Wahya Circle
Wednesday Works

As We Will It: Protection

As we have learned, before we utilize many energetic practices, we are Wise to think about Protecting ourselves and those around us. It has been Experienced by other Practitioners that rogue energies have escaped, or have become residual or stayed in an unexpected way of collateral fallout. This “residual” is often considered nonproductive or NOT conducive to our Intent.
After our Work, cleanse, clear, release, ground.
Or whatever YOU feel is needed for your practice!

Beginning Pharmakeia
Shikerebe-ni

Phellodendron amurense -- Cork Tree

This is a species of tree in the family Rutaceae, commonly called the Amur cork tree. It is native to eastern Zhong Guo: northern Zhong Guo, northeast Zhong Guo, Korea, Ussuri, Amur, and Nippon. Sadly, in the United States, the Amur cork tree is considered invasive, simply because the use is not fully understood and Folk Medicines are heavily governed here. The State of Massachusetts even lists this tree as a “noxious weed”, which it is not, and encourages all who see it to destroy it.

MEDICINAL
The Ainu people used this plant as a painkiller. Extremely odiferous (fruit smells like turpentine). It can be made into a tea or used orally to treat abdominal pain, diarrhea, gastroenteritis and urinary tract infections. Research is showing it may protect cartilage against osteoarthritis progression. It may be a potentially important chemopreventive agent for lung cancer, research for that is ongoing as well. (The constituent berberine that is in the plant can be toxic if overdosed, but if used properly it is shown to reduce blood sugar and bad cholesterol, helping to protect the liver from toxicity.)

MAGICKAL
This tree is Protective. It encourages growth in intellect, confidence, and communication. Concentration. It also encourages happiness, joy, and creativity. If you have suffered from burn-out and are ready to find your creative spark again, spend time with the bark of this tree to help you find your passion again. It corresponds with the Solar Plexus Chakra. (This chakra governs your individuality, your sense of Self, and your power.)

Beginning Crystalium
Stone Circles

One of the most important aspects to Ainu culture was the fact they were Ainu, or “human”, having the “human” Experience of Life in Matter. This is what ‘ainu’ means to those who call themselves by they name.

The places the Ainu built have only recently begun to be understood but already plans to construct highways have placed an exceptionally well-preserved stone circle excavated in 2003, in Morimachi, in danger of being lost forever. The stone monument eloquently depicts the spiritual world of people in the period 10,000 BCE - 300 BCE and the layers of volcanic ash from Mt. Komagatake that covered the site apparently preserved it.

The stone circle is located in the Washinoki Ruins No. 5, on a hill about 40 kilometers north of Hakodate. Funka Bay can be seen from the hill's crest. The Morimachi circle, which is actually oval in shape, consists of three circles of stones and is the largest in Hokkaido and one of the largest in the country.

The outermost circle's diameter is 34-37 meters. Although its size is smaller than that of the Oyu stone circle in Kazuno, Akita Prefecture, which is a national heritage site and has a diameter of about 48 meters. The Morimachi stone circle is larger than the Oshiyoro stone circle in Otaru, Hokkaido, which is about 33 meters in diameter.

About 530 stones were used to make the Morimachi circle, including the riverside stones that make up its outer perimeter and the middle circle, where the stones are irregularly placed about 50 centimeters within the other. The inner circle's stones fill a space that is about four meters in diameter. Some stone circles are believed to have been used as graveyards. But like the stone circle in the Komakino ruins, the stone circle in Morimachi is not thought to be one of these. The remnants of a large pit were found at the southern side of the Morimachi stone circle and could have been a grave. About another 100 meters away from the site, is an area that some believe to have been a mass grave. It is highly likely that the whole area was a gigantic ritual center.

As the excavation of the stone circle was initially undertaken to make a record of it before construction began on the highway, preserving the site is problematic. A tunnel must be dug beneath it, through which the new highway could be diverted. If such a tunnel will be created, two bridge supports that have already been completed would have to be discarded, which would increase the original budget for the project by several billion yen and extend the construction period by three or four years.

