Mishaguji - Day 169
Race: Vile Arcana: Heirophant Alignment: Dark-Law March 6th, 2025
I can't believe this is how I'm starting one of these fucking uploads, but here goes... sex has been an incredibly important part of human existence in history. Let's all be mature here, people... and trust me, this is coming from someone on the asexual spectrum. Without having sex, babies wouldn't be made (at least for most people, I'm capable of mitosis), and our species would have come to a complete, sterile stop. As such, because intercourse is so important, it's not... uncommon to have deities that represent lust, arousal, and all that horny stuff, let alone deities of intercourse itself, in many mythologies. This was no different, of course, for the Suwa people of Ancient Japan. Also, once again, I have to thank @eirikrjs for his excellent writeup about Mishaguji- it's a fantastic source for information about this strange, phallic entity, and contains a girth of sources that were severely lacking. god dammit i almost made it through the intro without a sex joke
Mishaguji has several names, and many of them are used interchangeably from area to area from what I can tell. Interestingly, it appears to be female according to some sources, and she's described as the deity of Suwa Lake, worshipped by an ancient cult and taking the form of a white snake. The cult also worshipped 'Mother Earth,' rather than attaining heaven, and as they were a cult primarily located at the Suwa shrine, before they were overtaken by other forms of worship and cults of other beings. Several shrines to Mishaguji can be found throughout the Suwa region, such as the Ontō Mishaguji Sōsha, and many shrines were spread out throughout much of Japan as a whole, in fact, called Mishaguji-sha. At least, according to a map from a seemingly defunct mapping website of Japan, there were several Mishaguji shrines spread through a lot of Japan. Unfortunately, as is likely obvious at this point, the online sources for Mishaguji are incredibly scarce, so I can't back up everything with concrete evidence past what I've already linked above.
The cults of Mishaguji celebrated Mishaguji as a god of fertility, safe birth, and as a guardian of children, and the being could basically inhabit any object they gave up to be inhabited by it. I'm admittedly kinda confused here, but it seems that Mishaguji wasn't one single being but rather a collective of spirits that were each deities that inhabited these beings. Yeah, I just linked the homepage to the museum that says this, because again, sources are scarce. The objects that the Mishaguji would typically inhabit were often things like grinding slabs, stone mortars, or... uh... well...
Things like this, except sometimes far smaller. Yeah, I'm sure you get the picture. Mishaguji also have connections to fellow gods, are often conflated with Takeminakata, and were paired with another deity- Sosou- which were their male counterparts- and they were also seemingly at the center of a war with Takeminakata that they ultimately lost, leading to Takeminakata becoming the primary figure of worship, paralleling the real-world takeover of the Suwa cults by the Yamato imperial people. Lastly, they were often involved in a rather disgusting ritual involving young boys that I won't be getting into here because it personally makes me sick to even think about, but if you can stomach it, just read the blog post.
As for the design in SMT, while I've blocked off the dick head like a prick, it works fantastically- Mishaguji, as a goddess of fertility, was often associated with sex and baby-making due to that, and her appearance takes many cues from other sources revolving around her as well- namely, the white snake association, as well as the fact she's literally wrapped around a stone pillar that shares many similarities to the rocky... massage machines that were often used to embody them. This is, of course, only the tip; there's so much more to this being that I'm not reading off here, so I'd recommend you do your research if you can find anything more.
