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| My Photo of Mount Fujiyama |
Today I saw Mount Fujiyama, where I could sense the spiritual presence that it had, as it is
considered kami. Within my religion, anything
that has the intangible quality that is felt within spiritual truth is
kami. This ranges from animals, rivers and seas to forces of nature such as storms and wind. Due to the nature of kami, we can only experience it,
not capture it in writings and words. Adherents,
such as myself, believe that during the ‘age of kami’, heaven and earth were
created after something, along the lines of a heavenly egg, split. Our gods
attended this and produced a second generation, who were paired
to make brother and sister. The last pair that was made was Izanagi and
Izanami created the islands that I live on now, Japan. Our Great Mother
Goddess, Amaterasu, the kami of the sun, came into being and so did her brother Susanoo-O-Mikoto,
the kami of storms. These two are incredibly important in our Shinto mythology, and are seen in the image below.
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| Amaterasu - Kami of the Sun |
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| Susanoo-O-Mikoto - Kami of Storms |
From this, my ancestors created two worldviews, the first being that
the universe is divided into three categories: the ‘Plain of Heaven’, where the kami live, the human realm called the
‘Middle Land’, where you and I live, and the world after death. The other
view that was formed, the one that my family and I believe, is that our realm is an extension of the
‘Perpetual Country’, where the kami remain in tranquillity. I try to live
and view my world with harmony and the will of kami, so I will be under the
protection of such kami. Due to the spiritual nature of my world, I live in awe of
everything that accompanies the mystery of life and I embrace and connect the
natural world around me extensively. Subsequently this provides me with a happy
and genuine worldview, in which I love the world that I live in.
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