Japanese shamaness

[telophase]

(That should technically be "shamanka," if we're using the term properly to mean a female shaman.)

Anyway, here's a paragraph from The Fox and the Jewel, a book about the worship of Inari in Japan and the relationship sacred foxes have with the deity. This is from the chapter about the priests and shamans involved with Inari worship, and the differences between them and their approaches--there tend to be strict gender divisions between the two, with men becoming priests and women becoming shamans. This is an account of one ritual/ceremony/what-have-you performed by a shaman.

Whereas the ritual behavior of the priests followed prescribed channels, that of the shamans took very individual forms, including powerful anger. On one occasion a shamaness was called by concerned relatives to help straighten out a family consisting of an older woman and her two grown sons who had gotten the family into serious debt trhough gambling. The shamaness spent hours chanting the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra in front of their family Buddhist altar, but she insisted that the family members all sit in that room or the adjoining one, some writing their names on the hundreds ofprayer sticks she would later burn in a purifactory fire. She interrupted her prayers often to exhort them to discuss how they planned to get themselves out of this financiial mess. With tears running down her face, she told them that the dead father of the household was worried and frustrated that he was unable to help them. Finally, she stood over the brothers, lecturing and scolding, crying and shouting, that they should not simply get the money from relatives but should work at any job they could get and pay off the money through their own honest labor. Although she is a short woman, she seemed to fill the room with her anger and power, and the men were almost cowering before her on the tatami mats, eyes cast down, not meeting hers. In the next room, the women were all weeping. Here we do not have a possession per se or a priestly interrogator. But the shamaness does derive status from her affiliation with Inari Mountain and the shrine. And her use of various techniques - ritualistic, psychological, emotional - to break the impasse was very effective. A priest would not, in general, go this far.

You know? That is just MADE of WIN.

Comments

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

And if this doesn't prove that sometimes the best man for a job is a woman I don't know what will. Rituals are all well and good, but mix it up with a massive guilt trip, serious scolding and (semi-)public humiliation, and you get one heck of a powerful learning experience, and most men wouldn't think of whip-sawing them like that to snap them into line.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that an intermediary who isn't of the family can help, too: when it's family scolding you, you can often ignore that much easier than someone who has some sort of other authority. (And that authority boosted by the spirit of the dead father, too. XD)

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think everybody learns to at least partially tune out Mom or Dad by the time they hit their teens. But trying to tune out someone who's backed up by the gods and the ancestors is a wee bit tougher when she's right there taking you on a roller coaster ride. XD

[umadoshi.livejournal.com]

That's just cool. ^_^

[cicer.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha, oh wow, that's awesome.