/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>48777455
Oh? What did you do? What kind of things have they been telling you to do?
>what should i do to please them?
What have you been doing so far?

I finally got around reading that "Japanese Shamanism" book I bought a couple of threads ago.
https://archive-of-the-sealed-gods.neocities.org/japanese_shamanism
It turned out not be what it was advertised, but nevertheless on the topic and by the stated author. A weird artefact for sure.

Anyway, it was a very interested, if quite dated, read. It depicts various religious-shamanistic-magical rituals and practices in middle Meiji era Japan. These include rituals involving boiling water, walking on live coals and climbing a ladder of blades. Much attention is given to the practices of spirit possession/channeling.

It's a really interesting picture of the time. Buddhism and Shinto were forcibly separated, Shugendo was banned, yet Lowell describes a syncretic sect calling itself "Ryobu", likely at that point a cover name for Shugendo. Spirit channeling and various demonstrations of supernatural feats seemed very commonplace. Whether this was historical norm or anomaly is unclear. Meiji restoration was after all precedented by a kind of wave of spiritually tinted mania and rebelion known as Ee Ja Naika.

The time of writing, the 1880s, was a time of spiritual mania in the form of spiritism in the West too, and Lowell has this kind of attidute of debunking some of the phenomena. While there might be reasonable materialistic explanations for some of the phenomena, I don't think such necessarily would lessen the spiritual impact and meaning of the acts.

The possessions Lowell regards real in the terms that he observes some very drastic psychological and physiological changes in those who undergo it. Lack of reaction to pain, eyeballs rolled up, rigor mortis like tightness, marked abnormalities of the heart rate...

I found it interesting how the method of spirit channeling appears to have been simply exhausting oneself to the point of trance while gripping a gohei. Lowell points out that all the sects - Shinto, "Ryobu" and even Buddhists - doing the channeling use the gohei, akin to a "lightning rod" This analogy might be quite apt, as a Shinto priest described to him how there are "spirit channels" all around the world through which they can move.

Lowell comes to some rather...interesting conclusions, stating that the Japanese are getting "possessed by the spirit of their race", and doesn't really elaborate on that.

It's a very lively and interesting description of Japanese spiritual life in a time when "superstition" had not yet been so completely stamped out. The Mt. Ontake mentioned frequently in the book also just happens to sit on the border of Nagano and Gifu...

>>48624934
I don't think we've ever had much of an issue with x-posting in these threads...or do they post about this stuff on /x/ too? I don't go there anymore, it's too negative.
>>48625675
I don't think it's quite so dramatic, but it's a classic case of become interested in mythology and mythology becomes interested in you, plus nothing preserves traditions like the urgent sense that they are about to disappear.
>>48631038
>my ticker is ticking like normal but then ticks too many ticks too fast when it shouldn't
Could be from disturbed sleep or abnormal sleeping patterns or anxiety or stress if it's just sporadic bouts of tachycardia without any malign signs. I'm not a doctor but I used to have that stuff, sometimes my resting heart rate would be at 90-100 range. And yeah I was alarmed as all hell at first.
>pointed out our trees as having sad energy
She's probably right about it.
>didn't want to eat anything because it all had meat
Speaking of meat, has Yukari done the it's ok for youkai to eat humans because humans eat animals thing to you yet?
>>48637729
There threads have had posts gone inexplicably missing couple of times before. Janitors or youkai? Who knows...
>>48638404
It would appear so.

I've been extremely absorbed with planning my future trip to Japan. Bought the plane tickets so there is no backing away into wishy washy land with that anymore.

I did my firs traditional, yarrow stalk I Ching reading on the 1st, the subject of inquiry was advce for the coming year. It was a mixed bag. The first hexagram was 14, which is extremely positive, but it's transformed hexagram was 54, which is considerably less so. I took it as an encouraging sign with a really harsh reminder that if I become too arrogant or have too high hopes I'm gonna get burned very badly.
>>48638624
>befriended some 2hu fans that live in Suwa
>one offered to show me around when I visit
Oh, that's really cool!
>which apparently is a surprisingly common occurrence
Yeah I can imagine it's an appealing destination to Touhou fans in the know. Apparently there's an onigiri shop run by a Touhou fan somewhere in the city, and there's a cafe near one of the shrines run by someone who got so much Touhou merch as a gift that they turned into a fan over time haha.