There was a time long ago when Japan created a Ministry of Magic, run by wizards.
They even had a little Hogwarts.
This video is a collaboration with the guys over at the Cool History Bros channel.
Watch their video about Taoism after this one. I command it.
Okay, way back in ancient Japan, life was tough and unpredictable.
One minute you could be plowing your field, minding your own business, and the next minute,
a warlord could ride over and plow your face.
Or you could be cooking up some noodles outside, and a demon could snatch you up and drag you
into the mountains forever.
Yeah, the Japanese thought demons and evil spirits were as real as their superiority over Koreans.
Living in such a harsh world, people needed ways to protect themselves from bad spirits.
Luckily, they lived just a puddle away from a country run by the ruler of all under Heaven: China.
Surely, China had all the answers. They love intellectuals.
In the 500s and 600s, Japan brought in a lot of books and ideas from China.
At the time, Japan was BFFs with the Korean kingdom of Baekje.
They used each other’s chapsticks and everything, it was very cute.
Baekje had already tasted and gorged on Chinese culture, so most of these ideas came through Baekje.
Now Baekje later fell to the sword of Silla.
The Japanese got so mad at this that they later became buddies with Silla.
Look, whining ain’t gonna bring friends back.
Among these Chinese ideas were the concepts of yin and yang, and the 5 phases, which were taken from Taoism.
The follow up video from Cool History Bros talks about these ideas, so check it out after this.
The Japanese put those concepts into a blender, and they tossed in some ideas from Buddhism,
from native religions, from all kinds of unrelated ideas and practices,
and then they pureed it into a shake called onmyōdō 陰陽道, or The Way of Yin and Yang.
It was a set of magical spells and rituals for fortune-telling and fighting evil spirits.
This shake brought all the Japanese boys to the yard and in 675, the emperor created basically
a Ministry of Magic in the government.
It was called the Onmyōryō 陰陽寮, or the Yin and Yang Bureau.
They had 4 main jobs: magical rituals, being in charge of the calendar, astronomy, and timekeeping.
Those seem like unrelated jobs, but it was a time when things like philosophy, religion,
astronomy, and fortune-telling were not clearly separate fields.
People saw them as you know, things that smart people with soft hands studied, all that high-level stuff,
while us normies did our unimportant work like feeding people.
The Onmyōryō recorded omens and interpreted them.
Like if there was a meteor shower, they would analyze it and tell you what it meant.
They created calendars. They also kept time.
Every two hours, a person pounded on gongs and drums to let you know precisely what time it was
when you killed that twat for waking you up at 4 in the morning.
So how did the timekeepers know what time it was?
They had this big water clock device called a rōkoku, where water would flow from the
top bucket down to the lower buckets, and the movement of the water would charge a smartphone,
and they would check the smartphone for the time.
The Onmyōryō had officials called onmyōji 陰陽師.
These guys performed magical spells and rituals.
At first, there were only supposed to be 6 onmyōji in the bureau, but over time everyone
who was part of the Onmyōryō became known as onmyōji by the public.
So we had the Onmyōryō, the government office;
the onmyōji, the people who worked in it;
and onmyōdō, the actual set of magical ideas and knowledge they used.
To be clear, these wizards or sorcerers weren’t all running around acting out their D&D fantasies
and doing Naruto hand signs for funsies.
No, the wizards became a part of daily life, as we’ll see in a bit.
It was serious business. They were seen as the backbone of the state.
Now at first, the government wanted to keep these ideas secret.
They banned non-onmyōji from studying them, or even from showing anyone the rituals.
The only time you saw these rituals were at state ceremonies.
But how do you recruit new onmyōji if the teachings were secret and no one else knew them?
Without recruiting new people, the office would have just died out.
That’s why within the Onmyōryō was a little school, a little Hogwarts.
They recruited students and taught them the different fields of study in onmyōdō,
before making them actual onmyōji.
There was a lot to learn.
They used all kinds of tools like charms and divining devices and little dolls that were like voodoo dolls.
The number one purpose of an onmyōji was to protect the emperor and the capital from
evil spirits, diseases, and the occasional sexy fox disguised as a human.
Their services were not supposed to be for individual citizens.
But in the middle of the Heian Period, the elites in the capital were like,
“Hey, why you guys no protect us?”
It was a good question. Why did they no protect us?
It was such a good question, and so many nobles asked it, that things actually changed.
It was like American democracy, but working.
Onmyōji started helping individual nobles, for payment.
They became part of the daily lives of the Heian elite.
This was the period in history when onmyōji reached peak Among-Us-level popularity and influence.
Now we shouldn’t think of these wizards as religious figures. They didn’t see themselves that way.
They were more like tradesmen, like armorers, tailors, or blacksmiths.
But while armorers sold armor, and tailors sold tails, and blacksmiths sold--
onmyōji sold magical rituals.
An onmyōji treated it like a normal job, something he did to put rice in his bowl,
clothes on his back, and coins in his whore’s purse. It was a new market baby.
They invented brand new rituals, a lot of them.
They drew ideas from native Japanese beliefs and Chinese beliefs like Buddhism, Taoism,
Confucianism, and Chinese folk traditions.
They had rituals for health, living longer, protection, purification, fortune-telling,
so many rituals and techniques.
And the Heian nobility just ate it all up like an adult video star. They loved it.
When someone wanted to build a house, they would call up an onmyōji and ask about the best location.
There were weird superstitious requirements, like it had to be in a place with positive energy,
or it needed a pond on the south side, for reasons that we’ll go into in another video.
Before building the house, the onmyōji did a ritual to purify the land and to ensure
that the construction succeeded and that the house didn’t collapse the next month.
Before entering an abandoned home, you needed an onmyōji to drive out the demons and evil spirits.
People consulted onmyōji for the tiniest things.
Planning a trip? Ask an onmyōji when to go and which direction to take.
Accidentally spent time with a sick person? Call an onmyōji to purify you.
Got an itchy anus? Ask an onmyōji what it means spiritually.
Beyond house calls, onmyōji did important rituals for the state that benefited everyone.
They conducted multiple yearly state ceremonies, one to protect the capital against spirits,
one to protect it against fires, and one to protect it against diseases.
They tracked bad energies around the capital and purified places with negative energy to
prevent evil spirits from spreading.
They had rituals against epidemics.
Onmyōji would travel to areas ravaged by an epidemic and cast purification spells to
block the disease’s path.
They also did rainmaking rituals amidst the droughts and famines devastating the country.
It didn’t really help, but starvation is more fun with a show.
After the Heian Period, onmyōji popularity suffered a coronavirus level crash and never recovered,
although they did have a little nipple of resurgence during the Edo Period.
Looking at all that, it’s amazing how much onmyōdō evolved from its early version,
which borrowed from Taoism.
The 5 phases and yin-yang cosmology were major parts of Taoism, but it’s interesting how
these ideas still worked in onmyōdō without the rest of Taoism.
Was that even allowed?
I guess it’s time to summon this nerd I know. Hey CJ!
How did these ideas even work without Taoism?
It’s perfectly fine, bro!
CJ: The five phases and Yin Yang could stand on their own.
They weren’t even part of Taoism to begin with.
During the warring states period, around 2500 years ago, it belonged to its own school of thought.
The School of Yin Yang.
It was only melded into Taoism later, during the Han dynasty.
Linfamy: Awesome.
Hey if you want to geek out with the guys at Cool History Bros and hear CJ talk about
the evolution of Taoism, check out his video here.
And don’t forget to subscribe to his channel.
He covers a lot of Asian and world history, and how each country’s historical events
influence each other.
Alright, I love you, and spread the knowledge!