Tag: rock worship

Baikal and Back 6: Rocks

August 28, 2018 / John D. / 3 Comments

Hawk rock

My guide in Busan, Ryu Dong-il, was warm and sensitive to a tourist’s viewpoint. By the end of the day I’d got to know about his family, hobbies and a whole lot about Korean culture. The son of an illiterate dock worker, he had got his first job at twelve, paid for his own schooling and left to become an engine driver.

For years he’d combined driving trains with his pastime of rock-climbing, and the pictures he showed me was the stuff of nightmares. What on earth would move a human to even want to do such a thing? ‘It makes me feel alive,‘ he told me. ‘It makes me comfortable.’ Comfortable?! Short of being tortured, clinging to a cliff was as far from comfort as I could imagine.

Ryu told me of a close friend with whom he used to go climbing. Halfway up a rock face, his friend had suddenly frozen motionless. Asked what was wrong, he did not reply but started to descend. His eyes were ablaze, and the very next day he applied to be a monk. It had been twenty years ago, and though Ryu had often visited the small temple where his friend lived, he had never learnt what exactly happened that day. Clearly it had something to do with the power of the rocks. ‘Now he lives a simple life. He’s poor, but he has a purity in his eyes. You feel that he has a detachment from life,’ said Ryu. ‘He’s free.’

‘And how about you?’ I asked. It turned out Ryu too had had an unusual experience. ‘It was very special,‘ he said. ‘I was lying on a giant rock, taking a rest after a difficult climb, when I felt as if I was floating. I lost control of my body, couldn’t move, yet there was something pleasant about it as if I’d entered a realm of weightlessness. Since then I never had a feeling like that again. Even though I tried sometimes lying down on rocks, but never that same feeling. I think it was something to do with that particular rock. Each rock is different.’

Rocks are known to have different physical properties. Some have a powerful magnetic field, granite gives off radiation, and the blue stones of Stonehenge may well have been dragged all the way from Wales because they had special healing properties. There are rocks of worship, rocks of transcendence, rocks that convey authority and rocks conducive to contemplation. They were seen by the ancients as manifestations of a living Earth, and they served as vessels for otherworldly spirits. With their rockhard solidity, they represented the eternal and the permanent. This stood in contrast to the temporary world of vegetative matter to which humans belong.

Rocks and roots. As a land of mountains, I couldn’t help feeling Korea had a lot to teach.

Baikal and Back 5: Korean connection

August 6, 2018 / John D. / 1 Comment

Seonbawi rock at Seoul, ghostly guardian over the city below

‘Actually not many Koreans know much about the shamanic tradition. It’s strange,’ scholar David Mason told me. ‘It’s as if they were ashamed of it. Few Koreans could face their past until the 1980s because it was all too painful. All that devastation. All the heritage wiped out. All the shame. It’s only recently that they want to look back and claim their past. But if you look around, there really isn’t that much. In Seoul there are the Royal Palaces, the City Gates, the Insadong craft street. That’s about it. So it’s strange they don’t embrace the shamanist heritage more fully. Until recently they were ashamed of it as primitive, and after the war they even tried to stamp it out as superstition. But you’re going to see how much a part it is of a living tradition.’

We were on our way to Mt Inwang, a shamanic hill with sixteen brightly-coloured Buddhist temples, garish by Japanese standards, which had once stood astride the old road to China. Inside were paintings of Sanshin, an old man with a beard, invariably accompanied by a tiger, who acted as protective deity to Buddhist temples.

On the hill stood the national shaman shrine, Guksadang. The main feature was an old Spirit Tree, spanning the three worlds, in front of which were offerings of alcohol. It was decorated in cloth strips of symbolic colours, the dominant being blue to signify the source of the cosmic order. (It is why the Korean president occupies a Blue House rather than a White House.)

For a national shrine it was unprepossessing, but Korean shamanism had never been institutionalised like Shinto and its structures were makeshift and homemade. There was no official form of worship, no set liturgy, and shaman practices were conducted in homes or outdoors. The closest it had come to organised religion was in its alliance with Buddhism.

Beyond the temples lay the rocky crag of Seon-bawi, one of the most worshipped rocks in the world. From the side of the slope above us its weathered features stood up tall and proud, looking like a giant old man. Dubbed the Benevolent King, he casts a protective eye over Seoul in the valley below. From a certain angle it was possible to see too a companion resting his head against him. ‘They’re known as Zen rocks because they resemble praying monks,’ said David, ‘but to me they look like Sanshin and his tiger.’

