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WLW - Women-Loving Wizard(esse)s? Lesbian love spells from Roman Egypt

I said there will be no dedicated femslash february-adjacent post this year, and in the end that turned out to be nominally true. That’s only because this article, which I didn’t plan too far ahead, is a few weeks late due to unforeseen irl compilations. In my previous, also unplanned, article I’ve included a brief introduction to the Greco-Egyptian magical papyri, and discussed some unusual attestations of Hecate in them - perhaps some of the most fun material to research not directly related to anything I usually write about I’ve had the pleasure to go through in a long while. This text corpus is a gift that keeps on giving in general, but perhaps the single most welcome surprise was learning that there are at least two - possibly three - examples of lesbian love spells in it. While I considered waiting for pride month to cover them, I ultimately decided to publish an article about them much sooner (I have a different, highly esoteric pride month special in the pipeline already though, worry not).

Without further ado, let’s take a look at these unique wlw (women-loving wizard) testimonies and their historical context. Which supernatural entities were, at least for these women, apparent lesbian allies? Why does one of the lesbian spells contain an elaborate poetic passage pairing Osiris with Persephone? Why Lucian of Samosata might be the key to determining if 2 or 3 lesbian love spells are available to researchers? Answers to all of these questions - and more - await under the cut!

Before you proceed, I feel obliged to warn you that the article discusses historical homophobia, so if that might bother you, you’ll have to skip one of the sections. Furthermore, some of the images, as well as parts of the text itself, are not safe for work.

Part 1: the spells

Through the article I will refer to the discussed texts as “lesbian spells”. This is merely intended as a convenient label, not a definite statement - we can’t be 100% sure of the orientation of everyone involved, obviously. On top of that, none of the spells give us any hints about the terms the women involved in their composition used to describe themselves. Needless to say, the fact that the discussed spells even exist is nothing short of a miracle. The corpus of magical papyri and other related objects like inscribed tablets and gems is relatively small, and covers a short period of time - for the most part just the first four centuries CE. On top of that not all of them are specifically love spells. For comparison, while there is a sizable corpus of Mesopotamian love incantations spanning over two millennia, not even a single lesbian one has been identified among them so far (Frans A. M. Wiggermann, Sexuality A. In Mesopotamia in RlA vol. 12, p. 414).

They also represent one of the only indisputable examples of ancient texts in whose composition women who at the very least desired relationships with other women were involved (Bernardette J. Brooten, Love Between Women. Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism, p. 105). How active that involvement was might be difficult to ascertain, though.

Spell 1: angel or corpse daimon? The first spell of the discussed variety I’ve stumbled upon lacks a distinct title, but it’s included in the basic modern edition of many of the magical papyri, The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells edited by Hand Dieter Betz, as PGM XXXII. 1-19 ( p. 266):

It was discovered in Hawara, an archeological site in the Fayum Oasis, and most likely dates to the second century CE (Love Between…, p. 77). At the time of its initial publication, some doubts were expressed about whether it’s really a love spell by authors such as Richard Wünsch - as you can imagine, for at least implicitly homophobic reasons - but it’s been the consensus view for a long while that it's explicitly lesbian. I left the brief comment included in the standard modern edition on the screencap above to highlight this. It needs to be stressed here that the opposition to this now mainstream interpretation was a minority opinion in the first decades of the 20th century already, and was conclusively rejected as early as in the 1930s (Arthur S. Hunt notably contributed to this) and basically never entertained by any authors since (Love Between…, p. 80-81). Sadly, there is not much to say about the dramatis personae of the spell. Herais’ name is Greek, but her mother’s, Thermoutharin, is Egyptian; both Helen and Sarapias are Greek names, but the latter is theophoric and invokes, as you can probably guess, Serapis. This sort of combination is fairly standard for Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt, and it’s not possible to determine if one or both of the women involved were Greeks who settled in Egypt, Egyptians who adopted Greek names, or if they came from mixed families (Love Between…, p. 79).

While it’s likely Herais simply commissioned the spell from a specialist (Love Between…, p. 109), it’s worth noting that in the most recent commentary on it I was able to find, Heta Björklund argues that she was a magician herself (Invocations and Offerings as Structural Elements in the Love Spells in Papyri Graecae Magicae, p. 38). She also assumes some of the heterosexual love spells were the work of female magicians. Sadly, in the relatively short period of time I dedicated to preparations for this article I failed to find any study which would make it possible to establish whether this is a proposal with more widespread support. Female conjurers are certainly not uncommon in works of fiction, though, so even if the magical papyri were mostly written by men until proven otherwise I see no strong reason to doubt that we’re really dealing with a wlw (women-loving wizard).

The vocabulary employed in Herais’ spell is identical as in the heterosexual love spells. However, since examples aimed at both men and women are known, and do not significantly differ in that regard, the fact most of them were written by men seeking to secure the love of women doesn’t necessarily imply Herais necessarily took a masculine role herself just because she adhered to the same convention regarding magical formulas (Love Between…, p. 105).

An interesting aspect of the spell are its theological implications. At least from Herais’ perspective, Anubis, Hermes and “the rest down below” - in other words, a host of other unspecified deities residing in the underworld, not to mention the entity invoked to help her - not only would have no objections to her orientation, but would actively aid her in securing the love of the target of her affection (Love Between…, p. 80).

Invoking deities is basically a standard in love spells, regardless of the orientation of the people involved. Three distinct categories of them can be identified: Aphrodite and her entourage (ex. Eros and Peitho); heavenly deities (like Helios and Selene) and, perhaps unexpectedly, underworld deities (Hecate, Hermes, Persephone and others) - and, by extension, ghosts. From the first century CE onward it was actually the last group which appears most commonly in love spells. This likely reflects their association with magic and fate (Invocations and Offerings…, p. 45-46).

While there’s no point in dwelling upon the references to Anubis and Hermes, which are self-explanatory, there is some disagreement about the nature of Evangelos, who Herais basically asks to act as a supernatural wingman for her. Björklund argues that he should be interpreted as an angel or divine messenger (Invocations and Offerings…, p. 38). This is not implausible at first glance. Angels are invoked in multiple other spells from the magical papyri as helpers. For example, PGM VII 862-918 focuses on a request to Selene to send one of her angels presiding over a specific hour of the night (Leda Jean Ciraolo, Supernatural Assistants in the Greek Magical Papyri, p. 283; as a side note, there's a chance I will discuss early angels - especially the oddities like PGM angels - in a separate future article).

However, another view is that Evangelos was a “corpse daimon” (nekudaimon) - this would offer a good parallel with other love spells. What was a corpse daimon, though? Simply put, the restless, but not necessarily malevolent, spirit of a person who died prematurely (Love Between…, p. 80). In Egypt this idea intersected with other views on the origin of ghosts - for example that they could be people who died so long ago nobody made tomb offerings to them (Ljuba Merlina Bortolani, Magical Hymns from Roman Egypt. A Study of Greek and Egyptians Traditions of Divinity, p. 224). It’s possible that in some cases, perhaps including Herais’, papyri with spells have been deposited in, or at least read above, the graves of people who died in circumstances which made them eligible to become corpse daimons, in order to secure their help (Love Between…, p. 80). There is also evidence that food could be left for them in appropriate places instead, as attested for example in the “love spell of attraction in the presence of heroes or gladiators or those who died violently” (ωγὴ ἐπὶ ἡρώων ἢ μονομάχων ἢ βιαίων; PGM IV 1390-1495). This was a practice derived from a common type of offering to Hecate and her ghost entourage (Magical Hymns…, p. 223). It’s worth noting a daimon didn’t necessarily have to be human - the “cat spell for all purposes" (ἡ πρᾶξις τοῦ αἰλούρου περὶ πάσης πράξεως; PGM III 1-164), described as equally effective whether employed as a love spell, enmity spell or… a way to alter the results of chariot races (a relatively common goal in the magical papyri). instructs how to enlist the help of a “cat daimon” (τὸν δαίμονα τοῦ αἰλούρου). In this case the magician has to first “create” this entity by offering a cat as sacrifice, though, instead of invoking a preexisting daimon (Invocations and Offerings…, p. 32).

Spell 2: Osiris, Persephone and inflamed liver

While the spell discussed above seems to be brought up online the most often in discussions of references to lesbian and gay love in antiquity, the second known example is much more elaborate. Its standard translation was published in 1990 in the first volume of Robert W. Daniel’s and Franco Maltomini’s Supplementum Magicum, intended as a supplement to the already mentioned compendium of translated magical papyri (p. 137-139):

The text is inscribed on a tablet discovered in Hermopolis, and dates to the third or fourth century CE (Supplementum Magicum…, p. 132). It’s possible it was commissioned from a magician, rather than written by Sophia herself. Both her name and Gorgonia’s are not declined, which might indicate that a magician simply inserted them into blank spaces in a preexisting formulary offered to clients (Love Between…, p. 88-89). It’s nonetheless quite interesting as a work of literature, even if it was just a stock formulary sold over and over again. Some sections deliberately use poetic forms. Furthermore, some of the long compound words in them are entirely without parallel. It’s possible that this was a conscious source meant to create a peculiar overwhelming atmosphere, suitable for invoking ghosts and underworld deities (Love Between…, p. 88). While Herais’ spell is brief and vague and doesn’t really reveal much about her desires, beyond establishing that the object of her affection was a woman and that she believed supernatural entities would plausibly approve of pursuing her, Sophia’s commissioned(?) one seems to involve a pretty detailed fantasy. Of course, an argument can be made that it doesn’t necessarily specifically reflect her individual desires, but rather the widespread perception of bath houses as places suitable for flirtation and related ventures (Love Between…, p. 89). Still, while obviously we’ll never be able to know, it’s interesting to wonder if she perhaps had to choose from a larger repertoire of love spells offered by a magician (or perhaps even by multiple magicians) and went with the formula which matched her expectations to the greatest degree. Interestingly, the idea of a love spell being more effective in bath houses recurs in multiple magical papyri. The view that they can be haunted was fairly widespread, which made them a favored location for casting spells of all sorts, to be fair. The request for the “corpse daimon” to masquerade as a bath attendant to help with accomplishing a specific goal is unparalleled, though (Supplementum Magicum…, p. 132-133).

A combinative "Isis-Persephone" (or vice versa) from the late second century CE (Wikimedia Commons) As far as other appeals to supernatural entities go, it might be surprising to see Osiris mentioned in association with Persephone, Cerberus, the Erinyes and various elements of topography of the Greek underworld. It is presumed that this passage depends on the identification between him (as well as Serapis) and Hades, which is fairly well documented in Ptolemaic sources (Supplementum Magicum…, p. 146). However, it’s also worth pointing out that Persephone could serve as the interpretatio graeca of Isis, though it was by no means exclusive, and the latter could in various contexts or time periods be linked with Demeter, Cybele, Selene, Hecate, Aphrodite and others instead (Magical Hymns…, p. 9-10)

The unnamed “messenger” of Osiris is presumed to be Hermes, invoked not under his proper name but under a standard Homeric epithet. Referring to him as a “boy” most likely reflects the convention of depicting him as a child, which is attested through Hellenistic and Roman periods (Supplementum Magicum…, p. 146-147).