The Morimachi mayor, who is also the vice president of a group promoting the construction of the highway in southern Hokkaido, has opposed preserving the site because its maintenance would be a burden for the town and the town needed to secure an emergency route in case Mt. Komagatake erupted. The Hokkaido Prefectural Board of Education urged the town to reconsider its position.

Towns and villages generally support the preservation of ancient sites, and Morimachi's case is unusual because the government is willing to preserve the ruins while the town is reluctant to do so. Tatsuo Kobayashi, a professor of archeology at Kokugakuin University, said: "The people in the Jomon period labored over something that didn't give them wealth. They left their mark here, which was preserved by nature. These stone circles are their declaration of being human." Not even knowing fully yet what these sites were used for, construction began.

Stone circles are often located at a site, usually a mountain location, from which the sunset or stars such as Polaris could be viewed at the time of the Equinox or Solstice, even in Japan. Some sites are believed to have been used for rituals that calendrical coincided with the stars. They are noted to be strikingly similar to those found at Stonehenge in England, although the stones are shorter. Regardless, it is strongly felt amongst the scholarly community that these places are sightings for heavenly bodies and other celestial phenomenon that coincided with rituals of the tribe of the Indigenous.

Deities of Earth 101
Kamui - Bear God

The veneration of Bear
is at the head of all Ainu Gods.

As archeological proof has been “new” to the area (Egypt was plundered first to our knowledge), it has shown through continuous layers of occupation, those that have been uncovered have so far dated back as far as 3,000 years Before Common Era. Officials hid the history and tucked the Ainu into files marked “human migration mysteries,” or “aberrant hunter-gatherers of the modern age,” or “lost Caucasoid race,” or “enigma,” or “dying race,” or even “extinct.” But in 2006, under international pressure, the government finally recognized the Ainu as an Indigenous population. And today, the Japanese appear to be all in.

So, thousands of years before Japan and the Soviet Union planted their flags in the land, the Bear was (and is) very special. From millennium to millennium, it is showing to have been strongly relevant archaeologically, an integral part to this Indigenous society of Ainu. On the surface, there is nothing about Hokkaido that is not Japanese. But dig down—metaphorically and physically, and you will find layers of another class, culture, religion, and ethnicity.

For centuries, the Ainu lived in kotan, or permanent villages, around the Pacific Rim. These comprised of several homes perched along a river where salmon spawned. Each kotan had a head man. Inside the reed walls of each house, a nuclear family cooked and gathered around a central hearth. At one end of the house was a window, a sacred opening facing upstream, toward the mountains, homeland of Bear and the source of the salmon-rich river. The Bear Spirit could enter or exit through this window. Outside the window was an altar, also facing upstream, where people held Bear ceremonies.

To the Ainu, the bear has a body and soul; it’s a ferocious predator that roams the mountains and valleys, and it is a kamuy, a God. Kamuy are great and small. They are mighty salmon and deer, humble sparrows and squirrels, ordinary tools and utensils. Kamuy visit the earth, have a relationship with humans, and if respected, they return again and again to feed and clothe humans. It is a sophisticated belief system where both living and nonliving things are spirit beings, and where interspecies etiquette is central to a good life.

To maintain a healthy relationship with the kamuy, Ainu artists traditionally represent the world in the abstract, creating pleasing designs meant to charm the gods—the transcendent symmetrical swirls of color, not banal figurines. Making a realistic image of an animal endangers its spirit—it could become trapped in that creation, so Ainu artists did not carve realistic looking bears that clenched salmon, corn, or anything else, in their teeth.

(As an aside, we have to look at art and its parallel to life. Art has a way of adapting to the zeitgeist of the area it originates. The typical Ainu bear today, a figurative bear with a salmon in its mouth, has a distinct German look. It is speculated that someone probably said something along the lines, ‘Okay, the Germans like this,’. Sadly, Ainu artists adapted after the Meiji Restoration. They often gave tourists the iconic brown bears of the Black Forest that no longer existed. This pivot was a pragmatic answer to their culture’s precarious situation – barely being recognized in their own homeland.)

