earth mysteries, sits in the Devil's Chair at the Avebury stone circle

Common links
The sacred rocks of Japan derive from their association with the spirit world, and it’s no coincidence that to my mind the most persuasive theory about Avebury is that it was a ritual centre dedicated to ancestor worship.

For the pioneering scholar, Mircea Eliade, standing stones were part of a prehistoric ‘cult of the dead’: ‘in all probablility, these stones constituted a sort of “substitute body”, in which the souls of the dead were incorporated,’ he wrote. In this way the rocks came to represent ancestral spirits, and were consequently a source of power revered by the living descendants.

As we proceeded around the stone circle, seminar leader Peter Knight highlighted some of the characteristics. One was the sequence of ‘male’ phallic rocks alternating with broader, more rotund ‘female’ stones. Did ancient Britons have a yin-yang consciousness? They certainly had a concern with fertility, for the female rocks bear quite definite yoni holes or vaginal clefts. Since the stones were left in their natural state, they had been clearly been carefully selected.

Many of the stones have a startling rock face

Many of the rocks have suggestive shapes, a trait I’ve noticed too in some of the sacred rocks of Japan. The outline of faces, or the shape of a totem animal are particularly notable, as if embodying the spirit of the rocks. These would have loomed large in the moonlit imagination of worshippers during shamanistic rites.

Pagan rites
Neo-paganism and neo-shamanism have made great strides in recent years, with the rising interest making itself evident in various forms. Pagan rites are commonplace, and honoring the spirit of place has returned to the national consciousness.

Healing, meditation, dowsing and drumming comprised the focus of the seminar. At the end we formed a circle around a symbolic centre, mirroring the stone circle within which we had met. Thanks were given to the ancestors for our inheritance, and to Mother Earth for nurturing our existence.

Gratitude; ancestral spirits; nature worship – here indeed were the very elements of Shinto in pagan form. Primal religions the world over share a common outlook, showing how crass are the claims of uniqueness and national divisions. In the rebirth of paganism lies recovery of the ties between east and west, offering hope for convergence and a meeting of the twain. Blessed be!

Dowsing for electro-magnetic energy emanating from the rocks

Hawk rock at Avebury – similar to the hawk rock at Shiraishi in the Inland Sea associated with the hawk that guided Jimmu on his eastwardj journey of conquest

Female rock with vaginal opening - as in Shinto, ancient paganism was concerned with fertility and the natural cycle of birth, death and rebirth

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For more about rocks in Japan, click here.

Joseph Cali on Shinto Shrines

July 23, 2012 / John D. / 2 Comments

Joseph Cali is the main author of the forthcoming title, Shinto Shrines. (Publication date: Nov. 30, 2012. For further details and orders, please click here.)

1) When and why did you first conceive of the book?
When I first began working on The New Zen Garden around 2002. At that time, I met an exceptional gardener named Yasumoro Sadao who taught me about traditional garden design. Although the theme of the book was modern dry-gardens (karesansui) and especially the influence of Buddhism, Yasumoro sensei (and a number of other gardeners) loved to say that Buddhism had nothing to do with garden design. But a comment he made to me about ‘listening to the kami of the place before starting to work’ stayed with me. I think this and Landon Warner’s Enduring Arts of Japan put Shinto on the playing field for me.

2) How did you go about selecting the 57 shrines included in the book?
Well, the original intention was to have about 100 shrines. I used my basic knowledge of the country and listed up all the major shrines. Then I began area searches focusing on major historic cities such as Nara and Kyoto, and then island by island beginning with Kyushu. I also searched endless lists of ‘favorites’ and ‘top 5’ and any shrine that was mentioned as interesting — the Shinto ML list was helpful here.

3) How did you carry out the research?
Once I had composed a list I set about finding someone to help with the research. When I had as much information about a shrine as I could find, I wrote it up and then began sending out letters to shrines. The letters included information about the book, the contents of the entries, a request for photos that could be used in the book, and then slowly arranging for meetings with an official from the shrine. I spent between one and four hours with priests to verify key points, and another one to three hours wandering the shrine grounds and photographing.