In addition to invoking a nameless corpse daimon and a number of deities, the spell uses a lot of voces magicae - magical formulas with no apparent meaning, sometimes the result of religious terms or even theonyms from langues other than Greek and Egyptian . Perhaps the most interesting inclusion among these is “Ereschigal”. This is obviously a derivative of Mesopotamian Ereshkigal, though as I outlined in my previous article, we’re essentially dealing with a ship of Thesus in this case; and if we are to take this as a reference to a specific deity rather than a hocus pocus formula, it’s best to think of it as an unusual epithet of Hecate as opposed to a conscious reference to a deity from a theological system otherwise basically entirely absent from Greco-Egyptian magic. The other interesting cameos are Azael and Beliam, a misspelling or variant form of Belial (Supplementum Magicum…, p. 144).

One last detail which requires some explanation is the reference to inflaming the liver, in addition to heart and soul. This is not a magical curiosity, but rather a reflection of a belief widespread all across the Roman Empire in the first centuries CE: the liver was believed to be the organ responsible for passions of various types. Invoking it alongside the heart in spells is well documented (Love Between…, p. 90).

Spell 3: the pronoun controversy

There might be a third lesbian spell. It is inscribed on two lead tablets from Panoplis, most likely from the second century CE (Love Between…, p. 90-91). The provenance was possible to establish based on the presence of the name Tmesios, “midwife”, which in Egyptian was written with the same determinative as the names of gods. It is most likely an euphemistic reference to Heqet, the goddess of midwifery, who was a very popular deity of Panoplis (Supplementum Magicum…, p. 116-117). The most recent edition I’m aware of is included in the Supplementum Magicum, vol. 1 (p. 116):

The text is undeniably a standard love spell. It even features an appeal to a corpse daimon - a certain Horion, son of Saropus - like the two discussed above (Love Between…, p. 91). The fact he is invoked by name is unusual - most corpse daimons are left anonymous (Supplementum Magicum…, p. 115). A further unique detail is the inclusion of a small drawing of a mummy - generally assumed to be Horion:

The supposed corpse daimon, via Supplementum Magicum vol. 1, p. 116; reproduced here for educational purposes only. An alternate proposal is that this is a symbolic representation of Nike being affected by the spell, as there are no other depictions of corpse daimons, and such entities are consistently described as mobile, which to be fair indeed doesn’t fit a mummy particularly well (Christopher A. Faraone, Four Missing Persons, a Misunderstood Mummy, and Further Adventures in Greek Magical Texts, p. 151-152). Still, unless further evidence emerges, there’s no reason not to stick to the consensus view.

Next to the mummy drawing, the other mystery is the reference to a period of five months. Why exactly would Nike be under the effect of the spell for that period of time remains uncertain (Supplementum Magicum…, p. 117). It might be a nod to the notion of “trial marriage”, which also lasted for five months. After this period, the parties involved would determine whether they want to formalize the relationship with a written contract or part ways instead (Love Between…, p. 107). However, by far the main topic of debate regarding the spell is the gender of Pantous/Paitous. While Nike bears an undeniably feminine name, the other name is not spelled consistently even on the tablets themselves, and has no other attestations. This also holds true for Gorgonia from spell #2, but in her case there’s no ambiguity - the name is undeniably feminine. However, -ous can be a suffix of both feminine and masculine names; while pa- occurs in Egyptian names as a masculine prefix. To make things more complicated, in both cases the relative pronoun referring to Pantous/Paitous is feminine - but it has been suggested that this is a typo due to presence of an incision on the tablet which might indicate the scribe made a typo wanted to actually write the masculine form. The gender of this person is thus difficult to determine (Love Between…, p. 93-94).

The assumption that we’re dealing with a double typo, according to the authors of the most recent translation, is supported by similar typos in other magical papyri, where the context makes it easier to ascertain the gender of the parties involved (Supplementum Magicum…, p. 117). Bernadette J. Brooten argues this is an overabundance of caution, though, since the spell under discussion is the only example where every single pronoun would have to be a typo. Furthermore, there are no other errors in the text (Love Between…, p. 95).

Brooten also offers an interesting solution to the uncertainty stemming from Pantous/Paitous’ name itself: even if it is masculine after all, its bearer might have been a woman who took on a masculine persona in some contexts, complete with a masculine name, or perhaps a nickname. She offers a precedent for this interpretation: the character Megilla/Megillos from Lucian of Samosata’s Dialogues of the Courtesans (Love Between…, p. 96). Since exploring this topic fully goes beyond the scope of the spells themselves, I will explore it in more detail in a separate section.

Part 2: WLWizards in context

From Plato to Lucian

In the fifth of Lucian’s dialogues a certain Leaina discusses recent events in her life with a friend. She is, as you can probably tell from the title of the whole work, a courtesan. At some point in the not-so-distant past she encountered a person who she refers to as Megilla, but who, as she stresses, at one point used the name Megillos in private. The character is AFAB, but for all intents and purposes presents masculinely - “like the most manly of athletes”, to be precise, as they describe it (Love Between…, p. 52). They engage in typically masculine pursuits, like holding symposiums, cut their hair short like young men (but wear a wig in public to hide that) and bring up that another character, Demonassa, is their wife in order to stress own masculinity (Andreas Fountoulakis, Silencing Female Intimacies: Sexual Practices, Silence and Cultural Assumptions in Lucian, Dial. Meretr. 5, p. 119-120). From a modern POV, it might appear that Megillos is a partially closeted trans man whose name is the masculine form of his deadname, but while this would be an obvious angle for a retelling to take, in reality the character is an example of a Greco-Roman stereotype of a woman attracted to women. Lucian refers to Megilla/Megillos as a hetairistria. He states that this rare term refers to women who pursue relationships with other women, and explains that this basically makes them like men (Love Between…, p. 23).

It’s important to stress we have no real evidence that this word - or any other ancient labels of similar sort - were actually used by any women to describe themselves (Love Between…, p. 7). Lucian most likely decided to use it as a nod to Plato (Love Between…, p. 53). The plural form, hetairistriai, is used to refer to women attracted to women in his Symposium (Love Between…, p. 41). It was most likely etymologically related to hetaira, in this context to be understood as something like “companion” (though it could also refer to a courtesan - as it does in the original title of Lucian’s work). It’s fairly rare in later sources, though dictionaries from the early centuries CE confirm it was understood as a synonym of tribas (plural: tribades), which was more or less the default term for women attracted to women in Greek, and later on as a loanword in Latin as well. An anonymous medieval Byzantine commentary on Clement of Alexandria, a second century CE Christian writer (more on him later) provides a second synonym, lesbia, which constitutes the oldest attested example of explicitly using this term to refer to a woman attracted to women, rather than to an inhabitant of Lesbos, though the context is not exactly identical with its modern application as a self-designation, obviously (Love Between…, p. 4-5). In Symposium the existence of hetairistriai is presented neutrally, as a fact of life - the reference to them is a part of the well known narrative about primordial beings consisting of two people each. Plato apparently later changed his mind, though, and in Laws, his final work, he condemns them as acting against nature (Love Between…, p. 41). It has been argued that the negative attitude might have been widespread in the classical period, though for slightly different reasons - it is possible that relationships between women would be seen as a transgression against the dominant hierarchy of power, on which the notions of polis and oikos rested (Silencing Female…, p. 113). As far as I can tell this is speculative, though.

While Plato’s rhetoric about nature finds many parallels in later sources - up to the present conservative discourse of all stripes worldwide (though obviously it is not necessarily the effect of reading Plato) - other arguments could be mustered to justify opposition to relationships between women as well. In one of his epigrams the third century BCE poet Asclepiades decided to employ theology to that end. He declared that the relationship between two women named Bitto and Nannion was an affront to Aphrodite; a scholion accompanying this text clarifies that they were tribades (Love Between…, p. 42). Note that I don’t think the fact that all three of the lesbian spells don’t invoke Aphrodite is necessarily evidence of the women who wrote or commissioned them adhering to a similar interpretation of her character, though - especially since they are separated by a minimum of some 500 years than the aforementioned source. While obviously we can’t entirely rule out that Asclepiades’ poem reflected a sentiment which wasn’t just his personal view regarding Aphrodite, it seems much more likely to me that the fact all three spells postdate the times when underworld deities and ghosts started to successfully encroach upon her role in this genre of texts is more relevant here. "Masculinization" and related phenomena

While clearly hostile, neither Plato’s nor Asclepiades’ works contain the tropes on which Lucian’s dialogue depended. What has been characterized by modern authors as “masculinization” of women attracted to other women only arose as a trend in literature after the rise of the Roman Empire, especially from the reign of Augustus onward (Love Between…, p. 42-43). This reflected the fact that Roman thinkers - as well as their Greek contemporaries - apparently struggled with grasping the idea of sex in which they couldn’t neatly delineate who is passively penetrated and who is actively penetrating. This resulted in the conclusion that surely one of the two women involved must have played the “masculine”, active role, and that sex between women must also have been penetrative. In some cases this involved confabulations about what some described in scholarship as an “some unnamed phallus-like appendage” (Love Between…, p. 6). A good example of an author wholly dedicated to this idea is the second century CE dream interpretation enthusiast Artemidoros. He evaluated sex between women as “unnatural” - a category in which he also placed oral, which he however saw as an act which by default had a man on the receiving end (Love Between…, p. 181). The sole passage in his opus magnum dealing with sex between women can be seen below (translation via Daniel E. Harris-McCoy, Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica. Text, Translation & Commentary, p. 149):

It needs to be pointed out here that earlier visual representations do not appear to be quite as fixated on this point. Evidence includes a Greek red figure vine vessel dated to 515-495 BCE or so decorated with a scene involving a woman touching another’s inner thigh and genitals; another slightly younger work of similar variety shows a kneeling woman reaching for another’s genitals, though it might depict depilation (contemporary sources indicate women plucked public hair by hand) rather than sex (Love Between…, p. 57-58). I must admit I really like the contemplative expression of the kneeling woman, which you can see on the screencap below (also available to view here):

Obviously, works of art such as the one above don’t necessarily reflect an ancient wlw point of view, and might very well be voyeuristic erotica which instead reflects what male painters presumed lesbian sex entailed. However, alongside a slightly bigger number of contemporary works possibly depicting couples in other situations they nonetheless make it possible to establish that the participants aren’t really differentiated from each other - in other words, they neither present differently, nor seem to be separated by age (Love Between…, p. 59).

Needless to say, it’s difficult to tell if either the older or the newer sources reflected actual trends in presentation among women attracted to women - with small exceptions, like the spells this article ultimately focuses on, we have next to no texts actually composed by them or for them, and the same caveat applies to visual arts. The majority of sources we are left with were, as you can probably already tell based on the sample above, written by men who at the absolute best considered them immoral (Silencing Female…, p. 112-113). For this reason, evaluating whether Lucian’s Megilla/Megillos is entirely literary fiction or merely a mocking exaggeration, and by extension whether she can be used as an argument in discussion about the identity of Pantous/Paitous from the third spell, is difficult at best.

