This reminds me Huronsky-----there was a bad side effect brought on by the importation of Chinese culture and religion into Japan. This is based on my observations, but-----I believe that Confucianism has done a lot to harm both the cultures of China and Japan and much of Asia in the expression of those animistic elements they retained. In ancient China, the subjective philosophy of Taoism was at odds with the objectivism of Confucianism. They both sought a return to the ways of the ancient shamans (the sages). But the traditions of Taoism were more blatantly shamanistic. For example taoists did a bear dance in bear skin that traced the outline of the big dipper. Confucianism was more like a Chinese version of 17th-18th Century European empirical objectivism. The problem with Confucianism is it tries to force one into a strict code of conduct, ethics, and knowledge by repetition, rote, and imitation. I would argue that the Cultural Revolution that destroyed so much of Chinese culture, had its roots in confucianist ethic. The ancient Japanese were incredibly spontaneous. Everything came from the heart. This was more akin to Taoism than Confucianism. The beauty of Japanese art for example lays in the way that they let nature take its course in the shaping of the aesthetic, in a spontanous way. When the Japanese imitated tea ceremony from the Chinese and made their own tea bowls---the quality was inferior to the Chinese eyes. The Chinese bowl had already become set in dimension, quality, style, color. But in the Japanese kilns, they allowed natural malformations to occur----warps in shape, etc. They saw beauty in this natural spontaneity, and reflected it in their tea ceremony. This is what the Japanese terms of wabi and furyu refer to. These are concepts that have to be experienced from the heart. I would argue that when zen came to Japan, the Japanese gave it renewed spontaneity. Zen was supposed to have a spontaneous element---as it evolved from taoism as well as buddhism. While confucianism had a much stronger influence over other buddhist schools. The haiku masters of Japan were able to achieve incredible expressions of nature in a very spontaneous way direct from the heart. Shinto too was imbued with a spontaneous appreciation of nature. Shrines were built around trees, around rocks, over the shores of bays, torii gates were placed on difficult and steep rocks---all without changing nature's forms. The Buddhist temples, on the other hand, tended to be built as buildings and walls with set dimensions despite the surrounding shapes of nature. Unfortunately the Japanese imported confucianist ethics, largely ignoring the taoist. Confucianist ethics were especially useful in education. They were especially espoused in pre-world War II Japan. The Japanese educational system is still largely based on imitation, repetition, rote----they are not taught how to think. They are not taught how to be creative. Students brought up in the japanese educational system excel in math, and science----but they are not as good at creativity. There are plenty of Japanese college students that could probably check and correct my grammar---but they can't speak English with me. My first wife came to the US as an exchange student. I came back to the US with her and went to school with her. Her English was very good, and she was smart---but she had a terrible time, and required a lot of my help because she found it harder to think outside of the box. I love Japanese haiku, and enjoy composing my own. I wanted to be part of a haiku club---but found it very boring. I found that they studied the heart, feeling, spirit, and sponataneity out of it. I was so disappointed. We each submitted a haiku to a priest for judging. He greatly praised the one I submitted, expressing that this represented the true spirit of haiku. This was not the case with the others. I left the club with the message that they need to be like their old masters----expressing from their hearts, not their brains. I studied calligraphy and found the same things---one had to imitate for years, before they could be spontaneous. I think the Japanese still have that spontaneous side-----it is buried in their hearts as the aesthetics of wabi, sabi, and furyu. But their training allows it to only come out when the beauty of the moment catches them off guard. And if anyone tries to tell you how better Japanese schools are than those in the US-----keep this in mind. I would never put a kid through their educational system. Sorry Huronsky---I don't mean to take over your thread---keep your comments coming---they are great.
