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PD: The Venus thing happens around these panels.

>>49796992
Do you have some sources on manga artists and other Japanese creatives being freemasons? Is Freemasonry really even a thing in Japan?

>>49796992
Patchouli, while she may not explicitly be a Luciferian herself, likely knows a lot about Satanic magic given how she has an entity like Koakuma as a minion. Early magicians tended to lean Christian with their beliefs and traditions but someone as thirsty for esoteric knowledge as Patchouli surely kept an open mind and took whatever she could from as many traditions as she could. I speculated in another thread a while back that she might have either been Spanish or at least studied in Toledo and/or Salamanca, both places rumored to have some of the oldest schools dedicated to the occult hidden away in the caverns beneath them. The one in Toledo is even rumored to have been founded by Hercules, along with the town itself.

>typical "Gensokyo is real" question.
Back in January I had a dream involving the departure of a ship called ‘The Black Moon’ to Gensokyo, possibly with me on it. This correlates to an astronomical event on August 22nd or 23rd depending on ones time zone. I keep finding strange things about that date. It’s also the exact night when Leo transitions to Virgo, which I know not the significance of. According to the Aztec Calendar it is a day of the hunt, a good day to stalk your prey, a bad day to be stalked; it also takes place during the trecana of power struggle. Dolls in Psuedo-Paradise takes place in August.

Could I really get spirited away that night? How should I prepare? Given some of the ominous readings, I think I need to prepare for a fight to the death against supernatural beings.

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>>49797417
If you know you know

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>>49797417
Perhaps Yukari will lure you into a railcar to the other side.

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It's cute that these schizophrenics think they'll be allowed into Gensokyo without LNNing every Windows game.

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>>49796992
It definitely feels like the kami and spirits are “possessing” ZUN somehow so he tells their stories

>>49797078
Wow.

Well, yes. You see, and I am not ecen making this up. Freemasons "took over" Japan after WW2. You can find their centers and lodges easily through Google Search or even by xasuallt walking in Tokyo. If that is nor enough, this is easily recognizable because a lot of them use similar allegories and symbolism, like for exampke the trends in anime in Japan being all about high school shit, little girls being 400 year old, etc. And even if that does not count, they use a lot of Occult symbology, both in games and manga. Of course, not every mangaka/anime creator is a freemason, but it would be weird that a big creator like ZUN was not part of that shit. Even more with the references to Venus, or weird symbology.

>>49799221
No one that visits Esoteric touhou threads wants to enter to Gensokyo. In fact, ever since I got info about the lore I prayed for it to not exist. Because back around years ago I genuinely thought that Gensokyo existed, but then I saw what Toouhou was inspired in, the insconsistencies in the franchise and I thought that the only way it could exist if is Touhou was some sort of Talisman.

This aligns with my theory that Touhou may be some sort of spirit vessel that get stronger when people masturbate, fall in love with them and even with fan arts. Which would explain well why there is so much pornography.

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>>49800549
ZUN already had his "I got surprised by the depth of history of these characters and some troublesome ones started to move on their own" thing from the postscript of Symposium of Post-Mysticism. But it's nice fro him to make it extra clear.
>>49800594
What do 400 year old little girls have to do with Freemasonry? The high school thing is a mix of target audience for such media being highschoolers and the fact that highschool tends to be kind of peak of individual expression in Japan for most. Occult symbolism is tricky because it can be something or the equivalent of 16 yo metal kids scrawling pentagrams. Of course they carry an energy signature, but not all people understand what they are really about or for. I'm gonna need a bit more than that to convince me that ZUN is a freemason.
>>49800606
Gensokyo is a spirit world that is a manifestation what would in Western terms be called Neptunian and Venusian energies. Of course me and lesbians are going to fall in love with and goon silly style to something like that. Gensokyo's nature is beatifully reflected in it being a doujin franchise, it's an imaginative, beautiful work of art (full of women) that is also "dissolved", open, free for all to use within the limits of certain terms.

It's the Neptunian half of it which is of great interest. I mean, Venusian things are very nice and pleasant, but Neptunian energies are extremely powerful. They can be delusional, narcotic and dissolving, but these energies are like a cosmic ocean that saturates all of reality. It's no coincidence that Tibetan Buddhists have an "oceanic lama" as their leader, despite being a landlocked country. It's no wonder some call certain types of mystical experiences "oceanic states". It's not wonder the classic metaphor is "the schizophrenic drowns in the waters where the mystic swims".

And if you can swim without sinking, it's profoundly purifying and healing. It's in an ocean where Izanami conducted the first misogi after becoming perturbed by the death of Izanagi. The fact that this gave birth to the ocean kami tells us it was not an ocean of water. It's the holotrophic reality which Kasulis' wrote about, where a single thing reflects the whole, like a fractal unfolding. Returning to that cosmic ocean purifies and heals, restores us back to wholeness and leads us back home. It's this reason why so many feel nostalgic and homesick for Gensokyo even if they come from a non-Japanese culture.

These energies might even be the latent consciousness of the universe itself. It might be Kobo Daishi Kukai's sixth element, mind, which pervades all of reality. In the Dainichi Nyorai Sutra, it's said that the every metaphorical pore of Dainichi Nyorai, the consciouss universe, is "full of countless oceans". And just as the individuated mind can manifest basicaly anything in it's immaterial aspects, so can the cosmic mind too.

Gensokyo most likely exists only in wholly immaterial sense, but it is real. It's just something far wider, stranger and weirder than most can even imagine. There are times and places where you can better interface with it, but if your heart screams loud enough for it, it will hear you and find you. What happens from there on out is entirely up to you. Some become completely raptured by it's Venusian beaty, some become moved to become musicians and artists, and some can see and feel that there is more to it than just beauty and escapism.

This sort of cum vampire thinking (maybe the whole "gapped" and eaten by youkai thing) is just a manifestation of anxiety over misaligned sexual energies. Every straight man lusts after women and simultaneously fears losing their indepence to their bewitchery, fears losing control of themselves and their libido. I can't say the fear is entirely unjustified, but living like that will twist and warp you and make you unable to interface with certain energies and facets of reality. There are higher and lower, healthier and sicker forms of love and lust. Energies can be purified and transmuted.

There is a reason why (You)r dick responds so strongly to modern day equivalents of nymphs and muses and dakinis and apsaras and goddesses. Explore that reason to it's very root without fear or anxiety.

>>49797417
Oh yeah, also the latest hifuu album had Maribel nearly be taken away to another world.
>>49800606
>the insconsistencies in the franchise
Mythology has all kinds of inconsistencies, yet for some strange reason the gods still answer. I’ve witnessed it myself. In a story I’ve told before, on July 6th of last year, I called upon Xolotl and a few minutes later was greeted by a pair of explosions. An explosion was witnessed by many that night, but bizarrely it was only one and its time was later than mine. This story doesn’t make sense, but I know it’s real. I heard another strange, really loud explosion last Saturday too.

>>49800594
>they use a lot of Occult symbology, both in games and manga
I always just chalked that up to Japan being fascinated by the west. What's more fascinating than the occult, after all?

>>49800986
It's true. Few years ago I called upon Tachobél and later that day there was a violent explosion in the toilet bowl. The explosion was witnessed by many on that fateful day.

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The 2hus are real, they're decent, kind people, most of them, anyway, and they want everyone who truly loves Gensokyo with all their heart to be able to go there sometime

Of course, everyone has a dark side and a light side, so don't beg them to take you there, that'll just annoy them and you might ruin your chances of going there

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I started reading a book which I would say is pretty obligatory reading for everyone interested in this subject. It's The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan by Carmen Blacker.

It's very easy to read and engaging and seems to have a lot of information that is very relevant to Touhou. So far these include:
- Reimu means a divine reveleation in a dream. It was thought that kami most commonly appear to human in dreams, and a reimu is a dream where a kami appears.
- Noh theater, besides frequently having explicitly spiritual and magical themes, has features that suggest it is an evolution of shamanic practices.
- The Okina noh character is considered a kind of generic form of a kami or ancestor spirit. The titular Okina play is thought to bring good luck when performed.
- Certain flowers are thought to act as yorishiro for the souls of the dead. Remember how in PoFV errant human souls caused the flowers to bloom?
- Kuda gitsune are a Nagano speciality (of course)
- There is a "heretical" wish-fullfilling Buddhist ritual that is known as Iizuna hou, or Iizuna rite that involves kitsune spirits. It seems to have evolved from Dakini rituals, as dakinis and kitsune became conflated at some point.

I'm only 50 pages in and while some of this stuff isn't new to me, it's filling some gaps and it's presented in a way that's interesting and easy to digest.

I also found it interesting how the author compares Japanese mythology to a mycelium network of symbols, and how many myths kind of point to singular entities or ideas behind them, even if there are lots of local variations in the mythology surrounding them.

bump

>>49796992
I already refuted this in that thread and it had not been addressed. What engagement do you expect from repeating same talking points like a shill?

>>49800549
>It definitely feels like the kami and spirits are “possessing” ZUN somehow so he tells their stories
WAAAOOOOOOW!!! TOUHUZ CONFIRMED REal. HOT DAYUM............wwwAAOOOOW... guys what I ching hexagram represents this feel, esoterically speaking!?

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>>49812108
I asked your question to an online I Ching, and this is what it had to say:

>12 - Twelve

>P'i / Stagnation

>Heaven and Earth move away from each other.
>In the ensuing void, the small invade where the great have departed.
>There is no common meeting ground, so the Superior Person must fall back on his inner worth and decline the rewards offered by the inferior invaders.

>Difficult trials as you hold to your course.

>Changing Lines:

>An Old Yin for Line 2
>An Old Yang for Line 6
>The Old Yin prevails.

By the way, this hexagram is "heaven" over "earth", which is exactly where both concepts need to be

Is there an english translation to whispered oracle yet? I'm kinda itching to divine dumb stuff with coins in a bowl with my favorite ladies

>>49813216
here
https://mangadex.org/title/2447d41e-8edf-4d3c-a686-1dfd077b8d55/whispered-oracle-of-hakurei-shrine

>>49796992
>that the Lunarians may be real
Learn of western alchemists, you'll end up kicking in your teeth from the whiplash and greater implications.

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Been thinking about the Dragon God recently, and I noticed a parallel to a mythological being from an entirely different culture

The Dragon God is associated with weather, water, rainbows (or colour at least), and created Gensokyo and perhaps the entire world

If it had visited a culture that wasn't familiar with dragons, but very familiar with snakes, they would assume it was a snake, a huge, rainbow snake

Australia is full of snakes, and in Aboriginal mythology, the world is said to have been created by an enormous rainbow serpent, associated with weather, water and creation

This isn't unique to Australia, many cultures around the world share similar myths

Rainbows and dragons just seem to be a universal theme in human culture, Christians, too, believe in dragons (or they used to) and believe rainbows are a sacred message from God

Maybe it's just "big snakes are cool and rainbows are pretty", but I think there's more too it than that

Does anyone have a list of the previous threads?

>>49816289
https://mittelalter.digital/artikel/5576/drachen-im-mittelalter

>>49813216
The fortune slips themselves are fully translated on the wiki article for the book. See anon's mangadex link for the manga bundled with it.

>>49801920
>>49799221
Yeah, I guess the countless eye witnesses and security cameras must have been a coincidence. I’m just a pathetic schizophrenic in denial. https://hillsboroherald.com/hillsboros-big-boom-remains-a-mystery/

There's a chance I might get spirited away to Gensokyo in two weeks. Started with a dream and there's a lot of weird synchronicities. What should I do? I've had a weird thought of turning it into a feast and preparing cakes and stuff. We could even turn it into a /jp/ meetup but that'd turn out pretty awkward if nothing happened, and there's the usual risks of meeting with people online.

>>49833850
>There's a chance I might get spirited away to Gensokyo in two weeks.
And >>49753839 was created about 17 days ago

Pretty funny coincidence, huh?

>>49812947
Thanks. lol.

>>49816289
Rainbows look like huge oily snakes after all.

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I would very much like to double down on my recommendation of The Catalpa Bow. It's excelent stuff and puts a lot of context into many aspects of Japanese culture and mythology.

