High on a wall of the home sits a miniature shrine: each morning it receives fresh water, rice, salt, and a bowed head with two claps.
Tagged: Prayer Remembrance Sacred time Shinto
How It Is Practiced
The kamidana — the 'kami shelf' — holds an ofuda, a talisman tablet from a great shrine (often Ise, the shrine of Amaterasu), small shrine doors, and paired lanterns or candles. In the morning the household offers fresh water in a small vessel, cooked rice, and salt on tiny dishes, lights the lamps, bows twice, claps twice (kashiwade, to call the kami's attention and purify the hands), bows once more, and removes yesterday's offerings. A sprig of sacred sakaki may stand in its vase, renewed on the first and fifteenth of the month.
Purpose and Meaning
The kamidana makes the house a small shrine and the family its priests. Its devotion is upkeep: gratitude and purity maintained daily in the currency of water, rice, and attention. Where the great shrines keep the nation's rites, the shelf keeps the household under the same gaze — the kami invited, fed, and thanked where life is actually lived.
References
- Kamidana — Wikipedia Free / open access
Related Practices
- Home Pūjā — The household shrine's daily worship: the deity awakened, bathed, dressed, fed, and offered lamp and flowers as an honored guest in the home.
- Offerings at the Buddhist Shrine — Flowers, candles, incense, water, and fruit before the Buddha image: the daily offering whose lesson is impermanence itself.
- The Sabbath Table — Friday night's table — candles, wine, two loaves, blessings, and song — is the home liturgy at the center of Jewish devotion.
Related Across the Site
- First Fridays Devotion Devotion — The First Fridays devotion joins Mass and Communion on nine consecutive first Fridays to the promises of the Sacred Heart.
- Home Pūjā Devotion — The household shrine's daily worship: the deity awakened, bathed, dressed, fed, and offered lamp and flowers as an honored guest in the home.
- Offerings at the Buddhist Shrine Devotion — Flowers, candles, incense, water, and fruit before the Buddha image: the daily offering whose lesson is impermanence itself.
- Stations of the Cross Devotion — The Stations of the Cross walk the worshipper through fourteen scenes of Christ's journey to the crucifixion.
- The Angelus Devotion — The Angelus is a short prayer on the Incarnation, prayed at morning, noon, and evening at the sound of a bell.
- Veneration of Icons Devotion — Before the icons at home and in church, the faithful light lamps and candles, bow, and kiss the images of Christ and the saints.
- Dhikr Prayer or Creed — The remembrance of God through repeated short formulas of glory, praise, and greatness.
- Norito Prayer or Creed — Formal ritual prayers in classical Japanese, recited by priests to the kami at shrine festivals and rites.