Rock worship Korean-style, not so different from rock worship in Japan

Ancient tradition holds that rocks like this are spirits rising out of the ground, and there was indeed a palpable sense of presence. Before them offerings of food and soju (rice alcohol) had been laid out, while entreaties and prayers were given voice by earnest worshippers.

Interestingly, the positioning of the sacred rocks were similar to those I’d seen on the Inland Sea in Japan, along which migrants from Korea passed in ancient times. I’d often wondered what made a particular hill sacred. One thing I’d noticed was that the hills were often steep on one side with a long extended slope on the other. The shape was mirrored in that of shrine roofs, surely no coincidence. The position of the sacred rock was not, as might be expected, at the peak but a third of the way up. Seen from below, it serves as focal point for the mountain as a whole. Indeed the background of the rising mountain could be seen as a kind of aureole. Sacred rock, holy hill.

While we were at Seon-bawi, David told me about hyeoul, or energy point. Shamans were sensitive to these in much the same way as the ‘wise folk’ of Western witchcraft responded to the power of place. In hyeoul it was important to balance the forcefield of heaven with that of earth, resulting in the locating of sacred rocks at a keypoint on the lower part of the mountain where magnetic forces accumulated. It was a vital ki point, as it were. Very interesting! Surely Yayoi-era emigrants had taken notions of hyeoul with them as they made inroads into Japan along the coastland of Kyushu and the Inland Sea.

‘What you find in Korea is mountain-worship at particular cliffs and boulders,’ remarked David. ‘The rocks act as a focus for prayer, much like the crucifix in a church acts as a focus for Jesus and God. There’s a tradition of worshipping particular rocks, such as these with special shapes or rocks that seem somehow special.’
‘Yes, it’s the same in Japan,’
‘Well, don’t forget that the ancestors of modern Japan came from hereabouts, so it’s all linked.’

Meditation at a shaman’s rock in Korea

Zen rocks (Book review)

January 3, 2018 / John D. / 2 Comments

The famous garden at Ryoanji shows how Zen Buddhism absorbed the native tradition of reverence for rocks

Reading Zen in the Rocks by Francois Bertbier (translated with a philosophical essay by Graham Parkes) Uni of Chicago Press, 2000

Understanding the role of rocks in Japanese culture, and specifically in Shinto, has been something of a quest for Green Shinto. Here is a book which does much to throw light on matters that have long intrigued us. Though the focus is on the dry landscape gardens (karesansui) so beloved of Zen, the book has much to say about the wider subject and its background.

Whereas Green Shinto has previously asserted that the cult of rocks came over with Korean shamanism (the result of southern migration from Altaic shamanism), this book makes no mention of that but looks instead to the Chinese tradition of litholatry. And in the philosophical essay by Graham Parkes, there is the assertion of origins too in the ancient cosmology of China.

For early Chinese, humans lived in a giant cave of which the sky formed the ceiling. That the sky should be made of rock can be seen as a logical conclusion from the way meteorites fell to earth, for they were presumed to be bits of the celestial covering that had fallen off. In similar manner mountains were seen as huge blocks or stalactites that had descended to earth. Their heavenly provenance was not their only distinguishing feature, for in the precipitous fall they had accumulated huge amounts of energy (known as chi or qi). It helps explain why rocks that fell to earth are traditionally treated as divine in Japan.

Another vital point the book makes is that whereas the West has an established dichotomy between animate and inanimate, for the Chinese there was a continuum of existence with chi energy running throughout. The dichotomy such as there was rather between yin and yang. The earth was yin, mountains thrusting upwards were yang. The landscape was thus pulsing with energy, seen graphically in the Japanese word for landscape sansui (mountain – water).

Since rocks constitute the very material of a mountain, they came to be seen as a microcosm of it. They were thus held to possess the same properties and energy as the original mountain. Though the book does not go into this, as it is concerned with Zen, the notion sheds light on Shinto practice. Kami in ancient times descend from heaven into mountains, the nearest point on earth, and Amaterasu’s offspring famously descended on Mt Takachiho in Kyushu. If kami could descend into mountains, they could also descend into the representation of a mountain, i.e. rocks. And here we can understand the possible evolution of iwakura, or sacred rocks.