A fascinating and unique zuijin guardian figure in the new romon of Oyamatsumi Jinja in the Seto Inland Sea. An interesting combination of zuijin and nio Buddhist guardians, sheathed in 13th century armor.

4) What were the main difficulties you encountered?
The only difficulty I encountered was the occasional reluctance to grant me the use of photos or of an interview. However this was not usually very difficult to overcome. In some cases I had to go back again and again before getting an OK. However you come to realize that part of it lies in the layers of organization (particularly in some of the larger shrines) and partly what I perceive as a great fear of creating any sort of controversy or taking responsibility for having said something which may cause damage to the shrine. Once people could see that I had a good grasp of their concerns and were convinced of my non-political intentions, there was little difficulty.

The other problem was one of my own making. My initial goal of one hundred shrines proved impossible in terms of pages. When I had more or less completed eighty-eight shrines, I sent it off to the publisher whose initial reaction was that 50% needed to be cut! With some finessing of the layout, I managed to retain 57 shrines but had to out the remaining ones, not to mention a big chunk of the background material on Shinto. I believe I managed to retain most of the major shrines and several smaller shrines that will be of interest to those involved with Japanese arts such as aikido, bugaku, and Noh.

The other major problem was that my long-time publisher, Kodansha International, decided to close their doors in April of 2012—roughly one month after the Great East Japan Earthquake — just as the book was on the layout table. This set the project back more than a year but in the end enhanced the quality, as the new publisher, University of Hawaii Press, has produced an even better version than the original.

The “golden rock” at the Hachioji Jinja of Hiyoshi Taisha in Shiga Prefecture. Thought to be the place where worship on Mt. Hie began, it is situated between the Sannomiyagu and the Ushiogu on top of the 1,200-foot hill.

5) What impressed you the most in compiling the information?
I would say that while I am a lover of traditional architecture (and there is plenty of that in the book), I am always most impressed by people. Although this was not the focus of the book, I think it was the extraordinary kindness of the priests I met which impressed me the most. For example, I thought I had lost my camera on the way to Kifune Jinja outside Kyoto. I had had a meeting with a priest at Heian Jingu, and as I got off the train at Kurama and reached for my camera it had gone! When I finally got to Kifune shrine and announced my name, I head a voice call from the back, ‘Cali san, your camera is here!’ All the miko and priests in the shrine office began to laugh at the look of confusion on my face. It turned out that I had left my camera at Heian Jingu, and the priest there, knowing I was on my way to Kifune, jumped on a train. Since I had taken the long route, he had already delivered it before I got there. This incredible act of kindness was repeated in different form on more than one occasion.

6) What kind of readership do you think the book will appeal to?
Certainly anyone interested in visiting a Shinto shrine. Shrines are not the most accessible places and it is very easy to come away nonplussed. This book will help to make it a more fulfilling experience. I think people interested in Japanese culture generally will also benefit, for it strikes me how much I have learned about Japan from books like Karen Smyer’s The Fox and the Jewel about Fushimi Inari Shrine, or from John Nelson’s A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine about Nagasaki Suwa Shrine.

I hope my book will also appeal to people planning their itinerary for a visit to Japan, as well as those who may not have the opportunity to visit but are interested in the country’s religion and its places of worship. It may also be a good resource book from which to launch further study. With all the spurious information out there on the internet, I think it will be very helpful to have a single source of reliable information that does not cost hundreds of dollars, as many of the scholarly resources on the subject do.

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To see Joseph’s excellent blog on Shinto Shrines, please click here.

