Shinto

The April 12^th issue of Jinja Shinpō carried an interesting short article, written by someone in their final year of training for the Shinto priesthood at Kokugakuin University. Their concern was that, in order to avoid spreading COVID-19, many matsuri were being held with minimal attendance, often just the officiating priests, and that this was against the basic character of Shinto. They argued that jinja, and matsuri, should be open to everyone.

If you have a formal ceremony performed at a jinja, a seishiki (or shōden) sanpai, the priest includes your address and name in the norito that is read to the kami. This is so that the kami knows who the prayer is for. After your name, the priest says “eeeeeee”. There is normally a short pause before and after that sound as well.

What’s that about?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog post asking who had the authority to decide whether someone could practise Shinto, or was practising it wrongly, and came to the conclusion that no one did. However, as I mentioned at the end of that post, there might still be things that you should do if you are investigating Shinto, even if no-one has the authority to tell you that you are doing it wrong. This post is about my position on that.

Obviously, this post is not telling you what you have to do if you want to investigate or practise Shinto. I spent a whole post arguing that no-one has the authority to do that, and that includes me. Rather, I will describe what I think is a good way to approach the field, with reasons. It is up to you to decide whether you agree.

I thought I’d do a very simple post with some photographs I took recently (over the last couple of weeks) of jinja and other Shinto things near my home.

When should you take offerings down from your kamidana?

A few weeks ago, someone left a comment on the blogpost on my old website about kamidana, suggesting that leaving the offerings there for two weeks proved that I knew nothing about Shinto and certainly couldn’t have written a useful book about it.

Now, that blog post was written more than ten years ago, and I do not leave my offerings up for two weeks now, nor do I recommend it. However, the question is not that simple. So much so that it has taken me several weeks to track down the necessary information.

I have just made some more back issues of the Patreon essays available for purchase. First, on Amazon, there is Myths of Creation and Amaterasu. This combines two of my past essays, Shinto Myths and Myths of Amaterasu, and explains the sources for early Shinto myths, and the role they have played in Shinto and Japan, before going on to retell some of the myths. They include the variant forms of the myths found in different sources, which can sometimes be really different. Parts of these essays are included in… Read More »New Back Issues