In this way we can see that in ancient Chinese thought the rock was of a mountain, and the mountain was of heaven. Small wonder that Daoists liked to retreat into caves to seek the ultimate reality. Small wonder too that Bodhidharma spent nine years meditating in front of a rock face. The result was that Buddhists came to incorporate the nature of sacred rock into their philosophy. Zhanran of the Tiantai School for example claimed that even non-sentient beings have Buddhist nature.’ And in Japan Saicho, founder of Tendai, spoke of ‘the Buddha-nature of trees and rocks’.

Garden development
In Shinto it is usual for the area to the south of the main shrine building to be flat and covered with white sand or gravel. It is a place of purity where the kami will be honoured and entertained. Much of Zen in the Rocks is concerned with decoding the famous garden of Ryoan-ji in Kyoto, and it is pointed out that the dry landscape there lies to the south of the main building in Shinto fashion and is on a piece of level land covered with gravel. The Shinto preference for purity, simplicity and naturalness was woven into the Zen tradition.

Sand cones at Kamigamo Jinja. The Zen temple of Daisen-in has a similar pair in its front dry landscape garden.

Buddhism incorporated other aspects of Shinto too. One example is the use of sand cones at Kyoto’s Daisen-in, which is located in the Zen monastery of Daitoku-ji. Its rock garden contains two sand cones which mirror those at Kamigamo Shrine. These may have originally served a purpose similar to the use of red carpets today, in other words prior to the visit of an important dignitary or to the holding of a ritual event the sand from the cones would be spread over the forecourt as a form of purification and renewal. In other words, the cones were a means of storing spare sand, and over time they came to be seen as agents of purification in themselves. Something similar happened at the Zen temple of Ginkaku-ji, where the famous tall cone of sand, said to represent Mt Fuji, was originally just a garden device to keep extra sand when needed.

Zen in the Rocks is relatively short and though it focusses on the rock garden, it offers a range of unexpected insights in the role of rock in Japanese culture. It shows for instance how the Heian garden of pond and vegetation transmuted into the bare rocks and pebbles of Muromachi times. This was part of the Zen concern with pointing to the root of things and stripping away the inessential. In this way the Buddhist emphasis on perpetual change and the transience of life, given emphasis in the Heian garden, was replaced in the Zen garden with symbols of permanence and the eternal.

‘Brother rock’ may seem an odd concept to Westerners, but if you think in terms of the Big Bang, we all share common origins. In considering the changing attitudes to nature in the Sino-Japanese tradition, this book helps us to look at rock anew. Not as something dead, sterile or alien. But as fundamental to our place in the universe. Fundamental to ourselves. As Alan Watts pointed out, the giant rock on which we travel through space is ultimately the source of our existence. The spirit in the rock is ourselves.

For more on rocks, please see the list of categories in the righthand column and browse through the relevant section. For Alan Watts on rock, see this entry here.

Rocks rock

August 6, 2016 / John D. / 4 Comments

The Shaman’s Rock at Lake Baikal has a cave in which a monster was said to live. It’s one of the oldest shaman sites in the world.

The awesomeness of rocks
Green Shinto has written several times of the spiritual significance of rocks in Shinto (see the righthand column for previous postings). It’s a much overlooked subject. Why? Partly because it is associated with the kind of primitive superstition that Meiji era Japan sought to put behind it. But also partly, I suspect, because rock worship leads back to Korean shamanism and shows that far from being unique, Shinto is inextricably linked with continental nature worship. Just how this conflicts with the insularity of mainstream Japan will become evident in the remarks below.

It was with some delight that I recently came across a video entitled “Okayama: the profound spirit of the rocks” (28 mins). 70% of Japan is covered in mountains and forests, so it’s not surprising that ancient Japanese felt some kind of kinship with them. They even named tribes after the protective mountain beneath which they settled.

‘Since ancient times,’ runs the commentary, ‘people in Japan have felt a deep sense of awe towards particularly impressive rocks.’ It’s not limited to Japan, of course. The same could be said for ancient cultures around the world – you only have to think of Stonehenge, the pyramids and Machu Picchu for example.

Rock power
The commentary goes to feature a cave and group of rocks in Okayama, where according to local folklore a demon is said to live – reminiscent for me of the ‘demon’ said to have lived in the Shaman’s Rock on Olkhon Island in Lake Baikal. Rocks as an abode of spirits was part of the Ural-Altaic culture that spread down into the Korean peninsula. In Japan’s syncretic tradition, it is a Buddhist temple rather than Shinto shrine that guards the area, though in times gone by there would have been no such artificial division.

