WaterSaltRiceA lamp in the darkFlowers at a boundary
Invocation Approach
Tone
Grave courteous
Address
Izanami-no-MikotoMother of the LandRuler of Yomi
Relationship
Not a patron she is the one who keeps the dead
Warning
She asked him not to look and he looked
Resonance
The grieving those who tend ancestral rites those at a death
Symbols
Yomotsu hirasakaThe boulderThe comb thrown downYomiThe thousand and the fifteen hundredThe wagtail
Mythology Summary
Izanami is the first woman and the co-creator of the islands with Izanagi; she dies giving birth to the fire kami Kagutsuchi and goes to Yomi, the land of the dead, where Izanagi follows her. The Kojiki has her warn him not to look at her; when he lights a torch and sees her decay, she is shamed and enraged, sets the hags of Yomi on him, and at the pass of Yomotsu Hirasaka vows to kill a thousand people a day, to which he answers that fifteen hundred will be born. She remains there as Yomotsu Okami, the ruler of the dead.
Modern Practice
She is approached at death and at the ancestral rites rather than for favours: the offering is water, salt and a lamp, made at the boundary of a house or a grave, and the practice is to name the dead and let them be dead. Japanese Buddhism later took her into funeral rites, while the Shinto shrine tradition keeps her at a small number of sites.