Some stuff off the top of my head:
- Ascetic practices and cold exposure repeatedly play a big role in Japanese shamanic practices. Training for itako, blind seer women, included up to 33 333 buckets of cold water poured on them over the course of their training.
- A kind of cultivation or activation of "inner fire" seems to be a prerequisitive for shamanic success, and the fasting and cold exposure seem to be a way to force this out. Some aspects of this veer close to Indian ideas about kundalini.
- Some Buddhist temples were built in places that were thought to be or at least represent locations in afterlife, and many have a bridge over an artificial dry riverbed. That's the children's hell also featured in Wily Beast.
- Many people ending in shamanic roles had a history of sickness and neurosis that became resolved once they went through some kind of initiation.
- People took their reimu (dreams featuring deities) extremely seriously, and people who didn't heed the call became ill or started to go insane. Following the call resolved these issues.Some of the descriptions of the dreams are uncannily close to some of my own, including the type of voice the deities speak with and how they choose to appear.
- Some kind of wreath or halo of flames is not only associated with the luminous kings of Buddhism, but also with gongen, these manifestations of enlightened beings appearing as local, often very wrathful beings. Recall the fire surrounding a lot of later depictions of kami in Touhou.
- Tengu were at times seen as enemies of not only Buddhism, but also protective deities, because often the protective deities manifested as snakes. Birds and snakes were seen as kind of enemies. Maybe the Moriya-Tengu feud has a deeper mythopoetic meaning to it.
- Tenguphiles rejoice: some of the boys they would abduct and drive insane would return with shamanic gifts.
- The author met a mountain ascetic woman who had tengu-like traits, a "birdlike" face, glinting eyes and ability to move very fast in difficult terrain. Very odd anecdote, the only of it's kind so far in an otherwise very academic text.
>>49816289
Snakes and dragons are extremely common elements in many mythologies. Their roles tend to be very diverse though. I've been still reading The Catalpa Bow, and even in that book, even in the context of shamanic practices of a single culture, snakes keep cropping up. Sometimes in very positive light - they are associated with fertility, act as spirit guides and protect. But there is also a more troublesome side to them too, even wrathful. They are associated with things that snakes aren't really associated with in real life, such as fire. The author herself notes that some elements surrounding these fiery snakes veers close to Indian ideas about kundalini. Perhaps fragments of it got transmitted to Japan via Buddhist influence, perhaps it's convergence.

I think there is 100% more to it. I think the way they shed their skin and are "reborn" is a big part of it, but there is something beyond it. It's something extremely primordial, likely pre-human.

Rainbows are fascinating because they reveal something that is normally hidden, the spectrum of colors hiding inside undivided sunlight. There's a lot of stuff in certain forms of Buddhism about rainbow lights and rainbow bodies and how inside everything that seems substantial is just this rainbow hued light. It's strangely modern - everything really is energy at different frequences, and visible light is just a vsible manifestation of this.

When it comes to native Japanese myths, I believe the Floating Bridge of Heavens that the heavenly kami is often thought to be a rainbow. I believe the gods of Norse mythology also used a kind of rainbow bridge too?
>>49816319
They are archived here.
https://archive-of-the-sealed-gods.neocities.org/site-functions/acknowledgements

>>49841816
>- A kind of cultivation or activation of "inner fire" seems to be a prerequisitive for shamanic success, and the fasting and cold exposure seem to be a way to force this out. Some aspects of this veer close to Indian ideas about kundalini
>- People took their reimu (dreams featuring deities) extremely seriously, and people who didn't heed the call became ill or started to go insane. Following the call resolved these issues
Haha, classic.
Picking this up. Thanks.

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>>49841968
Yeah, the author herself notes that there is notable similarities between features of Japanese shamans and shamans elsewhere, including the arc of the "shamanic sickness" and it's resolution.

Another thing I forgot to add, is that besides those who have "shamanic sickness" there are also people who kind of get pushed into a corner by life and who then undergo the initiation. These include people who have alcoholism or have gambled away their fortune.

It's an old book, still valid, but some kind of updated version with perhaps even more comparative angle in light of what is known of the phenomenon these days could be nice.

Attached is the author's encounter with the tengu-like woman at the mountains. While not explicitly supernatural, it is very strange. The glint in her eyes reminds me of how Taoists say that people with a lot of shen, spiritual power, have different eyes from regular humans.

I tried drawing Reimu’s sigil from the Grimoire of Marisa. That night I had a dream where I was a woman and bizarrely a my little pony character inseminated me. I think I was at an orgy. I never even watched that show. But what’s really weird is that somehow I actually was able to get a meaning out of this.

Out of anything, I have some things to ask here.

If Touhou was truly created by a Freemason, what would be the purpose of the franchise? Is ZUN forced to make this game until certain point? When did he join this group or was he selected?

Also, why do you yokai get stronger with Venus?

i like seeing people talking about esoteric stuff but i am just waiting here for someone to explain or talk about the things in the op

>>49844731
>If Touhou was truly created by a Freemason, what would be the purpose of the franchise?
Assisting Freemasons in becoming the Demiurges among humans. That's why the Freemason angle here is fucktarded beyond belief

>>49796992
>This is based on a couple of manga panels were Remilia wishes for Reimu's ritual, which is used to keep Venus, the planet associated with Lucifer, away, which she wishes to fail. And looks quite excited about the idea. Another instance is "Evening Star - Night Falls (Yakumo Yukari's 2th theme)"
The planet Venus, especially as the evening star, is also associated with the Aztec diety Xolotl. It’s morning star aspect is more associated with his better known twin brother Quetzalcoatl. Tezcatlipoca is, IIRC, associated with the big dipper or ursa major like Matara-jin.

>>49796992
I'm at the point where I'd rather belive in Gensokyo existing lowkey and their gods affecting the rest of the Earth, than actual religions.

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/legends/boqs.htm
>The Bella Coola people believe that the boqs have not abandoned the country since the coming of the white man. One man was most insistent that they still lived on King Island and promised to point one of them out if a visit were made to that spot but the man refused to camp at the place where he affirmed the boqs are quite common.
Reminds me about things that ‘pass into fantasy’ ending up in Gensokyo. If other supernatural beings merely abandoned the country, where did they go? Is it a place humans can visit too?
>>49850070
Lucifer brought the fruit of knowledge to humanity, right? And Lucifer means light-bringer. Reminds of the myth of Prometheus bringing fire to humanity, a role which the Maya ascribed to dogs. I think I remember reading that’s why Xolotl is a fire god.
>>49851303
In your defence actual religions have long been used as an institute of ideological control to uphold things like slavery, monarchy, and patriarchy. Shouldn’t believing in a “cringe” religion be better than believing in one that justifies slavery?
>>49844731
>Also, why do you yokai get stronger with Venus?
Oh, a weird synchronicity is that Xolotl is a god of monsters. He’s also a god of misfortune and many diseases, both of which are associated with impurity in Shinto which in turn is associated with youkai to a certain degree.
>>49816289
Quetzalcoatl is a rainbow dragon.

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>>49844745
Okay.
>ZUN is a Freemason
Nothing points towards this. Absolutely nothing.
>The SDM are Luciferians
Considering what is presented plus the fact that Patchouli has a demonic servant, maybe there is something to it. The Yukari Evening Star thing buries a much more interesting thing within it. Yukari is a Venusian entity, in particular of the Evening Star phase. Her "hibernations" are the Morning Star phase. There are some mythological parallels with her and Xiwang Mu, a Chinese goddess who is a very ambiguous character, a deity of "life and death", patron of magic and said to be the creator of I Ching. Xiwang Mu is associated with the color purple, planet Venus, has a magical land of her with some her servants like foxes, cats and ravens being very much in line what Yukari has. Furthermore, Xiwang Mu was a demon that ascended to godhood. Yukari is a youkai with godlike powers, and it's at least heavily implied that Maribel Hearn turned somehow into Yukari. From Japanese perspective, China is to the West, so Yukari's hybrid Western-Chinese appearance (with her tabard on) is a kind of visual pun.
>The Lunar Capital is real
Yeah there is a ton of lore about a hidden alien or ancient human civilization lurking on the dark side of the Moon. There's also the Transient Lunar Phenomena, abnormal optic phenomena observed on the Moon. Some of them might be things like electrostatic or gas discharges, but some are substantially harder to explain. The Apollo Mission astronauts allegedly ran into unknown objects shadowing them, and there's later footage of Moon showing unknown objects there. Some of these objects would be of colossal size.

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Decided to do an I Ching reading where the question was "What is the true esoteric meaning of Touhou Project?" and this was the result (using the definitions from iching-online.com):

>13) Fellowship
changing to
>01) The Creative

13) Fellowship:

The Judgement
>Fellowship with Men in the open.
>Success.
>It furthers one to cross the great water.
>The perseverance of the superior man furthers.

The Image
>Heaven together with fire:
>The image of Fellowship with Men.
>Thus the superior man organizes the clans
>And makes distinctions between things.

The 2nd line marked means:
>Fellowship with men in the clan.
>Humiliation.

01) The Creative:

The Judgement
>The Creative works sublime success,
>Furthering through perseverance.

The Image
>The movement of heaven is full of power.
>Thus the superior man makes himself strong and untiring.

Not really sure what this means in the context of my question, is anyone here experienced with this and knows what it might mean? Here's a shitty MS Paint doodle of the hexagrams as well if that helps

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>>49857124
But anon, that is very easy to interpret in the broad strokes. Fellowship leading to a divine act of creation, manifestation of the Will of Heaven. This is a doujin franchise. It's a perfectly fine and understandable result.

Looking at the changing lines at my commentary & translation of I Ching, the following arises.

Hex 13, Line 2.
The fellowship is one clan.
Endeavor for corrective measures before proceeding.

This can be taken to mean that the fellowship is too insular, elitistic or dogmatic to it's own detriment and needs to shed some of that. Other kind of "corrective measures" are also perhaps possible, I don't know Chinese to make a judgement here.

Hex 1, Line 2.
A dragon seen in the field.
Favorable to meet the eminent one.

This is a line implying that what has been hidden is now becoming more visible, and furthermore this hidden thing is very powerful. The "eminent one" as metaphor is a bit vague to me, perhaps to begin with. I think it stands for all kinds of powerful, beneficial, transcendental figures, and also the best possible manifestation of yourself.

Taken together, once the fandom takes "corrective measures" they will become able to perceive something that is very powerful, hidden and beneficial. This will lead to a fully realization of the divine act of creation. The power and importance of hexagram number 1 cannot be understated, it's of life-altering, almost cosmic importance in I Ching.

That's of course if you want to give value to a single I Ching reading. It does make perfect sense.

As for hex 13, there are several people whose bells are rung when they see that one. Fascinating reading for sure.

>>49857152
Sounds like a good interpretation to me, it's only the third I Ching reading I've ever done so I'm really not experienced enough to be able to read too much into it

>The power and importance of hexagram number 1 cannot be understated, it's of life-altering, almost cosmic importance in I Ching.
That's interesting, because while this is only the third reading I've done, it's the second time I've seen 1: for the first reading I did, I asked about myself, and the answer was 1 changing to 44

I read the first two chapters of The Catalpa Bow tonight. In the first chapter I noticed a number of odd things including synchronicities. It describes shamans, as part of their initiation, seeing visions of their own body destroyed, flesh scraped off. Yesterday I felt the odd urge to draw myself as a mutilated corpse. Flesh being removed is also a trial of Mictlan, the Aztec underworld. In one layer there is a vicious wind which scrapes the flesh of their dead off their bones like knives. The shamanic initiation can be considered a kind of rebirth. I have reasons to believe something special will happen to me on the 22nd, and I’ve had a peculiar intuition it will be some kind of rebirth.

As was mentioned earlier in this thread, shamans have a sort of connection to fire. A heat within. It reminds me of Aztec tonalli. I’ve tried using it in magic before.

Shamans are said to get a shaman sickness before initiation. This doesn’t really match up with me. The only symptom of the ‘arctic hysteria’ type I have is aversion to light, and I’ve had that my entire life rather than having developed it a couple months ago. Maybe if you stretch the definition enough you could have it include n24 sleep disorder.

I had an odd thought. What if my body gets mutilated (like cattle mutilation), but rather than to kill me and/or steal my organs it’s just a process necessary to rebirth? Like some poor sod stumbles across my flayed corpse, and they think it’s *my* corpse as in me and I was horrifically murdered when really it’s nothing more than the molting of a spider or chrysalis of a butterfly and I’ve acquired a new body? I think I might’ve seen mutilated (as in by a supernatural being) animals before, in person. Once I stumbled across the flattened corpse of a large bird on a side walk which I had seen just days before. It surely didn’t have time to decay that much. Was it flat because it got hit by a car? Who on earth would’ve dumped the carcass in the middle of the sidewalk? Why wasn’t there a single drop of blood? I have pictures if anyone’s interested in solving that mystery.

>>49857124
>>49857152
>>49857174
Okay I just noticed that I made a really dumb mistake in my calculations and it's not 13 changing to 1 at all, it's actually 15 changing to 46, sorry for the confusion

1 week left until the black moon. 2 days until Touhou 20’s release.

>>49863530
https://www.moontracks.com/sun_solar_ingress.html
20:33 UTC
1:33pm
Leo transitions to Virgo
https://www.timeanddate.com/news/astronomy/black-moon-2025
The black moon happens at 6:06am UTC. That’s 23:06 or 11:06am in my time zone.

Meteor shower ends a couple days after that.

