{"id":6026,"date":"2014-06-30T04:43:19","date_gmt":"2014-06-30T08:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/?p=6026"},"modified":"2014-06-30T04:43:19","modified_gmt":"2014-06-30T08:43:19","slug":"reading-what-is-behind-divination-in-imperial-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2014\/06\/reading-what-is-behind-divination-in-imperial-japan.html","title":{"rendered":"Reading “what is behind”; Divination in Imperial Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"-<\/a>In imperial Japan, one-third of the officials in the Ministry of Religious Affairs \u2014 the Jingi-kan \u2014 were assigned to one department, the Department of Divination. Their job was to read patterns of coincidence and advise the emperor accordingly. They had many techniques for provoking a sign from the world, including heating a turtle shell and reading the cracks and monitoring nighttime activity in the Shinto and Buddhist shrines where priests and supplicants went to ask for an oracular dream, a reimu<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But the task of the divination office was also to advise on the meaning of spontaneous signs and coincidences: the fall of a comet, an incident at a bridge, the case of three doves who strangely pecked each other to death. T<\/p>\n

he Japanese word for divination is ura<\/em> or uranai<\/em>, and it means getting in touch with \u201cwhat is behind.\u201d There is the understanding, in the term itself, that to understand “what heaven and earth want to happen” required us to look behind the curtain of the visible world.<\/p>\n

The imperial diviners were drawn exclusively from one family, the Urabe clan. We can assume that in early days this family produced a strong line of seers who were successful at seeing into the world \u201cbehind,\u201d and at provoking signs and oracles from the other side. They did not need a code to tell them what it meant when the crack in a turtle shell ran a certain way or when birds formed a certain pattern in the sky.<\/p>\n

Later, as the diviners become less like wizards and more like civil servants, they followed tedious and elaborate rules. Carmen Blacker, a wonderful scholar of Japanese oracles and shamanism, wisely observes in The Catalpa Bow<\/em> that \u201cthese rules, in the form in which they have come down to us, are no more than dead, hardened residues left behind by the passing of the gifted seer.\u201d This is true of all cultures.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Text adapted from The Three “Only” Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence and Imagination<\/em><\/a> by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.<\/p>\n

Graphic:<\/em> Imperial Japanese banknote showing Ysukuni shrine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In imperial Japan, one-third of the officials in the Ministry of Religious Affairs \u2014 the Jingi-kan \u2014 were assigned to one department, the Department of Divination. Their job was to read patterns of coincidence and advise the emperor accordingly. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6027,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6026\/revisions\/6027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}