Rocks can provide boundaries and guidelines

‘In Japan we believe that massive rocks such as these are occupied by divine spirits,’ says the guide, typically emphasising the singularity of Japan rather than its continental heritage. It is in such beliefs, deliberately furthered by Japan’s education system, that the roots of Shinto nationalism lie.

‘In the face of this massive power of nature, we can only put our hands together in awe,’ continues the guide, perfectly expressing the animistic roots of the religious impulse in cultures throughout the world. The belief that Japanese are somehow unique in this stems from a binary opposition of ‘we Japanese’ versus ‘Christian Westerners’, so deeply ingrained in Japanese education. Is it too much to hope that one day school textbooks will talk of ‘we East Asians’ and of Shinto as part of ‘shamanistic cultures worldwide’.

Rock of ages
Kitagi Island in the Inland Sea is famous for its granite rock (which was used for building Osaka Castle). One of the quarrymen there says, ‘My father would always tell me the rock is alive,’ and the discussion goes to suggest that newly cut rock is like a baby, freshly brought to life. After hundreds of thousands of years, the pieces of rock are liberated from their deep seclusion by being severed from the base of the parent mountain.

The programme notes that the grandeur of rocks gives humans a sense of their insignificance in the grander scheme of things. Perhaps it is from this that their spiritual power emanates. As in Zen, the effect induces a diminishing of the ego in face of the sheer immensity and longevity of the rocks. And in the end all we are left with is ‘Gratitude’, as an ink-stone grinder puts it.

Rocks are thus shown to be a true object of worship, and it is to the larger rock on which we live that we owe our very existence. As the programme shows, rocks truly rock. We can only live in awe.
(For more of Green Shinto on the mystique of rocks, click here.)

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Christian Storms, climber and video maker

Christian Storms, climber, actor and tv producer

Christian Storms, the American featured in the NHK programme, writes:

‘Climbers like me tend to view history via geology, a primordial time before man. Each type of rock tells a different story about the history of the earth. Much like the people I have shared special moments with, rocks come in all kinds of forms, compositions and hardness: just like the characters I have met.

On this trip, I learned to appreciate rocks that I can’t climb, which was a first for me. I met Sugita-san, an old-school climber who has put up over 150 routes in the world-class limestone Bichu climbing area, which now has 400 routes. Climbing his first ascents was a real pleasure because he designed the routes. It felt like picking his brain or dating his ex-girlfriend.

Formed underwater in ancient coral reefs and from shells and skeletal fragments of living organisms, those limestone cliffs I climbed were once underwater, before Japan was ever Japan. I promised Sugita I’d return to develop some of my own routes – and I will.

There is nothing like a ferry ride, and Kitagi Island [out of Kasaoka port] is a real gem. Tsuruta-san was all smiles as he showed me an old quarry for limestone and marble, that s now filled with crystal clear water. Watching limestone being quarried using the old fashioned method was quite something. And the death-defying ladders I had to climb down were scarier than any mountain I’ve climbed.

Finally, finding an inkstone was special. But more than that, I got to make one, together with the master, Nakashima-san. To create something from rock, and to make something that has been used for over 700 years – it felt so primitive. Without this rock, there would have been no written world, no literature, no history.

As the musician Bob Dylan said, “How does it feel? To be without a home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.” Okayama felt like home.’

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Places spotlighted in the NHK programme (see here):

Takahashi City in Okayama Prefecture is a popular destination for sports climbers. Rock climbing courses were first set up here in the late 1980s, and the area is now known by the name Bichu. TV producer Christian Storms is an avid sports climber. On this edition of Journeys in Japan, he scales one of the rock walls of Bichu. He visits an island that has a long history of producing high quality granite and inspects an existing quarry. He meets a traditional craftsman who uses the local slate to carve calligraphy inkstones by hand. And he discovers the profound connection that people here have long felt for their rocks.

Mt. Yoze-dake in Takahashi City is one of the most popular areas for sport climbing. The main climbing area, known as Bichu, is equipped with a parking lot, a rest house and a car camping ground.

Mt. Kinojo Visitor Center

On the summit of Mt. Kinojo you can visit the site of an ancient castle. The beautiful landscape is dotted with places associated with a legendary demon who is said to have ruled this area. Inside the precincts of Iwaya-ji Temple is an impressive rock formation that is believed to have been the demon’s residence. The Mt. Kinojo Visitor Center is 20 minutes by car or taxi from Soja Station on the JR Hakubi Line.