Ok Tymnpynctooma---I reported your last 2 entires as spam/advertising lastnight. I'm sure there is a place for your posts of porn but this thread aint it. What's your trip? I see you are from Qatar---by chance were you offended by my comments on Islam as an institution, or it's connection to the Goddess faiths? If that is the case, please feel free to make your comments. My posts are my observations, and results of my experiences---I wouldn't think anything wrong if you had a different opinion, and I would be very happy to hear it. In the end, no one really knows what the ultimate answer to anything is until we make that final plunge into death. But we can have experiences here in this life that are more than convincing of what that answer may be. But who are we to say what those answers are for someone else? I see value in all religions. I can talk about the good things of any religion. Most of my life, from even before I was a teenager, was spent on one long vision quest. I explored all kinds of religious beliefs, including Islam, and I tried to see and experience them as a believer would. I studied their historical context, and their cultural roots. And I found that they all get down to the same thing. In the end, many of the differences are more cultural, historical, and semantic---in the big scheme of things, do these aspect really matter? So yeah, I can talk about the good of any religion, but I also have critiques of where they are and why, only my opinion of course. Everybody has to find their own path. And culture has a powerful way of shaping that path. Most people brought up in America, for example are culturally, christian, or judeo-christian---even if they are devout buddhists, or avid atheists----culturally, they have a lot of christian perspectives, influences, and personas wrapped in their heads. If you were brought up in Japan, Shinto-Buddhist. In the Middle East, Islam. It may not be what you choose or what you believe---but culturally it's there. In the end, the most important thing for you is how sincere you are on the path you choose---and is it really meeting your needs. For me, institutions cannot provide the path. The institutions are not god. They are institutions which use manipulations and politics to maintain and extend their power. Because of this, the institution---organized religion, does not meet my needs. But there is great value there, and it meets the needs of people----if that's your path, more power to you. I don't think anything less of you---for you the value must be what is below those manipulations, or the manipulation doesn't matter to you---that's cool, but be sincere to the message underneath. Look below the manipulation and politics. All religions have common elements that tie it back to a common spirituality. To get an idea of my views on this, look at my post in "Back to the Garden" also under animism. In a nutshell---I think all religions are related. They all fall back on a common primal spirituality. They all have lingering elements of the Goddess faiths, and before that, the animism we commonly label with the Tungusic term, shamanism. I think the closing of the sacred hoop represents coming to terms with all religions as being more closely related than any adherents realize. What this means for you in Qatar is that if Christianity is related to Hinduism, or to the animism of a tribe in the jungles of South America----then just think how much more closely related the three religions begat from Abraham are---christianity Judaism and Islam. And there is clear elements of the Goddess cults in all 3 and the older shamanism before that. You don't have to look hard, if you want to look. If something in my comments offends you---you would be much more effective to share it, rather than push a bunch of porn into a thread where it is not apropriate. I would welcome your comments, I would share my views in response, I would not belittle you, or even expect you to change. I may even learn from your comments. Islam has some tremendous teachings in it. If that is your path---I'd dig it---I would suggest to look into the spiritual, versus religious, side----sufiism, but... ...its your path. On the other hand if your bag is to just push a bunch of smut where you think people might see it, for your own selfish gain----well then that's your trip---someone somewhere will see you as a thorn and take you out of the site, but..
Oh-----correction, that was Primitivism and the Garden of Eden Myths, where I posted some of my views on the subject of all religion being related, etc.
Another Shinto custom that shows a potential ancient connection woth the Ainu is the use of the Shamaness. When the Chinese first came to Japan, they recorded that the country was ruled by a Shamaness who was called Princess or Queen Himiko. The shamaness is almost the exclusive spiritual leader in the Ainu culture. Shinto shrines today still have shrine maidens or Miko. Here is a picture of Miko, though they usually wear their hair back: Today, most Miko are High School students. But in years past they were hired on as virgins, and served as temple prostitutes (according to numerous sources). They also practiced 'kami orosu'. Kami means god, orosu means to call down----in other words they would call down the shinto gods. In other words, they had a connection with the spirit world as shamans an shamaness' do. The Shinto gate or Torii is a very common symbol of shinto. Japanese maps will typically mark a buddhist temple with the Buddhist swastika and a shinto shrine with a torii. Here is a typical torii: When entering the torii, you are stepping from the mundane world into the sacred (or in a truly aimistic sense you could say that we are stepping from this world (which is sacred) into the spirit world (a different level of sacred)). This structure of gate is obviously very old---if you travel around Asia you will find it in other areas too, such as Thailand---usually connected to temples or shrines. It is also fairly similar to the gate that you find when entering into the China Towns of numerous cities. In Japan you will also find it drawn on various walls just a little bit above the ground---this is drawn by the owner of the wall of the building, or shop, to make that spot sacred. Why? so that men won't pee on the wall there. (If you spend aany time in Asia you will probably notice that men will pee where ever they feel the urge to). Shrines will sell small torii, anywhere from about 8 inches to foot and a half or so (I am just guessing roughly on the sizes) to put before the small shrines in one's house. They can also be placed in front of trees etc to make them sacred, or a better way to say it, to honor the kami-sama within
Doesn't anyone have any comments to add? Statements? Questions? One concept that is very Japanese, and was obviously based on the ancient shamanism of Shinto----is Yugen. It is one of those Japanese words that does not have an English equivalent, like sabi, aware, and wabi. These concepts are all connected to art, and so is yugen. Yugen is a feeling that is evoked by art, but it is much more. In the book, They Have a Word For It, Yugen is defined as "an awareness of the universe that triggers feelings too deep and mysterious for words." I describe it as that moment when the veil of the universe is lifted just enough that you can almost feel the eternal. Numerous people have described yugen with such concepts as watching cranes fly overhead and into the distance, walking in a deep forest, aimlessly. I used to have one of those goldfish with the big fins, just sitting and watching it move about in its bowl, I thought was very yugen. Sitting in a misty forest in the early morning, and suddenly a leaf makes a noise as it hits the ground. I love Japanese haiku because it can so powerfully evoke this feeling of yugen. Another Japanese art form, the Noh play is very yugen. The actors wear masks, act and move around the stage with very little movement. A very small subtle movement, can carry a lot of meaning in Noh. The art is supposedly passed down from the ritualized shamanic dance and speech patterns of ancient Shintoism.