For what it’s worth, an anonymous physiognomic treatise from the fourth century does mention that there are “women who have sex with women whose appearance is feminine, but who are more devoted to masculine women, who correspond more to a masculine type of appearance”, but further passages in this work would indicate that this might be yet another case of stereotyping rather than a nuanced account of varying presentation (Love Between…, p. 56-57). One specific aspect of Megilla/Megillos' character appears to match a single other source as well. Claudius Ptolemy, a second century astronomer and astrologer, offers a twist on the stereotype relevant to his primary interests. He states it is one of the “diseases of the soul” in his Tetrabiblos. He characterizes it as a result of a specific combination of constellations and planets (a term which in this context also encompassed the sun and the moon) at the time of an individual’s birth. Based on the specific scenario, women might become tribades - which according to Claudius Ptolemy means behaving in a masculine manner and pursuing relationships with other women secretly or openly, with the most extreme possible configuration resulting in a propensity to refer to another woman as one’s “lawful wife” (Love Between…, p. 124-126). Once again, it’s not really possible to determine if this reflects a genuine convention - though it does more or less parallel how Megilla/Megillos describes her partner. Evaluating how accurate the available sources are is made even more difficult by the fact that the “masculinization” was often paired with other literary devices meant to cast relationships between women as an “alien” or immoral phenomenon. Quite commonly they could be described as something utterly foreign or anachronistic, as opposed to a part of everyday life in contemporary Rome (Love Between…, p. 42-44). The second century writer Iamblichos, author of the lost Babyloniaka, or at the very least the popularity of his work in antiquity, arguably represents an example of this phenomenon. On the moral level, Iamblichos considered love between women “wild and lawless”, though he simultaneously had no issue writing about it, one would assume for voyeuristic purposes. His novel is only known from a summary preserved by the Byzantine patriarch Photius, but apparently enjoyed a degree of popularity earlier on. It described an affair between Berenike, a fictional daughter of an unspecified ruler of Egypt (fwiw, multiple women from the Ptolemaic dynasty bore this name), and a woman named Mesopotamia (sic), and their eventual marriage (Love Between…, p. 51). In contrast with the other, more famous Babyloniaka by Berossos, no primordial fish people or sagacious rulers with unnaturally long life spans make an appearance. A daring project to combine the two has yet to be attempted. Jewish and Christian reception

The Greco-Roman condemnations of relationships between women was also adopted in early centuries CE by Jewish and Christian writers. In the former case a notable example is the Sfira, a rabbinic theological commentary on Leviticus composed at some point before 220 CE. The passage dealing with 18:3 - “You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt (... )and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan” - asserts that marriages between women were a custom among Egyptians and Canaanites. This is unlikely to be a faithful ethnographic report; rather, something perceived negatively is attributed exclusively to foreigners (Love Between…, p. 64-65). As far as Christian sources go, pretty similar rhetoric can also be found in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Love Between…, p. 64). Another notable early Christian author to adopt similar views was Clement of Alexandria, whose condemnations combined quotations from Paul’s letter, the apocryphal Apocalypse of Peter (which he viewed as canonical), and a host of Greek and Roman philosophers, most notably Plato - as you can guess, specifically the passage from Laws which already came up earlier (Love Between…, p. 320-321). He dedicates a lot of space to condemning marriages between women, which he describes as an “unspeakable practice” amounting to women imitating men (Love Between…, p. 322). It’s a part of a longer diatribe against even the slightest hints of gender nonconformity, which also condemns, among other things, men who shave their facial hair (Love Between…, p. 323-324). There’s a lot of other smash hits in Clement’s work, including an extensive section focused on, to put it colloquially, theological considerations about cum, very creative mixed religious-zoological approach to the digestive system of hares, as well as some more “mundane” but still pretty chilling apologia for domestic abuse, which I will spare you from. For an author from Alexandria, he also seems oddly ignorant about Egyptian sources, as at one point he claims that the fact Egyptians worship animals puts them morally ahead of Greeks, because animals do not commit adultery. I am sorry to report that adultery between Egyptian gods is, as a matter of fact, directly referenced in the magical papyri, which are roughly contemporary with Clement - specifically in PGM IV 94-153 (The Greek…, p. 39):

Concluding thoughts The sources discussed above are mostly supposed to illustrate that while it’s possible to study the prevailing attitudes among the contemporaries of the “protagonists” of the spells, it’s not really easy to say what their private lives were like. We don’t know how open they were about their preferences; how they presented; what, if any, label they used to refer to themselves. We can’t even ascertain if any of them were ever actually in relationships with other women, and whether the norm for women like them - if such norms even existed - was to pursue brief trysts or commitment for life, in parallel with aims of the authors of at least some of the heterosexual love spells (Love Between…, p.105-107).

In what after almost 30 years remains, as far as I am aware, the single publication with the most extensive discussion of the spells, Bernardette J. Brooten argued that since marriages between women are mentioned in five sources roughly contemporary with them - by Lucian of Samosata, Clement of Alexandria, Claudius Ptolemy, Iamblichos, and in the Sifra - they must have been an actually observed custom in Egypt in the early centuries CE. She argues that since marriages were basically personal legal agreements, it theoretically wouldn’t be impossible for two women to pursue such a solution (Love Between…, p. 66; note the fact the Sfira also refers to marriage between women as a Canaanite custom, which no primary sources from any period corroborate, is not addressed). I don’t think her intent was malicious, but I must admit I’m skeptical if it’s possible to reconstruct much chiefly based on sources which, as you could see in the previous section of the article, are mocking at best and openly hostile at worst, and a small handful of actual first hand testimonies which due to their genre sadly provide very little information. Sadly, we ironically can tell more about how the women from the spells thought corpse daimons functioned than how they envisioned the relationships they evidently desired.

To illustrate the difficulties facing researchers, imagine trying to reconstruct what the life of the average lesbian in the English-speaking world in the 2010s would be like with your sole points of reference being a single episode of a Netflix show with a mildly offensive gender nonconforming character, a press article written by an eastern European priest ranting about “gender ideology” imported from abroad corrupting children, a fanfic written by a homophobic weeb who jacks off to lesbian porn, and a small handful of contextless blog post actually written by wlw, but not necessarily entirely focused on anything related to her identity. The results wouldn’t be great, I’d imagine. The sources mustered by Brooten ultimately aren’t far from that, I’m afraid (I leave it as an intellectual exercise for you to determine which of the satirical modern comparisons applies to which) - thus it’s difficult for me not to see her conclusions as perhaps leaning too far into the direction of wishful thinking. But, in the end, wishful thinking is not innately bad - I’d be lying if I said I don’t have a host of personal hypotheses which fall into the same category (one of these days I will explain why I think a “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude doesn’t necessarily seem incompatible with Old Babylonian morals). Therefore, even though I’m more skeptical if the “protagonists” of the texts this article revolved around could truly pursue relationships on equal footing with other inhabitants of Roman Egypt, I can’t help but similarly hope that they found at least some semblance of happiness in the aftermath of the endeavors documented in the discarded magical formulas.

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purseowner4thequalityanimation · 3 months ago

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Hecate, Melinoe, "Ereschigal": when a name becomes the ship of Theseus?

(Triple Hecate on a magical apparatus from Sardis, via William Bruce and Kassandra Jackson Miller, Towards a Typology of Triangular Bronze Hekate Bases: Contextualizing a New Find from Sardis, p. 512; reproduced here for educational purposes only)

This article wasn’t planned in advance. It’s largely a side effect of trying to help a friend with tracking down a \specific source, the elusive reference to Melinoe from outside the Orphic Hymns, in order to determine whether it really treats her as interchangeable with Hecate. Investigating this topic revealed that it’s connected fairly closely with something I wanted to cover for a while already, namely the Greek (or rather Greco-Egyptian) magical papyri, a unique text corpus to a large degree focused on Hecate and in particular on supposed equations with a number of other figures, ranging from Selene, though Isis, to Mesopotamian Ereshkigal. The last of these cases is what I will focus on, as similarly as the supposed interchangeability of Hecate and Melinoe it is often presented online without context. While the two core goals of this article are establishing whether Melinoe really is just Hecate, a distinct but very Hecate-like figure, or something in between, and explaining whether references to “Hecate-Ereschigal” necessarily indicate some greater degree of familiarity with Mesopotamian theology, that’s not all I will cover. You will also be able to learn why Hecate gained an extra body in early centuries CE; whether it’s true that sources referring to her as genderfluid exist; which unexpected figure plays the role of messenger of Zeus in magical papyri; what the possible last known pre-modern reference to Ereshkigal has to do with Jewish angelology; and more!

Note that technically this is not my first Hecate article; I wrote one long ago - in the early days of this blog, probably around half a decade ago at the height of the initial covid lockdowns, if not in the even more distant past. However, it was subpar; for all intents and purposes, this is the first one which meets my modern standards.

The case of Melinoe

Melinoe appears in a very small number of sources, all of which are fairly well studied. In theory this makes her fairly easy to write about. However, she is also fairly unique in that I can’t think of many other mythological figures who arguably received an enormous boost in prominence specifically thanks to their online reception. This is a double edged sword. On one hand, unique sources reach more people than they would otherwise, at least indirectly.. On the other, misconceptions and misreadings are abundant. For this reason, a brief introduction to her will be necessary before evaluating what, if any, connection existed between her and Hecate.

There’s no strong reason to suspect Melinoe was ever particularly popular in antiquity - more on that soon - and she had negligible presence in art before quite recently. A notable exception is apparently an offhand reference to her in one of Hugo Grotius’ poems (Edwin Rabbie, Editing Neo-Latin Texts, p. 42). I was sadly unable to track it down - if you want to check for yourself, it is reportedly to be found on p. 359 in the 1992 anthology Original Poetry 1604–1608 (De Dichtwerken van Hugo Grotius, I 2 A/B 4).

Melinoe in the Orphic Hymns

Grotius relied on what was the only source about Melinoe available to him and his contemporaries - the Orphic Hymns. They remain a pretty important point of reference for researchers today, though not exactly due to the presence of Melinoe. Even though they’re relatively late and fairly esoteric (as expected from an orphic text corpus), they’re one of the best preserved collections of Greek hymns which were undeniably performed in a religious setting. We don’t know the full history of their transmission, though. They were hardly discussed in other literature before the fifteenth century, barring a single reference in a commentary on Hesiod’s Theogony which might date to the thirteenth (Daniel Malamis, The Orphic Hymns. Poetry and Genre, with a Critical Text and Translation, p. 1).

