The Kototama of MIZUHO NO TSUTAE by Yamaguchi Shido

(L)  Kada’s Inari Koden Chart.     (R) Yamaguchi’s Futomani no Mitama Chart.

Editor’s Note: This is an English rendering from the Japanese book, Koshinto Gyoho Nyumon by Omiya Shirou, pp 100-107.

Yamaguchi Shido in the mid-19^th century wrote a book that integrated the strange symbols found in two ancient scrolls into a metaphysical system of Kototama.

Yamaguchi Shido

In 1765 Yamaguchi Shido, the son of a wealthy farmer, was born in Awanokuni which is the modern-day Kamogawa-shi in Chiba prefecture. He was a child prodigy and learned Chinese literature at a young age. When he was 25 or 26, he moved to Edo to live with his uncle. He started the study of kokugaku, which is the study of ancient Japanese literature.

Futomani no Mitama/Kagotama Chart

The Yamaguchi family had handed down over the generations an ancient scroll that contained a mysterious chart known as Futomani no Mitama, also called Kagotama. Yamaguchi wanted to unwrap the secret of this chart. After three decades of studying, he came to understand that Futomani no Mitama told the secret about ancient kototama, the power of sound. But he did not quite understand the kototama.

Inari Koden/Mizuhi no Ontsutae Chart

The Inari Koden or Mizuhi no Ontsutae chart was handed down in the prominent Kada family. The Kada family, together with the Hata, of Kyoto were hereditary priests of the Inari shrine in Yamashiro no kuni, the present Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine in Kyoto. The noted kokugaku scholar, Kada no Azumaro (1669-1736) possessed this chart at one time. Azumaro has a lovely shrine at Fushimi Inari which I visited in 2012. Azumaro passed the chart to his adopted child, Tamiko, who in turn passed it to Kada no Noriyuki.

Yamaguchi Shido studied classical Japanese literature under Kada no Noriyuki. Later he taught nobles at the Imperial Court in Kyoto. During these studies, Yamaguchi was given the Inari Koden chart. [Inari Koden probably means the ancient document of Inari.] The secret symbols written in the chart enabled him to solve his question of the ages about the Futomani no Mitama chart.

Mizuho no Tsutae by Yamaguchi Shido, an integration of the two documents

By receiving the Inari Koden, Shido became more confident about his study. In the year Bunsei 1, 1818, he returned to Edo and spent five years in developing a solid base for his study. In the year Tempo 1, 1841, he was invited to the house of Fukui Shigetsugu, his brother-in-law, at Kameyama in Kyoto. There he began writing his work entitled Mizuho no Tsutae which became his life-time achievement.

After that, his study of Kototama became so popular among court nobles in Kyoto that he gave many lectures to them. In the year Tempo five he finished writing seven volumes of Mizuho no Tsutae. Two years later, he was invited to see Kishu Tokugawa (one of the top three Tokugawa-related families) and went to Kishu in Wakayama. There he offered his books, Kamikazeiki and his series of Mizuho no Tsutae to Kishu Tokugawa.

Kototama of Yamaguchi Shido

According to Yamaguchi, all things in the universe consist of water and fire. These are also referred to as the sound of “i” and the sound of “ki.” Earth and people are all made up of these water and fire elements. The universe can be very much affected by the kototama that is created from water and fire. Shido thought “iki,” breathing, also consisted of water “i” and fire “ki.” Breathing was absolutely imperative to carry the words with kototama in them. For him, iki means to live, ikiru.

Yamaguchi found that the Inari Koden had much to do with Futomani no Mitama. He carefully compared them to each other. He revealed that the creation written in Kojiki actually told about the generation of goju-on, the fifty Japanese kana characters/syllables.

Yamaguchi saw that the Futomani no Mitama was made upof the five elements: the dot, the circle, the horizontal line, the vertical line, and the square.

He realized that the Inari Koden, through its twelve forms explained each of the five symbols in the Futomani no Mitama chart. This helped him work out the hidden meaning of Futomani no Mitama.

Yamaguchi noted the goju-on, the fifty voices of the kana syllables, as principal sounds and he made them into figures that represented the true identity of the universe.

The Japanese 50-kana syllables are a system showing the power of sound that controls the universe.

You can control the universe if you have a deep understanding of each sound. The belief of kototama that koto, something that is said, will become koto, something that happens, is a metaphysical system in the innermost recesses of traditional beliefs.

AMATSU IWASAKA KOTOTAMA

Kototama is the spirit and the power of sound. It is an ancient practice, hidden for a long time. Ogasawara, Nakazono, and Shimada teach it using the amatsu iwasaka chart.

