. tachikawa-ry 811
The ritual of “that teaching” described in the second scroll is truly
surprising, in part involving sexual intercourse: the practitioner must
first acquire a human skull, then have sex with a woman; he must mix
the male and female fluids produced from this intercourse, and smear
the skull with the mixture; he must repeat this ritual many times, and
decorate the skull with colors, so that it looks like a living head. Then
he will have to keep it warm, just like an egg, for a long time. After
seven or eight years, if the ritual is successful, the skull will come to life
and give oracles on matters of the past, present, and future.
The fact that the Juhō-yōjin shū refers several times to the Tendai
school as having relation with “that teaching” seems to suggest that
this ritual was not strictly limited to the Shingon school (the word
“Tendai” occurs eleven times in the Juhō-yōjin shū; Moriyama 1965,
530, 535, 538, 540, 543, 549, 566, 567). It would appear likely that its
main practitioners were not monks or regular clergy; they would have
to live in a social context in which sexual intercourse with women
would be considered perfectly normal. Even if it is true that many
regular monks were living with women, it is difficult to imagine how
this condition could be met for them. The most probable social milieu
in which such a situation would be feasible would be that of some
“para-religious” people, such as yamabushis who often formed pairs
with female mikos (mediums).
However, from the doctrinal and ritual contents reported by the
Juhō-yōjin shū, it is possible that some professional Shingon (or more
vaguely mikkyō) monks, of a rather high intellectual level, were impli-
cated in the formation of this current. On the other hand, it is also
possible to find some influence or reminiscence of it in certain trends
in early fourteenth-century poetry exegesis (such as those represented
by the Ise monogatari zuinō )^5 or in Ise Shintō thought.
All this seems to suggest that in the thirteenth and early fourteenth
centuries there existed very active and inventive religious—or para-
religious—groups around the regular clergy of mikkyō schools, which
could have possibly conceived of these odd rituals.
One thing that should be noted is the fact that the ritual’s final
purpose is not sexual pleasure or fulfillment (which would have been
assimilated to the felicity of attainment of buddhahood), but is sim-
ply a means in a process that could be called artificial procreation.
(^5) Study and translation in Klein 1997, 1998, and 2003, esp. 273–91.