The full collection consists of eighty eight hymns, each dedicated to a different deity, ranging from major figures recognized virtually all over the at least partially Hellenized world, through personified abstract concepts, to local deities from the west of Asia Minor with few, if any, other attestations. Melinoe belongs to the last of these categories, alongside the likes of Mise, Hipta and Erikepaios (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 171-172). The seventy first hymn is dedicated to her. Multiple translations are available, the most recent one is Daniel Malamis’ (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 103):

The exact translation of some phrases remains a subject of heated debate, but the gist of it is fairly well understood: Persephone gives birth to a minor underworld goddess after Zeus impersonated Hades to seduce her. A minority position is that Melinoe somehow has two biological fathers (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 130). I’m not aware of any translator making it even remotely possible that Hades alone was her biological father - this is entirely an online misconception. There is no alternate account of her origin, the hymn is the only version - claims on the contrary are doubtlessly the result of online games of telephone. The friend whose Melinoe inquiry was a catalyst for this article informed me that there are online claims that the myth describes Hermes witnessing this event. It’s important to stress that nothing of that sort is evident here, as you can see for yourself - the only deities mentioned are Melinoe herself, Persephone, Zeus and Hades. I’d assume this misconception is the result of the river Cocytus also being mentioned in the hymn to Hermes Cthtonios (and nowhere else in the Orphic Hymns), which however doesn’t deal with Melinoe, let alone specifically with her birth (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 89):

To go back to the main topic, dedicating a lot of space to explaining the origin of Melinoe sets the hymn apart from the other eighty seven. It is possible that the compiler considered her obscure to the point it warranted explaining to their audience who she was by narrating her origin myth (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 266). As a result of this unusual focus, she receives very few epithets compared to most other deities praised in the Orphic Hymns. She shares this status with Nomos - in whose case the small number of epithets instead reflects the fact he was more a personified concept than a deity proper, though (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 270).

Thanks to the contents of the hymn, despite Melinoe’s obscurity we have a pretty solid idea about her character, too. At the very least for the compiler of the hymn, she was an appropriate deity to invoke to guarantee safe passage of the dead into the afterlife (Kassandra Jackson, ‘She who changes’ (Amibousa): a Re-examination of the Triangular Table from Pergamon, p. 465). Further insights might possibly be gained from her name, which has been variously interpreted as “gentle-minded” (from meilinói; this interpretation was seemingly proposed as early as in the sixteenth century, as evidenced by an anonymous translation into Latin explaining her name as placidae mentis) or “russet” (from mílinos), in this context a poetic way to describe the color of the moon (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 288).

The fact the hymn refers to Melinoe as a nymph warrants some further discussion as well. I haven’t seen this point raised in literature, but this would fit neatly with her presumed status as a minor goddess of strictly local importance. It was not uncommon for such figures to be labeled as nymphs when they were incorporated into the broader “Olympian” pantheon in one way or another, as attested for example for Callisto or Britomartis (Jennifer Larson, Greek Nymphs: Myth, Cult, Lore, p. 7).

A potential issue for this interpretation is that Melinoe doesn’t seem to correspond to any specific natural feature, though - the localized character of nymph cults reflected the fact that they typically corresponded to a specific river, mountain, island, et cetera (Greek Nymphs…, p. 9). Alcman mentions underworld nymphs (lampads) from the entourage of Hecate, but this reference is entirely isolated (Greek Nymphs…, p. 284; note the wikipedia article asserting they are referenced in Hesiod’s Theogony is essentially a hoax, though admittedly a fun, creative one). For what it’s worth, the term “nymph” might very well just be used metaphorically to indicate Melinoe was imagined as a young woman, though (Anne-France Morand, Études sur les Hymnes Orphiques, p. 182).

Nymph-centric deliberations aside, the fact that the hymn associates Melinoe with ghosts and more broadly with the underworld, and that she might even have an indirect lunar connection depending on which etymology of her name is correct, it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that it’s pretty much the academic consensus that overall her character was Hecate-like (though pretty obviously less multifaceted). The similarities even extend to terms used to refer to them (“saffron-robed” is a fairly common epithet of Hecate) and requests aimed at Melinoe in the hymn and at Hecate elsewhere (‘She who changes’ …, p. 465). However, as far as the Orphic Hymns are concerned, they are ultimately two separate goddesses (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 361). In the hymn dedicated to her, Hecate is actually portrayed as a veritable head of the pantheon (The Orphic Hymns…, p.165-166), directly addressed as the “queen of all cosmos” (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 27):

Ultimately it’s important to bear in mind that even if the compilers clearly cared about Melinoe enough to dedicate a separate hymn to her, they neither equated her with Hecate nor even attributed a comparable degree of importance to them. The investigation cannot end here, though. Melinoe has exactly one more further attestation.

Hecate-Melinoe, Hecate-Persephone, Hecate-Zagourê? The Pergamon tablet and its historical context

An illustration of the triangular magical tablet from Pergamon (wikimedia commons)

In addition to her considerably more famous role in the Orphic Hymns, Melinoe also makes a cameo on a peculiar object from Pergamon (The Orphic Hymns…, p.172). It dates to the third century CE. In contrast with the hymns, it doesn’t provide much mythological or theological information about her. It’s not even really a proper text. Rather, it’s a triangular tablet inscribed with a long series of epithets of Hecate, arranged into three columns under three depictions of her placed in the corners (‘She who changes’ …, p. 457).

In this context, Melinoe is explicitly one of Hecate’s (many) names (‘She who changes’ …, p. 464-465). This is presumed to reflect a level of familiarity with both figures sufficient to establish they were similar enough to warrant an equation (Richard Gordon, Another View of the Pergamon Divination Kit, p. 198). It’s also worth noting that Melinoe’s presence in the inscription was one of the arguments which lead to the formation of the generally accepted view that the Orphic Hymns must have been originally composed somewhere in the proximity of Pergamon, at least more broadly in western Anatolia (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 171-174).

This doesn’t mean we should conclude the Orphic Hymns were also written with the same arrangement in mind, though. Equation in a specific context doesn’t mean two figures can be considered interchangeable. It’s hard to think of better proof than the fact not only Melinoe, but also Persephone is reinterpreted as a title of Hecate on the Pergamon tablet (‘She who changes’ …, p. 466). It’s hardly the only magical text to do so (Eleni Pachoumi, The Concepts of the Divine in the Greek Magical Papyri, p. 130-131). It is probably relevant that a tradition in which Hecate was a daughter of Demeter is also attested - sparsely, but still. It might even be alluded to in Eurypides’ Ion, where Enodia is addressed as such (Ljuba Merlina Bortolani, Magical Hymns from Roman Egypt. A Study of Greek and Egyptian Traditions of Divinity, p. 232).

Hecate actually gets a fair share of other names which usually would refer to independent figures on the discussed tablet; the two cases discussed above aren’t unique in that regard. Some of the other notable examples include Leukophryne (“of the gleaming brow”), a designation used exclusively for the local form of Artemis worshiped in Magnesia on the Meander; Dione (sic); and even the angel Zagourê (“he whose fire glows), best known from the Eighth Book of Moses and other magical papyri, a genre of text I will soon go back to (‘She who changes’ …, p. 463-466).

While as far as I am aware the last equation is unique, as a curiosity it might be worth noting that the words angele and angelos were actually sometimes used to describe Hecate elsewhere (for example by Hesychius), usually in the literal sense, to reflect moving between the underworld, the earth and Olympus (Rangar Cline, Ancient Angels. Conceptualizing Angeloi in the Roman Empire, p. 49). It’s tempting to speculate that perhaps this is why the author of the Perhamon tablet opted to equate her with a specific angelos they were vaguely familiar with - it’s not like the text preserved any distinct information about Zagourê’s character.

The Pergamon tablet isn’t unique - similar objects also inscribed with long series of Hecate names are known from Sardis and Apamea (Towards a Typology…, p. 509) - but as they don’t mention Melinoe I won’t discuss them here in detail. All three of these extensive collections of Hecate names reflect the same phenomenon, though. In late antiquity Hecate’s defining feature was arguably being “many-named” and “many-formed” (The Concept…, p. 137). It’s tempting to assume that the standard three bodied Hecate depictions, which the average person would be well familiar with, made her particularly suitable for equations with goddesses who shared some of her characteristics - which, as I outlined above, is definitely the case for Melinoe.

It's also important to stress that there was a pretty universal religious anxiety over getting the names and titles of deities wrong or omitting an important one, though. Simultaneously, it was believed that it pleases a deity to hear many of them, say, in a hymn in their honor; and, furthermore, that they could be compelled to act by sufficient familiarity with their names (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 218-219). It’s easy to imagine how this would influence composition of texts focused on a goddess whose very nature required turning this focus on names and titles up to eleven. Given that Melinoe is not attested on any other similar artifact, perhaps she was included just in case due to such a concern? Ultimately this is pure speculation on my part, though, and it’s equally if not more plausible that she is included only in this one list simply because she was exclusively worshiped relatively close to where it was found.

The long strings of names and magical formulas on the Pergamon tablet and other similar objects are also significant for a further reason: they make it possible to establish a connection with a specific corpus of Greco-Egyptian esoterica, the late antique magical papyri. The owners of the tablets were not necessarily actually well versed in Egyptian religious texts of the sort passed down in temple scriptoriums, but it does seem they knew enough about them to attempt to use the same principles - which is reflected, among other things, in the long strings of names assigned to Hecate (Another View…, p. 197-198). Melinoe is not attested in any of these texts (‘She who changes’ …, p. 465), and her role in this article as a result ends here.

Before I can move on to the second case of a peculiar link between Hecate and another deity I'd like to discuss, a brief introduction to the magical papyri themselves will be necessary.

A brief introduction to magical papyri

“Greek magical papyri” and “Papyri graecae magicae” (PGM) are the modern conventional names designating a corpus of unusual texts from, as you can probably guess, Egypt.

The earliest example known dates to the fourth century BCE, but most are significantly younger (Jacco Dieleman, The Greco-Egyptian Magical Papyri in Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic, p. 316). While they were composed under Roman rule, between the second and fifth centuries CE, the only languages used in them are Greek, and less commonly Demotic, with no trace of Latin. This is pretty much in line with other texts from Roman Egypt. It was culturally Hellenized through the period of Ptolemaic rule, but it never really became Romanized to a comparable degree, and Latin was restricted to military administration (Magical Hymns…, p. 3-4).

Why are these papyri “magical”? Despite involving deities and frequently referencing specific myths, they generally describe rituals which took place in private houses, as opposed to temples. The stated aims often can be only described as petty (securing the love of another person, gaining material wealth, or even a specific outcome in a chariot race…), and require some rather unorthodox solutions, like quite literally blackmailing deities, ghosts or other supernatural beings. Many of the texts also stress that their contents should remain secret. Thus, referring to them as “magical” rather than broadly “religious” literature is seen as optimal by researchers, to stress that they don’t represent the official temple cults, but rather a distinct sphere of activity (Magical Hymns…, p. 14).

It needs to be pointed out that modern terminology reflects the Greek (and Roman) outlook more than Egyptian. The closest Egyptian term to “magic”, heka (ḥkȝ) originally referred to something that was ultimately a prerogative of temple priests, rather than an unofficial application of religious principles to private ends (Magical Hymns…, p. 16-18). Since at least some of the authors of the magical papyri were Egyptian priests, possibly ones who sought new sources of income in changing times (Magical Hymns…, p. 23-24), it is possible that they deliberately reinvented their practices for a new clientele to meet their expectations (Magical Hymns…, p. 19). It was pretty clearly important to make sure the clients were satisfied - at least some of the texts were composed ad hoc for specific unique cases (Magical Hymns…, p. 277). While the magical formulas were innovative and had no direct antecedents, they were deliberately presented as a secret ancient tradition to imbue them with more authority. Sometimes they were outright claimed to be passed down from famous historical authors or religious figures, ranging from Pythagoras, through Manetho, to Moses, or even deities, typically ones heavily associated with magic like Hermes or Isis (The Greco-Egyptian…, p. 312-313).

