The cave and the womb world

Abstract

THE CAVE AND THE WOMB WORLD This paper attempts to delineate the different significance of a contemporary Japanese rite for women and men.It tries to show how women and men experience the rite uni quely because the symbolism of the ritual interacts in vastly different ways with their separate and differing psy chological structures.One of the conclusions reached in this investigation is that the meaning of ritual frequently must be explained in terms of the gender of the partici pants.The paper is divided into four sections.In the first is given a description of the rite of ascending the cave at the Oku no In peak of the Omine-san Shugendo site.The second section copsiders the history of this rite and the nexus of religious ideas it invokes.The third section focuses on the central psychological motif of the r it u a l,a return to the womb, and shows how the psychological signi ficance of this m otif differs for women and men.A fourth section presents the conclusions reached in this attempt to depict the meanings of the ritual. 一This essay concerns the ritual as£ent of Omine-san, a sacred mountain in Nara Prefecture.Omine is an important site for Shugend5, the cult of sacred mountains.Actually, Omine is the name not of a single mountain, but of a chain

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