Explanation of “Amatsu iwasaka”

岩境     いわさか, iwasaka   Heavenly area or shrine

Also: ‘Iwa’ means fifty sounds of kototama. The completed kototama is called ‘futomani’.

Amatsu means Heavenly, Divine. So this is a chart of the heavenly fifty kototama sounds.

Explanation of diagram:

There is a circle at top which is the Void. However, it is not shown in this figure.

Level 1.  “U” or “SU” is Amemiwoya/ Amenominakanushi Kami, the creator of the universe.

Level 2.  Division into male and female, heaven and earth.

“A” is Takamimusubi, High Producer, male, centrifugal force, vertical, Heaven.

“WA” is Kamimusubi, Divine Producer, female, centripetal force, horizontal, Earth.

Note the form, the resemblance to a Tree of Life which it indeed is.  A-WA is like Alpha-Omega of creation.

This Amatsu Iwasaka leads to the following kototama chart:

Vowels are called mother sounds; consonants are father sounds; syllables beginning with W are half-mother sounds. Other syllables are made by combining consonants with vowels. The story of Izanagi and Izanami in the Kojiki reminds us that the father goes first.

References:

futomani.jp.or  Shimada Sensei http://www.futomani.jp/kototama_ver.1/lecture/no166/no166.htm

Nakazono, Masahilo, The Source of Our Present Civilization

Ogasawara, One Hundred Deities

KATAKAMUNA ANCIENT CIVILIZATION

Introduction

Katakamuna is an ancient civilization, a moji script, a science of the universe. This post contains information from Japanese sources in a book and on the Internet.

Part 1  Katakamuna Civilization and Documents

From http://ejje.weblio.jp/sentence/content/katakamuna, whose entries come from Japanese Wikipedia.

Katakamuna civilization is a super ancient civilization that is said to have existed in Japan. カタカムナ文明とは、かつて日本に存在したとされる超古代文明。

Katakamuna civilization is said to have existed at the end of the paleolithic period (Japan) before the Jomon period.  縄文時代以前、旧石器時代(日本)末期に存在したとされる。

NARASAKI Kogetsu was the first to advocate the existence of the Katakamuna civilization in Japan. 日本で初めてカタカムナ文明の存在を唱えたのは楢崎皐月（ならさき・こうげつ）である。

According to the Katakamuna documents, it is assumed that the civilization had highly sophisticated technology and an original system of philosophy. 極めて高度な科学技術や独自の哲学体系を持っていたことがカタカムナ文献から推測される。

It [these documents] is so called because the Katakamuna characters were used.  カタカムナ文字を使用していたとされる事から呼ばれる。

Later, Kogetsu succeeded in deciphering this document (commonly called “Katakamuna documents”) over five years.

後に皐月は五年をかけてこの文書（通称「カタカムナ文献」）の解読に成功。

These characters were called “Katakamuna characters” from the location where they were enshrined and “Katakamuna Civilization” was advocated as the civilization in which the characters were used. この文字はそれが祀られていたとされる場所の名から「カタカムナ文字」と呼ばれ、その文字を使用していた文明として「カタカムナ文明」が提唱されたのである。

Part 2   Fukano Kazuyuki, Chogakusho Katakamuna no Nazo, 超科学書「カタカムナ」の謎, Kosaido Books, 1993

NARASAKI Kougetsu  (楢崎皐月), born 1899, was a scientist who studied at Japan Electronic Engineering School. In the 1920s he was in Manchuria where he invented a special oil that blocks electricity and developed a man-made gasoline; he was in the Japanese Army that was making iron in Manchuria. After he came back, he worked in a medical company where he had a project to raise farming yields by use of electricity. So he was putting up power lines in Hyogo-ken’s Kincho-zanchu in the Rokkousan 六甲山 mountain range. He wanted to learn why a large matsu pine could grow on top of an iwa large stone. He spent five years living in the wild and this experience resulted in his writing a book. Moreover, it resulted in his discovery of Katakamuna.

This is a book about Katakamuna, a super-science from a super-ancient civilization. The information comes from a scroll which Narasaki copied over a period of twenty days in 1949. Narasaki was studying the environment when a hunter, around 50-60 years old, appeared holding a gun. The hunter told Narasaki that the power lines were preventing animals from drinking from lakes, so Narasaki stopped doing that. In gratitude, the hunter came back and said that his father was guji at Katakamuna Jinja. He brought a makimono that he said is their goshintai, written in strange moji. He allowed Narasaki to copy the document. The document had been protected by the Hira-Ke and Meshi-Ke families.

