George Klonos (East Asian Religions; IKGF Visiting Fellow)

Shugendō 修験道, the tradition of Japanese mountain asceticism, was ubiquitous in Japanese religious life, its patrons and clientele ranging from courtiers and warriors to farmers and city dwellers. Its adherents used their powers to provide services such as healing, exorcisms, and talismans.
The study of Shugendō reveals a tradition rich in Esoteric Buddhist doctrine and ritual, although distinct from the Tendai 天台 and Shingon 真言 schools most often associated with Japanese Esoteric Buddhism. The present talk introduces ritual methods from collections of kirigami 切紙, texts composed in the early modern period (1600–1868), which deal with subjects such as childbirth, protection from wild animals and spirits, epidemics, protection from bandits, fires, dreams.
This ritual technology adapted both Indian (dhāraṇī, Siddhaṃ 悉曇 script) and Chinese (five phases, trigrams, branches and stems) systems of knowledge, combining them to produce methods in which both sound (speech) and image are important