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Hakusan – Collective name given to three mountains worshiped as kami and sacred to the Shugendō. [5] Hakusan shrines are common all over Japan. Hamaya (破魔矢, lit. ' evil-banishing arrow ') – Decorative arrows bought for good luck at Shinto shrines at New Year's and kept at home all year. [1] Hama Yumi (破魔弓, lit.
The name ma (魔 – devil) suggests that they are meant to threaten human existence or defy the gods, while -zoku (族 – tribe, clan, family) indicates that they are a family. [ 3 ] Maō ( 魔王 ) is a term derived from mazoku, suggesting a king ( 王 Ō – king, ruler) that rules the mazoku.
Statue at Taiyū-in in Nikkō. The iconography of Fūjin seems to have its origin in the cultural exchanges along the Silk Road.Starting with the Hellenistic period when Greece occupied parts of Central Asia and India, the Greek wind god Boreas became the god Wardo/Oado in Bactrian Greco-Buddhist art, then a wind deity in China (as seen frescoes of the Tarim Basin; usually named Feng Bo/Feng ...
The explanation is that in Japanese, まめ, マメ (mame) can also be written as 魔目 (mame), meaning the devil's eye, or 魔滅 (mametsu), meaning to destroy the devil. During the Edo period (1603–1867), the custom spread to Shinto shrines , Buddhist temples and the general public.
Yōkai (妖怪, "strange apparition") are a class of supernatural entities and spirits in Japanese folklore.The kanji representation of the word yōkai comprises two characters that both mean "suspicious, doubtful", [1] and while the Japanese name is simply the Japanese transliteration or pronunciation of the Chinese term yaoguai (which designates similarly strange creatures), some Japanese ...
Like many monsters of Japanese folklore, malicious yūrei are repelled by ofuda (御札), holy Shinto writings containing the name of a kami. The ofuda must generally be placed on the yūrei ' s forehead to banish the spirit, although they can be attached to a house's entry ways to prevent the yūrei from entering.
The name Kuraokami combines kura 闇 "dark; darkness; closed" and okami 龗 "dragon tutelary of water". This uncommon kanji (o)kami or rei 龗, borrowed from the Chinese character ling 龗 "rain-dragon; mysterious" (written with the "rain" radical 雨, 3 口 "mouths", and a phonetic of long 龍 "dragon") is a variant Chinese character for Japanese rei < Chinese ling 靈 "rain-prayer ...
The Gashadokuro is a spirit that takes the form of a giant skeleton made of the skulls of people who died in the battlefield or of starvation/famine (while the corpse becomes a gashadokuro, the spirit becomes a separate yōkai, known as hidarugami.), and is 10 or more meters tall.