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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in way of the kami

 

 

In retrospect, it was one of the formative moments in my early pagan career.

1973. A gangly tow-head is sitting on the floor of his grandparents' living room in Pittsburgh, reading a National Geographic article about that year's Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan.

One photo was all it took.

The organizers had commissioned a local artist to make three massive—25 foot—snow sculptures of three pertaining kami for the occasion: the kami, if memory serves, of Winter, Snow, and Ice.

But now the Olympics were over, and it was time to tear down the snow-statues before they became a hazard. ("Look Out for Falling Gods.") In the photo, a workman is making a final offering to the kami before they're broken up: he's leaning out of the basket of a cherry-picker, pouring a bottle of sake into the fanged mouth of one of them.

In that moment, a door opened in my head. Lacking contextual experience of kami, Shinto, or pagan religious practice, I somehow recognized and understood what I saw in that photo. I didn't need any explanation of what they were doing to know that it made sense, and that it was right.

Lo and behold: nearly half a century later, that gawky teen, now grown up, has become chronicler, and éminence grise, to one of the US's largest and most vibrant pagan communities.

Talk to any pagan, and you will hear about similar formative experiences; we all have them.

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