I have read many of your posts, Mountain Valley Wolf, and have been totally impressed (most) with your lucid explanations/views of all religion being related, and the importance being one's sincerity to the path chosen, right? Even though I believe in God Jehovah and the trinity, I also feel that the other Abrahamic faiths, as well as others mentioned could "lead one to truth". I have been interested in eastern philosophies (and have found your explanations most informative) since a repetitive dream of an oriental woman levitating and disappearing/reappearing whilst she also Laughs at me.
Thank you Lynnbrown---and that's exactly right---I think you've got to be sincere to that path you choose. It's got to be true to your heart, and your heart should be true to it---if not, then you are on the wrong path. I can be critical of organized (institutional) religion, but I can also compliment it. So if I ever say anything that is overly critical of anything that is right for you---remember that it is based on my perspective from my path----and I'm not here to change your path, or expect that you will see it the same way----I can dig the path you are on----so no matter what I say----more power to you, and where you are heading. One thing I have learned about spiritual reality, is that the reality of the spiritual realm---the realm of the mythos----including the realm of our unconscious (and by unconscious, I am using the Jungian term to refer to the Freudian subconscious)----is a reality that can be very different from the reality we experience in our normal life. So if a shaman talks about some super-human feat he has accomplished---we in the west immediately dismiss it as a superstitious misinterpretation of reality, or a fabrication intended to manipulate his people. In reality he may be talking about feats achieved on a spirit journey---in other words in a different reality. Maybe it is a fabrication of his own unconscious mind, maybe it is an act committed by his spirit in a different realm---regardless, it is a story of a different reality. As a different reality, we cannot judge it by the rules of our conscious everyday reality. We have no right to say if it is truth or fiction. (And as I have experienced in my life, shamans have an uncanny way of changing our own reality in ways the West also cannot explain...) In the same manner, Native Americans believe that they entered this world through the sipapu (or some similar spiritual entrance) directly into this North American continent from the previous world. That is their spiritual reality. Modern genetic research is demonstrating that they migrated primarily accross from Siberia, and that they are descended, like everyone else, from ancestral Africa. That is the reality of our empirically confirmed objectivistic reality in this world. In fact, their creation myths and emergence myths allude to things that may certainly represent their migration in our reality---the previous world flooded by water, for example, could represent the final crossing from the Eurasian continent to the North American. But either way, their emergence myths are a spiritual reality, and in the spirit world, dimensions and realities are set by different rules. Taking this a step further, we can say that two spiritual stories, or beliefs, which may seem in our reality to be contradictory of each other, or opposing of each other, in our reality, are profound truths on a spiritual reality. This is why shamans do not qestions the visions, stories, and revelations of others----they are truth in a different reality. So more power to you on your path Lynnbrown, and I am honoured that you have gotten something out of my posts.
Mountain Valley Wolf, thank you for your reply. I'm really not that big a fan of organized religion; but I surely do not say there is not a good church out there. I was baptized many years ago, but do not worship at a church now...though I do go and meditate on a large flat piece of granite that is part of church property. I have extremely strong feelings about mother earth and the spirit of trees, and all of nature, really. So, just as if you read my mind, I have sincere and deep "spritual" beliefs that some could never understand and others even feel are wrong; yet it works for me and I do not fear death nor what may come. I look forward to reading more of your posts.