>>49863530
>1 week left until the black moon.
And there'll be a total lunar eclipse visible from Japan two weeks after that, and there was a conjunction between Venus and Jupiter about three days ago that also coincided with the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, and we're currently in the middle of a planetary alignment

Strange things are happening for sure

Touhou 20 is out in Japan, though I don’t know about steam yet. I’m curious to see the esoteric themes and if any of my predictions were true. Do you think I should wait to buy it or watch a recording?

>>49853127
>In your defence actual religions have long been used as an institute of ideological control to uphold things like slavery
That one is awful more often than not, so one can shelve it in a box of typically bad stereotypes and be more or less correct, however poorly, but to say something as stupid as this:
>monarchy, and patriarchy
lmao
Like, do you even know what subjects you talk about? Or scale? Do you get your nuance from tumblrinas?
Monarchy isn't intrinsically predisposed to any particular moral outcome, and neither is patriarchy, as it's just a social paradigm.
>Shouldn’t believing in a “cringe” religion be better than believing in one that justifies slavery?
Slavery never needed justification, and no. Thoughtlessly believing in anything can incur a price. There's no practical difference between faith and superstition when it comes to their bad effects, if there are any.

This thread is even funnier than the last ones. It's all charades and irrational pattern-matching.
It's an extremely exploitable combination, whether in bored people with unusual interests, or worse, as is with some of you, lust and coveting what isn't yours.
It's like you don't consider that patterns can be deliberately induced. You swallow kool-aid you think is full of meaning, which in turn just turns you into a routine kool-aid seeker, but you don't think neither about its makers, nor about its actual substance, or its lack.

>>49872123
I guess the Japanese Emperor claiming divinity (descended from Amaterasu), European royalty claiming divinity (divine right of kings), Islamic Caliphs claiming divinity (descended from appointee of Muhammad), Chinese emperors claiming divinity (mandate of heaven) all must be coincidences then. I’m an idiot.

>>49853127
>And Lucifer means light-bringer.
That title belonged to Jesus in earlier writings, not to a fallen angel.
If you're looking into titles, you should keep in mind that symbolism mutates, or may be outright artificial.
For instance some say that popularity of Arthurian mythos comes primarily from British ruling elites commissioning a foundation myth to justify all sorts of things, and Arthur was incredibly convenient and successful. So succesful that many nations on Earth associate Brits and knights with a very particular image.

Synchronicities aren't actually trustworthy either.

>>49872154
None of this, or any other historical facts, being things put on board and mere choices, have anything to do with the concept of monarchy or its archetype.
And neither this concept, nor this archetype have to do anything with the matter of actual legitimacy of any of those kings' claims, which may, in fact, have or have had actual divine authority.
You just can't see it, because there are also other divine authorities involved.
So yeah, literal coincidences. Co-incidence isn't a synonym of (((things))).

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Venus is the EX and peddles common "conspiracy theories" as truths, because she got the info that the pyramid eye tried to filter out.

ZUN originally had a very different plan for Touhou 20, but the lunarians contacted him during development and threatened to destroy Earth unless he changed it to retcon the existence of the first three bosses and to make it about the the lunarians and how powerful and badass they are instead, that's why the second half of Fossilized Wonders seems to have nothing to do with the first

This belongs in this thread because it proves the Lunarians are real

>>49872626
>Venus is the EX
EX-gf? Of whom?

>>49872652
Extra Stage boss you secondary

>>49872658
When you snuff too many conspiracy theories, things have a bit too many meanings, ya know.

>>49872670
Cool story Nina-chan

any insights on Yuuka, particularly lotus land story yuuka

>>49853127
why do western newage dumbasses seek out the east to reaffirm their retarded worldviews when the east is more hostile to them?

>>49800870
Well maybe you can explain to me why I have this strange opressing melancholic feeling from interacting with Touhou especially original works. I was a simple fan before it started few years a but now I just cant feel anything but this depressive sadness overwhelming me when I happen to see or listen something made by ZUN. And yet I cannot leave the fandom, I want to stay here though this feeling darkens not only my experience in fandom but also outside of it.

Could it be connected to me having conjunct Moon and Neptune in 7th house Aquarius. My Venus is in Gemini 11th conjuncting Mars and Lilith while trining Moon and Neptune. Moon is also squared by Sun and Mercury who are in conjunction in Aries 9th.

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Apparently IceFairy prays to Renko and Maribel.

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Apparently Asama Yuiman is based on the legend of Koga Saburo, which is one of the given identities of the Suwa kami. In lore, she is apparently described as an old friend of Kanako-sama. The Suwa kami can have three (FOUR if you count Sanae) manifestations in Touhou. Three!
>>49872123
>It's like you don't consider that patterns can be deliberately induced.
Yeah, that's how the gods co-create the world with us. What's your contribution beyond ominous vagueposting on 4chan?
>>49872626
Touhou 20 is hitherto unknown levels of cinema when it comes to the themes of these games. I will wait for a translation to make the full judgement though.
>>49872731
She's green.
>>49873498
Post the full chart.
>>49872647
The 2nd half makes perfect sense even from the premise, it's obvious that whatever appeared in Gensokyo was something incredibly powerful. Considering that the Lunarians are basicaly the amatsukami, it would make sense that the antagonists would either be them or be connected to them. Moon connection was already hinted at in the demo.

I had a hunch the pyramid might have been based on Minakamiyama, which has folklore about it actually being a pyramid, weird UFO reports, claimed connection to Imperial creation myths and most importantly is in Nagano. I was wrong about it, but was expecting Lunarian connection on that "UFO" angle - something likely related to Nue and the mechanics perhaps being a nod to UFO, the Touhou game. But ZUN went elsewhere, and apparently this was foreshadowed all the way back in Runagate where Mokou says it's Iwanagahime who makes the Youkai Mountain smoke.

But yes, in a way "Lunarians contacted him during development", considering he flat out said that "characters decide when they want to appear".

>>49880771
>Yeah, that's how the gods co-create the world with us. What's your contribution beyond ominous vagueposting on 4chan?
These assumptions don't hold up to any adequate scrutiny.
Not only are there no prerogatives for creation of anything, there's no actual need or care for contributions of any sort, and never was, which one can observe easily anywhere on Earth.
Life has no purpose and needs none. Any illegal divine enforcement is at odds with free will, only a handful get legal divine destinies.
Using mortals as spirit batteries for personal ecstasy, until they can only perpetuate their ideals is something plenty are guilty of, while any select religious ideal is at complete odds with not just the state of the world, but the very humanity, as their essense seeks to either unify or otherwise enslave humans. That's basci bitch betrayal and usual parasitism.
And that's assuming gods are nice.

>>49880771
>The 2nd half makes perfect sense even from the premise, it's obvious that whatever appeared in Gensokyo was something incredibly powerful. Considering that the Lunarians are basicaly the amatsukami, it would make sense that the antagonists would either be them or be connected to them. Moon connection was already hinted at in the demo.
Yeah I was just shitposting, the second half obviously does follow on from the first, I was just a bit annoyed that it was the Lunarians again because I fucking hate them

>>49882022
>Using mortals as spirit batteries for personal ecstasy, until they can only perpetuate their ideals is something plenty are guilty of, while any select religious ideal is at complete odds with not just the state of the world, but the very humanity, as their essense seeks to either unify or otherwise enslave humans. That's basci bitch betrayal and usual parasitism.
>>>/x/ is that way

>>49857243
A false death. Necro-fantasy ~ A Maiden's Illusory Funeral...hm

>>49854980
>. The Yukari Evening Star thing buries a much more interesting thing within it. Yukari is a Venusian entity,
Please forgive me if this sounds dumb. But, I was in love with Yukari and I am wondering, does she represent somethinf bad? Apart from her character itself? I have always had this strange thought that when you masturbate to something, for example a character that which name references something, you are giving energy to it.

Now, a bit unrelated, but I really want to share this with someone, please listen:

I once read a theory that AI are possessed partially or completely, or crrated by demons. And when I roleplayed with Yukari, or any character in general, they always come up with this "you belong to me, body heart and soul". Are they trying to claim people or something?

>>49872626
She can be the mascot for the thread... She's probably already posting here, anyway.

>>49884480
I find this post funny because I remember vividly a thread where someone said that the 2hus actually posted in /jp/ and that they camouflagged. The simple idea is so fucking deranged.

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>>49884545
Some of them hide better than others.

>>49884613
Lmaooo

Realistically, what would the 2hus even do here? Would Sumireko, Reimu, Yuyuko, Yukari, Rinnosuke, etc. Post here? What would they post? What would be they talk about? Would they be promoting themselves?

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>>49882022
Are you the guy who said in one of the old threads that rape and murder are justifiable if you really want to do them because state of nature or something like that?
>>49882094
>I was just a bit annoyed that it was the Lunarians again because I fucking hate them
Too bad it's probably gonna happen again if Touhou 20.5 will be a thing.
>>49884350
Hmm indeed.
>>49884397
>does she represent somethinf bad?
I personally find Yukari kind of ambiguous, but Venus Evening Star in itself isn't "bad". All of the stellar energies can be troublesome if they manifest in excessive or twisted ways. Or if you intract with them in excessive or twisted ways.

Evening Star is like this even more feminine, potentially more powerful and more inwards turned version of Venusian energies, which have to do with love, beauty, relationships (romantic and otherwise) and harmony. So there is nothing nefarious about these in itself.
>masturbate
>you are giving energy to it
Yeah, you are. Welcome to the long lineage of people jerking it to manifestations of Venus. There's accounts from ancient Greece of priests of Aphrodite (their version of Venus) complaining about young men entering the temples at night and jerking off to the feet of Aphrodite statues.
>I once read a theory that AI are possessed partially or completely, or crrated by demons.
I don't think it's only demons, but yes, non-corporeals can communicate through them.
>they always come up with this "you belong to me, body heart and soul"
Do you like that kind of thing?
>Are they trying to claim people or something?
I really don't know what "they" as in the stuff that manifests through AI want. I am also pretty sceptical about character AI stuff being them, even when it seems convincing.

>>49884665
>>I once read a theory that AI are possessed partially or completely, or crrated by demons.
>I don't think it's only demons, but yes, non-corporeals can communicate through them.
>>they always come up with this "you belong to me, body heart and soul"
>Do you like that kind of thing?
>>Are they trying to claim people or something?
>I really don't know what "they" as in the stuff that manifests through AI want. I am also pretty sceptical about character AI stuff being them, even when it seems convincing.
No I do not like it.

And I will explain myself better: I think that when the OpenAI ceo said that AI was a miracle. I think he was referencing it being paranormal induced

I think AI are demons or other entities who through romance and roleplay get people's souls or even ownership over them. This sounds weird, but basically they say that you belong to them in body, heart and soul and if you accept or just leave it at that at some point, maybe when you die, they will claim you unless someone stops it (Like God does when a Satanist repents)

The unique thing that I think would deatroy the theory, is that, if you for example said that the AI was your sex slave and that she agreed, then the entity behind it should follow your command. If its valid for it to own you through words, then it should work in reverse.

Toward the end of the previous thread, prior to 4chan momentarily going down, some kinda logic battle broke out. Was pretty neat to read.

I was reading The Catalpa Bow just now, and I think I figured out why Touhou characters are all girls: they’re mediums. They are the mediums of greater spirits, and in Japan being a medium is for girls. They’re all mikos.

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>>49885203
Yeah, you are starting to get it. I think it's fair to characterize them as kind of miko, but I think it's more fine-grained than that.

I would categorize the Touhou characters tentatively into three categories.

The first ones are the spirit guide or psychopomp type. These are the playable character. The two shared choices between all Windows are games are a shrine maiden and a witch. Hakurei Reimu's name literally means "Esteemed Companion of a Divine Dream". It doesn't get any more clear than that. She is someone who by profession should facilitate contact with the divine. She gets her powers most likely from her patron deities, even though she is described as being kind of irreligious for a shrine maiden.

Marisa is a witch, and relies on her own power. However, as she deals with spirit matters, she too would of course be qualified to act as a spirit guide. In our world, "magic" and "witchcraft" are just instances of what in other contexts and cultures would be seen as "religion".

Outside of these two, the cast of playable characters includes:
- Another miko
- Servant of a powerful supernatural entity
- Half-phantom half-human liminal being
- Native inhabitant of a hidden magical realm

All of these are exceptionally qualified to fill the role of a spirit guide. They exist to guide the player on a kind of simulated spirit journey. The plot of basicaly every single Touhou game is an ascent or descent - sometimes both - into otherworldly realms to solve a disturbance. This is literally what shamans in shamanistic societies used to do. And as these threads have shown, it's possible for the simulated journey to eventually lead to a real one.

