Shinto – Norito prayers

On Tuesday the 20^th of June Jenny Raper presented an introductory paper for the Spiritual Reading Group on the ancient Japanese religion of Shinto. This included a reading and discussion of Norito prayers, reprinted below.

Norito – Words or prayers addressed by worshippers to a deity.  The efficacy of the prayer is founded on the concept of koto-dama, the spiritual power of words.  Words that are beautiful and correct bring about good.  Words that are coarse or ugly bring about evil.  So, the words used are profoundly important. Words that were classical and elegant were always used. 

Here are some prayers from the Engi-shiki (927 CE) written from the Heian court.  They are highly 'formulaic, ritualized and repetitive.  They consist of an invocation of a god or gods, a recollection of the founding of the shrine.....an identification of the recitant and his status; a list of offerings, a petition for certain benefits or blessings, a promise of recompense to be made in return; and a final salutation.’  (Sources of Japanese Tradition, edited by Theodore de Bary,  page 31)

Here are excerpts from The Great Exorcism of the last days of the sixth months.

First, the heavenly sins:

   Breaking down the ridges.

   Covering up the ditches,

   Releasing the irrigation sluices,

   Double planting,

   Setting up stakes,

   Skinning alive, skinning backwards,

   Defecation –

    …..are called the heavenly sins.

The earthly sins:

   Cutting living flesh, cutting death flesh,

   White leprosy, skin excrescences,

   The sin of violating one's own mother,

   The sin of violating one's own child,

   The of violating a mother and her child,

   The sin of violating a child and her mother.

   The sin of transgression with animals,

   Woes from creeping insects,

   Woes from the deities on high,

   Woes from the birds on high,

   Killing animals, the sin of witchcraft -

   Many sins (such as these) shall appear.

When they thus appear,

By the Heavenly Shrine usage,

   Pronounce the heavenly ritual, the solemn ritual words.

When he thus pronounces them......the Heavenly deities

   Will hear and receive these words.

When they thus hear and receive,

Then, beginning with the court of the Sovereign Grandchild,

   In the lands of the four quarters under the Heavens,

   Each and every sin will be gone.

As the gusty winds blows apart the myriad layers of Heavenly clouds,

   As the morning mist, the evening mist is blown away by the

   morning winds, the evening wind....

As a result of the exorcism and the purification,

   There will be no sins left.

They will be taken into the great ocean

   By the goddess called Se-ori-tsu-hime,

   Who dwells in the rapids of the rapid-running rivers

     Which fall surging perpendicular

     From the summits of the high mountains and the summits of the low mountains.

When she thus takes them,

   They will be swallowed with a gulp

   By the goddess called Haya-aki-tsu-hime...

When she thus swallows them with a gulp,

    The deity called Ibuli-do-nushi,

     Who dwells in the Ibuki-do   (breath blowing entrance)

   Will blow them away with his breath into the land of Hades,

   The underworld.

When she finally loses them,

   Beginning with the many officials serving in the Emperor’s court,

   In the four quarters under the heavens,

   Beginning from today,

   Each and every sin will be gone.

After the great exorcism come the propitiatory offerings.

With this prayer I present offerings,

   Providing garments of coloured cloth, radiant cloth, plain cloth and coarse cloth,

   A mirror as something to see clearly with,

   A jewel as something to play with,

   A bow and arrow as something to shoot with,

   A sword as something to cut with,

   A horse as something to ride on;

   Wine, raising high the soaring necks

     Of the countless wine vessels, filled to the brim;

In rice and in stalks;

That with lives in the mountains -

   The soft-furred and the coarse furred animals -

That with grows win the vast fields and plains -

   The sweet herbs and the bitter herbs -

As well as that which dwells in the blue ocean -

   The wide-finned and the narrow-finned fishes,

   The sea-weeds of the deep and the sea-weeds of the shore-

I place these noble offerings in abundance upon tables

   Like a long mountain range and present them

Praying that the Sovereign Deities

   Will with a pure heart receive them tranquilly

     As offerings of ease,

     As offerings of abundance,

   And will not seek vengeance and not ravage,

But will move to a place of wide and lovely mountains and rivers,

   And will as deities dwell there pacified.

With this prayer, I fulfill your praises.  Thus I humbly speak.

FOUND Warning against Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

A Library member, reading our copy of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's 'The Phenomenon of Man' (Collins, 1959), found this Warning inside the book. It is a notice translated from the Latin of the Holy Office that appeared in L'Osservatore Romano on the 1st of July, 1962. Written on the Eve of the Second Vatican Council, the words read curiously now in a time when Teilhard de Chardin has been acclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI and others for his visionary writing. Scholars are discovering that he also had a strong influence on the thinking of many attendees at the Council. The things you find in books.