That's very good Lynnbrown, obviously you are sincere in your spirituality, and your heart, and it is sincere to you. One of the sacred animals to shinto is that of deer---deer tie back into ancient fertility cults which were even a part of the ancient Chinese fertility traditions. The deer is actually a spiritually important animal clear accross the Finno-Ugric-Ural-Ataic cultures---in other words, the non-Indo-Eurpean culture that stretches clear accross From the Lapplands in the Northern Scandanavian regions clear through Siberia, Asia and into Japan. To the Laplanders the reindeer is just as important and spiritual as the buffalo is to the Native Americans. Except that the Lapplanders herd them. If we travel South we find that the long lost culture that lived accross South Western Asia, also found the deer to be very significant. Many gold forms of deer from jewelry to what may be ritual artifacts have been unearthed in graves and other sites through out the range of their culture----the deer motiff they used still influences art and pagan symbols in Russia and the Ukraine. My library is in upheaval right now (as my son-in-law and stepsons said they were going to add bookshelves to my office) so I can't verify---the name of the culture, but it is on the tip of my tongue----I think it was the Scythians. Further south we run into the motiff of the bull/cow and the ram----but that could be a whole separate thread in itself. In Ancient Europe we find the deer and the bull/cow motiff together. Anyone who studies the Runes should understand the significace of both animals. The Rune alphabet begins with the Aurochs, the now extinct form of ox. The cow is the ancestress of the Indo-European cultures and the cultures that grew out of the Middle East. The cow tradition, though considered one of the oldest forms of the Goddess, actually began with the import of the aurochs from Europe. So this happened sometime after man had migrated to Europe. (The goddess is certainly older than that though). If we cross into North America we find the deer motiff still significant especially accross the more Northern regions of the Americas, but the further South we move the buffalo begins to replace the deer in significance. But the deer can still be found in places like Mexico. Why the horned animal? Because the horns represent spiritual power. You find petroglyphs worldwide that incorporate the horn into representations of the shaman. The shaman headress commonly uses antlers or horns. We find the same concept connected to feathers, and the tassels or strips of skin that hang down from medicine bags, or the clothing of shamans. Thus the rune (to return to Europe) that represents the deer, and that has a schematic representation of the antlers, has an inherent meaning reflecting our connection to the divine. (I can argue that this rune also represents the axis mundi or celestial axis, together with several other runes). In a modern sense we can argue that ancient man saw the antlers and horns in the same way we see radio antennas. We can compare it to a structure that 'tunes in the spiritual side,' but more correctly it is an extension of the spiritual power, so powerful that it has physically extended itself beyond the head of the animal. The Ural-Altaic languages extend not only clear accross Eurasia, but are connected to the Turkic languages as well. In other words the Turkish ancestors are related to the Chinese, the Siberian Eskimos, and so forth--my Turkish friends would strongly disagree. But because I can speak Japanese, I feel that I could very easily learn Turkoman---a language that is filled with Turkish root words (as is most languages throughout Central and Western Asia), because of the amazing grammatical similarities to Japanese. Sumerian is another language that is closely but distinct from the Turko-Uralic languages. In fact Sumerian roots appear in both those language groups and Indo-European languages. This suggests that sometime before the birth of Sumerian civilization, there was a group of people that spoke a Sumerian-Turko-Ural-Altaic-Indo-European proto-language. Words in both Ural-Altaic and Indo-European that refer to cow (the great ancestress) are surprisingly familiar---For example the Old English cu, is similar to the Ural-Altaic root gu, or gyu. But further East perhaps, the cow had not made its entrance to the ancient cultures by the time of the rise of agriculture---perhaps the deer served as the ancient ancestress, perhaps alongside the bear, or perhaps the older bear from the paleolithic was replaced by the deer in the early planter societes of China and Japan as an ancestress. All we know for sure is that the deer is a sacred fertility symbol. Deer antler in both China and Japan is popular to treat impotence and make men sexually strong. In Nara, Japan there is a park where deer run freely and tourists and visitors can buy food to feed them---they also freely nibble on cameras and coats etc---but they are protected the shrine there. Then of course we have the significance of the deer that flies through the sky (takes the shaman on his journey)----in the Christmas tradition...