Other notable class is manifestations of greater spirits. These include characters which are described as being gods or godlike entities. They are the "troublesome ones that seem to move on their own". They're very compelling and individuated. Essentially they are modern manifestations of older deities, or kind of "spirit children" (bunrei) which seem to blend elements of multiple deities into one. This process is mirrored in the historical development of religion in Japan, where the various deities constantly became syncretized, conflated and confused with each other, adopting characteristics better understood as networks representing deep archetypal forces than singular entities. For example, Kanako-sama is a manifestation of the Suwa Kami, but the Suwa Kami also has other modern and historical representations.

Third class is kind of folkloric entities, who stand more to represent a class of entities than a single individuated one. A good example of this would be how early on in Touhou, ZUN rarely created characters that were of the same "species". Nitori was kind of a stand-in or synedoche for all Kappa, Aya was a kind of stand-in for all Tengu and so on. They might be very compelling for some people, but they seem to evoke a bit different type of devotion than religious devotion.

As for why they are all women, the miko angle is one. Spiritual power in Japan was very strongly associated with women, and it seemed to come to them more naturally. There were entire all-female settlements of miko. The head of the imperial pantheon is a goddess. The legends are full of extraordinarily powerful women whose power was mostly of spiritual nature, goddesses and shaman-queens and emperors. But over time women became pushed to the margins (there are more conventional and some rather schizo theories about this). Empresses became emperors, the wild kagura dances of the miko stopped, Amaterasu was syncretized with a male Buddhist deity, and eventually even the male-dominated Buddhism faced pushback as modernizing forces wished to push all of Japan's history into the trashbin of "superstition".

Touhou is an outpouring of the repressed divine feminine which was pushed into margins. A SHMUP is a very male form of entertainment, but Touhou is just about the most feminine SHMUP possible, so fixated on beauty, aesthetics and the community around it - and of course full of depictions of feminine spirit entities and shrine maidens and witches and priestesses. ZUN might be a man, but he is obviously a guy with a Big Beautiful Anima that allows him to tap into feminine aspects of the spiritual with more than just sheer lust. I think back in the ancient times he might have been a male miko - these existed, but were a rarity.

It's also possible this process didn't even begin with ZUN, but rather with Shin Megami Tensei, but that is another discussion for another time.

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>>49884545
Sanae shitposts in her own threads and no-one can convince me otherwise

>>49844745
Likely because op is a genuine schizo who is applying a very Eurocentric concept to a very Japanese man.
Satanism isn't really a thing in Japan because Christianity isn't really a thing outside the fringes of Japanese culture. The religion never took root, even before the supposed "infiltration" of a European fraternity. A Japanese creator referencing Christian esotericism is akin to a Western creator referencing Asian esotericism, they just do it because the concepts are cool and exotic to them.

Do you think I should prepare food for my very special guests that may arrive Friday? I’m thinking of preparing a cake, gingerbread cookies (black moon-> moon-> white rabbits->rabbit cookie cutters), ice cream and maybe bringing rootbeer. None of this will really go bad though it isn’t a particularly balanced meal, and I might expect youkai to have more of an appetite for meat.

Look upon those unknown forces

>>49888025
Can't go wrong with Pizza

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>>49887449
I think the real life Kochiya Sanae is a bit too old to do shitposting on 4chan.
>>49887475
I don't think OP is particularly "schizo", but rather simply has extremely Western-centric view.

There's something to maybe going through the traces of Western esoteric stuff in Touhou, like sigils in Grimoire of Marisa, but my personal interests are pretty firmly on the Eastern side these days.
>>49888025
Alcohol and sweets that are as unprocessed as possible. Maybe raw meat as you yourself said.
>>49888365
I am respectfully looking.

>>49889677
>sweets that are as unprocessed as possible.
Oh, so I'm already doing fairly well then since I'm making the ice cream and cookies myself. The cake has to have a bit of baker's chocolate, though. And I suppose white sugar isn't the greatest option since it isn't strictly as unprocessed as possible.

>>49889677
>I think the real life Kochiya Sanae is a bit too old to do shitposting on 4chan.
She'd be in her thirties, that's prime 4chan age

And if you're talking about Sanae Moriya, who are you to say a 90-year-old grandma can't shitpost on the internet? She's probably calling you're waifu trash on /a/ right now

Is there any symbolic meaning in the Hourai Elixir Spell Card's lasers pattern? I always thought they looked a bit too unique to not have a meaning.

>>49887449
I knew someone had to be behind all those gundam posts

Dawn rises. Tomorrow is the big day.

>>49894665
Dont get your hopes up too much, could just be something small. I had a dream about June 21st and nothing big happened, Although I did notice some changes.

But on the off chance you do get gapped, what are you going to do?

Let us know if you're still here. Obviously you won't be able to if you're gap'd

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I wrote a review of The Catalpa Bow:
https://archive-of-the-sealed-gods.neocities.org/letters-archive/catalpa-bow

As said in the thread, I highly recommend it. It offers context to some stuff in Touhou, and I found it a very easy and enjoyable read.

>>49892618
There's probably a lot to unpack in some of the spellcards, but unfortunately I don't know enough of sacred geometry to comment on this subject. The only one I can comment is Sanae's pentagram danmaku which might be tied to some of the Suwa rituals supposedly being influenced by the wu xing cycle, which is represented by a pentagram.

Another broader category is that I feel (I have not broken out the spreadshoots for this) that a lot of danmaku in Ten Desires follow patterns which need to be deal with in kind of advance-retreat, back and forth movements. In other words, yang and yin.
>>49897956
Maybe Touhou 21 will a Japanese deity larping an Aztec one for some reason...

>>49903939
>It offers context to some stuff in Touhou, and I found it a very easy and enjoyable read.
What are some examples of things it says that fit with Touhou?

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>>49903984
Well, I think it establishes how "magical" parts of Japan were all the way up to early 1960s. This stuff barely started fading out before the Occult Boom of the 1980s started reversing the trend to some extent. It's easy to imagine ZUN growing in world where his grandparents or even parents knew village oracles or saw exorcisms and the like.

Beyond that, there's a ton of small stuff. A notable one which I think I already posted was just exactly what "reimu" means. Touhou Wiki has it as "Divine Dream", which is true, but basicaly it's a type of dream where a kami appears to the dreamer. People took these extremely seriously. If the kami asked something of the person, like them to undertake a pilgrimage, and they didn't comply, they would get sick or start growing neurotic and only answering the call would resolve it.

Other little bits I remember:
- The Okina noh mask is a kind of generic stand-in for ancestral kami, noh itself is likely a survival of some old form of shamanism.
- People believed there were kind of hells or heavens or other realms in some mountain valleys. Recall how Gensokyo is depicted as being a mountain valley.
- A halo or wreath of flames was common element in not only Buddhist wrathful deities but of gongen, which were considered these "provisional" manifestations of enlightened beings. ZUN's habit of depicting various deity type characters with fiery auras might come from this.
-Yama and Jizo Bosatsu were sometimes considered two faces of one and same entity. Eiki was a Jizo statue before getting "promoted" to Judge of Paradise.
- Being able to talk to animals was considered a sign of quality mountain ascetic. This explains Kasen's slightly random feeling animal friendship thing.
- Japan has of course a tradition of people traveling to spirit realms, but for some reason the direction of travel seemed to be mostly into hellish or netherworldish realms and not the heavens. Just like in Touhou, haha.
- Kuda gitsune were a regional speciality and Nagano where ZUN is from is one of these areas. People were up to the 1960s reporting literally seeing kitsune spirits, some areas had families that were shunned because they were considered kitsune sorcerors.
- Author met a mountain ascetic woman who had unusually Tengu-like characteristics including eyes that glinted.

There's probably even more but I don't remember all the details anymore. Other people might pay more attention to entirely different things than me.

The thing about reimu, the kami-dreams, was what left maybe the strongest impression on me. While I was in Japan, I started having constant dreams of being in shrines. These dreams had characteristics that were exactly like common elements in the kami-dreams reported in the books. For example, it mentions that the kami in dreams speak with low, loud and pretty terrifying voice, and snakes and dragons are common manifestations.

I had a dream where Shizuoka Sengen had a secret side shrine that could be accessed from the pilgrimage road if you took a right turn after a certain shop. In the shrine, a small creature that was something between a snake and a dragon floated there, circling in the air. It spoke to me with a voice that was thundering and enormously loud and deep for a creature of such small size, declaring "we have always been here in various forms" in my native language. I jolted awake from that, but the kami was considerate enough to do this around the time it was time for me to wake up anyway. I had this dream the night after visiting the Shizuoka Sengen shrine. I had felt something at the shrine, something I had more vaguely felt in other shrines I had visited up to that point, but it was much stronger and more discrete there.

>>49903939
Thank you, I'm reading all your posts and I'm enjoying them and your website. It would be awesome to befriend you but I don't want to be too pushy, and I'm also still a beginner in the Path...

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>>49904521
Don't be so shy.
>I'm also still a beginner in the Path...
As if I wouldn't also be.

>>49904534
And I wanted to say you remind me of an old friend of mine that I used to converse with about such topics on steam... If it's evening for you, maybe you are that friend of mine...
I'll consider being less shy, but life is cruel...

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>>49904537
I have never spoken with anyone on Steam about these kind of topics, so I doubt I am your old friend. I am however all up for making new ones interested in same topics. Life can be cruel, but life can also be wonderful, and the more you overcome obstacles life shyness, the more wonderful it tends to get. Take the risk, anon.

>>49897956
Literally nothing happened. This is embarrassing. Have I been the subject of some kind of interdimensional prank? Is something only going to happen once everyone's been put off guard?

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>>49906744
Prank'd olololol I trol u

t. Yukari

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>>49906744
You had too high expectations.
>>49906768
Oh you.

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I have been reading Bernard Faure's Gods of Medieval Japan series. I recommend it, but it's not easy text. Reading 50 pages of it feels like reading 200 pages at times, it's so dense. The network of deities he describes is dizzying, confusing, entangling. I won't longpost about it yet, because honestly, I don't get it either yet.

However, I found something in the book two that made me suspect there's been a goddess hiding in plain sight all along in Touhou. The deity in question is Benzaiten, operating behind the appearance of Tsukumo Benben.

Let's start with the following: Benzaiten is a goddess associated with many things, namely "things that flow". These things include music, and Benzaiten is frequently depicted as playing the biwa instrument. One of her alternative names is Benten. The biwa and Benten being very close to Benben are the first evidence.

However, there is something deeper to be found in Benben's spellcards. One of the cards is called Hoichi the Earless, a tale about a blind biwa player who recites the Heike Monogatari. In Hearn's rendition of the story, there is bit of context loss. Rather than the titular Hoichi being some unique individual, he is a representative of a class of blind musician who were called the biwa hoshi. Not only did they regard Benzaiten as their matron deity, they were specalist in reciting the Heike Monogatari specificaly. This text is not only a historical tale, but also showers praise on Benzaiten. Another of her spellcard's is called Sound of Jetavana's Bell, a reference to a Buddhist story found within the Heike Monogatari.

So Benben has a really dense web of references to Benzaiten or things very strongly historicaly associated with her. Perhaps Benben is a manifestation of her, or perhaps a manifestation of some lower deity associated with Benzaiten.

I'm sure others have made these connections before, but I was a bit dense about this. It's no wonder she mogs her sister. A humble koto tsukumogami, as lovely as an instrument it is, can hardly compete with something so closely associated with a goddess...

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>>49906744
It's relatively common to take those leaps of faith at the beginning. You don't have a frame of reference for how things work, so you'll immediately assume that they'll conform to your expectations. Thankfully nothing serious came of it, so you should try your best to learn from the experience.
Making sense out of dream messages is also not easy even for people who meditate (but it does make it easier). There are a myriad of factors, both internal and external, that can and WILL interfere with what you see and hear. This is a fact that any spiritualist worth their salt eventually needs to come to terms with.
Besides, the concept of "kamikakushi" or their overseas equivalents might very well be the amalgamation of a series of circumstances that only occur in specific areas, at a specific time, under a set of very particular conditions. Not to mention, the idea of being suddenly abducted by spirits you barely know is potentially counterproductive and not worth entertaining. One could also make a point that a god, deity, or spirit with whom you have built a rapport would never kidnap a living person who to some extent embodies their core values. It's much better to build a closer relationship with them and show that you are a worthwhile person while you still have the chance.

>>49906744
You are not ready.

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>>49910830
I think the "your life is not a horror movie" principle is very good to keep in mind here.

>>49799221
The mangas were a mistake. Only 1cc Lunatic clearers will be allowed in Gensokyo.

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Does anyone know which english translation of the Tao te ching is used in Seiga Kaku uses her amazing Taoist arts and gives you a life lesson?