By a strange coincidence, Narasaki had studied in Manchurian temples with Taoist elders. They told him that there was once in Japan a zoku, tribe, of people called Ashiya, a civilization with a high technology. They had yatakagami writing and special iron for making steel as well as a high level of culture. Their culture came to China through the Chinese Shinoushi who brought from Japan what would be the beginning of Chinese culture.

Katakamuna comes from the early Jomon at the end of the ice age more than 10,000 years ago.

Eighty Uta

There are 80 uta in the Katakamuna document that Narasaki copied out in 1949. Five out of 80 were published in Narasaki’s jisho. There are other uta in this Fukano book; they were written by Narasaki, who spent five years studying the document.

This is how Fusano explains Katakamuna.

Kata = seen world, the world of form

Kamu = unseen world

Na = nushi, lord

Thus, Kata-kamu-na is the lord of the seen and unseen worlds. A Katakamuna-jin has knowledge of the unseen world behind the world of form.

Everything comes from Ama. Uchu is everything, the universe. Mari is an atom of matter. Ama creates everything, and it comes from the unseen world, Kamu-no-sekai.

Tennen, everything, is made of 8 different rasen-no-kaiten spirals or junkai circular movements and opposite movements.

Katakamuna includes the super-micro and super-macro of joukyo appearance. Seimei no honjitsu, life and mind and uchu universe. Seibetsu living organisms occur naturally, and all things have life.

In Narasaki’s book, there are 80 uta arranged in spirals with three types of symbols in the center: Yatakagami symbol in 71 spirals, Futomani in 7, Mikumari in 2 spirals. The illustration shows the Yatakagami symbol in the center of one of the uta.

The first uta reads:

katakamuna –  hibiki – mano suheshi – ashia touan – utsushi – matsuri.

Katakamuna – sound – mano suheshi? – Ashia Touan – wrote this – made offering in matsuri.

Start reading from the center and spiral out. It seems to say that Ashia Touan received the message of Katakamuna from somewhere and he wrote it down and made an offering in matsuri.

Katakamuna reveals konpongen principles of: Universe, tennen, and shizen This is something like the Universe, Heaven-and-Earth, and Nature.

The first uta is telling about basic principles of everything in the seen world. The Unseen world has limitless energy, Kamu and the lord of Kamu. The Seen world is made from the Unseen world, Amana is the lord of Amana. Everything we have here is Kamuna and Amana vibration; tougou integration of Amana and Kamuna.

Here are verses 5 and 6. Below them are shown the three types of centers: Yatakakami, Futomani, and Mikumari.

     

 

Megaliths as Ancient Shrines

(c) Okunomichi 2012

Let’s discuss rocks and stones. We often use these words interchangeably. Are they different? Instead of the common word for stone, ishi, the Japanese sometimes use the word, iwa. If the ishi is a smallish stone, then iwa is a largish rock like a boulder. When we examine the kanji 岩 for iwa, we see the character for mountain over that for stone so it represents a mountain stone.

While megaliths occur naturally, there is evidence that some have been worked on by ancient people. Megaliths were often transported over great distances to special sites on the peaks of mountains (such as megaliths from the island of Shikoku on top of 2599 meter tall Mt Kinpusan in Yamanashi). Megaliths are also iwakura, stone seats for kami deities. The connotation is that kami descend from an unseen world to sit on or in the stones. Megaliths are found within iwasaka, 岩 境 or 磐 境, sacred enclosures, which were probably early shrines. Megaliths can be regarded as iwa no hashira, pillars of rock. The pillar is an important metaphor in sacred literature around the world. It represents a sacred mountain, the center of the world, the world axis.

Why are megaliths sacred? Megaliths connect ki of heaven spiraling down and ki of earth spiraling up. The movements of heaven and earth are celebrated and joined in matsuri, festivals to kami of heaven and earth.

I visited Kanayama Megaliths in Gifu Prefecture at the time of the autumn equinox in September. There are three Shinto shrines in front of the Iwaya-Iwakage megalith grouping, indicating that people have considered this site a sacred place. Let us note that the word, iwaya, 岩 屋, or house of rock, is also translated as cavern or grotto, and even as sanctuary, and Iwakage means the shade of the rock. It feels good to be in Iwaya-Iwakage. The beam of sunlight entering from the “ceiling” was easily revealed by the smoke of burning incense. I sat on the rock on the west side of the “sanctuary” and when I was alone, I felt Iwaya’s beauty and peace. The smoke in the sunbeam was swirling around and it was mesmerizing to watch. It seemed like there was a spiraling energy right here in Iwaya.