The most famous rocks in the world? The Zen garden at Ryoanji shows how Buddhism absorbed the native tradition of rock worship

A triad of sacred rock deities. This and the following pictures are from a remarkable collection of outstanding rocks by power spotter, Kara Yamaguchi (see https://www.greenshinto.com/2013/12/05/power-spotter/)

DH000059 地蔵岩　御在所　三重県

舞台石　飛鳥

DH000050 石の配例　唐人駄馬遺跡　高知県

Okinawa 5: Seifa Utaki

December 4, 2012 / John D. / 0 Comments

Opening into a sacred world

Seifa Utaki is the Ise of Okinawa. It’s a sacred site associated with royal patronage that lay at the apex of the Ryukyu kingdom’s religious structure. I think of all the spiritual places I’ve visited in Japan, this is the one that speaks to me most clearly of ‘a natural religion’. It’s as if nature herself had carved a cathedral out of sacred rock and subtropical forest.

Nature itself adds decoration to the site’s surrounds

The site lies south-east from Naha, on the Chinen peninsula which is associated in mythology with the very origins of the country. Legend tells of how the first of the islands to be created was that of Kudaka, which lies offshore from Seifa Utaki. From there the gods proceeded to the main island itself. No doubt there is some folk memory here of the arrival of ancestors from the southern seas, who settled first on the outlying island. In such a way origins are made sacred.

In the past only priestesses could enter Seifa Utaki (the king and any workmen who entered had to tie their kimonos in female fashion). At the head stood Kikoe-Okimi, a virgin relative of the king dedicated to the gods. The system of Kikoe-Okimi was in effect from 1470-1869, during which time there was a total of fifteen in all. They were responsible for divination and the great rites of the realm which ensured its stability and prosperity. Like the Saio at Ise, the office is probably a legacy from the shamaness-queen who ruled the country in ancient times.

The Kikoe-Okimi lived not far from the royal palace, travelling along the coast to Seifa Utaki for important rituals. Beneath her was a hierarchy of priestesses, starting with the noro who had control of up to five villages. Other ranks included the yuta and kamichuu, responsible for such duties as divination.

Near the entrance of Seifa Utaki is a spring, where priestesses would purify themselves before entering the sacred precincts. The altars and different areas are named after rooms in the king’s palace at Shuri-jo, showing the close links with royalty. The most holy part of the complex is a triangular opening. leading to s small altar space from which there are views of Kudaka Island. It is as if an orifice opens up into a rock womb, offering a secret view of life’s origins. Here in this innermost recess, the priestesses fostered the renewal and rebirth of the nation.

View towards distant Kudaka island, like a mirage on the horizon, mythic origin of Okinawa where the ancestors of ancient times first arrived

Unearthed items here include gold, celadon porcelain, coins and magatama jewellery, indicative of the precious offerings made. Outside the triangular opening are two large stalactites, from which water drips almost imperceptibly into bowls placed below. This liquid essence, wrung as it were from out of the very fabric of the rock, was considered holy water with magical qualities and used both for divination and in rituals to enhance spiritual power.

In Ryukyu times the site was a place of pilgrimage for king and commoner alike. Still today worshippers come here to pray, and it is here too that the leaders of extended families pay respects on behalf of their kin. Before the war the practice took place once a year, I was told, but now some only perform the ritual once every twelve years on completion of the cycle of the Chinese zodiac.

I was somewhat dismayed to find the atmosphere changed since when I last visited Seifa Utaki, with a welcome centre and guides in attendance. Since it became a World Heritage Site in 2000, visitors have increased dramatically. Now people walk around talking loudly on mobile phones, and parents yell out to errant children.

‘Seifa Utaki is a special sacred prayer site, not a tourist spot,’ said mayor Keishun Koya recently. He has a good point. One of the measures to protect its sanctity is to close it for six days a year according to the lunar calendar by which Ryukyu rites are fixed. It will allow worshippers to pray in peace amidst the immemorial rocks.

What makes Seifa Utaki special is the sensitive interaction of natural features and spiritual expression. Mystery, awe and wonder – these are precious feelings we’ve lost in the comforts of modern life. They can still be found at Seifa Utaki however, if you take care to visit first thing in the morning or linger to the last in the evening dusk. It’s at such times one can appreciate just why this was the Ryukyu’s ‘supreme sacred site’. It’s special indeed.

Ufuguni, one of the altars which served for the preparation of food

Two stalactites that drip holy water into bowls placed below

The awesomeness of nature is ever present