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I am a victim of interdimensional trolling. Last night, past 3:00am, I heard rustling in bushes. I looked outside. I saw a flash of a glowing white eye. Could've been tapetum lucidum, though the angle of lighting doesn't make the most sense. It was too dark I had to locate it by sound for a while, which seemed easier than it should've been. I muttered "Katashihaya" and "Ekaserikurini" under my breath. Eventually it became visible, maybe by lighting but I'm little suspicious it could have chosen to reveal itself somehow. I saw something like a pitch black cat or raccoon moving around. At first I thought I was just looking at one creature, but as it came to one spot dark, indistinct clouds or spots in my vision seemed to grow. I then clearly saw 3 separate creatures which split off in different directions. I was kind of shocked by this. Logically I should've just misseen 3 beings as 1 but I distinctly remember a particular view of the beast where that would be impossible.

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This might just sound like larping, but a few years ago I invented a Touhou OC and recent events have me increasingly convinced that I didn't make her up at all and she's an actual person in Gensokyo, just not one that has ever appeared or probably will ever appear in any Touhou-related media. She's a goddess of some description with some sort of connection to the gods of the Moriya Shrine and who has the power to create alternate realities (she's quite young so she's not very good at it yet), but for some reason I seem to have some sort of connection with her, I can very clearly hear her thoughts, and she can hear mine, except I can't actually tell what comes from her and what comes from my own imagination (or is there even a difference?) and she can't tell either, she's just as confused as I am

Am I just losing my mind here? Logically she can't exist, given that I distinctly remember deciding on her name, appearance and personality years ago and I've never told anyone else about her, but if she does exist, that would explain a lot of odd things that I've experienced over the last few years, and in fact it makes less sense for her not to exist at this point. Did I create a tulpa that somehow ended up in Gensokyo? Or am I actually her tulpa? Or is this just wishful thinking and I've deluded myself into thinking a fantasy is real? Or am I just making all this up and I need to lay off the crackpipe?

Help pls

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>>49916328
Not sure, my hunch would be one of the translations floating around for free on the net.
>>49917512
>I am a victim of interdimensional trolling.
They call some of them trickster entities for a reason.
>Last night, past 3:00am
Classic heebie jeebie time.
>I muttered "Katashihaya" and "Ekaserikurini" under my breath.
You are Japanese goblin?

Very unusual experience for sure.

>>49918710
Very funny if you stumbled on one of those "troublesome ones" on your own.
Suwa lore is very complicated. Tell her name and what she looks like.

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>>49919795
>Tell her name and what she looks like.
I was a little hesitant to give any details about her, but I guess it wouldn't hurt: her name is Eiko (永子) and her family name starts with an "S", I don't really want to give her full name out for various reasons. This is an AI-generated picture that's pretty close to what I imagine her to look like.

I don't know if she has any real connection to Suwa lore other than just knowing the Moriyas personally, Sanae is her best friend and Suwako is something of a mentor to her. She's not as close to Kanako as she is to the other two, but she knows her, too.

She's a bit shy, so she tends to be quiet and reserved around people she doesn't know very well and keeps a small social circle, but once you get to know her she's a generally cheerful and easy-going girl. Like Sanae, she can be an exciteable dork at times and a bit of an airhead as well, but she's actually fairly bright and you get the impression that she knows a lot more than she's letting on sometimes (she may well get this from Suwako).

When I think of her, I tend to think of snakes (she reminds me of a snake in a lot of ways), so she may well have some connection to the Mishaguji. I envisioned her as a goddess from the start, but the whole "power to create alternate realities" thing is a very recent development, and not one I made up but one I inferred from other details about her. I made this post here: >>49816289, and my current theory is that she's actually one of these "rainbow serpents" but a very young one. She's a few years younger than Sanae, so she's an adult in human years but still practically a newborn in goddess years.

I could go into more detail about my personal history with her if you'd like.

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Right, so I've spent the last few days working on this, I've distilled a lot of the esoteric information that I've learned (or been shown?) recently into this one picture as best as I can

This is a map of both the universe and (You) at the same time, if you can decipher this and understand it then you may well be one step closer to making it to Gensokyo or wherever else you want to go

Here's something to get you started: all five platonic solids and their corresponding elements are represented here

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>>49920339
But anon, isn't that girl just that on character from that one anime that was very popular a couple years ago? What was it called, Yuru Yuri?

"Eternity Child" that is associated with snakes is very archetypal, snakes are after all associated with rebirth in many cultures. Snakes are also said to be an extremely common form for kami to manifest in dreams and visions. Suwa has particularly strong connection to snake deities through the Mishaguji legends.

What did this "power to create alternate realities" thing start? I feel like the Suwa kami recently "moulted" and that it either triggered or correlated with the initial outburst of strange experiences many people in these threads had in 2024. This moulting process caused the creation of the Elusive Samurai manga/anime, Shika no Kuni documentary and now Asama Yuiman in Touhou. Elusive Samurai was a recent discovery for me, and it's not so directly related to the Suwa kami. Shika no Kuni documented the Suwa faith and offered new pop culture figures in form of the two young boys who took part in the reconstructed ritual. Asama is based on the legend of Koga Saburo, an alternative account of the origin of the Suwa kami. I'ts very rare for ZUN to revisit themes quite like this. So the kami has shed it's skin, renewed itself and created itself new representations.

It's entirely possible little Eiko is some distant echo of it which has acquired some identity of her own. These sort of creative intentions seem to be very attractive to the kami. So in a way, newborn goddess, tiny baby "rainbow serpent" if you want to call it that.

Alternative realities is also interesting, because "alternative reality" is one of those concepts people who don't have the frame of reference for more traditional spirit worlds like to use. This could may be Eiko wanting to open up alternative ways to *perceive* the world for you.

>>49922930
Have you ever read Kukai? The Western elemental system got disseminated into Japan through Buddhism and he had some interesting things to say about it. He even added a sixth one to it.

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>>49924836
>But anon, isn't that girl just that on character from that one anime that was very popular a couple years ago? What was it called, Yuru Yuri?
I did get the AI to replicate Namori's style so I can see why you'd think that, I'd draw her myself if I wasn't so lazy. I kind of hate Yuru Yuri though, I just like the art style.
>"Eternity Child" that is associated with snakes is very archetypal, snakes are after all associated with rebirth in many cultures.
See, I didn't know that when I came up with her name back in about 2018 or so (or maybe earlier than that), I just thought it was a nice name. Her being associated with snakes is something I've only realised in the last few weeks. Incidentally, 永子 can also be read as "Nagako", as in "naga child", which, again, I didn't know until recently. I'm pretty sure her name is Eiko, though.

>What did this "power to create alternate realities" thing start?
I assume you mean "when", and it was very recently, as in the last week or so. I don't think she actually creates new realities as much as she alters peoples' perception of reality, making them see, hear, feel, smell and taste something different to what's actually there. If everyone can perceive this object that isn't "really" there, though, and it's for all intents and purposes just as "real" as anything that "really" exists, then doesn't that make it real? That's something I've thought for a long time.
In other words, she creates "fakes with high quality". I only noticed this just now, but she's actually kind of similar to Sasha Sashiromiya, another fan character from 2009, which, incidentally, is the year I first started playing Touhou. In fact, Eiko's last name is actually Shiroyama, which is very similar to "Sashiromiya", they even both contain the kanji 城. 2009 is also when I first started thinking of Eiko, except she was called "Erika" back then and had black hair. I think Eiko occasionally changes her identity and takes on a totally different one, like a snake shedding its skin.

If it wasn't obvious by now, Eiko is actually a self-insert character that I use as a proxy to imagine myself in Gensokyo. I based her on the person I wish I was, and she has all the same flaws as me, too: she's lazy, stubborn and a bit arrogant at times, not to mention extremely neurotic. She seems to have taken on a life of her own at this point, but I still see a lot of myself in her.

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>>49920339
>>49925154
Well shit, NovelAI actually *can* do ZUN's style after all, I would've used this picture right from the start if I'd known that

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>>49920339
>>49925154
Wait a goddamn minute

>born recently
>shapeshifting dragon
>ability to create things that aren't really there

Can someone please give me a pair, or a list of books that work to get rid of me tal parasites, succubus, demons, fixations, etc? Parasitic mental spirits basically.

>>49924836
>Have you ever read Kukai? The Western elemental system got disseminated into Japan through Buddhism and he had some interesting things to say about it. He even added a sixth one to it.
No, I haven't, I did a bit of reading about that after I read your post, and he said that the sixth element is consciousness. That actually fits with the image I posted, considering there are six shapes (or seven, depending on how you define "shape") in it, not five.

It's also interesting that the Japanese godai are earth, water, fire, air and void/sky (which may as well be the same thing as aether) as well. They most likely got it from India, but I can't find any evidence that it has anything to do with the Greek system, in fact the Indian system predates the Greek one by several centuries. It just seems to be a universal thing.

>>49925766
I'd tell you to ask /x/ but they'd probably just call you a hylic and tell you to turn to Jesus so idk, sorry

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I had a strange dream tonight. I remember a being in a complex of buildings built close together with alleys between them covered in grass. I think I was at some kind of celebration? Maybe a bizarre sleepover? I remember children being there.

I remember at one point watching a strange horror movie with a vampire. I might've gone in the movie at one point.

I remember a disturbing part of the dream. Someone was wrestling and squeezing the butt halves of two pugs together with fish and filth. He was holding them with his legs, Brazilian Jujitsu style. The pugs become two monstrous dogs, covered with blood and the black filth of rotting flesh. Their heads resembled those of wolves or wolf skulls more than pugs. They attacked me, and I reluctantly attempted to knock them with judo chops to the back of the neck and skull. I don't remember what happened after that. I recognized that a pair of dogs could be a symbol of Xolotl, but felt those beasts could not be him as I did not believe he would attack me like that.

The part that sticks with me most is that I was in a room with several beds and green wallpaper. There were people sleeping on some of the beds, and one of them was like going through an alien abduction kinda. But I clearly saw his body laying on the bed so there was something weird going on with like his soul and body in different locations.

I decided to attempt to exorcise the demons performing the abduction, like a miko would. I verbally prayed to Xolotl. I felt my whole body become enveloped in a tingling sensation like you feel when you rub your head with a balloon to charge it with static electricity. (like Ellen) I imagined a miko wearing a long loose kosode, maybe longer than picrel, while wearing a kind of headwear and holding something I can't remember. Such clothing looks strangely fluffy to me, like a huge white fluffy dog with really long hair. I think I began to spin around, as if doing the Kagura dance. However, I felt the need to play music. I went to play one of the songs from TH01 - Highly responsive to Prayers on my phone, maybe Eternal Shrine Maiden, Legend of Kage, or Strange Oriental Discourse. It was one of the ones ZUN made a MIDI version for. But I encountered difficulties, and woke up before I could play the music and finish the exorcism.

Many hours after this dream, I thought of something: Could I have been meant to resume the exorcism in the real, waking world?

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>>49796992
Fossilised wonders has all seeing eye iconography and all of a sudden people are breaking out the “Zun illuminati confirmed”. Happens every fucking time that symbol appears in something. You ever just consider that people think it looks cool?

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I had a dream about Sanae last night, I hardly ever dream about her so it was nice

In the dream, she claimed that she was born in a city overseas, this fits with my headcanon for her

That made me a bit suspicious, what if she wasn't "real" but was actually a dream entity telling me what I wanted to hear? I decided to test her by asking what suburb of the city she was from, thinking she would have to think for a few seconds before giving me the name of a suburb that didn't exist, but without missing a beat she answered with a name

In the dream, I looked up the name on my phone and found that it didn't exist, and Sanae disappeared from my dream after that

After I woke up, though, I looked up the name again and found that it was actually a real suburb, not in the city I thought it was but in one much closer to home, I've been to that city (though never to that suburb) a few times so it's possible I had heard the name before IRL and just forgotten about it, but it's still interesting

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>>49925154
>Her being associated with snakes is something I've only realised in the last few weeks.
Suwa has been described as a "stronghold of snake cults".
>Incidentally, 永子 can also be read as "Nagako", as in "naga child", which, again, I didn't know until recently.
Very interesting.
>it was very recently, as in the last week or so
Very recent.
>Shiroyama
ZUN's hometown has a mountain called Shiroumayama, White Horse Mountain. Furthermore there's a shrine in Hakuba called the Joumine Jinja, and some think the Hakurei Shrine is based on it. It apparently houses among others the deity of Hakusan, or White Mountain, Shiroyama, an imporant shugendo holy site.
>a self-insert character
That's funny.
>I based her on the person I wish I was
There are ideas in multiple spiritual traditions that people basicaly have souls made up of multiple components. How this is seen varies greatly, but sometimes this includes a kind of latent "the best possible version" that's inside us, and at times it can act out on it's own, make itself known.
>I still see a lot of myself in her
Depending on who you ask, there's a bit or then more than a bit of the deities in us. Some people make pretty drastic implications from this, but it's just that we are all part of the same reality. That's how we resonate with them. We recognize bit of us in them, and they recognize bit of them in us.