I was reading through this thread to see if I had anything to add to it---and look what I found----they have taken away my picture of the Miko-san and replaced it with this: Now just to set the record straight, this thing says I have been charged money for this. Well that is not true, and if they do try to charge me, I will refuse to pay it. As far as I am concerned, if they do not want us to copy it, they should not make it accessible through a google image search, or at the very least, should have some kind of an agreement you have to click on in order to get to it. As far as I am concerned, anything that comes up on a Google image search is public domain unless otherwise blatantly stated. If it was wrong, than surely a guide on how to do it would have been included in that great Hippy manual, Steal This Book. But it wasn't covered there. (of course, there was no internet back then... ...so therefore no Hippy should be expected to understand the legalities of such issues). And if it went to court I would just fall back on the legal precedence set by that famous case, The Supreme Court vs Jonathan Barnsworth 1882, in which Mr. Barnsworth had logged onto his Mechanical Automated Computing and Tabulating Machine and downloaded a tinotype of a clantily dressed maiden posted by a certain L. L. Babcock & Company... Oh well---I will go find another picture of Miko maidens if anyone wants to see them, or you could go to that original sight as the (presumably anal rententive) owner wants you to do. Anyway, I did want to correct one thing, Inari is the Goddess of rice and fertility. The fox is her helping spirit---I had forgotten that detail when I wrote this. But the Fushimi Inari shrines are still considered fox shrines, and are shrines to the fox god---but they are also shrines to the goddess Inari. The name Fushimi, by the way, is made up of two Chinese characters, both of which are verbs. Fushi, means to bow down to the ground, Mi means to see----so literally it means to bow down to the ground and see the Goddess Inari-sama, (or the fox god depending on what you prefer). I first lived in Japan as a college student, and it was during this time that I first went to Fushimi Inari. But later I worked in the Japanese stock market. The Japanese brokerage firms, or atleast the Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, and Kobe branches, would all visit Fushimi Inari Taisha. I was the first foreigner to work in a Japanese brokerage firm in any capacity other than an English teacher or English Editor, so I went with my firm, Yamatane Securities, to visit Fushimi Inari. I thought that was pretty cool. We all went to one spot in particular in the shrine, where an old pine tree was growing. One of its major roots stuck out of the ground as it made it's way to the trunk of the old pine. This tree was called ne agari matsu----ne (root) agari (to rise up) matsu (pine tree). The tree was in the middle of one the shrines in the taisha. THis was very important to the stock market since ne also means price, so it could also be the pine tree of rising prices. As a firm, we all stood around the tree, clapped three times, and then said our prayers for rising prices. I also remember giving a cheer that started with everyone clapping to the beat-- clap-clap-clap clap-clap-clap clap-clap-clap clap and then let out a cheear like banzai----I forget exactly what we yelled.
Here is another little tidbit about Shinto---I'll continue adding them as I think of them. Not far from Nagoya is Tagata Jinja. It is home to a very old and somewhat infamous festival---the Honen Matsuri. Matsuri is festival, and if I correctly remember the kanji characters they used for Honen, it meant 'year of abundance,' in other words, the Honen Matsuri is a fertility festival for an abundant year. Remember, a jinja is a Shinto shrine. In many of the festivals, it is common for the god of the jinja where the festival is centered to enter into a stone, or a relic, or some such item, which is placed in either an ornately designed palanquin, or an ornate wagon specially made for this purpose, and is then paraded around the village, or atleast the nearby streets, possibly to some sacred destination. In the case of the palanquin, it is typically carried on the shoulders of a group of people who move it from side to side and bounce it up an down in a dance-like manner that certainly evolved from similar visits of the gods going back to the paleolithic, when the god was portrayed by a masked dancer in skins or whatever the dancer wore would wear to signify the god. Another example of the same kind of thing is the Dragon dances in Chinese festivals and special events. In the Honen matsuri, the object that the God is paraded around in is a giant phallus. I last saw this festival in 1982---but I remember this giant phallus to be probably 6 - 8 feet long (It was not housed in a palanquin---just carried on people's shoulders). and probably a good 2 - 3 feet wide. It looked like solid wood, but it was painted in a relatively anatomically correct manner. There was no mistaking what it was. In front of it walked a couple of priests, and every so often the men carrying it would lower it, and the priests would pour sake on the head with a large bamboo ladle. The area is all rural, so the parade passes down streets that border or divide rice fields. Nearby was another jinja which represented the goddess. She would be paraded around in a rock with a large cleft down it's middle and, as I recall, branches or dried grass or something, was attached to the top of the rock representing hair. The two gods would meet at a halfway point. Unfortunately with the crowds and all, I missed what happens at the meeting place. It is a very popular festival for tourists and Japanese alike, and can be very crowded. The festival is filled with all kinds of amulets and charms you can buy, that are carved into the shapes of either the male or the female genitals. Charms for helping you to have children, or to grow abundant rice, or