The magical papyri feature a plenty of unusual technical terms known as voces magicae. They’re magical formulas with no actual meaning which in the context of the magical papyri might have been treated as secret names of deities. While it is possible some of them were garbled transcriptions of words originating in Egyptian or in Semitic languages, many are pure gibberish, like sequences of vowels (aeēiouō is a genuine example) or invented palindromes (The Greco-Egyptian…, p. 285). The formulas sometimes label the voces magicae as Hebrew, Aramaic or Meriotic, but this is obviously not true - at best, it can be assumed that to the customers of the experts preparing the magical papyri they sounded sufficiently “alien” for these labels to be believable (The Greco-Egyptian…, p. 309-311). Some authors of the papyri evidently went even further, and claimed that the abra cadabra formulas represent the language of animals, for example falcons or baboons (The Greco-Egyptian…, p. 311-312):

The case of “Ereschigal”

It probably comes as no surprise that most of the deities frequently invoked in the magical papyri are Greek (Helios, Hermes, Hecate, Selene, etc.), Egyptian (Isis, Osiris, Seth, Bes, etc.) or, like Serapis, somewhere in between (The Concepts…, p. 10). What is less obvious is why a few of them contain references to Mesopotamian Ereshkigal - or rather “Ereschigal” (Ἐρεσχιγὰλ), to remain true to the Greek spelling. In a single case a Demotic form is attested, but it reflects the Greek one, and doesn’t represent an independent borrowing from any language spoken in Mesopotamia (Daniel Schwemer, Beyond Ereškigal? Mesopotamian Magic Traditions in the Papyri Graecae Magicae, p. 67). What is perhaps even more surprising is that her name is effectively treated as a byname of Hecate - one of the spells is directly labeled as directed towards “Hecate-Ereschigal” (The Concepts..., p. 21).

A crash course in Ereshkigal’s career, from Early Dynastic Lagash to Seleucid Uruk

Ereshkigal is a well attested deity, with a fair share of up to date publications dealing with her to booth. Sadly, as I’ve noticed while working on this article there’s a fairly significant issue with coverage of her in literature dealing with the magical papyri. In many cases even the authors of the most recent, rigorous publications in this field often seem to be far behind when it comes to Assyriology, and depend on and recommend questionable old scholarship. For instance, while I recommend Magical Hymns from Roman Egypt overall - it’s all over this article as a source, and I had a blast reading it - I really think it’s not ideal to use “Kramer 1960” (let alone “Wolkstein and Kramer 1981”) as the main points of reference. For this reason, I feel obliged to at least briefly discuss her history and character here. By the time Ereshkigal got to appear in the magical papyri, she was already a figure with a remarkably long history. She is attested in the textual record for the first time in an offering list from the reign of Urukagina, an Early Dynastic king of Lagash, from around 2370 BCE or so. The even earlier textual sources, like god lists from Fara and Abu Salabikh or the Zame Hymns, don’t mention her at all, though (Dina Katz, The Image of the Netherworld in the Sumerian Sources, p. 386).

Lu-Utu’s inscription on a dedicatory cone among other similar objects (British Museum; reproduced here for educational purposes only) While Ereshkigal’s very name - “queen of the great earth” - is probably intended to hint at her role as the queen of the underworld, the first text which explicitly characterizes her as such is an inscription of a certain Lu-Utu. He served as the governor of Umma in the Sargonic period (ca. 2300 BCE), probably between the reigns of Manishtushu and Naram-Sin (The Image…, p. 355).

There are actually no other known dedicatory inscriptions mentioning Ereshkigal, Lu-Utu’s is one of a kind (The Image…, p. 352). Overall her cult evidently had a small scope, and later attestations of offerings made to her, let alone sanctuaries dedicated to her, are uncommon (Frans Wiggermann, Nergal A in RlA vol. 9, p. 220). She is also absent from theophoric names, which makes her an outlier even as far as underworld deities go. However, it’s possible that the likes of Nergal or Ninazu would be primarily invoked in this context as the tutelary gods of their cities, not lords of the underworld (Wilfred G. Lambert, Lugal-edinna in RlA vol. 7, p. 137). The bulk of attestations of Ereshkigal are literary texts, chiefly from the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000-1600 BCE) and the Neo-Assyrian period (911-612 BCE).

As far as I am aware, there is only one notable cuneiform text corpus dealing in any capacity with Ereshkigal which have some temporal overlap with the (early) magical papyri - the administrative texts from Seleucid Uruk. They mention the existence of a “temple of Ereshkigal” in the city, though this term might actually refer to a cemetery, not a temple - or at least to a sanctuary directly connected to a graveyard (Julia Krul, “Prayers from Him Who Is Unable to Make Offerings”: The Cult of Bēlet-ṣēri at Late Babylonian Uruk, p. 74). Interpreting the term as something more than just an elaborate synonym for a graveyard is the easiest way to explain references to sacrifices made to Ereshkigal, though. These are at the very least implied by a set of instructions pertaining to daily offerings, according to which she couldn’t receive beef or fowl; in contrast with the other regulations (it is self-explanatory why Ningublaga, a cattle god, would be displeased to receive beef) the underlying logic remains unclear (Prayers from…, p. 62). However, even then, it was not really Ereshkigal herself who was actively worshiped - rather, it was her scribe Belet-Seri who enjoyed newfound popularity in Seleucid Uruk (Prayers from…, p. 76-77). Ereshkigal most likely was seen as an unapproachable, distant figure, just like before, and as such was hardly worshiped directly (Prayers from…, p. 75).

Julia Krul argues that Ereshkigal’s presence in the pantheon of Seleucid Uruk reflected diffusion of earlier knowledge about her status as Inanna’s sister, courtesy of the loose Neo-Assyrian adaptation of Inanna’s Descent (Prayers from…, p. 75). I’m skeptical myself - as pointed out by Alhena Gadotti, the term might very well be used as an honorary title, not necessarily as an indication of actual kinship (‘Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld’ and the Sumerian Gilgamesh Cycle, p. 13). No independent evidence for the existence of such a tradition exists, and the very same myth has ample evidence for use of kinship terms as titles - Ninshubur refers to three separate gods as “father” despite none of them ever being actually viewed as her family. It’s also worth pointing out that in Nergal and Ereshkigal Ereshkigal is addressed as the sister of all of the gods when an invitation is sent to her, which obviously can’t be literal. This is ultimately a digression; I plan to go back to this point in a separate article eventually, though - consider this a teaser.

Putting abstract considerations aside, to sum up Ereshkigal didn’t offer a very good parallel to Hecate, not least simply because she was not exactly commonly worshiped - while Hecate is arguably attested primarily in the sphere of cult. Furthermore, while she does appear in Mesopotamian magical texts (āšipūtu), she doesn’t play a particularly major role in them (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 67), and in contrast with deities such as Ea as Ningirima she was hardly a “deity of magic”. You probably could make an argument that if anything Ereshkigal offers a closer parallel to Hades - in the god list An = Anum a mini-section even lists names which did double duty both as her bynames and terms for the underworld (Wilfed G. Lambert, Ryan D. Winters, An = Anum and Related Lists, p. 24); the most notable example is easily Irkalla (An = Anum..., p. 196). However, as I’ll try to demonstrate in the next section, the matter of interpretatio graeca is not quite as simple as “the character of these two overlaps, so they ought to be analogous”.

Some notes on interpretatio graeca

Interpretatio graeca is a tricky subject in its own right. Equivalencies weren’t necessarily recognized universally. It goes without saying the perspective of Greeks and foreigners could vary considerably, too. For example, to Greeks the Lycian and Lydian goddess Maliya (Malis) was simply a nymph, as evident in her portrayal in Theocritus’ Idylls (Annic Payne, Native Religious Traditions from a Lydian Perspective, p. 242). However, both to Lycians and Lydians she was a counterpart of Athena - partially due to shared association with craftsmanship, partially because the Lycian kings wanted to emulate Athens politically in one way or another, and sought to portray their tutelary goddess as Athena-like (Eric A. Raimond, Hellenization and Lycian Cults During the Achaemenid Period, p. 153-154; Native Religious…, p. 241).

Oxus depicted in the form of Marsyas (wikimedia commons) Equations could be made based on very superficial similarity. For example, in Bactria a river god regarded as the head of the local pantheon, Oxus, came to be associated with Marsias (sic), and was depicted under the guise of the latter. This was the result of a random twist of fate - Greeks settling in Bactria after the conquests of Alexander largely came from Magnesia (Mary Boyce, Frantz Grenet, A History of Zoroastrianism, vol. III: Zoroastrianism under Macedonian and Roman rule, p. 180; Boris A. Litvinskii, Igor R. Pichikian, The Hellenistic Architecture and Art of the Temple of the Oxus, p. 57-58). Since Marsias was the namesake river god of the main river flowing through this area, he was effectively THE river god to them - and thus upon encounter with a different river god a transfer of iconography was possible. The fact the two shared few, if any, characteristics otherwise was of no importance. Needless to say, nobody ever recognized Marsias himself as king of the gods; but his river-related lore was sufficient for his iconography to be borrowed.

A possible Hellenistic depiction of Nanaya (wikimedia commons) This case is still not quite as outlandish as the official Seleucid policy of recognizing Nanaya as the counterpart of Artemis, which is yet another example of politically motivated interpretatio. There’s an obvious difference right off the bat - Nanaya was associated with eroticism first and foremost, Artemis demonstrably… wasn’t; the same goes for her association with hunting, a sphere of influence Nanaya had nothing to do with. The lack of similar traits was of no real concern, though - Seleucids simply needed local deities who could be presented as counterparts of their dynastic triad of Zeus, Apollo and Artemis. Marduk as a typical pantheon head made a decent fit for Zeus (despite lack of any real connection to the weather), Nabu as his son and, broadly speaking, a deity linked to the arts (primarily scribal, but hey, close enough) was proclaimed the counterpart of Apollo (Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Nabû and Apollo: The Two Faces of Seleucid Religious Policy, p. 20)… and Nanaya, as a Nabu-adjacent goddess, got to be Artemis (Nabû and Apollo…, p. 27). The fact Apollo and Artemis were siblings, while Nabu and Nanaya were not, was not an issue. It’s probably down to chance that it was Nanaya and not Tashmetum, who had a stronger and older claim to an association with Nabu who got this role, really - not that Tashmetum would be a much better match character-wise.

In particularly extreme cases it’s hard to attribute specific cases of interpretatio graeca to anything but confabulation about a deity one Greek author or another had only the vaguest idea of. Perhaps most notably, Herodotus (in)famously asserted that Persian Mitra was Aphrodite in a passage where he generally makes many claims about her foreign equivalents and moe broadly on foreign cults which make at best limited sense (Albert F. de Jong, Traditions of the Magi. Zoroastrianism in Greek and Latin Literature, p. 107-110). His mistake was repeated by Ambrosius, but to be entirely fair to Greeks and Romans, those two are outliers in this case, and other authors (notably Strabo and Nonnus, but not only them) were at the very least aware that Mithra was a male solar deity and/or that he presided over oaths, even if some of them were confused if he was Persian or Mesopotamian (Traditions of…, p. 286-288).

