842 fabio rambelli
The Reikiki seems to constitute the mythological and ontological
framework for such rituals; several medieval authors explicitly point
to this text as the origin of shintō kanjō. The Reikiki is indeed one of
the most important Ryōbu Shintō texts. It is composed of eighteen
fascicles: fourteen constitute the main text, and the last four contain
only iconographic material. Many copies of the text exist, but scholars
have pointed to the existence of at least three different versions. Mod-
ern scholars believe that the Reikiki was written by a Shingon priest
(or perhaps group of priests) connected with the Ise shrines between
the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. This attribution,
however, is not completely convincing, given the numerous Tendai
esoteric elements and the references to the Katsuragi mountain
range in the Yamato region present in the text.
The themes addressed in the various chapters of the Reikiki are
quite common in medieval combinatory literature. They range from
cosmology (especially cosmogonical theories and the place of Japan in
the universe) to theology (the status and role of the kami), soteriology
(a theory and practice of salvation with many elements from the teach-
ings of original enlightenment), the role of authority (in particular the
emperor), and issues related to the representation of the sacred. The
treatment of these themes, however, is quite peculiar, and in some cases
without equivalent in any other extant text. This fact, taken together
with the peculiarity of the iconography, may be an indication of the
early and perhaps essentially experimental nature of the Reikiki.
The End of the Tantric Discourses on the Kami
The fact that the Ise deities Amaterasu and Toyouke were envisioned
by Ryōbu Shintō as being the very essence of dharma-nature (hosshō
) and of the Buddha Dainichi gave them an ontological primacy
that opened the way to cosmogonical speculations on the original state
of the universe and the primordial godhead. Indeed, to argue that
the essence of Dharma and the very nature of Dainichi is a kami (in
fact, two different kami) opens up a number of problems in Buddhist
ontology, cosmology, and soteriology. These issues were addressed
by medieval and early modern discourses about the kami that were
deeply infused with tantrism.
Several medieval Shintō texts indicated, more or less explicitly, that
while Buddhism offered a soteriology progressing from ignorance to
awakening, and as such was still tied to a fundamental dualism (pre-