The Bear God is one of the mightier beings in the parallel spirit homeland, Kamuy Mosir. After death, bears journeyed to this spirit land, giving their meat and fur to the people. To honor this generosity, the people sent the bear’s spirit home in a special ceremony, iyomante. As the oral traditions share, in winter, Ainu men searched for a denning mother bear. When they found her, they adopted one of her cubs.

A kotan raised the cub as one of their own, the women sometimes nursing the young animal. By the time it was so big that 20 men were needed to exercise the bear, it was ready for the Ceremony. For two weeks, men carved prayer sticks and bundled bamboo grass or mugwort to burn for purification. Women prepared rice wine and food. A messenger traveled to nearby kotans to invite people to attend.

Guests arrived a day before the ritual was to begin, always bringing gifts. At the start of the ceremony, an Elder offered a prayer first to the Goddess of the Fire and Hearth, Fuchi. The Elder led the men to the bear cage. They prayed again. They would then release the bear to exercise and play, then they would shoot with two blunted arrows before strangling and beheading the bear, freeing the spirit. People feasted, they danced, they sang. They decorated the head and an old woman recited sagas of Ainu Mosir, the floating world that rested on the back of a fish. She ended Scheherazade-like, on a cliffhanger, a sly bid to lure the God back next year to hear the rest of the story. Finally, they placed the bear’s head on the altar outside the sacred window.

Archers drew their bows, and the whistling of ceremonial arrows accompanied the Bear God home.

World Studies 101
Stone Circles, a Follow-up

“A government panel identified on Tuesday a set of Jomon Period archaeological sites in northern Japan as a potential candidate for UNESCO World Cultural Heritage designation in 2021.

Tokyo will submit its formal recommendation by next Feb. 1 to the organization representing the ancient sites, which are located in Hokkaido and Aomori, Iwate and Akita prefectures.

The sites represent a culture that prevailed on the Japanese archipelago for more than 10,000 years. The Jomon Period is believed to have begun 16,000 years ago.

The UNESCO advisory panel will then assess whether to accept Tokyo’s recommendation before publishing its decision around May 2021.

The archaeological ruins are comprised of 17 locations including the Sannai-Maruyama site, a large settlement in Aomori Prefecture that provides insight into life in the Jomon Period, and the Oyu Kanjo Resseki site, which features two large stone circles, in Akita Prefecture.”

Please note, information that is being shared outside the countries of origin is currently strained. Feel free to do personal research if curious about this article.

LINK TO ARTICLE: (Video is in Japanese)

Speaking Stones: The Washinoki Site

Practitioner Knowledge 101
Deeper Exploration

When studying the history of the Ainu people, we learn that the word Ainu signifies something very different to the Indigenous. It simply means "human" to them. Imagine long ago, the Ainu gave entirely natural replies to a visitor’s questions: "who are you" and "where am I? " as the answer would be spoken:
"Ainu, we are people; and you are standing on our homeland, Mosir."

The Ainu call ethnic Japanese Wajin, a term that originated in Zhong Guo, or China, or Shamo, meaning COLONIZER. Or, as one Ainu told a researcher: ‘people whom one cannot trust’.

Book of the Week

Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People

As soon as the Ainu became known outside Japan in the early 1800s, scholars recognized that their history was different from that of surrounding Japanese, Korean, and Siberian peoples. This book presents a broad range of contemporary scholarship on Ainu studies by leading European, American, and Japanese scholars, and by native Ainu artists and cultural leaders. Using materials from early, unpublished Ainu collections in North America, supplemented by archaeological, archival, and modern Ainu art from Japan, Ainu culture is presented here as a rich blend of traditional and modern belief.

Like other extant native cultures, the Ainu have survived by resisting political and economic pressure to assimilate. Although they have lost their northern lands and are confined largely to Hokkaido, their culture and language have recently received official recognition, in Japan and internationally. This book, jointly planned with scholars and the Ainu people, helps bring Ainu history, culture, and art into focus as a rich living tradition.