A unique problem with Hecate and interpretatio graeca is that in many cases we can’t really say much about the deities she was associated with in that capacity, which makes it difficult to determine what shared qualities or historical circumstances lead to the development of a close association. The likes of Roman Trivia or Thessalian Enodia are not exactly well represented in the historical record, to put it very lightly; they’re effectively epithets more than distinct deities which can be discussed in any meaningful capacity. There’s also the even more extreme case of Lydian Nenenene (sic). It’s not hard to find the assumption she was associated with Hecate in scholarship (ex. The Concepts…, p. 132), though the only evidence available is a partially preserved stela with a dedication to her found in Kula. The modern assumption rests entirely on the goddess preserved on it appearing distinctly Hecate-like thanks to the presence of a dog next to her, as no other attestations of Nenenene are available (Eda Nalan Akyürek Şahin, The Cult fo Hecate in Lydia: Evidence from the Manisa Museum, p. 38).

Ereschigal: deity, epithet, vox magica?

At first glance, even taking the difference in their respective characters, the case of Ereshkigal and Hecate might appear easier to parse just because the latter is pretty obviously nowhere near as ephemeral as Enodia or Nenenene. However, in reality the available information about her reception is at best troublesome to interpret.

Ereshkigal is not attested in Greek literature at all outside of the magical papyri and related objects, such as curse tablets and apotropaic gems (Magical Hymns…, p. 236). No cultic activity involving her is attested in areas where any of them were found (Korshi Dosoo, Magical Names: Tracing Religious Changes in Egyptian Magical Texts from Roman and Early Islamic Egypt, p. 123). To make it all even more complicated, not even once does the name appear in a context which would indicate any familiarity with Mesopotamian sources going beyond the awareness that Ereshkigal was an underworld deity. No epithets, no references to motifs from Mesopotamian literature, virtually nothing. When specific attributes are listed, they’re invariably those of Hecate or Persephone (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 66-67).

Of course, it is clear that at least the initial stage of transfer must have involved people who possessed some basic familiarity with the structure of the Mesopotamian pantheon, After all, even if none of the attributes are Ereshkigal’s, and no text where the name appears shows any familiarity with specific Mesopotamian myths or with Mesopotamian magical slash exorcisitic literature (the already mentioned āšipūtu), it is consistently clear it was understood the name designated a figure closely associated with the underworld. However, it’s hard to disagree with the view that the authors and compilers of the available texts mentioning “Ereschigal” pretty clearly had neither detailed knowledge about her character and position in Mesopotamian theology, nor much interest in it.

Daniel Schwemer actually suggests the lack of familiarity might be central to why “Hecate-Ereschigal” arose in the first place. He suggests that the sole purpose of incorporating Ereshkigal into magical formulas was to provide Hecate with a sufficiently unusual, inexplicable new name, without much concern for its original context (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 67). He argues that the familiarity with her was so limited that it’s distinctly possible the transfer might have been indirect, though he doesn’t speculate about the identity of middlemen this scenario would require (Beyond Ereškigal…, 78).

If Schwemer is correct - and I see no reason to doubt him - we’re essentially dealing with a ship of Theseus. “Ereschigal” was understood by the magicians compiling and using magical papyri not as a distinct deity whose interpretatio graeca was Hecate, but merely as a title of Hecate, with associations derived from the latter’s character (more on that later). Rather than a strictly Mesopotamian contribution to the world of magical papyri, it is to be classified among ephemeral entities and formulas such as Abraxas or Sesengenbarpharanges (Magical Names…, p. 123). Or, to use a more modern example - somewhere near hocus pocus and abracadabra, if hocus pocus and abracadabra could be personified and assigned as names to one deity or another.

Of course, determining that still leaves many questions about the process of its transmission open - not least the problem of middlemen I mentioned already. Hopefully future research will shed more light on it. I’m fairly hopeful myself - it’s worth noting that a few years after publication of the article I relied on here, a team of researchers from the University of Würzburg lead by Schwemer received a pretty sizeable grant from the German Research Foundation specifically for a project meant to focus on comparative studies of magical papyri and other texts from similar genres.

A remarkable Syriac drawing of the archangel Gabriel (wikimedia commons) Speculation about future research aside, for additional context it’s worth noting that the adaptation of a name without much concern for its original context is not entirely without parallel in the magical papyri. For example, the names of archangels Gabriel and Michael frequently appear as “secret” names of invoked deities, in some cases respectively Anubis or Thoth, or alternatively with solar gods or astral bodies (Magical Hymns…, p. 68). Ereshkigal’s case ultimately remains unique in other regards, though - her name is actually the only Mesopotamian theonym to appear in the magical papyri (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 66). There technically are two other potential suspects, but both cases are at best dubious.

Shamash, Semea, Nebutosualeth: Mesopotamian or magical?

The lack of references to Mesopotamian deities in the magical papyri might seem surprising, especially in comparison to the numerous sources affirming that reception of other arts and sciences, especially astronomy, was widespread. However, it’s important to note that there is actually very little evidence for interactions between specialists involved in Mesopotamian magic and their Egyptian (let alone Greek) counterparts. We do know that scholars and ritual experts from Syria, Anatolia and Egypt were present in the Neo-Assyrian court a few centuries before the composition of the bulk of the magical papyri, which might be relevant here, but this ultimately remains pure speculation (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 64).

As far as the dubious cases of Mesopotamian influence go, a handful of attestations of Shamash (Σαμας) are available, and they at the very least indicate knowledge of this name belonging to a solar god. In one case this theonym is mashed together with a Greek spelling of Ra into the unique “Samas-Phrēth” (Σαμασφρηθ). However, nothing really indicates we’re necessarily dealing with the Mesopotamian Shamash. None of the passages preserve any material which would require adoption of a Mesopotamian figure. In fact, the god is typically labeled as “Canaanite”, “Phoenician” or “Syro-Palestinian” in scholarship in this case (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 67-68). This might come as a surprise to some readers, since there’s a fairly common online trend of referring to distinctly feminine Shapash as “Caananite” or even “Phoenician”, but this theonym is exclusive to Ugarit, which was basically its own thing, and ceased to exist in the Bronze Age collapse. Meanwhile, Phoenicians spelled the name of their solar deity, who was male, with a m - so it is perfectly believable that we’re dealing with him in this case, not with the identically named Mesopotamian god, let alone the Ugaritic goddess. It’s worth noting that Phoenician conception of the solar god shows the influence of analogous Egyptian motifs (Manfred Krebernik, Sonnengott A. V. in RlA vol. 12, p. 616) - which I believe might be relevant here in the light of the pairing with Ra. The phonetically similar name Semea (Σημέα) which appears in formulas addressed to solar deities is most likely derived not from a theonym, but from the ordinary Hebrew word for sun, which was seemingly adopted as a “secret” term for the astral body (cf. σημεα inscribed on gems with compilations of such terms; Magical Hymns…, p. 124). -

The other alleged at least partially Mesopotamian theonym is the term Nebutosualeth (or Neboutosoualēth; νεβουτοσουαλήθ), sometimes held to be derived from the name of the god Nabu. For what it’s worth, Nabu was a popular deity through much of the first millennium BCE, and as I mentioned earlier at least some Greeks must have had some exposure to him thanks to official Seleucid policy. However, there’s no strong evidence for this etymology, and it doesn’t account for the origin of… well, the rest of it, really. Even if the first four letters are superficially similar to Nabu’s name, the rest bears no resemblance to any of his epithets (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 67).

Similarly as in the case of “Ereschigal”, Nebutosualeth doesn’t appear in any contexts which would reflect Mesopotamian tradition (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 67). However, this term typically also shows up in lists of voces magicae describing Hecate. It has been proposed that three of them, which at times appear in sequence - Ereschigal, Neboutosoualēth and Aktiōphi (ἀκτιῶφι; meaning unknown) - were designations of the three moon phases associated with triple Hecate (Magical Hymns…, p. 237). For what it’s worth, Neboutosoualēth is explicitly a lunar goddess acting on behalf of Helios (or rather “Barzan Boubarzan Narzazouzan Barzabouzath Helios”) at night in the London-Leiden papyrus (Jacco Dieleman, Priests, Tongues, and Rites. The London-Leiden Magical Manuscripts and Translation in Egyptian Ritual (100–300 CE), p. 124).

The moon god Sin on an Ur III cylinder seal (wikimedia commons) Needless to say, this would reflect ideas about the moon and deities associated with it typical for Greek culture. In Mesopotamia, the moon was invariably imagined as a male deity, and the same holds true for virtually all the other cultures across the “cuneiform world” (Manfred Krebernik, Mondgott A. I. In Mesopotamien in RlA vol. 8, p. 360).

A Ptolemaic depiction of Wadjet from Edfu (wikimedia commons) As a curiosity it’s worth noting that an alternate proposal is that Neboutosoualēth was derived from Egyptian nbt-wḏȝt, “lady Wadjet” (Uto in Greek), though it also has no strong evidence behind it (Magical Hymns…, p. 237). I think it warrants further inquiries, though, not least because both the magical papyri and a variety of earlier sources actually associate Hecate with snakes (Magical Hymns…, p. 233).

While this is unrelated to the matter of Mesopotamian influence on the magical papyri (or lack thereof), as a curiosity it’s worth noting that least one more of Hecate’s epithets attested in them is at the very least an allusion to voces magicae. The unique Borborophorba (βορβοροφόρβα) from the “love spell of attraction in the presence of heroes or gladiators or those who died violently” (ἀγωγὴ ἐπὶ ἡρώων ἢ μονομάχων ἢ βιαίων) literally means “one who feeds on filth/mud”. However, it has been argued that instead of designating Hecate as some sort of Greco-Egyptian analog of Aztec Tlazeotl or something along these lines, it is effectively an attempt at smashing syllables commonly used in voces magicae both in the papyri and elsewhere into a semi-coherent name. The meaning was most likely of secondary importance, though, and the primary goal might have been to get something sounding vaguely like the barking of a dog (Magical Hymns…, p. 230).

deities in the magical papyri are limited to literature from the early twentieth century, and have been long since abandoned. Most of them were incredibly short lived, and depended entirely on superficial phonetic similarities between voces magicae and Mesopotamian theonyms (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 68). One such proposal warrants some further comments, though, despite being disproved - the assumption that the deity Iao (Ιαω) is Mesopotamian Ea (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 68). I would argue that this assumption was actually sound on some level - Ea (Enki, not to be confused with another unrelated Enki, though) was THE god of magic (not the only one, to be fair, but by far the most prominent). He’s all over āšipūtu literature (as a matter of fact, this art was traditionally represented as his invention), and continued to be worshiped well into Hellenistic times. When cuneiform was arguably at the peak of its prestige, in the second millennium BCE, he was known virtually everywhere from Hattusa all the way up to Susa - and in at least some areas he persisted outside Mesopotamia into the first millennium BCE. It would actually be much easier to explain how a Greek or Egyptian might have stumbled upon him despite limited familiarity with Mesopotamian sources than it is in the case of Ereshkigal.