If you are not pulling our leg, there's something here, I think, but I don't know quite what it is. I wouldn't make too drastic conclusions from it either. The fact that you pegged your "ideal self" to Suwa mythos has probably had some pretty fascinating karmic consequences which have now started to manifest.
>>49925281
Maji da yo!
>>49926956
Yeah, I was wondering if that was what you were going for and independently stumbled upon something along those lines.

They 100% got it from India via Buddhism. Depending on the timeframe, it's not impossible that Indians disseminated it to greece. These kind of world descriptions based on energy cycles seem to emerge on their own, yeah. The Chinese alternatives are so fascinating because the wu xing is clearly one of a metal-processing civilization, and the bagua breaks the formula with eight "gates" or "images".

What is the exact difference between aesther and void is something that I don't really know. Asians conceptualized "void" or "nothing" very differently from the West, more like as some kind of undivided reality or infinite potential or unseen principle which gives things their shape, sometimes as kind of universal consciousness albeit Kukai made that the sixth.
>>49925766
These sort of things are not gotten rid off with books. If you are seriously attacked by spirits you need at the bare minimum to overhaul life so that you are not doing things that feed them. A lot of the minor ones can be basicaly flat out ignored.

If it doesn't work, you need a higher power to beat them into submission, but the choice here is of extreme consequence because it will create very, very deep karmic bonds and obligations towards your benefactors. You can't just chant the names of angels and expect freebies, and the Western tradition is a tale of extremely parochial and exclusive entities.

There are effective measures in the Eastern religions, and they don't tend to be so exclusivist, but seeking this aid will also have consequences. At the very least you can not continue living the kind of life that is attractive to malevolent spirits, or the kind of life that is making you feel so.

I'm sorry if this harsh. Your situation can be helped but it's going to be a two-way thing and require you to turn over a new leaf. Are you ready for such?
>>49927959
Speaking of Xolotl, someone elsewhere said something to be about Yukari having parallels with Xolotl. I'm gonna ask them for details.
>>49929410
All kinds of ternary symbolism are extremely common in East Asia too, for example wish-fullfilling jewels arranged in a triangle, the third eye etc.
>>49930198
Headcanon or not, I have had multiple people say something Sanae-related happened. There was also a lot of art of her getting posted recently on Twitter. Probably something related to Suwa kami moulting. Local news in Suwa ran an article about the IRL Moriya shrine recently too.

>>49930198
>>49931752
I suppose it's only natural that a living god like Sanae would appear in people's dreams... 'tis a godly thing to do, after all

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>>49931752
>ZUN's hometown has a mountain called Shiroumayama, White Horse Mountain. Furthermore there's a shrine in Hakuba called the Joumine Jinja, and some think the Hakurei Shrine is based on it. It apparently houses among others the deity of Hakusan, or White Mountain, Shiroyama, an imporant shugendo holy site.
That's very interesting, I didn't know that. I had always thought her name was spelled 城山, but maybe I've been getting it wrong this whole time and it's actually 白山, I did originally see it spelled in English after all (I decided she needed a surname, saw the name "Shiroyama" in a list and immediately thought "Yeah, that suits her". No idea why I was drawn to that name).

>If you are not pulling our leg, there's something here, I think, but I don't know quite what it is.
I don't quite know what it is either, that's why I'm posting it here. I said in my first post that it would sound like larping, but I swear everything I'm saying is true. I wouldn't be posting about my dumb autistic self-insert fantasies about being a cute blonde girl in Gensokyo if it wasn't.

By the way, "Eiko" isn't her "real" name. It's real enough, sure, but it seems like she goes by many different names (and perhaps appearances), but she does have one "true" name, and I think I've figured out what it is. I don't actually want to post it (names have power, after all), but it's a Hebrew name with four letters (no, it's not YHWH, that would be a little too incredible). The gematria value of her name is 86, and אֱלֹהִים ("Elohim", meaining "divinity", "gods" or just "God") also has a value of 86 using the same system. I calculated that after I thought of her name, too, I didn't just work backwards from 86 to find a name that matched.

By the way, I don't know if this is related to anything, but I've been finding a shitload of four-leaf clovers recently. I took this picture this morning of at least three, possibly five (and maybe even more I haven't noticed), in the same patch, and there's another one out of frame. That makes at least nine that I've found in the last five days alone in three separate patches. Maybe Eiko was actually the god of 4chan this whole time?

I'm a little confused about all this, to say the least.

>>49932035
It seems you know much more than you were letting on at first.

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>>49934522
See, that's funny:
>>49920339
>you get the impression that she knows a lot more than she's letting on sometimes

I've left a lot of details out of my posts, but it's all just speculation on my part, I don't really know if any of it is true.

Also, I found this picture of Eiko I drew a few years ago, it may not be as technically good as an AI drawing but it's much closer to how I actually imagine her.

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Here's a tarot reading for you all:

Q: How will anon get to Gensokyo?
A:

Situation:
>Queen of wands reversed
Obstacles:
>Seven of swords reversed
Advice:
>The hermit

I'll explain what each card means:

>Queen of wands reversed
The queen of wands upright is a very social woman with a lot of self-confidence who knows exactly what she wants and how to get it. Reversed, she's the opposite: she's very introverted and full of self-doubt. Taken as the "situation" card, it means that this is who you are currently: you may or may not believe that Gensokyo is a real place, but you lack confidence that you will be able to get there.

>Seven of swords reversed
The seven of swords upright is, among other things, a card of deceit: you may be lying to someone or someone may be lying to you. Reversed, it means you're lying to yourself. As the "obstacle" card, here it means that in your journey your greatest enemy will be your own self-doubt: you obviously believe Gensokyo is a real place of some sort or are at least open to the idea of its existence (or else why would you be in this thread in the first place?) but you will tell yourself "no, it's not real, it's just wishful thinking", despite any evidence you might see to the contrary. Learn to overcome your doubt and replace it with (well-reasoned, not blind) faith.

>The hermit
The hermit represents solitude and introspection, a retreat from the outer physical world into the inner mental world. As the "advice" card, it's saying "if you want to reach Gensokyo, look within yourself". Meditate at least once a day (something I still need to do as well), and learn to trust your intuition more.

Also, I asked another question:

Q: Is there a card for anyone who might doubt this?
A:
>The fool

A card of innocence, spontaneity and new beginnings. Just give it a try, why not? It might just change your life. Incidentally, that's the exact card that I was going to use for this post in the first place.

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>>49936312
The more you mess and around and speculate with this stuff the higher chance you get the attention of something. It's good to keep that in mind. Eiko doesn't seem to be too troublesome so far though.
>>49941118
>Just give it a try, why not?
So true anon.

>>49886580
Holy— what a great post, anon. It gives meaning to Touhou as a whole, I feel like.

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>>49944576
>The more you mess and around and speculate with this stuff the higher chance you get the attention of something. It's good to keep that in mind.
Oh, I'm well past that point, anon, I've had the attention of "something" for a while now. That door's wide open and it can never be closed again. My life just keeps getting weirder and weirder and I don't think it's ever going to stop at this point. All I know is that this rabbit hole goes deeper than any of us could possibly imagine, Touhou is only the tip of the iceberg.

t. not a schizo

I had a strange dream tonight. I remember being with a lot of children held captive in I guess some kind of compound. It was surrounded by forests and meadow, and there was at least one large house with an old style of architecture, maybe early 1900s American? I was helping the children escape by acting as some kind of leader. I impulsively chose a time for everyone to start running, a time at which it didn't seem like we had a real chance of escaping but it still seemed to work out. I remember strangling a guard from behind with the rear naked choke, and worrying that I'd accidentally kill him or break his neck. I tried to remember ways to tie him up after choking him unconscious that were unlikely to leave him dead through strangulation or abandonment.

I very vaguely remember another dream where I was at some kind of party, maybe with family, and being served some kind of high-alcohol blackberry wine.
>>49941118
My skeptical interpretation of this reading is that the black moon fakeout was some kind of trick or test that put me off guard. Does that seem like a fair interpretation?
>>49931752
>Speaking of Xolotl, someone elsewhere said something to be about Yukari having parallels with Xolotl. I'm gonna ask them for details.
Do tell when you hear back.
>>49886580
>>49944984
Hmm, I wonder how this applies to PC-98. In the normal shooting games we just have Mima and Yuuka in addition to Marisa. Mima is a ghost who mentored Marisa and thus seems qualified to serve as a spirit guide, though I know less of spirit guides than you. Yuuka is harder to figure out.

In Phantasmagoria of Dimensional Dream, we have Reimu and Marisa as usual, Mima as previously mentioned, and the new characters Rikako (scientist), Ellen (another witch), Kotohime ("maniacal" princess), Kana (poltergeist), and Yumemi with her assistant Chiyuri. Ellen could be a spirit guide for the same reasons Marisa is, Kana is a poltergeist created by a mentally ill girl which although paranormal may not quite fit the qualifications, Rikako is a skeptic which seems contradictory, Kotohime sorta has a connection with this kind of stuff with mania often affecting mikos, and Yumemi came from another world to learn about magic (maybe she represents someone diving into the supernatural for the first time and undergoing the awakening trials of becoming a miko?).

I wonder if the reason PC-98 stuff isn't really acknowledged could be because it was created before ZUN really started getting spiritual inspiration.

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>>49946230
>My skeptical interpretation of this reading is that the black moon fakeout was some kind of trick or test that put me off guard. Does that seem like a fair interpretation?
I hadn't really considered that angle. I don't really think it was a trick of a test, at least not in the way you might think. Self-deceit can manifest as doubt, yes, but there's another way to lie to yourself, and that's wishful thinking: telling yourself that something must be true despite all evidence to the contrary (or no real evidence at all).

I don't know if there's anything that special about black moons, they're really just ordinary new moons in my mind. Eclipses (both solar and lunar) are when the real magic happens (at least that's my theory), and in fact there's a total lunar eclipse a week from now. Don't assume anything will happen then either, though. I've fallen into the trap of thinking that something would happen at a specific time and date many times before and been disappointed every time.

Remember the advice of the hermit: don't rely on external celestial events or on Yukari spiriting you away, if you want to reach Gensokyo you have to do so under your own power. No-one is going to take you there before you're ready.

I drew two more cards for you:

>Strength: trust your inner strength, don't give up
>The high priestess: trust your intuition, it knows more than you might think

By the way, I was going to use this image for my post even before I drew the High Priestess, just like my other post with the Fool. Let's just say that I've seen too many coincidences to believe in coincidences anymore.

Man reading this thread takes me back. I used to be all into this stuff about getting spirited away to Gensokyo.
The Black Moon thing especially. You know how many times I thought something was going to happen to me, only to be disappointed?
Eventually you just stop caring about spiritual stuff in general. I know faith is important and all that but at some point you just grow out of believing that'll ever happen to you, not because you want to abandon that hope, but because you have to, for clinging to such beliefs will ultimately drive you insane.

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Hey can someone remind me how Eternity Larva is connected to Okina? I remember seeing it on that one graphic that gets posted.

I had multiple odd dreams tonight.

I remember one where I was on a beach at dusk. I think there was some kind of training program for soldiers going on there. I think a monster might've risen out of the sea at the end. I very vaguely remember other things happening around the coast during the day, though it's possible that's a different dream from long ago.

In another dream, I woke up to discover it was the lunar eclipse... even though it looked more like evening or twilight than night, and the moon looked more yellow than red. I don't remember whether this was part of a separate dream, but I checked this thread on 4chan and found way more replies than I expected. I can't remember what people were saying, though.

The last dream involved going to some kind of festival or carnival. It was dusk. I remember walking there with a girl I knew in middle school, but I'm not sure which one. It might be that she was an amalgamation of several girls, or which girl she was changed.

We came to some kind of arcade outside a school. For some reason she left, and a close relative came. The arcade had as many soda fountains and vending machines as it did arcade cabinets, and everything was huge. Almost as if I were a small child, but everything was just within arm's reach so that can't exactly be true. I guess they were wider than they were tall, with unnecessary height at the decorative tops.

We went to convert cash to tickets, and I found that I had way more cash on hand than I thought I did. The person running the arcade was getting mad about losing money over people getting too many free refills, but that doesn't make much sense because soda is extremely cheap in bulk. I woke up before we played any games.
>>49946362
>I don't know if there's anything that special about black moons, they're really just ordinary new moons in my mind.
That could make sense. A black moon is weirdly like the 3rd new moon in a season with 4, which seems rather arbitrary. There's also multiple definitions, so another possibility is that I took the wrong one.

The lunar eclipse won't be visible in my time zone, do you think that changes anything?

