@HorsesandMuchMOAR
I’m a few different kinds of Pagan, including eclectic and Covenant of The Goddess (specifically NordCOG). I’m also Shugendo and Shinto, which I think are largely synonymous to western Paganism (albeit Japanese rather than European) even though the actual implementation of the practices can be vastly different.
Here’s an example of an implementation of those kinds of faiths: I worked for a company in Tokyo that frequently beat out competitors for customers, and every week we would spend an hour (or an entire day long weekend retreat) ritually offering apologies to those competitors’ employees and their families for the trouble we may have caused them, meditating on how we could have been better partners with them and caused less conflict, and purifying both our selves and our work place from the sin of putting others out of business.
It is very similar to an exterminator or extermination company praying weekly for the sin of killing the creatures they exterminate.
In the US we’d drink and party when we beat competitors. In Japan we meditated, sat under waterfalls as ‘punishment’, and apologized.
As another example, in the US if someone got laid off or fired, we’d take everyone out to a bar for some drinking and we’d be done. But one time we had to fire someone in the Tokyo office, and that resulted in an entire week of hour long afternoon meetings meditating on how we could have helped that person be more successful, and what it means for us as a team and a company that we were unable to have them be a part of our ongoing work, accompanied by a Shinto priest.
In the US the corporation is just the corporation. But in Tokyo everything has a spiritual component that touches everything. It’s all baked into the idea of ‘punishments’ - somewhat analogous to ‘sin’ I think, but more specific toward personal action and divorced from any kind of ‘the gods give a shit about this’.
Because, seriously - even in Shinto - the gods give NO shits about what we do to our competitors. That’s our choice to care about it. They’re just there to help us process it.
So, from that ‘Pagan / Shinto / Shugendo’ perspective, it’s OUR responsibility to decide what is sacred, and then to approach the sacred as we choose. Gods and Goddesses (assumed but not proven) may or may not help us with that, but it never hurts to ask. Humans recognize the sacred - it’s one of the things we’re good at - and then we decide how to integrate that into our universe. Whether the sacred cares or not is not our call - we don’t get to decide that. All we can do is recognize the sacred then decide how we want to interact with it, if at all.
Sometimes the sacred interacts back. Sometimes not. It’s all very fuzzy and might just be coincidences. But, if a placebo works or has beneficial side effects, then why not use it?
From my own perspective, and purely from an implantation standpoint, the only difference that I see between Shinto and Shugendo is that Shugendo is Shinto with a specific and very personal death cycle added to the initiation, very much like the Eleusinian mysteries. That’s why Shugendo often wear the kinds of things that you bury people in - we’re all dead already. And in Shugendo everything is sacred and everything sacred is Kami - including Buddha, Christ, Mohamed, and anyone else you want to add. So, it’s not so much that Shugendo is Shinto + Buddhism, which really is not a bad description of how it all works, but that it’s Shinto on ‘everything is sacred and you can’t see that until you die’ steroids and Buddha is just another Kami.
So in Shugendo you get the Buddhist ‘108 defilements’ as well as the ‘burning away sins’ rituals, so you also have purifications that are really more analogous to exorcisms - and the ‘you have to die first’ festivals and initiations that Shinto has pruned away from itself, or, in many cases, never had. Shinto is not one thing. Even the Nihongi starts with 9 different creation myths - even the Shinto ‘bible’ doesn’t have a ‘One Way’. It just has the “Here’s ways that …”.
As another example of practice and implementation, before starting work on a construction site you get a Shinto priest to tell the land and the Kami that you want to prepare the space for a new building. That gives them time to move, and for the beneficial Kami to bless what you are doing if they want. But if there’s a Kami that asserts itself and equipment keeps breaking or people get hurt trying to build the building - you get a Shugendo priest to fucking take care of it, even if that means some sort of spiritual battle.
It takes the happy fun drinking religion of Shinto where it’s less of a religion and more of a societal or cultural practice that is subsumed into every aspect of life, and adds a set of ‘separate from daily life’ initiations and practices that are closer to the Greek ‘Things Said, Things Done, Things Shown’ approach to spiritual practice, including … effectively … spells.
In practice, I feel it takes the better aspects of Shinto and makes it more immediate and mystical. Which of course is why it’s more cult-like and tends to result in more cult-like groups.
In Shinto you are born and the world around you is Shinto. So you’re Shinto, but it’s how you interface with everything from coworkers to trees and penises.
In Shugendo you die and that’s something you have to choose yourself and it’s something you maintain. And it is how you interface with everything from coworkers to trees and penises.
So - in actual day to day life, they’re indistinguishable. But one has a higher hurdle to entrance and fewer temples.
And both are remarkably similar to European Paganism, and for eclectic EuroPagans, can be inserted into or added to any EuroPagan practice and religion pretty effortlessly - like a lego.
However, some European Pagan groups see Shinto as an entirely different set of Gods and Goddesses, and may see those as anathema.
To be honest, I think the actual practices of Shinto are considerably different than Covenant Of The Goddess Wiccan-style worship, and you have to be fairly eclectic before that would work.
On the other hand, Shugendo is actually very Wiccan in it’s approach to the world and the sacred. Probably because of that Eleusinian mysteries component which makes it largely indistinguishable from any Demeter/Persephone circle, and whatever deities you choose in your Wiccan practice “are just more Kami” to the Shugendo practice.
Integrating Shinto or Shugendo practices and beliefs into a Pagan or Wiccan framework all depends on the ‘what kind of Pagan or Wiccan are you’, and the core practices and beliefs of that group.
Someone in a very conservative Famtrads might not be able to make the leap.
But for my Famtrad, it was a perfect match. Because my parents were super eclectic.
After that, it’s just practice. You choose what you do or don’t do. And what you then do or don’t do as a result of the doing or not doing.
Add a slice of Poison Grass and Pointing At The Moon, and Eclectic-Zen-Wiccan-Shinto-Shugendo-Buddhism is easy.
There is no Buddha, no not Buddha.
No Bodhisattva Tree, no not Bodhisattva Tree.
If all is void, what is there to polish?
The obvious answer in Shugendo is ‘Everything’.
Does that kind of help answer your question? Or did you have a more specific example you were curious about?