make money, or whatever you want an abundance of. There was also a museum at the Tagata jinja which was billed as the biggest museum of penises in the world. Inside you could find the preserved penises of just about any mammal you could think of, and possibly some other animals as well. There was a even whale penis. If you think about it, this festival is not much different from fertility festivals or rites practiced in many parts of the world. There are numerous rural places such as some places in the Philippines and other countries, were young couples will have sex in the fields to make the fields fertile. I forget where it is, but there is still atleast one place, where the village women take off all there clothes, and go out into the fields in the middle of the night to promote fertility of the fields. Many of these cultures, including traditional Japan, do not have the taboos on sex that we in the west do---typically this is the case in cultures where the Goddess still holds atleast some influence. It is not hard to see that these traditions go back to the ancient Goddess cults. You would be surprised at how much sexual symbolism plays in the art, and common motifs of some of these countries. In Japan, one of the many symbols of the vagina is the shellfish. The next time you go to a sushi bar and order akagai (mussel), see what it reminds you of----it is intentional, as there are other ways the mussel could be sliced and arranged (not many, but there are). On the other hand, Chinese restaurants are 'filled' with this kind of symbolism in a more subtle form---peaches, roses or peonies, long necked vases, are some common examples. The Chinese gods have high foreheads because they have satisfied many women (receiving their yin) while retaining their own yang (semen). This has resulted in their becoming immortal. The next time you look at a Chinese painting---see if you can notice the symbolism of the male and female. A favorite dimsum restaurant of mine has a painting in which the Chinese reads the 'Mystical Valley' (mystical is my translation, but it uses the gen of yugen I referred to in an earlier post on this thread). It has a Chinese man standing on a foot bridge in front of a waterfall that falls between two hills jutting out from the cliff, forming a rounded-triangular shape to the waterfall. Up above is that ever so common rock that juts straight out of the mountainside representing the male aspect. Why is this so common? Because it is the magic of abundance and long life. On a different matter---have any of you ever witnessed a Shinto wedding? I think it is one of the more beautiful wedding ceremonies anywhere in the world---complete with Taiko drums and the whole bit. I don't know if you can find a video on YouTube---there probably is. The woman's kimono is very exquisite, and you could easily buy a nice car for the cost of one of these. They are typically rented, and you can actually find used ones that have been discarded by the rental place fairly cheaply---a great souvenir if you don't mind packing the extra weight. (Tokyo's Ueno is the place to go for these). The woman wears a white headress that wraps around her traditionally styled hair----it is said that it covers up her horns that come out when she gets angry. The priests in shinto use a ritual language, much like the sacred or secret language of some other religions and spiritualities. It is a very old Japanese, which is typical of the secret magico-religious languages. The use of Latin in the catholic church is a Western example of this. The bride and groom generally have very little understanding of the language of the ceremony, unless it is explained to them. That is why Japanese have no qualms of going to Hawaii or Las Vegas and having a wedding ceremony in English, even though they have little to no understanding of what is being said. The big Japanese drums---Taiko----are Shinto in origin. They surely hail back to Shinto's shamanistic roots, as the drum is a very important tool in achieving the shamanistic state of consciousness---i.e. embarking on the spirit journey.
By the way, you can see a shinto wedding in the 1st page in the picture of the shrine posted by Huronsky. Today I was digging around in my office and found some old Noh play scripts in Japanese. I had forgotten that I had these---I found them at an antique shop in Osaka. they are over 100 years old. They are very beautiful to look at, because they look as if they were painted by hand in charcoal ink and brush---beautiful calligraphy, with stage directions, and the drum beats. They weren't hand painted, but the printing looks that way. They were probably sold at performances so that people could follow along---the language is archaic and sung in a chantlike form. I cannot make heads or tails of it without reading it as they speak it. (even then it's not easy---akin to trying to understand Shakespeare). There are usually footnotes to help you on the particularly archaic meanings or references. I mentioned in an earlier post that Noh plays are evolved from ancient shamanistic ritual. One thing that points to that is the fact that the musicians that perform for Noh plays consist of three drummers and a flutist, that is all. The drum is an integral part of shamanistic ceremony the world over. The first play I picked up was another good example of this ancient tradition---Hagoromo, or The Feathered Cloak. This is based on a very ancient legend, a common theme that I have found in Africa, all over the Pacific, and even the Americas: a god or spirit from the other world, during his/her visit to the earth, sets aside their clothing, which is then found by a human. Without it they cannot get back to the other side. The human returns it, but only after a favour has been bestowed upon him. In Hagoromo, the story is of a fisherman who finds the feathered cloak of a Goddess, that she set upon a pine tree. She confronts him, and begs him to return it. He argues with her but agrees to return it to her, if she will show