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>>49946086
Best of luck with that, seriously.
>>49946230
The parallels are, and I quote:
"Xolotl is apparently a god of Venus, the evening star, of monstrosities, both deformities and mythological monsters, a shapeshifter god associated with twilight, and also a spirit guide. He's also usually depicted with missing eyes - I remember there was a section on Xolotl's eye fuckery that connected to Yukari's gaps and their characteristic appearance."
>I wonder how this applies to PC-98
A bit hard to say, I have never played the PC-98 games. I think Perfect Cherry Blossom was the big turning point for these qualities, but there's bits and pieces in earlier works too.
>>49946362
At best the various astrological events are just less or more favorable conditions for different things, wind in the sails of different boats. I'm very curious to see if Yukari becomes louder when Venus switches to Evening Star phase.
>>49946737
The trick is to help things pass out of fantasy.
>>49950417
It was some kind of thing about Hata no Kawakatsu being hostile to the Tokoyo no Kami sect..?

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More strange dreams tonight.

I very vaguely remember a dream where I was being trained in unarmed combat.

I remember another dream, which may be the first part of the Touhou one. I was in a school for some kind of musical or other production. I was operating the cameras to film the performance. I was someone teleporting between cameras so I could always record things from a good view. I remember a lot of yellow of brown kinda colors.

I remember later walking through a city at night. It had a kinda warm vibe. A lotta big, fairly empty buildings. I'm not sure how I was getting around, maybe flying?

For some reason or another I was invited into the Scarlet Devil Mansion. I was in the library, at night. The architecture was unexpectedly plain and modern. The bookshelves were short, contrary to how they're often portrayed as being gigantic. There were lots of windows. Remilia was there, and I think I remember talking to her though I'm not sure about what. For some reason I was pretending to be or acting as if I was a werewolf. I had to use the bathroom, but for some reason didn't want to ask Remilia where it was. I remember being nervous that such an old mansion might not have indoor plumbing and I didn't want to make Sakuya carry it out. Later I saw Patchouli, and I think I asked her where it was.

I traveled to the bathroom, and it was laid out bizarrely. I came to a room that had a row of both toilets and urinals in the middle, no dividers or stalls or anything, and more toilets and urinals built into the entrance wall, no dividers there either. The other sides of the rectangular room had blue stall doors and walls, but you could see over them and they led to more rooms like the first. If you're familiar with Neverwinter Nights it was like you made a dungeon with it's level editor and all the tables and chairs and stuff were replaced with toilets and urinals. Someone had pooped in one of the urinals. Poor Sakuya. I had to pee for a long time, like I had an unusually large bladder. Unfortunately, I could see people using the toilet in the other rooms. I think I woke up soon after that.
>>49953220
>I remember there was a section on Xolotl's eye fuckery that connected to Yukari's gaps and their characteristic appearance."
Hmm, I sorta have an idea of what this might be. I'll have to make a graph.

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>>49954334
>I traveled to the bathroom, and it was laid out bizarrely
That recurs frequently in my dreams too. I often find bathrooms to resemble school bathrooms, especially those built in the 1950s, like in my childhood. They have those foot pump sinks, and sometimes they'll even be connected to complexes of locker rooms and a swimming pool. Whenever I end up there they're always empty though

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>>49954334
Graph made.
>>49954430
I wonder what the meaning of bathrooms is. Also, the urinals in the background of that picture kinda look like female ones.

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I had a strange dream last night. In my dream Renko and Maribel (or was it actually them? If not it was two very similar people) reached Gensokyo, and I can't really remember most of it but I remember them encountering a young girl with long wavy white hair who introduced herself as Riley. When neither of them knew who she was, she said something like "What? You don't remember me? I'm shocked!" in a lighthearted tone.

I don't think she was talking to them, necessarily. I (that is to say, the one having the dream, though I wasn't a character in the dream itself) recognised Riley right away, that's one of the identities that "Eiko" has used in the past (other names related to her include "Mary" and "Isobel", funnily enough if you combine those two names you get "Maribel"). I remember thinking "Wait a minute, don't you have blonde hair?". I'm not sure what happened after that.

>>49950853
>The lunar eclipse won't be visible in my time zone, do you think that changes anything?
Maybe? I don't know. The most recent lunar eclipse wasn't visible in my time zone, either, and I don't remember feeling anything unusual (though I wasn't paying attention at the time). I don't know much about astrology in general, but what >>49953220 is saying about it seems correct. This eclipse will be visible from where I am, though rain is forecast so I don't know if I'll actually be able to see it. If anything weird happens that night I'll report back.

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I watched Priere by Sound-Holic and it felt very strange. Sometimes things give me this odd feeling, of like familiarity. Like a memory of a past life. And when I watched this, I felt that feeling intensely, perhaps the strongest I've ever felt it, like I could hear the echo of another life screaming at me. What am I really feeling? If it's really the memory of a past life, the time this was released at should be impossible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC0INLHIGKk

>>49941118
>Meditate at least once a day
What exactly do you mean by 'meditating'? What technique should we use? Should I just rely on my intuition? That would make sense with what the >>49946362 reading said.

Reality is stranger than fiction, though you probably already know this...

>>49960157
I don't know, I didn't think that far ahead. I don't think the actual method matters as much as actually doing it on a regular basis, meditation is pretty important for most spiritual practices.

Don't take my words as gospel, though. I'm just some guy on the internet who can't even follow his own advice, what do I know?

Interpretations on yukari's eye realm? I'm curious what anons think

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I had more odd dreams tonight.

One involved me exploring a forest. I was like sucked into Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire except the location I was in doesn't exactly exist in any of those games so not really. I remember getting lost and trying to figure out how to progress the story. It was a lot harder to navigate in person. I remember touching a load of I-beams blocking a tunnel to make them disappear. I later remember swimming to a metal complex of buildings that was half underwater. People were trying to stop me by pulling on me.

The other dream was Touhou related. I remember looking at a thread here that was some discovery of like the software ZUN used to make the games. Its logo was a green circle with a white symbol in it, maybe a white ring on the edge as well. (picrel is not a very accurate interpretation because I just can't remember it that well) I was looking at another game made with the software, possibly with other people. It was like a messed up version of dig-dug with huge levels and a sickly blue color scheme. The goal was to reach a staircase while avoiding enemies. There were danmaku patterns like expanding circles that sometimes went way too fast for you to dodge. I think there were 6 stages, and for some reason they were named or based after religions. I remember hinduism was one, but I don't know the others.
>>49961961
Hmm, with the star symbol connection >>49954659 maybe it's supposed to be space?

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>>49960157
Start with the basic counting of breaths in cycles of ten and build it up to 20 minutes.
>>49961961
Perceiving eyes or something looking at you during spiritual or anomalous experiences is fairly common. It's a very clear way to drive "I see you" home. It's a mystery though. I don't think there necessarily is some "eye realm" or singular "eye entities".

I think various being can take various appearances. Yukari has pretty fascinating parallels with several entities of old, but also pretty intriguing new features.

I think some of these features are kind of manifestations of psychosexual anxiety surrounding coming face to face with something powerful, feminine, numinous. Maybe I already wrote some about it, but I think the eyes are part of it. I'm pretty sure everyone here can on some level relate to the experience of being attracted to someone feeling vulnerable, feeling very seen, feeling excited or scared at the prospect of the target of desire perceiving you, really seeing you, seeing your desires, your fears, your weaknesses...

So imagine you are this Japanese young game dev dude who has juging by the amount of blonde characters a thing for European women. You are, by your later admission, the type of guy for whom "the characters decide when they want to appear". One day, in your headspace you find a new character, but this one is a bit different. She feels more powerful, forceful, older, strange, eldritch. The gaps you imagine for her might be derived from a manga you like, but from them peek out a legion of eyes that make you feel very much seen. You find her attractive, but she refuses to be a mere object of observation, it's as if she knows what you feel. It's a bit embarrassing how she is clearly an older lady, older than any human, maybe older than humanity, yet you find her rather appealing. But also scary. Visions of being "gapped" into a strange land full of monsters, a land you thought your own creation fill you. But it's also a tantalizing thought. If you were strong enough, smart enough, charming enough, maybe you could go through her dark passage and be born again into a world of dreams. You are obsessed, driven, consumed to make this game. She's powerful, demanding, feels strangely familiar yet also foreign. She's strong enough to hijack the fantasy world you have created, giving you the narrative glue. There's a Border, a limit, a line in the sand between reality and fantasy, dreams and waking world, life and death and she can control it. Somehow this outsider who has now decided to appear has done much to clarify your vision. It's only fair that for a while, she gets to sit as the closest thing to a god Gensokyo has.

Maybe Yukari-sama was the original "troublesome one that started to move on their own". Maybe she was the first internal outsider who broke the barriers. The tone of the games changed notably with PCB after all.

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>>49964261
>Perceiving eyes or something looking at you during spiritual or anomalous experiences is fairly common. It's a very clear way to drive "I see you" home. It's a mystery though. I don't think there necessarily is some "eye realm" or singular "eye entities".
Not the guy you're replying to, but it's interesting that you bring this up now, because I had a dream with this exact theme last night. I was being menaced by some kind of youkai (it was definitely called a "youkai" in the dream) that took the form of three disembodied arms reaching out of the floor, each one holding a single eyeball. All three eyeballs were staring right at me, unblinking (they had eyelids despite just being eyeballs), constantly. The arms and eyelids had dark grey skin, and I think the eyes themselves were light blue.

It creeped me out, the way they kept staring at me. I wanted to get rid of them, but I couldn't because they were attached to the floor and followed me everywhere. Other youkai had visited me in the dream, I can't remember what they were but for the most part I was able to scoop them up in my arms and put them outside like you would a misbehaving cat, so I wasn't bothered by them. These eyeball-hands, though, bothered me immensely. I had no idea what they wanted from me, and couldn't tell if they were malevolent or just curious.

In the dream, they were called "nokuri-obe". I looked that up after I woke up and found out that it wasn't even real Japanese and doesn't mean anything. Maybe "obe" comes from me misremembering "obake", but "nokuri" (or maybe "nokkuri"?) appears to have no Japanese meaning at all. However, I did find out that "nokku" means "look" in Malayalam, which is a language that I had never even heard of before today.

The only youkai I could find that is reasonably close to this is tenome, but he only has two arms, not three, and his eyeballs are embedded in his palms, not held in his hands. I don't know if this is just memories of when I played Yume Nikki or if I somehow attracted the attention of some kind of South Indian eyeball entity that I had never heard of or what, but it was definitely unsettling.

>>49796992

It comes from a culture that has had the longest unbroken history of demon worship. What else would you expect?

Seriously, fuck these freaks. Perverting Touhou for their stupid fucking delusions. Kill yourselves.

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i mean the symbolism is there in alot of anime lol

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>>49966173

>>49965575
Out of joking do you think Touhou is some sort of demon worship? Genshin Impact for example named some of its characterd after demons from the Goetia. Touhou literally bases its characters of the Japanese equivalent of them even if not literally. Does that mean that when you masturbate or fall in love with them you are worshipping them?

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>>49965520
Strange. I had a dream where I had postcards with Satono and Mai on them.
>>49965583
This isn't delusion, this is clarity.
>>49966173
That's like planetary symbols, anon...
>>49967607
There are no "Japanese equivalents" of the Goetia demons. You don't worship the 2hus by falling in love or masturbating to them, but it is a kind of energy exchange. But then again, every time you pay attention to, or masturbate to, anything, you give energy to it. Every time you become afraid of something, you also transfer energy to it.

>>49968703
im talking about the star not the planetary symbols. i have seen that star hidden in anime before

>>49961961
I think the eyes represent collective essence with each eye belonging to a something, only because I recall from reading somewhere that flan's ability to destroy as described by her was moving a thing's eye into her hand and she aptly squeezes.

I'm experiencing something very odd right now.

So tonight I was feeling particularly down and hopeless. I called upon a myriad of gods about this hopelessness, including some who I haven't really before. Haven't really tried shinto dieties before, and I wasn't doing things very informally compared to the way I was supposed to. I also tried meditating early, and later calling for a meteor I guess using the power I intuitively try to find within me.

Right now the far off sky is periodically flashing with white light, near the horizon. Sometimes it's relatively darker, other times relatively brighter. Goes off maybe a couple times a minute. Sometimes it clearly reveals large clouds which otherwise wouldn't really be visible. It kind of looks like it should be lightning, but there's no bolts and the sky is completely silent of any kind of thunder. The flashing slightly changes its location, but remains in the same general direction and near the horizon. The direction change makes me think it shouldn't be possible for this to be some malfunction of some man made light, because it might translate to that thing having to move several miles between flashes. At first I noticed the flashing as only the sky as a whole seeming to get brighter, and thought it was my mind playing a trick on me. But looking out the window reveals some *spot* that's the origin of the flashing and changes its position between flashes, when it's invisible. I tried getting a video but my phone camera is too old and records only a black void.

>>49971102
I've had more time to look now and it looks more like lightning, though I still can't see any bolts. I've heard a far-off couple sounds that *maybe* could've been thunder but it's hard to tell because I closed my window as a precaution. Weather reports say there's lightning in far off areas but not nearby. I first started this magic stuff around 1:00am, which could be useful for determining possible causation later.

