#shinto faith

[blossomingkami]

What are some good English resources for Shinto?

hello!! so i mainly use accredited japanese resources, buuut i do recommend these books!!

https://www.amazon.com/Fox-Jewel-Meanings-Contemporary-Japanese/dp/0824821025

https://www.amazon.com/Shinto-Shrines-Second-kenji-Kato/dp/4093887454

they’re not 100% perfect books, but they’ll do just the trick. if you want other resources i definitely recommend asking @shintoinenglish because i’m sure they know lots of stuff to recommend!

[livingwithkami]

Happy Spring Equinox!

Today is the Spring Grand Ancestor Ceremony

春季霊大祭

We completed all the offerings, now time for the ceremony soon!🌸🌻

[roaringwish]

Abstract Kuniumi

Commission Info

[shintoinenglish]

Inari Okami

Finally made my example post! This is free for everyone to view, of course. Please consider supporting me as I do research and write.

[heathersdesk]

NO, REALLY. TELL ME ABOUT YOUR RELIGION.

I'm coming to an understanding that I'm on the spectrum somewhere and religion is my special interest. Like, the amount of information I possess on all kinds of Christian denominations is not normal, I'm realizing. Between all the experimentation my family has done, the invites from friends that I always accepted, my own experimentation, being in a fringe Christian community that many people don't really recognize as Christian, living abroad in South America to see the permutations of Christianity that exist there, and deep dives I've done on my own into various religious movements my ancestral family members have belonged to, I've got a library in here 👉🧠👈 on various Christian traditions. It also includes Judaism and Biblical Hebrew (which I did in college), and what I'll call a trinket box of stuff I've collected about Islam and Buddhism from the wild. I want to know more about Islam inside and outside of the Middle East, as well as more east Asian religions I've largely only been exposed to by name only.

I probably(?!) know more than the average person on a large number of Christian traditions. I always want to know more. I'm in a constant state of trying to get people to infodump on their religious traditions in a culture that teaches (but in no way enforces) that it's rude to talk about religion.

[mozevvelnik]

御神米 Goshinmai in Konkokyo.

Resource: 御神米入 | https://okamotoshinki.com

Goshinmai(御神米 "Sacred Kami Rice", "Divine Rice") is an envelope of rice paper with a dozen of consecrated uncooked rice. Tenchi Kane No Kami prayers are performed over the rice. It is then washed with consecrated water and dried under the sun before being left to rest under the moonlight. The next morning, the rice is sprinkled with sacred blessed sake and placed in a small triangular white rice paper envelope.

Rice is a symbol of life and Goshinmai symbolizes the blessings of Tenchi (天地, Universe). Rice is grown because everything in nature works in harmony with each other, including humans. It represents the virtue of Tenchi Kane No Kami and the wish that these blessings are never forgotten.

Goshinmai can be forward by visiting a church and making a donation at the Toritsugi Mediation Desk, but it is also given to believers who ask for a blessing with a sincere heart. Goshinmai is believed to help with illness, recovery from injury, childbirth or difficulties in life.

One who receives Goshinmai can eat it either raw or cooked. The rice can be kept in a special pouch on one's altar, in one's purse, or on the windshield of one's car. All of this reminds us of Kami-sama's blessings and that He is constant presence with us.

The main thing is to take care of Goshinmai and cherish it, remembering Kami-sama's daily blessings.

Rev. Olivia's Bernkastel(@livingwithkami) Goshinmai, photo by @konkokyo

[zenthropology]

Sakura season

[chelledoggo]

there's too much animosity towards queer people who want to practice their faith/spirituality, both within their respective religions and within the LGBTQIA+ community.

we need to protect and lift up our queer siblings of faith.

our queer Christians.

our queer Jews.

our queer Muslims.

our queer Hindus.

our queer Buddhists.

our queer Sikhs.

our queer Baháʼís.

our queer Wiccans/Pagans.

our queer Shintos.

our queer siblings of indigenous/folk faiths.

our queer SBNR siblings.

our queer siblings of whatever religion/spiritual systems they observe.

you're all beautiful and valid and loved and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. 💖

[yanderepuck]

@lulu-the-smol-floof and I spent like 2 hours talking about the religions the guys were, so we looked it all up just to be sure. There are so many more arguments happening

Napoleon: was baptized into the Catholic faith as a child, however, he never became engrossed in the faith

Mozart: Catholic (and fairly religious)

Leonardo: more than likely Catholic. He referred to God as a supreme being. Could also be called a spiritual metaphysician.

Vincent: Protestant (father was priest, also nearly was a priest)

Theo: Protestant (father was priest)

Arthur: Catholic turned atheist(after studying medicine) then got interested in the occult.

Isaac: Born into an Anglican family, by his thirties held a Christian faith. Saw worshipping Christ as God was idolatry, to him the fundamental sin.