With Noguchi Guji of Isaniwa Jinja in Matsuyama, which according to Joseph is one of the finest examples of Hachiman style in Japan

Renewal

July 18, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

One of the key points of Shinto is the notion of renewal, in tune with the perennial ability of nature to renew itself. Here Kevin Short, naturalist and cultural anthropologist, writes of his visit to Shinobazu Pond in Tokyo. (Daily Yomiuri, July 5 2012)

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Nezu Shrine (copyright unknown)

On this day the star is a mother karugamo spot-billed duck resting peacefully in the shade with her brood of five ducklings. The spot-billed is the only species of duck that breeds regularly in the Tokyo area. Shinobazu Pond, with its dense reed bed, is an ideal nesting spot. Spot-billed ducks lay up to a dozen eggs, but some ducklings fall prey to huge hashibuto-garasu jungle crows, and others to the big aodaisho rat snakes, Benzaiten’s sacred familiar spirits that prowl around the edge of the pond.

Despite all these natural and cultural attractions, my lady friend and I do not linger at the pond. We pay our respects to the water goddess, then set off walking northward along Shinobazu-dori. This avenue skirts the edge of the zoo, then enters the mouth of a narrow valley formed between the Yanaka Cemetery on the east and the University of Tokyo and the Hongo-daichi Uplands on the west.

Our destination, the Nezu Shrine, is nestled into the valley’s western slope, just north of the university baseball field. We stop for a cup of coffee on the avenue. My friend, who combines traditional spirituality and aesthetics with a complete mastery of state-of-the-art digital communication devices, conjures up an aerial photograph on her tablet. The shrine is easy to pick out–it is surrounded by a magnificent sacred grove comprising several dozen venerable old trees.

The current shrine buildings date to the 18th century, but legend holds that the shrine was first founded nearly 2,000 years ago by the great mythological hero Yamato Takeru. On this day in late afternoon, the grounds are cool and shaded, but surprisingly crowded. In front of the entrance to the inner shrine stands an immense wreath, well over four meters high, woven of twisted straw.

Today, my guide tells me, is the last day of June, time for the Nagoshi-no-Oharae, or “Summer-surviving Great Purification Ceremony.” The ceremony is scheduled to start at 6 p.m., but participants and priests are already milling about. The atmosphere is charged with pleasant anticipation.

“During the course of our daily lives,” she explains. “Various impurities collect unnoticed like sludge or muck in our bloodstream, and stick to our spirits like grime or plaque. These are caused by petty emotions like irritation, anger, jealousy, impatience and dislike. As it builds up over the months this gooey junk slows us down and tires us out, and can cause stress and even illness. The purification ceremony flushes the stuff out and resets our body spirit back to a more natural and comfortable state.”

Hitogata

The purification is a two-step process. We start by writing our name and age on a small piece of paper cut out in human shape. Then we blow on the paper and rub it across our foreheads. A priest explains, “This transfers some of the impurities to the paper doll, which is disposed of later.”

“The wreath contains straw from reeds and other water grasses,” he continues. “In the natural world, these plants help purify the water by fixing excess nitrogen and pollutants in their roots. In like manner the straw can remove the remaining impurities from the hearts and spirits of humans as they pass through the wreath.”

By the time we join the line it stretches out the main gate and all the way down to Shinobazu-dori. We pass through the wreath once, circle around to the left, then pass through again and circle to the right. Finally we pass through a third time and continue straight on to pay our respects at the shrine, after which we receive a miniature straw wreath charm that will energize and protect us until the New Year’s Eve.

“I feel like I just changed the oil and cleaned the spark plugs on my car!” enthuses one young office worker. “It’s like getting rid of all the unneeded files on your spiritual computer desktop!” adds another. The ceremony is held only once, but the wreath will be left up for a few weeks for those who wish to purify themselves on their own.

Passing through the circle of life: chinowa midsummer purificatiion

Shinto Shrines: forthcoming publication

July 10, 2012 / John D. / 3 Comments

It is with great pleasure that Green Shinto is able to announce the forthcoming publication of Shinto Shrines: A Guide to the Sacred Sites of Japan’s Ancient Religion by University of Hawaii Press this autumn….