And yet, Iao is actually not Ea. As it turned out, the reality is much stranger than the early interpretation of the name in scholarship was. Yao is actually a Greek adaptation of the tetragrammaton. The result is effectively a new deity, as opposed to simply YHVH placed in a new context, though (Magical Hymns…, p. 67-68). A short hymn to Apollo preserved in one of the magical papyri describes him as a messenger of Zeus (Magical Hymns…, p. 62). The name also pops up in some gnostic sources, reinterpreted as an archon, which is also attested for a number of other designations for the Abrahamic capital g God (Magical Hymns…, p. 68). That’s well beyond the scope of this article, though.

The references to Iao, as well as a variety of angels, reflect a broader phenomenon: ultimately, while outliers such as Ereshkigal, Shamash or Mitra can be identified, in addition to Greek and Egyptian only Jewish culture is represented to a bigger degree in this text corpus. This is not accidental: religious specialists from these three cultures were all present in Egypt in the relevant periods, and in at least some cases competed for clients. Combining elements from potentially competing traditions could give one an edge in this peculiar supernatural marketplace (The Greco-Egyptian…, p. 284-285).

“Ereschigal” beyond Hecate, Hecate beyond “Ereschigal”

While the other references to Mesopotamian deities in the magical papyri turned out to be dubious at the absolute best, it’s worth highlighting that there are a few cases in the magical papyri where the title Ereschigal is applied not to Hecate, but instead Isis or Aphrodite (Magical Hymns…, p. 236). Needless to say, this doesn’t match Mesopotamian evidence either, and I think it’s safe to say in both cases we are dealing with situations dependent on the associations between these goddesses and Hecate.

A Roman period depiction of Isis (wikimedia commons)

The identification between Hecate and Isis is an incredibly well documented phenomenon - I’m actually shocked how rarely it comes up outside of academic literature, honestly. It depended on two points of connection: like Hecate, Isis was associated with magic; and via a link to the star Sirius (Sothis), she was an astral (though obviously not lunar - deities associated with the moon were invariably male in Egypt) deity. It should be noted that Isis actually had no consistent interpretatio graeca, though, and based on which of her characteristics was emphasized could be variously linked not only with Hecate, but also with Demeter, Persephone, Cybele, Selene, Artemis, Aphrodite, Tyche or Nemesis (Magical Hymns…, p. 9-10; additionally p. 235 for the last two). It should be remembered that in many cases these one-off instances of syncretism had a political motive behind them, since Isis was regarded as a source of authority and legitimacy for rulers - this doesn’t necessarily mean the average person believed she was essentially a slurry of goddesses from all over the ancient Mediterranean (Magical Hymns…, p. 10). Sadly, questionable vintage scholarship lives on, in some cases leading to what Aren Wilson-Wright aptly describes as “Frazerian” attempts to present her as interchangeable even with deities she had nothing to do with, like Inanna (sic) or Tanit (Athtart. The Transmission and Transformation of a Goddess in the Late Bronze Age, p. 9).

As for Aphrodite, the matter is more complex. Her association with Hecate seemingly reflected the development of a new, quadruple form of the latter, which required the addition of a fourth deity to the common Hecate-Selene-Artemis set representing the phases of the moon (Magical Hymns…, p. 294). Hecate with “four faces, four names, (...) of the four roads” is attested in a hymnic passage from a text labeled simply as a “spell of attraction” - which also mentions Aphrodite in relation to her, in addition to the expected closely associated goddesses (Magical Hymns…, p. 283). The rise of quadruple Hecate appears to be the result of astronomical developments. As explained by the second century CE astronomer Cleomedes, while earlier on Greeks only recognized three phases of the moon - the crescent, the half moon and the full moon - in his times this number changed to four, with gibbous as a new addition. This also required the addition of a fourth face to the triple depictions of lunar deities (Magical Hymns…, p. 294). As a curiosity it’s worth nothing a late reference to four-faced lunar Hecate can be found in the writings of the sixth century Byzantine official John Lydus, who states that this was a visual representation of the moon’s control over the four elements - pretty clearly a secondary, philosophically motivated reinterpretation (Magical Hymns…, p. 293). The new moon seemingly had no direct impact on the notion of three-bodied lunar Hecate (or any other deity who came to share this characteristic). However, it does show up in the magical papyri in association with her in a slightly different context. According to one of them, the “inscription to the waning moon” (δέλτος ἀποκρουστικὴν πρὸς Σελήνην), it was easier for a magician to command Hecate to specific ends during the new moon. The spell bolsters the effects by having the performer make it clear they are aware of that, and pretend to be “Hermes-Thoth” and claim to know how to prolong the new moon forever just in case (Magical Hymns…, p. 251). This is seemingly a reflection of a motif already common in earlier Egyptian magical texts. It was believed that it was possible for a priest to influence, or even control, a deity by showing a high level of knowledge about their sphere of influence and using it to own advantage, or by threatening to cease to perform or to disturb regular temple services in their honor (Magical Hymns…, p. 253).

It has to be stressed that the connection between Aphrodite and (quadruple) Hecate is limited to only one of the magical papyri (Magical Hymns…, p. 293). There’s also a number of indirect connections between the two, though. Both of them were, in different contexts, linked with Isis, which might have facilitated the incorporation of Aphrodite into Hecate’s circle in the aforementioned magical papyrus (Magical Hymns…, p. 296). While this is less relevant, it’s also worth noting in Samothrace both could be linked with the local goddess Zerynthia (Magical Hymns…, p. 292). It’s worth noting that in addition to the singular case of apparent conflation, some of the magical papyri show what can be described as encroachment of Hecate upon spheres of influence normally associated with Aphrodite. In multiple cases she is invoked in erotic spells (Magical Hymns…, p. 289). As a matter of fact, they represent the single largest group of formulas invoking her (Another View…, p. 193) In one case this role might be underscored by turning the name of Peitho, the personification of persuasion frequently associated with Aphrodite and further with the nymph Iynx (a personified love charm, basically), into a further epithet for her (Magical Hymns…, p. 288). The only reference to Hecate in a vaguely erotic context outside of the magical papyri I am aware of can be found in Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica, though it’s hardly comparable. He states that dreams involving having sex with Hecate are an ill omen, “even if one delights in it” (Daniel E. Harris-McCoy, Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica. Text, Translation & Commentary, p. 149). Curiously, going by the same source, it’s the opposite in the case of Selene - it’s an auspicious omen as long as you are, to paraphrase, a shipowner, helmsman, merchant, or at least examine the heavens, enjoy traveling or wander frequently. Otherwise - it’s a sign you’ll suffer from edema (Artemidorus’ Oneirocitica…, p. 149, 151). Excursus: genderfluid Hecate?

Putting the auspicious and inauspicious implications of dreams aside, the lunar connections of Hecate might be responsible for perhaps the single most unexpected aspect of her character attested exclusively in the magical papyri. A few of them attribute a degree of androgyny to her (Magical Hymns…, p. 259). In the already mentioned “inscription to the waning moon”, she is referred to as possessing “the heart of a man” and as “manly” (Magical Hymns…, p. 247). While Athena or Artemis could be sometimes metaphorically described in other sources in similar terms due to associations with pursuits conventionally regarded in masculine by ancient Greeks, in Hecate’s case the matter is much more complicated.

There might also be a lunar angle to it as well, though - Mene is a title of Selene with strictly lunar connotations, so it’s possible that the underlying idea was that Hecate slash Selene had different forms tied to different moon phases, with gender as one of the characteristics which shifted as the lunar cycle progressed (Magical Hymns…, p. 259). The fact lunar deities were uniformly masculine in Egypt might have contributed to this phenomenon (Magical Hymns…, p. 260). This explanation is obviously speculative, but especially the last argument strikes me as plausible. It’s worth noting that Greeks also came into contact with male lunar deities in Anatolia, most notably with Phrygian Men. While none of them seem to come up in the magical papyri, as far as I am aware, it strikes me as plausible that it could have also contributed to the idea of a genderfluid lunar deity.

The only other figure described as both male and female in the magical papyri is Kronos, though the passage is unique and links this characteristic with the deity’s role as a creator. It’s essentially a parallel of the Orphic creator figure Phanes (The Concepts…, p. 96-97). This is obviously a phenomenon very different from Hecate’s apparent occasional genderfluidity.

There’s a further instance of a connection between Hecate and a male deity in the magical papyri, though it’s much less direct. Two of them refer to her with the feminine form of Hades’ poetic name Aidoneus, Aidonaia (Ἀϊδωναία). This doesn’t really have similar implications, though. This title was only supposed to designate her as an underworld deity - in other words, as “Hecate of Hades” in the sense of a supernatural realm (Magical Hymns…, p. 318).

Deity, epithet, spell, angel: the final attestations of Ereshkigal As far as I’m aware, no passages referring to “Ereschigal” overlap with these discussed above. It might be worth noting that in one case the standard “Ereschigal Neboutosoualēth Aktiōphi” sequence appears in a spell addressed to “Typhon-Seth”, who is obviously a male figure, but the context indicates it’s not supposed to be understood as a string of names applied to him, merely as a magical formula (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 67)

There actually is a single possible reference to a potentially male Ereshkigal, or rather Ereschigal, though. The name might have continued to circulate as a magical term for at least two centuries after the composition of the last magical papyri. It has been proposed that the name of the angel Erechsiel (’RSKY’L), known only from the inscription on an amulet from the sixth century Maon Synagogue, was one of the results of Jewish reinterpretation of the voces magicae, now personified as angelic figures. They’re all invoked to aid a certain Natrun, daughter of Sarah, who was apparently suffering from headaches (Anna Jordanova, Untersuchungen zur Gestalt einer Unterweltsgöttin: Ereškigal nach den sumerischen und akkadischen Quellentexten, p. 499). Obviously, at this point we’re effectively dealing with a double case of the ship of Theseus: a deity turned into a magical formula turned into an angel. I don’t think the situation is really comparable to the late survival of Nanaya in Sogdia. Still, it makes for a pretty remarkable final chapter in Ereshkigal’s history prior to her rediscovery more than a thousand years later - and even if the connection between her and Hecate was hardly direct, it is safe to say Hecate can be metaphorically credited with making it possible.

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purseowner4thequalityanimation · 5 months ago

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New video, which goes weirdly in depth for what it is.

6 out of the 7 characters at Soul Hacker's Pet Shop demon trade place are cameoing from other games, while one of them is an NPC living a double life. I stalk them for 10 minutes of the video. Enjoy!

#soul hackers #shin megami tensei #megaten

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purseowner4thequalityanimation · 5 months ago

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From Shinoda Myōjin to Sakaki no Mae: the history of Kuzunoha (and a few others)

Abeno by Shūhō Yamakawa (public domain; via wikimedia commons)

A few months ago I asked a more or less representative group of potential readers how familiar they are with Kuzunoha. Save for a single tongue in check response, "that's the Devil Summoner guy with the sideburns, right", the results were fairly uniform: most people are aware that she is a fox and the mother of Abe no Seimei - but not much beyond that.

