After last week's post, I realized I have left the nature of the spirit world wide open. Spoiler alert, I have no plans to actually visit the spirit world in any of the five novels I will write in this series, so if you care, this blog post will be the one time I go over the actual details of a spirit world I intended to leave behind the veil.
The other dimension is yin and yang, or more accurately, from yang to yin. The spirit world is polar, running from yang, the pole of creation, to yin, the pole of destruction. The mortal realm is a plane of existence that exists at the point of convergence at the center of the spirit world. Everything on the yang side is Togenkyo, everything on the yin side is Jigoku. There is a natural flow of raw energy from yang to yin, Shinryuu shapes the energy into spirits called shikigami, charged with yang energy, then they take on mortal form as po energy, and when they reach the end of their lives, they convert to yin shikigami and go on to be consumed by Kageryuu and get recycled back to the beginning of the cycle all over again.
The natural flow does have exceptions, and it all has to do with hun, the spirit of mind that connects to the po, spirit of body. Everything in nature has po, but only humans have hun. The hun's purpose is to attain enlightenment through religion, gathering yang to return to Togenkyo at death. Hun that achieve enlightenment independently through self-discipline become bodhisattva and exist in Togenkyo as immortal beings while their po reincarnates with brand new hun that repeat the cycle. Hun that fail to become bodhisattva can still ascend to Togenkyo if their soul recieves enough prayers to be venerated as an ancestral kami, which yields the same result as becoming a bodhisattva except that the when the po reincarnates there is no gurantee that it will be protected through further cycles of reincarnation. Then there are the great kami of legend, the ancient gods of Japan. The great kami were ancestral kami that were so influential that their po did not reincarnate as mortals but instead connected to yoshiro and their shrines across Japan to persist as long as they are worshipped and the hun influence earthly matters by directing the flow of yang through Togenkyo to the mortal realm. Each of the great kami of legend is limited in their influence by position and only have power by directing the flow of energy in Togenkyo, meaning that if any of them returned to the mortal realm they would be powerless because once the energy gets to the mortal realm it has already settled and is too late for the kami to exert their influence.
There is one exceptional kami, Raiju. As stated in the last post, Raiju is the only spirit besides the dragons Shinryuu and Kageryuu that has any power that can be maintained even when in the mortal realm, specifically Raiju has electrokinesis in his own right and can manipulate electricity and even generate it even when bound in the mortal realm. Another thing that makes Raiju unique is that he is the only kami that consists of po rather than hun. in the time of swordsmith Masamune, a samurai named Kyutsume killed eight men in battle before loing his own arm and being forced into retirement. His eight victims returned as undead and tried to reanimate the severed arm using the corresponding po which should have passed into Jigoku. Their plan was to get revenge against Kyutsume by creating a monster with his arm to kill him by his own hand. However, they performed the ritual incorrectly and the price they paid was that they each lost an equal portion of their po and the collective po became a new spirit that was Raiju. Raiju returned to Kyutsume and became bound to a ten piece yoshiro that can be used to summon Raiju when all ten pieces are assembled by Kyustume or a reincarnation of him. When Raiju is not manifesting with his yoshiro he is typically with Kyutsume who became a bodhisattva after death and creates random lightning storms, which, like all of the other natural phenomena under the influence of the kami is indiscernible except by enlightened mystics.
When a soul fails to attain enlightenment, they proceed into Jigoku where the hun and po are bound by the sins they committed in life and suffer accordingly, the greater the sin, the longer the suffering. Those who didn't sin very much but still failed to attain enlightenment will go through this phase quickly and once the bonds of sin break, the hun and po separate and are devoured by Kageryuu to return tothe natural cycle. This is arguably better than the alternative which is to become a yokai. Yokai are the result of a soul that does not repent through their suffering and instead embrace their sin and become corrupt. The po still separates and proceeds through the natural cycle, but the hun becomes yokai. Without po, the yokai cannot return to the mortal realm and must remain in Jigoku. The leader of the yokai is Akuma, the first yokai, as ancient as the great kami of legend. Akuma was a cruel tyrant in life who had so much sin that he became exceptionally corrupt and stubbornly refused to die. When he faced his ultimate fate of being devoured by Kageryuu, he fought until he subdued Kageryuu. Subsequently, Akuma became the ruler of Jigoku and torments the souls that end up there, attempting to corrupt any soul he can into another yokai to serve him.
So now the big question, if I have no intention of going to the spirit world in this series of stories, why is any of this relevant? This is relevant because of the Shrine of the Golden Dragon which was key in the war against the one hundred and eight yokai that was fought in the time of the swordsmith Masamune and is reenacted by the reincarnations of the yokai and the bodhisattvas that defeated them when the seal at the shrine was broken. In the book 7th Moon, the shrine's seal is broken when Ryu and Sakura leave, the yoshiro of Raiju are stolen, and Sasuke is killed. When the seal is broken the souls of the yokai are released to return to the mortal realm. The only way spirits of the dead can return to the mortal realm is if they have a body without a soul to inhabit. Historically, the only bodies without souls were corpses, but when 7th Moon genetically engineered artificial humans, they were not part of the natural flow and therefore they would not be viable. Once the seal at the shrine was broken and the yokai were free, they were able to reincarnate as the one hundred and eight soldiers that were successfully produced. Well, actually, to be more precise, one hundred and five of the soldiers were yokai, the remaining three were the bodhisattvas that defeated the yokai in the past, the protagonists of the story, Hidariude, Keisei, and Kichiku, who were reincarnated specifically to combat the yokai. The last three yokai were the Tsukomugami who used a machine body as Seichei, Kageryuu who like Shinryuu couldn't reincarnate until the biotech was perfected to create a suitable vessel, and Akuma who wanted to use Han Toromi himself.
I will go over the origins of the yokai and their relationship to Shinryuu, Raiju and the three boddhisattvas in a later book titled Guardians of Paradise, but it was hinted at in 7th Moon. A few decades before the time of the swordsmith Masamune, Japan was invaded by Chinese from the mainland. They failed in their invasion and drowned at sea attempting to return home. After the ritual that created Raiju, the yokai that inadvertently created him rallied the army of one hundred and eight yokai and Akuma took over their little plot and led his own invasion using the drowned bodies to march on Japan. Shinryuu brought together Kyutsume, Bakeneko, and Nyudo and blessed them to use their power to stop the yokai. Once the yokai were defeated, to make sure they never returned, the shrine was used to make a seal that prevented them from coming back to the mortal realm. To maintain this seal, there had to be a monk, a miko, and a sword priest to maintian the shrine and it's rituals. This tradition continued unbroken for eight centuries until Ryu and Sakura left the shrine and the seal began to be weakened, and was finaly broken completely with the death of Sasuke and the theft of the yoshiro.
The context of these spirits, both good and evil, is the world I have just explained. The stories I have to tell will take place only in the mortal realm and neither Togenkyo nor Jigoku, or any of the other spirits beyond the one hundred and eight yokai, the three bodhisattvas, Shinryuu and Raiju will ever have any role to play in any of these stories.
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