Jean: Catholic

Will: Protestant

Dazai: Christian but in the way that God is a punisher (in game possibly more Shinto since we see him in shrines)

Comte: He believes...in something

Sebastian: atheist but superstitious

Vlad: Eastern Roman Orthodox Catholic (going off Vlad in Impaler)

Faust: Protestant (was banned from churches tho)

Charles: Catholic

Drake: Protestant

Galileo: Roman Catholic (supported the church and hoped the church would support him, spoiler alert: they didn't)

~~

Fun lil thoughts now

Jean and Mozart are the only ones who go to church every Sunday.

Because here Leonardo is a pureblood, I think that maybe for a hot moment he was religious but very quickly turned his back on that.

Theo is SOOOOO mad that the three he hates the most are the only other Protestants. He's stuck with Will Faust and Drake.

Will actually grew up in the Church of England, which was possibly more Roman Catholic but when you look at his writing it reflects Protestant more.

Best part is that Faust is Protestant but Vlad has him working in a Catholic church. Vlad doesn't know the difference. Faust gives all his sermons in German and they aren't even sermons. He just bitches about this and gives out recipes, but Mozart is literally the only one who knows

Faust: I fucking hate this city. It's so dirty

Mozart: he's so right

Now bc they lean into Drake being more of a pirate, I don't think this man has much religion to him. He sticks to the pirate code. But I feel like if you showed him a sign of God he'd believe you.

Okay so Dazai. When we first talked about this we couldn't really find anything (I was honestly doing a quick Google search, not a deep dive), so we said he's probably Shinto, at least in game since we see him in shrines in some cgs. @tako-cafe informed me that he was first communist (when growing up) and then Christian, but int he way that God is here to punish/torture us bc humans themselves are sin and cannot escape it.

Arthur went atheist once he discovered science basically.

Isaac is actually right with the idolizing thing. It's actually blasphemous to have depictions of Jesus on a cross, or having a place dedicated to God. But that part sort of got lost bc obvs churches don't want you to know that. Also, he's just a god fearing man.

Isaac: going to church is a sin

Jean, across the room: ITS WHAT

That being said, Christmas Day, aka Isaac's birthday, Isaac and Arthur are the only ones at the mansion in the morning.

Dazai is going bc they have snacks. Sebastian is going because ..well.. we shouldn't trust them all to behave.

Back to Dazai. If we stick with him being Shinto, everyone in the mansion finds it weird as hell. Sebastian has to tell them that "no. This is actually the religion, not just weird things Dazai does"

Meanwhile Dazai is like "I need to go feed the frogs goldfish so that we have good weather"

Oh? Comte? Yeah. He believes. In what? He believes

Also, keep in mind that even tho that most of them are Catholic, they are all from different countries and time periods where being Catholic meant different things.

[deusvervewrites]

Divinity: The AU opened up with Izuku accidentally summoning a goddess by praying for a quirk, and Momo explaining she couldn't grant him one YET. Was it ever established if/when she would gain enough power to actually grant that wish and what his quirk would be? Because on one hand, I imagine that must be a relatively big wish, fundamentally altering someone's biology like that, and his enchanting thing is close enough to a quirk that Izuku is probably already THRILLED with that ability. But on the other hand, it's MOMO, and there's no way she wouldn't grant the wish of her first follower, her high priest, and her maybe boyfriend, as soon as she was powerful enough to reasonably do so.

It also said (or at least implied) that she was a forgotten deity and used to have followers in the past. I'm picturing Momo dragging Izuku to a museum and the two come across depictions of Past!Momo in some display about 'ancient local shinto deities' or some such, and Momo reacts with the exact same sort of embarrassment as a teenager when their parent pulls out the baby photo album in front of their significant other.

I did not establish how much faith it would take to Create a Quirk, but it would be less than it takes to Create new life entirely. The way her Creation powers work is effectively that reality attempts to justify whatever she did. For example, if she wanted to Create a mansion, it might also expand the space to accommodate, as if the planet had always been that slight bit larger. This is the same principle behind her Creating Quirks or similar alterations to something.

Midoriya absolutely is thrilled with the whole enchanting thing. Not only is having a large selection of minor powers he can swap in and out perfect for someone like him, the fact that he's basically learning a divine language for it is cool as hell. But you are also correct that Yaoyorozu will fulfill her high priest's wish.

I absolutely love this; her reacting to any of the documentation about her would be incredible, from things that are annoyingly wrong to embarrassingly true

[max1461]

>Have you seen religion discourse on this website?

I think so, I've lurked here for a while, but none of it included the Idea that the Japanese are especially religious (!?), which would seem to be contradicted by surveys, my anecdotal experience, and their general anglosphere stereotype(s).

Anyways, when Japanese people say "westerners" they usually mean Americans, and "Americans be unusually religious " is like, a super common and basically correct stereotype.