him some heavenly dance. She agrees and shows him a dance that enables the changing phases of the moon. There is reference to the numbers 3, 5, and 15, which have a deep significance to the number of days involved in the lunar phases. In her sacred dance, we see celestial significance, much like the ancient Taoist bear dance I wrote of in an earlier post that is danced in the shape of the Big Dipper. The Hagoromo itself is reminiscent of the feathered cloak used by some shamans accross Central Asia which they use in their dances performed while in a shamanic trance---representing their flight into the heavens as they are either carried by their spirit helper, a bird, or they themselves become the bird. Without the cloak, the goddess cannot return onto the higyou no michi----the flying path, or flying road. In Shinto tradition, the celestial axis, or axis mundi, is often referrd to as a path or a bridge. In the shinto creation story, the first male and female Gods stood on the floating bridge from which they created the Japanese islands by stirring them out of the primal ocean with the staff (yet another obvious symbol of the celestial axis---the stirring motion suggestive of the spinning of the universe around the axis). In Hagoromo, the Goddess returns to the other world via this flying road. At the end of the play, she doesn't just fly way with her feathered cloak----rather she disappears, like a mountain slowly disappears into a mist. Thus, the idea of flight is less literal, and more symbolic as we would expect of the axis mundi. There are 2 main players in a Noh play---the shite and the waki. Shite (pronounced shee-tay), carries the connotation of controller or manipulator, and is a spirit, god or goddess. In most Noh plays, they appear in human form in part of the play, and ghost or spirit form in another part of the play. The waki is a human who finds himself interacting with the god or spirit. Here again we see a suggestion of the shamanistic relationship between the human and the spirit world; the Shaman (or would be shaman), and the gods and spirits of the other world. The characters speak in this chant-like sing-song voice that is limited in the tones it uses----almost, but not quite monotone. Their parts include not only their own lines but also narration----all of this is designed to give the play an otherworldy atmosphere. The theme behind the myth of Hagoromo is interesting in a shamanistic sense because it typically involves 4 different outcomes that relate to the shaman. In a Bantu story from Africa, a man takes the skin (clothes) of an alligator. To get his clothes back this alligator entity, who as it turns out is an ancestor, saves the people of the man's village by taking them to the land of their ancestors under the river, before an enemy village attacks them in a sneak attack that the ancestors foresee (this relates to how the shaman is the protector of his people); In a Polynesian story, the man takes the dolphin skin of a beautiful otherworld maiden, she must marry him to get it back (this represents the spirit spouse that is present in the shamanism of some cultures). In the Tukano Culture of the Amazon, a man hides and watches as a snake god removes his snake skin clothes. He is then able to get the medicine pouch of the God. The tools inside later become the tools of all Tukano Shaman's for healing. (the shaman recieves his tools of the trade from the otherworld). Finally in the Hagoromo, we see that he is able to experience a dance from the heavens (The shaman gains ritual knowledge from the otherworld). I may be a little off on the details of some of these myths---it is late and I am too tired to verify them---but the 4 purposes are the same---and I am sure about the jist of the myths.
As I read the Noh play yesterday, I got to thinking about the old Japanese word for heaven: ama. What is interesting is that this word does not seem to fit with the common root form we see with the rest of the Ural-Altaic languages: ten, tien, tian, din, tun, etc. Japanese spirituality did speak of heaven in similar terms as other Ural-Altaic peoples---they saw different levels of heaven, and a celestial palace with its own emperor at the highest level. We find such words as tennin---heavenly people or beings. But the word ten~ is of Chinese origin---imported from somewhere in China when the Japanese adopted the Chinese characters for writing. The older word is ama, and it is still used in Japanese today. For example, ama no gawa (or river of heaven) refers to the milky way. Is it possible that ama is related to the Ural-Altaic roots? If so, this would help validate my belief that shinto has Ural-Altaic roots. To examine this, I will quote from part of a post I did under the Taoism threads, titled Tien??? as a background on the Ural-Altaic root: Modern genetic research suggests that somewhere in the Middle East between the Mediterranean and India, man broke off into numerous directions---this was the launching point from where populations headed into South East Asia, Australia, the Pacific; From where populations headed up into Central Asia and Siberia as well as over into Europe. I would suspect that the early word root for heaven, an, was in use at this time. I gave some examples above of how the an or tan roots appear in both Indo-European, Sumerian, and Ural-Altaic language families. But there are plenty more Indo-European examples, for example the Hindu Great Spirit (if you will), atman---here we have the ~an root, and in fact you will notice that its structure is even closer to the Ural-Altaic root: ~t~ ~an. The English word heaven is also a good example (notice the ~en root). Linguists claim that its early Indo-European root is ak----whose variant is ka-men, which in Old English became hefn, and heofen and Germanic hibin. In other languages you see the root as well. For example, in the Malay Language you have the word angkasa meaning outerspace, and in the Philippines you have the indigenous gods---anito. Returning to Japan, linguists