Synopsis to the new impression of the ANZTLA Festschrift (1995)

https://books.atla.com/index.php/atlapress/catalog/book/10

In 1995 the Australian and New Zealand Theological Library Association published a Festschrift in honour of Dr Lawrence McIntosh, librarian of the Joint Theological Library (now the Dalton McCaughey Library) in Parkville, Melbourne. This book has just been given a new lease of life online, due to the good graces of the American Theological Library Association. I was asked to write a foreword to the new impression, which follows here.

The year that this Festscrift was published is now seen as a time of great sea change, from a library world based firmly on the book to a world of almost infinite resource variety. Librarians were caught right in the middle. The signs of this change had been coming for some time, engendered by technology’s genius for new forms of information storage and retrieval. The change did not make the book outmoded, despite the many fears expressed at the time in the form of Gutenberg elegies. Rather, the sea change brought new formats, rich and strange, and with them the challenge to find our own imaginative responses. Belonging to an association of like minds, albeit not all of them digitally native, was a blessing as we progressed from our card-carrying card catalogue days into a time of diversification and information overload.

From its inception, the Australian and New Zealand Theological Library Association thrived, based on meeting the professional needs of its members. Sensitivity to presenting issues has always happened in an environment where the value and meaning of our collective inheritances have been upheld. The necessarily ecumenical nature of the Association has been a main cause of its success. The sharing of different traditions, with their varying purposes and styles, has been educational for all librarians who have encountered it; they have joined in with the possibilities. A creative exchange has been established and maintained. The consequent creation of quality products with the ANZTLA brand has been one practical and fruitful outcome.

The Association was never going to fit into the special interest group categories of a national library association: our numbers were always too large, our needs multiple and complex. Nor would it fit in as an adjunct to any theological association, something satisfactorily explained in the existing histories: theologians were never going to fully understand or appreciate the expectations of their librarians, or give them the indefinite time and attention required adequately to address those expectations. The Association came into being by launching itself free of any parental body, making its own way and developing its own character.

Browsing through the Festschrift today one is sensitive to the great achievements made by the Association in that short space of time since the landmark consultation of 1983. Raised consciousness about collection development, special collections, specialist religious issues in acquisition, cataloguing, reference and so forth had been reached quickly by close collaboration and a growing trust in our mutual endeavours. The Association has always had the knack of identifying the main issues at stake in our work, then acting to solve them within its limited means. This talent emerged early.

One also notices more work to be done. Trevor Zweck’s admirable history of ANZTLA describes how several people seemed to have the idea for ANZTLA, or at least saw the need, at about the same time. However, subsequent research has revealed that different cities of mainland Australia now lay claim to the genesis moment, with agreement nowhere in sight. Cards may see this as a typical symptom of Australian life, an opportunity for argument deep into the night in defence of local claims. More than likely though, as with most things, it was a New Zealander who actually first had the idea.

The Festschrift contains useful histories of theological libraries. It reminds us there is still much work to be done too on the history of the book in the Antipodes and its relation both to religious learning and theological education. There is still much work to be done on the history of religious publishing in this part of the world and how it expresses the life of nations with sometimes ambivalent attitudes about religion in public life. Patterns of educational reform across church traditions and their meaning in regard to faith life is another subject for our consideration.

One is amazed all over again at the work of researchers like Coralie Jenkin, who put together directories of theological and religious libraries with meticulous attention to detail. Detail, indeed, that one sometimes wonders is there online, now that library directories rely on the individual input of the institutions themselves. Her lists include records of private collections of scholars, clergy and enthusiasts that were a decisive subject guide for individual researchers. The concrete nature of the Book made such lists possible, they were locatable in time and space. One wonders if the same can be said for the mercurial nature of online directories and repositories.     

The Association thrives today because of the willingness of its members to ask the hard questions about their work needs and demands in the reality of a changing resource environment. Also, their ready willingness to work together and serve each other in the interests of common objectives, which continues due to the enabling existence of an energetic and committed Association. The friendly annual conference is where so much of this is recognised and the tasks addressed. The lively sharing of information on the e-list ANZTLA-Forum and at chapters meetings is essential to our forward purpose. This Festschrift is one basic resource for anyone wanting to know about ANZTLA. It is good news, and we are grateful indeed, that the American Theological Library Association sees fit to make it available here as well.   

--- Philip Harvey