The opinion that you commonly see is that atheism or general irreligiosity are Western in origin, imposed on other parts of the world through either direct colonialism or general Western hegemony. This is not true, and our lovely memecucker has been doing the lord's work (ahem) in dispelling this idea from every angle, but people still cling to it.

Anyway, it's often pointed out that viewing irreligiosity as inherently Western is kind of weird, in light of the fact that many of the world's least religious countries are in Asia, and indeed (as far as I know) the only countries that continue to maintain an official state policy of atheism are in Asia. People try to rebuke this by saying something to the effect of "well, religiousness means something different over there, people only say they're not religious because the survey questions are Christian-centric" or something to that effect. Now, this rebuttal seems to be... sort of a misremembered version of an actually true fact, but the way it's used is total nonsense.

The true fact that I think it comes from is that religious identity in the Abrahamic faiths is centered around belief (usually) and is exclusive (if you're Christian you're not Muslim, and vice-versa), whereas in many other religious traditions, religious identity is centered around practice and is non-exclusive. So, for instance, in Japan people have historically engaged in a mix of Shinto and Buddhist practices, because there is nothing about the doctrines of either Shinto or Buddhism which says you have to believe one or the other, it doesn't work like that. And Shinto in particular does not consist of any one set of canonical doctrines or beliefs, it's more like a loose collection of different stories and practices that have existed in a huge array of variations across Japan and across its history.

I don't know much about Chinese folk religion, but I take it that it is in this regard similar.

In the present day, a lot of people in Japan still celebrate Shinto-Buddhist holidays and practice Shinto-Buddhist rituals, despite describing themselves as atheists or non-religious. And because Shinto has always had huge variation in doctrine and has always been defined more centrally by practices than beliefs, there's a case to be made that such people "are Shinto"—they fall well within the variation that Shinto has had in the past.

Except, no, that's fucking stupid! Because people will tell you that they're not religious, that they don't believe in the supernatural, and that they practice Shinto-Buddhist rituals mostly because it's part of their culture—the same way plenty of American atheists celebrate Christmas or, I don't know, knock on wood to avoid bad luck or whatever. Yes, religious identity outside of the Abrahamic faiths doesn't work the same way as it does in Christianity, Islam, and most forms of Judaism. And that's worth remembering. But does that mean that people who tell you they aren't religious actually are? No that's fucking dumb.

Anyway...

[blossomingkami]

im dearly sorry for never being active! here's a picture of some candles on my kamidana <3

[livingwithkami]

Notice from Shusse Inari Shrine of America! EARTH DAY SHINTO CEREMONY LIVESTREAM on Monday April 22nd, 2024 at 7:00pm (19:00) PDT! YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/live/pNBrPLa6WsM?si=8foclAbHzUbIpchf Please come join if you are able to!

[wetheepiphany]

random jotaro headcanons

1. as a child, jotaro wanted a pet. his mom didn't allow him to get one as she was basically a single parent by this point - she didn't want to be caring for both a child and a pet all on her own

because of this, jotaro was secretly thrilled when the crusaders got iggy (despite iggy's initial treatment of the group) and enjoyed taking care of the dog during the group's downtime - he ended up becoming the person that iggy was the most calm around by the end of their journey

had iggy survived the adventure, jotaro and polnareff would have gotten into an argument over who was adopting the dog

the pain of losing iggy is why jotaro never owned any pets after egypt - much to the disappointment of jolyne who, as a child, wanted a pet

2. as a baby, jotaro was taken to the 1972 winter olympics in Sapporo by his parents - this was one of the only times the family of three ever attended a major event together

3. because of his mixed family, jotaro was raised practicing three religions: shinto, buddhism, and christianity - he himself is agnostic

4. jotaro hates the flavor of sweet on its own and always needs another flavor (tart, salty, etc.) to balance it out

5. jotaro's iconic hand emblem was a gift from a high school friend that he only knew for a single year - despite this, their friendship meant enough that jotaro continued to incorporate the emblem into his outfits for the rest of his life

pretty much no one else knows this friendship existed, as jotaro started keeping holy in the dark about his school life during this time. he has also never told the friend's real name to anyone else

6. winter used to be jotaro's favorite season - he later changed it to summer

7. jotaro was irritated by the hard rock and metal crazes of the '80s, preferring slower and less intense music

he remained a very faithful listener to his favorite '70s music until the end of his life, no matter how uncool or old-fashioned others found his taste

⭐️ making jjbi is taking forever and we've been so nervous over sharing anything we're doing that i'm gonna give random info dumps a try for us x'D

[shintoinenglish]

New post: The Kami of Kumano is up!

[zenthropology]

Had my first Toritsugi mediation last night when I really needed it most, it was so nice to just feel listened to without judgement and to feel protected by and cared about by Kami-sama