often assume that the language that is the furthest from the linguistic birthplace of its language family, may represent the oldest form of the family. It is possible then that Japanese may have imbedded in its language, older roots of Ural-Altaic, perhaps even proto-Sumerian-Indo-European-Ural-Altaic. To research this I turned to Sergie Starostin's Altaic Etymological Database which can be found online. Unfortuately I was unable to pull up too much---I have found a lot of these etymological databases to fall short of what they promise. (I have a great Ural-Altaic Lexicon which I find much more useful, but it is buried somewhere in my office). But I did come accross one thing of interest: There is a Middle Korean term, hanar which refers to sky. Linguists claim it is connected to Proto-Korean hai, meaning sun (and possiby sky). This evolved into ha, meaning sun and year in Modern Korean. The Japanese equivalent is hi (pronounced like the English, he) for sun. It would not be surprising if the root ~anar of the Middle Korean, evolved into the ama of Japan. or that ama may have originally been hama. In fact when you consider the Indo-European ka-men, and the fact that h~ is a soft or voiceless counterpart of k~ we might wonder if ama, evolved from kama. Perhaps in Proto-Japanese the ~n evolved into ~m. (This is certainly what happened in English and German, where the word heaven came from ka-men). If this is the case, then the Japanese word for God, kami, would then be more closely related to the Ural-Altaic sky god (Tan, Ten, Tun, Tien, Tian, etc) then one would have expected. Wherein the Ural-Altaic peoples use the same word for heaven and sky god, Japanese split the word apart---between ama and kami. Another interesting implication of this is the fact that my research has shown that the k~ root is largely feminine. The t~ root is largely masculine. In the Sumerian, while An, or Anu was the Sky God or Father Sky, Ki was the Goddess, Mother Earth. If there was a Proto-Japanese Kama(r), then this, along with the Japanese Kami, and the Indo-European Ka-men, (and possible root ak) come form a much older usage of the word heaven---tying back to the Great Mother----when (I beleive) the concept of the paleolithic male and female was a non-issue and transcended into the Mother Goddess of all things. This also points to the fact that Japanese may have possibly evolved from an older form of the Ural-Altaic family, or atleast contain older root words.
It was late when I wrote the last post and so I don't know if it is as clear as I intended it to be. While the Sumerian An did not have the hard consonant of t to reflect the male, it still represented father sky and the sky god. But the 'siginificance of power' of the sky father developed later in man's spiritual evolution---there are myths around the world, from Africa to the Americas, to Africa and Eurasia that point to a world wide revolt of man against the power of the women. For example, you can find stories in both the Americas, Australia, and elsewhere that point to the bull-roarer, one of the oldest instruments known to man, as originally being part of the magic or medicine of the women. But man revolted and stoled it from them. In one aboriginal tribe in Australia for example, women are not allowed near the men when they use the bull-roarer---and there are stories of the scary creatures its use evokes to keep women away. In fact the bull roarer, a lens-shaped piece of wood that is tied to a chord and spun rapidly overhead, bears a shape similar to the vulva. I have seen some Australian pieces that are carved in what is very obviously a representation of the vulva. Anyway---the Sumerian word An obviously came from a time before the male god had gained in his later powers. The hard consonants such as t and d are common at the end of the words referring to the vulva. While softer consonsants (k, g, and h) are always at the beginning. Perhaps this was intentional---the hard consonants being opposite of the softer ones. The masculine T~ at the beginning of such words as tian I believe came from a period after the male god had risen up in significance. What is interesting is that if you trace the Ural-Altaic languages into the Americas you will notice that both the k~ and t~ are used there as well, particularly in relation to the sky god----The old Lakota God Tunka is a good example. In ancient times, the Lakota would paint rocks that jutted up out of the ground, red, to represent tunka. Tunka today is translated as grandfather, and Tanka refers to the Great Spirit, as in Wakan Tanka. This language stretches way down into the Americas, and even into the Pacific. The use of both k~ and t~ again helps validate the archaic use of kami as a Ural-Altaic god. (I can give tons more examples if anyone is interested----but I do ask, if any of you are writing papers, or whatever, and run with this idea that you do cite me or this site, or better yet, contact me and I will share articles with you, or even some of my book. This research is going into what is still an unpublished manuscript. However I do have a published article on this concept, and consider that copyrighted. I haven't run into anything else that expresses the same things. However I do know that not all of my ideas are wholly unique. But still please give me credit for my years of research...) Anyway---kami refers to both gods and goddesses, but the term kami itself must come from a more archaic concept of the gods.
Zondag 7 juni van 11.00-17.00 uur Bekijk, proef en beleef Japan in de Kunsthal! In het kader van de tentoonstelling Silk Stories, organiseert de Kunsthal op zondag 7 juni de Japandag! Tijdens dit evenement staat de Kunsthal volledig in het teken van Japan. Gedurende de hele dag worden workshops, proeverijen en demonstraties aangeboden voor jong en oud. Met onder andere een workshop Shinto, de oorspronkelijke religie van Japan, onder leiding van Shintomeester P. de Leeuw. Voor meer informatie: http://www.kunsthal.nl/31-67-Japandag_.html