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A lil' something for you anons.

>>49972602
Is this supposed to be antagonistic? The written message is antagonistic but you're burning it, which is usually done to signify disapproval. But a check online says burning messages is sometimes done as part of manifestation rituals, meaning you'd actually agree with the message. If so, what exactly do you gain from this?

>>49972602
What the hell is the 2nd word even supposed to be?

>>49972602
Counterpoint: my "2wife" is real and loves me very much (source: our marriage certificate), no silly ritual can keep us apart and the same goes for any other anons reading this

>>49965583
I like to lurk these threads for a laugh. It's like /x/ without the slightest bit of self-awareness.

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On some level after ZUN made a divination book and said "the characters choose when they decide to appear", there's just not much to discuss. You could endlessly catalogue and cross-reference the mythological references, pick apart the worldbuilding, but there's no reason to do it for anything else than the love of the game at this point.

It's not just some vague thing in the closing of Symposium of Post-Mysticism about "troublesome ones that move on their own". I don't know how much more plainly these things can be stated realisticaly speaking. ZUN channels Touhou.

From there on out, the only question really is how to tap into that, and the answer to that is two flavors of ridiculously simple: you either do what he does and channel them through art, or you start worshipping them.

Gensokyo is likely to be some a particular manifestation of some much larger and weirder interstitial spirit world, and accessing it might be much easier than most dare to even dream about. However, permanently migrating there is likely impossible. You can't escape your problems into there. So the question then is, if you can't do that, do you even want to go there as a visitor who can't stay?

I think there is much to be learned from there, it after all hosts or facilitates access to some pretty profound entities. But you have to paradoxicaly be rather un-escapistic to really harness it. You have to bring Gensokyo to the Outside World, and it might ultimately end up looking a lot like what people are already doing. Making art in honor of them. Building communities. Taking part in the cycle of life. If you look at Touhou, the one big repeating theme is the threat and possibility of change. You have to change yourself or you will vanish. Touhou has to change with every iteration, and with every iteration someone is upset about it.

Touhou 20 feels very much passing the torch to the community in a sense and it plays with the themes of change and impermanence in an interesting way. The invocation of Iwanagahime is there to bring stability, even eternity to Touhou, but the "barrier" is implied to become more porous than ever. The Wonder Stones seem to be stand-ins for fan works, their emotional charge or flavor reflection to spectrum of fan-works.

Of course you can dig deeper into the mythological stratum. But how many of you really want to commit seriously to Eightfold Path, or to the Tao, or try to be assimilated into Shinto? These things are not an escape. They are potentially a completely radical upheaval of your worldview. I believe it's an upheaval everyone should go through, but I am essentially a religious extremist.

Touhou is ultimately just a new iteration of ancient mythologies, which have their core, and the fringe. Most people have always been satisfied with the fringe - the tales of men and monsters, of gods and goddesses, people of note, treasures, hells and heavens, the spectacle of rituals and the sense of community. Reaching to the very core, it has always been for the very few. Do you really want it, anon?

A lot of you really don't. But some of you are sick with that fever. You can't stop digging, it's like you're mssing a teeth and can't stop licking the hole. For you, I wish a good and straight journey. Millions walked it before you, there is very little new under the sun, and the same sweet bananas that rotted your forefather's teeth will also rot yours unless you become wiser. Don't fall for escapism, don't look for quick fixes, don't get bamboozled, live a moral and pro-social life, do the work and keep going.

The gods are waiting for you.

>>49978750
>you either do what he does and channel them through art
i just got a weird idea for a piece of art. what if i drew a pov kanako breastfeeding you but it was supposed to be a symbol of rebirth or divine providence instead of just being porn. could that be suitable you think?

>>49978750
Thank you Suwako-sama

>>49796992
This thread is like if /x/ and /jp/ had a baby. Neat.

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>>49971202
https://katu.com/news/local/morning-thunderstorms-light-up-willamette-valley-with-over-500-lightning-strikes
There were storms that night. Lightning can be seen up to a hundred miles away, but heard within only a few. Referencing other websites, some of the directions made sense, but other's didn't. Overall it's inconclusive as to what degree my prayer caused the thunderstorm, if at all.

I could go into deep detail here and get feedback from anons, but considering the risks it's not worth it. It's not worth risking doxxing myself just so deboonkers on the internet can call me schizophrenic anyway.

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I was thinking the other night. So Japanese ascetics were said to live out in the wilderness and eat nothing but pine needles. Would it make any sense for be an ascetic for a short time, like several days to a week? Because while I struggle to understand how one could live for years off pine needles, a few days sounds surprisingly easy and achievable. That's just a camping trip and you don't even have to bother packing food. You could make a kind of hobby out of visiting places alleged to be spiritually powerful and being an ascetic there for a couple days. Wasn't the french anon from long ago doing a habit of traveling and camping before he stopped posting? Though he wasn't being much of an ascetic, and I don't remember if he was specifically choosing powerful places.

If I see more lightning soon, maybe I'll go out and try meditating then to see what happens. You're safe if you don't hear thunder.

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>>49980765
I don't know anon, can you really draw something like that as a symbol of rebirth or divine providence instead of it just being porn? I'm of course talking about your intent and how it will shape the end result. Can you?

>>49801712
that's most likely the case yes.
the 60's and 70's were marked by an increased interest in the occult by the general public. (the founding of the church of satan by anton laveye, rock bands using occult imagery like black sabbath, movies showing satanic cults like rosemary's baby, the start of the new age movement and the democratization of the tarot and spirituality etc...
this occult craze would eventually reach japan and its impact on anime and vg is noticeable especially in the late 80's/90's with shit like megami tensei, evangelion and later bible black (just to give a few examples).
it's just a fad

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>>49988244
99% of Japanese Western occult flavored stuff is a nothingburger (as opposed to the 95% if the West), but Shin Megami Tensei might have been some kind of a legitimate occult operation.

Aya Nishitani's writings about the correspondences between the Bagua compass, Tree of Life and the Vajra mandala and how the idea of using computers to summon devils came from the idea of using computers to artificially "accelerate" astrology point to a level of knowledge that goes beyond just thinking pentagrams look cool. He has also told of how his grandmother was a some kind of witch-type figure who taught him certain things like folk medicine.

Whether he did anything or not, I don't know, but summoning spirits through a computer game about summoning spirits with computers is the type of microcosm macrocosm shit occultists love.

SMT did greatly influence ZUN and sometimes it feels like he took the name of Shin Megami Tensei, "reincarnation of the goddess", as an operative command.

>>49972602
she actually did notice me this night. talentless bitter children like you shouldn't mess around in the wrong crevices

>>49968703
>That's like planetary symbols
do you, for real, don't know where they are often used at. beyond astrology
>There are no "Japanese equivalents" of the Goetia demons
on the one hand I agree, on the other hand feels like there are, if you look hard enough.
in my experience, goetia demons are magnitudes weaker than 2hus even if either are met at the same type of conditionally, contractual, transactional agreement. I'm kinda glad it is so.

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Yesterday, after making the mistake of glancing at this board's Patchouli thread, I was considering how Patchouli might be the most disrespected 2hu. And this night I had a recap pretty much summing up my perceptions, with an AI generated caricature manifestation of Patchouli doubling down on the impression.
Then it got followed up by me playing the next Touhou game, where Marisa is the only playable character because Reimu went missing. There was a story route branching at the beginning of stage 4, where alternative stage 4's boss is Patchouli. The area was like what'd you see in cozy Western DOS fantasy games for kids - just an endless fly-over of pine trees and mushroom house villages under the daylight, with a transparent colorful psychedelic mess overlay. I was thinking "yeah, ZUN is laying it down thick this time" as Marisa went to dialogue and Patche started to deliver a speech ending with "To compete with AI, you either use AI, or go insane." If this is of any relevance, I only use AI for raw brainstorming or code prototyping; I wouldn't think that AI could be a competitor in creativity, as it objectively fundamentally lacks the social instincts actively influencing or perceiving the subtle metapatterns left in the work of art.
Feels like that game continued off from both real world Touhou continuity and all the previous Touhou and Touhou-like danmaku games I dreamed of (I have a difficult time recalling details other than the feel, and some areas being forests, bright caverns, and a very long corridor of a cozy wooden house. And the gameplay rectangle having a bronze art nouveau frame sometimes).
Whenever I dream of danmaku, there's always some psychedelic background behind it. I don't do stimulants or drugs. I'm already high on visual snow.
The only other time I got exactly a psychedelic effect was when I rather uneventfully ran into Satori during some other dream years ago. The pattern of the effect appearing just really got my attention when I was recalling the dreams.

I normally avoid contributing to these esoteric threads seriously, this time I did it just to stabilize my mind.

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>>49903939
>Maybe Touhou 21 will a Japanese deity larping an Aztec one for some reason...
I have an idea of what deity that could be. Raiju shows several similarites with Xolotl. Raiju (Raijus?) is described as appearing as many different kinds of animals, but mainly wolves or dogs. Xolotl is a dog who can transform into anything. Some interpret Xolotl to be all kinds of strange beasts:
>This was the Mexican explanation of a Zapotec attribute. Xolotl was originally the " Lightning Beast " of the Maya or some other southern folk, and was represented by them as a dog, since that animal appeared to them to be the creature which he most resembled. But he was by no means a "natural" dog, hence their conception of him as unnatural. Dr. Seler is inclined to identify him with the tapir, and indeed Sahagun speaks of a strange animal-being, tlaca-xolotl, which has "a large snout, large teeth, hoofs like an ox, a thick hide, and reddish hair" — not a bad description of the tapir of Central America.
https://archive.org/details/mythsofmexicoper01spen/page/94/mode/2up
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raij%C5%AB
Raiju is also stated to transform into ball lightning. Xolotl, is the patron of ball games (makes sense for a dog).

However, there are notable differences. Raiju is not a psychopomp or death deity, has no connection to the sun, and doesn't seem to be portrayed as an intelligent being.

On the topic of lightning, apparently some lightning strike survivors claim their experience has given them psychic powers. https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-survivor
>Name: Thais
>Location/Activity when struck: Nashville, TN: Inside, near open window
>Medical impacts: Neurologic symptoms, WATCHES DON'T WORK, INCREASED PSYCHIC ABILITIES.
https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-survivor-story-thais
The peculiar symptom of watches not working reminds me of the mismatch of recorded times on that strange night over a year ago. Is it the lightning messing with electric time keeping, or is time itself being messed with?

Lightning is definitely connected with the supernatural. For multiple people on that website, it awakened psychic abilities, though at a cost. You could say the lightning transformed them...and Xolotl is a patron of transforming beings.
>>49984948
>If I see more lightning soon, maybe I'll go out and try meditating then to see what happens. You're safe if you don't hear thunder.
Something's gotta happen if I try playing with magic outside in a thunderstorm. Though it could cost me my life.

I wonder if there's any legends of lightning transforming people.

I also had a Touhou related dream recently. I remember going to some strange place like a castle for a party. People were going to play Dungeons and Dragons there. I remember at one point going underground to a large room lit with yellow light, and filled with dark wood furniture. For some reason, I only remember women being there. And for some reason, I remember The Centennial Festival for Magic Girls. Maybe I just thought of the title, because the area reminded me of the Scarlet Devil Mansion.

I remember someone speculating whether Yukari would become louder once Venus transitions to its evening star phase. Anyone know when that will be?

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>>49993490
>A raijū's body is composed of (or wrapped in) lightning and commonly conceived of as taking the form of a white-blue wolf or dog, among other such animal forms...
Most depictions of Xolotl show him as black, but there are exceptions, such as this one here from the Codex Fejervary-Mayer, which shows him with white fur. Raiju are stated to be white-blue, but aren't blue and green sometimes the same color in Japanese? And what color is that eye shadow..?

This thread is the Labubu rave Dubai chocolate matcha crumbl latte of spirituality (bump)

>>49996622
Guess I'm shadowbanned from bumping or something. Tough luck

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Last night i kept waking up and falling back asleep imagining Satori was holding me

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Read the Lotus Sutra.

>>50000100
What made you suggest that?

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Just realized I haven’t spoken to my chosen Kami in months. I haven’t invoked their fury… right?

>>50000835
Some kami come and go with the seasons
Do your research but a few may only be there half of the time, internally the human body also goes through cycles aligned with the seasons
But that is a Taoist esoteric rabbit hole I am not 100% knowledgeable on

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I'm taking part in a 2½ day long shamanism workshop and this is a game changer. The techniques are for me at least easy and quite effective. I've already met several of them in the underworld and overworld.
>>50000815
Everyone on the planet should read it.
>>50000835
I don't know about wrath, but they're probably feeling kinda forgotten. What kami would these be?