* comprehensive overview of Shinto in general

* detailed guide to 57 major shrines

* explication of the physical attributes of the shrines

* insights into the spiritual and mythological significance

* 125 colour pictures as well as 50 illustrations

* a guide for travellers and a companion for virtual travellers

Green breakthrough

July 9, 2012 / John D. / 1 Comment

Shimogamo Jinja's sacred grove

The Greening of Shinto

Last weekend I went to a talk on Sacred Landscapes in Britain by Martin Palmer who runs an organisation called ARC (Alliance of Religions in Conservation). There were many fascinating aspects, but the most striking in Shinto terms was that ancient Long Barrows in Britain served as ritual sites for ancestor worship. More of that, later.

Martin Palmer’s organisation works with sacred forests worldwide, and he himself has worked a lot in China where Daoism and Buddhism are beginning to claw back some of the influence lost under Communism. I took the opportunity to ask him about Japan and Shinto, in response to which he told me of conversations he’d had with representatives of Jinja Honcho (Association of Shrines).

When they first asked to join the organisation around 2000, he asked them whether they were concerned only with kami in Japan or with kami everywhere. When they responded that there were only kami in Japan, he told them that it was impossible for them to join because the organisation was predicated on a global and universal basis. There could be no narrow nationalistic concern for sacred landscapes in one country only.

The rejection apparently came as a shock to Jinja Honcho and led to eighteen months of internal discussions, following which the representatives came back and said that kami must exist overseas as well and that therefore they were concerned with sacred landscapes worldwide. Membership of ARC duly followed.

Since that time Jinja Honcho has thrown themselves into the activities of ARC and are involved with projects that concern the management of forests in overseas countries. For progressives, this is a great leap forward in the internationalisation of Shinto and a welcome sign of the slow but steady opening up of the religion to the wider world.

One day the tribal may truly become global.

The path to globalisation?

A first for foreigners (Wiltschko)

July 9, 2012 / John D. / 3 Comments

Willchiko Florian at Ueno Tenmangu in Nagoya (photographer unknown)

OPENING UP

One of the burning issues of contemporary Shinto is insularity versus internationalisation. Is Shinto a religion of and for the Japanese? Is it, as many maintain, not even a religion at all but synonymous with Japanese lifestyle? While organisations like the Assocation of Shrines and ISF (International Shinto Foundation) press for greater understanding of Shinto internationally, they are ambivalent about the spread to non-Japanese.

This is what makes the achievement of Willchiko Florian so remarkable. Though Green Shinto heard of him some time ago, we were reluctant to broadcast his story since the young Austrian wished to keep a low profile. Consequently information about him is hard to come by.

From what can be gathered, he’s about 23 years of age. As a child he was struck by a photo of shrine priests in one of his father’s books. The fascination led him to pursue the matter further, particularly though the English homepage of Ueno Tenmangu Shrine in Nagoya (a very recommendable resource). His many questions impressed one of the priests there, Hirata sensei, and over six years they developed a master-pupil relationship.

In 2001 Florian visited Japan for the first time with his father, when he was in his early teens. Six years later, at Hirata sensei’s suggestion, he took up the opportunity of an apprenticeship at Tenmangu and was able to pass the practical test. Thereafter he was able to take and pass the official Jinja Honcho examinations and gain a nationally accepted priest’s license. It was an historical moment, for he was the first non-Japanese ever to do so.

How exactly he managed all this while also graduating from Vienna University is unclear – so anyone in the know, please enlighten us. It’s not clear either what Florian is planning to do with his priest’s licence, though rumour has it that he has returned to Austria.

So if Willchiko Florian is reading this, maybe he could get in touch and tell us his story so that others could follow in his footsteps. Reluctant though he might be, he’s a hero of our times.

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Click for outreach by Ueno Tenmangu.

For Ueno Tenmangu as a Nagoya power spot, click here.