So, I'm still ignorant in the ways of Shinto. I was wondering, can witchcraft and Shinto mix? Or is that something taboo?
Well, honestly that depends on what you call “witchcraft”.
You see, shinto is not necessarily a magical practice. It is a religion, but most importantly, a phylosophy, a way of living, that’s why it’s literally called “ The way of kami”, or even further “神道”, “shen dao”, roughly translates to “the way of spirit” aswell. The most fundamental belief of shinto is that everything holds a spirit, everything is alive, and everything is sacred, thus, kami. To be shinto is to honor this belief, to honor nature and kamisama.
Now, witchcraft in it’s more basic essentials, is a magical practice done with the intent to change something, from it’s “natural” course, to an end that suits the witch’s will. Western witchcraft, thus, shouldn’t be mixed with shinto. You can be shinto and be a witch, if you wish to do things separately, have a kamidana to honor kami, and a separate altar for witch purposes, etc, but to me, using western witchcraft would be like going against shinto’s belief of honoring nature and kami: you can’t honor nature and then go against it’s back to suit your needs. Most shinto practitioners trust that kami will guide them to reach whatever they need and rely on prayer instead of taking hands into the matter themselves through magic like a practitioner of western witchcraft would.
But, there is one practice that is the closest you’ll get to “witchcraft” and shinto overlapping, this is, japanese occultism schools like onmyodo. But let me explain: onmyodo isn’t witchcraft. Onmyodo roughly translates to “the way of yin and yang” and it’s a magical practice that was born from the addition of taoist and esoteric buddhist beliefs to shinto phylosophies. It could be considered similar due to how heavily ritualistic it is, but in it’s core, the intention of the onmyoji (practitioner) is to understand the Dao and nature to better flow with them, not change it, not manipulate it. To give you an example, the most well known practice of japanese onmyodo is to divine auspiscious times, dates or places, for example, using chinese feng shui and astrology. Let’s say you want to get a new house, the witch would buy whatever house fits what they originally want better and then bless it or use magic to change the energy that came with it, instead, the onmyoji would use divination to choose the most auspiscious home, according to the future occupants’ natal chinese astrology, and the feng shui of both the construction itself, aswell as of the surrounding land, city, etc, since it was chosen taking that into account, they could just move in and there would be no need to “change” any energy in the house.
Divination doesn’t mean the same in onmyodo as in witchcraft either. Divination according to western witchcraft is, well, communication with the Divine through tools like tarot or oracles, but for an onmyoji, the practice of divination is using complex calculations to find what’s most auspiscious based on natural patterns or signs studied. The witch divines by using tarot cards selected at random, trusting that the chosen randomized cards will carry a truthful message to be interpreted, while the onmyoji relies on defined and very specific calculations to arrive always at the same result, not random at all, quite the contrary, heavily ritualized and as specific and tangible as possible. While two witches could divine and get to two radically different conclusions, two onmyoji are most likely to come to the exact same conclusion if they both take into account the same aspects, thus do the same calculations, you get my point. It’s math.
So, while the western witch would use the knowledge of elements and correspondences to use it to their favor and change an already defined situation, the onmyoji instead uses knowledge on different studies (like the wu xing, five phases, or the eight trigrams of the early heaven and later heaven ba gua, among many other practices derived of the study of these two) to calculate which choice to make is more “auspiscious” or better for the inquirant, and thus doesn’t need to change anything through magic, just have a deep understanding of how energy and nature work in different situations or taking different variables into account. Witchcraft is the cure of a bad situation, onmyodo is preventing that bad situation, so you don’t have to change a thing, instead, following the flow of the dao as accurately as possible.
Thus, onmyodo can be practiced through shinto, since it’s not meant to change nature, but study and honor nature in a mathematical, almost scientific, approach to the Dao, the Divine Kami, Energy and Nature.
I will make a post on onmyodo soon that hopefully will help clarify the details even further, but I hope this is understandable enough for now hon! 💙
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