Kuzunoha is simultaneously probably the single most famous Abe no Seimei-adjacent literary character today, overshadowing even actual historical figures. She arguably changed the Abe no Seimei “canon” in a way few other works did. Even with the “onmyōdō boom” still in full swing in modern popculture, many characters from earlier Seimei tradition remain obscure - but Kuzunoha is arguably equally as famous as her son.

This prominence lead to a variety of misconceptions, most notably to viewing the story according to which Seimei was the son of a fox as considerably older and more integral to his fame than in reality. In particularly disreputable online sources you might even see it being presented as THE fox romance story, an archetype example from the dawn of history of Japanese literature. However, despite stories about foxes and onmyōji both being a mainstay of popular entertainment through the middle ages already, Kuzunoha was only invented in the Edo period - and in the case of most of the major developments pertaining to her we can pinpoint the exact sources.

Read on to find out how the story of Kuzunoha arose and changed through the Edo period, whether the character was always known under this name, what she had to do with Kamo no Yasunori, and more. An excursus will also introduce you to the works and life of Kamo no Yasunori no musume, possibly the most unique thinker of the Heian period. That’s not all you will be able to learn, though.The second half of the article goes beyond Kuzunoha, and introduces a selection of other characters from broadly understood Seimei literature - from Seimei’s wife to an immortal Chinese disciple of the bodhisattva Monju. It was initially intended as a standalone sequel, but I figured it would be preferable to publish both halves in one go. Is listening to gossip a form of divination? How many bones do you need to resurrect a person? What do eclipses have to do with board games? Answers to all these questions - and more - await under the cut!

Before Kuzunoha: introductory notes on foxes in medieval and early modern Japan

Before discussing the development of the story of Kuzunoha, it’s necessary to briefly summarize the history of foxes in Japanese literature. It arguably starts with one of the earliest Japanese chronicles, the Nihon Shoki (720). However, foxes only really appear there as omens. The relevant entries are very brief and essentially boil down to reporting an unusual (for example albinistic) fox was sighted somewhere, or alternatively that a regular fox acted in an unusual way. It’s hard to really call them “stories”. They also don’t really indicate that foxes were regarded as shapeshifters just yet, in contrast with contemporary Chinese sources. The oldest example of a Japanese story involving a fox shapeshifting into a woman - arguably the most famous and widespread subgenre of “fox literature” - appears in the setsuwa collection Nihon Ryōiki (日本霊異記), dated to the early ninth century. This motif, like many other stock elements of fox tales, originates in China. Due to space constraints it is not possible to discuss the development of this genre on the mainland, but it will suffice to say that the literary image of foxes was already fairly solid by the Tang period. A good example of a classic Chinese fox story of a similar sort as the Nihon Ryōiki one is The Tale of Miss Ren from the late eighth century. In both cases, the disguise eventually comes undone, and the true identity of the fox character comes to light, which forces her to leave her human life behind. This remained a mainstay in later periods.

An illustration from Tamamizu Monogatari (Kyoto University Rare Materials Digital Archive; reproduced here for educational purposes only)

The importance of foxes in Japanese literature grew considerably in the “middle ages”, the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. The popularity of stories about animals acting like humans in general increased, in no small part due to the growth of new ideas about the nature of enlightenment. The Tendai school of esoteric Buddhism advanced the view that every living being possessed an innate Buddha nature, and could thus attain enlightenment. A good example of a medieval fox story is Tamamizu Monogatari. It combines elements already present in these discussed earlier, though they are reconfigured in unexpected ways; furthermore, the eponymous fox character’s religious considerations are a fairly major part of the plot. It is worth noting that the story of Tamamo no Mae, Kuzunoha’s main competitor for the title of most famous fox character in the history of Japanese literature, first developed in the middle ages too. However, it is somewhat unconventional in that the original story is just a really weird twist on Sutra of Humane Kings - the fox theming is ultimately somewhat superficial.

The newfound popularity of fox tales never really declined afterwards, and many new ones arose through the Edo period in a variety of mediums, including but not limited to novels, puppet plays and kabuki. The old material was often reinterpreted in new, unexpected ways to suit the evolving taste of the audience. This is the environment in which Kuzunoha arose.

The evolution of Kuzunoha, from Hoki-shō to kabuki

The oldest prototype of Kuzunoha appears in the Hoki-shō (簠簋抄; “The ritual containers, annotated”), an early seventeenth century commentary on one of the most famous medieval religious treatises, Sangoku Sōden Onmyō Kankatsu Hoki Naiden Kin’u Gyokuto Shū (三國相傳陰陽輨轄簠簋内伝金烏玉兎集, “The Book of the Gold Crow and the Jade Rabbit, Secret and Exposed, of the Round Vessel and the Square Vessel, the Wheel and the Wedge, the Yin and the Yang, Transmitted Through the Three Countries” - the title is basically a long enumeration of various dualities representing yin and yang; as you will soon see, various fictional tomes present in stories about Seimei reference it) or Hoki Naiden (簠簋内伝) for short. Its compiler (or compilers) collected multiple, often contradictory, tales about the source of Abe no Seimei’s supposed supernatural powers - many of which were seemingly adaptations of completely unrelated folk tales.

One of them states that Seimei’s mother wasn’t a human, but donned a human guise before giving birth to him. At the age of three Seimei was abandoned by her, but as a parting gift he received a poem explaining that he will be able to meet her in the Shinoda forest in the Izumi province. Many years later, Seimei recalled the poem and decided to travel there to pray at a local shrine. Its deity, known simply as Shinoda Myōjin (信太明神; Myōjin, “bright deity”, is a common historical title of local deities, cf. the likes of Shinra Myōjin or Sekizan Myōjin), appeared to him in the form of an old fox, and told him she is his mother. It’s not Seimei’s only “origin story” collected in this volume, though - elsewhere it states that he was a being from the Dragon Palace (龍宮, Ryūgū). This seemingly didn’t catch on, and we have yet to see a modern work bold enough to make him some sort of fishman.

Hoki-shō does not explain why Seimei’s mother left him, but another likely contemporary collection of short tales, Tsuki no Karumo Shū (“Seaweed gathered in the moonlight”), provides a hint: here Seimei’s mother composes the poem and leaves because his father cheated on her. She is later encountered first by her ex, and then by Seimei, in the Shinoda forest, in both cases taking the form of a fox, much like in the Hoki-shō. She also provides her son with a jewel which lets him understand animals - an item which also appears in other legends about him, though not necessarily in the same context. Curiously, outside of this supernatural episode, this work generally follows historical information about Seimei. It correctly relays that his father was a low ranking court official and that he studied under the famous onmyōji Kamo no Yasunori.

A breakthrough in the history of Kuzunoha occurred with the publication of Ryōi Asai’s Abe no Seimei Monogatari (安倍晴明物語; “The story of Abe no Seimei) in 1662. Various disconnected legends collected in the Hoki-shō and similar sources came to be forged into a single narrative for the first time ever, which turned out to be a successful approach. Seimei, while never really forgotten, became a favorite of Edo period audiences, and a “Seimei boom” of sorts occurred, with numerous new works focused on his life and exploits being published.

Young Seimei meeting Otohime, as described in Abe no Seimei Monogatari(public domain, via National Archives of Japan Digital Archive; all illustrations from this novel included in this article have been sourced from these scans; another set can be found on the website of the Waseda University Library)

It would be unfair to say that Abe no Seimei Monogatari is just a direct adaptation of Hoki-shō, though. It is an innovative work in many ways, and in some cases rewrites completely unrelated legends with Seimei as the protagonist. For instance, Seimei at one point visits the dragon palace to help Otohime in what is obviously a novel twist on the tale of Urashima Tarō (though it might very well be an echo of his second origin story from the Hoki-shō) - just without any of the repercussions for the protagonist. Seimei was, presumably, built different, to put it colloquially.

Innovations are also present in the section of the story dealing with Seimei’s mother. In contrast with the sources discussed above, Abe no Seimei Monogatari also provides his father with a name - Abe no Yasuna (安倍保名). He is introduced as a farmer living in Abeno, a village near the Shinoda forest (in earlier legends Seimei was said to hail from Nekoshima, located near Hitachi). The reason why the mother leaves is curiously not provided. The novel simply states that one summer day she abandoned her family - and that’s really it for her relevance.

It is not certain if Abe no Seimei Monogatari was a direct influence on the next major work dealing with Seimei's origin, the 1674 puppet play Shinodazuma Tsurigitsune Tsuketari Abe no Seimei Shusshō (しのだづまつりぎつね并あべ晴明出生; “The Shinoda wife, fox trapping and the birth of Abe no Seimei”). While such a connection is not impossible, it might have alternatively depended on a now lost sekkyōbushi (説経節), a type of Buddhist ballad accompanied by shamisen and puppet performances. However, no direct evidence for the story of Kuzunoha ever being adapted in such a form exists.

Regardless of whether there is a connection or not, the play does follow Abe no Seimei Monogatari when it comes to the identity of the eponymous character’s father. It additionally establishes that Yasuna owns the mystic tome Hoki Naiden, here described as a family heirloom passed down since the times of Abe no Nakamaro (more on him later). Most importantly for the topic of this article, many new details regarding the marriage of Seimei’s parents emerge here for the first time.

Actor Nakayama Bun'emon as Ishikawa Akuemon (ukiyo-e.org; reproduced here for educational purposes only)

A new character shows up in the relevant part of the story, Ishikawa Akuemon (石川悪右衛門), a brother of Dōman, Seimei’s rival from Abe no Seimei Monogatari and a variety of other sources. While Dōman is most likely based on a historical person (though one with no real relation to Seimei - more on that in a sec), Akuemon is entirely fictional. Through Dōman’s influence he received a government post near the Shinoda forest. His modus operandi is to obtain the liver of a white fox, since his brother told him it can be used to heal his ailing wife. Yasuna encounters him during a hunt, and saves a fox from him. This leads to a fight in which he almost ends up killed, until another fox intervenes. By disguising himself as a priest serving in Akuemon’s family temple he tricks him into sparing Yasuna’s life.

Some time later, Yasuna saves a woman from drowning, and subsequently marries her. He has no choice but to live with her in the Shinoda forest, since through a complex string of events resulting from Akuemon killing his father Abe no Yasuaki (安倍泰明) he had to kill him (and is effectively an outlaw, as I understand). He and the woman eventually have a son.

When the son - who is, obviously, Abe no Seimei - is seven years old, his mother accidentally reveals to him that she is a fox who took human form. She becomes so enchanted by blooming chrysanthemums that she loses grasp of her disguise. Kid Seimei is horrified by this revelation, and his mother decides she has to leave. She leaves a letter for him in which she expresses her sadness about this turn of events, and another for Yasuna, in which she reveals that she was the fox he saved, and that everything that happened between them since was an elaborate way to repay that favor.

It might be worth noting that the idea that foxes were particularly fond of chrysanthemums was a well established trope. It goes back to a poem by Bai Juyi, who in turn influenced a host of classic Japanese poets, including but not limited to Miyako no Yoshika, Ki no Haseo, Shimada no Tadaomi, Ono no Takamura and Sugawara no Michizane. By the Edo period, it was essentially common knowledge, so the scene was less surprising to contemporary audiences than it might be for us.

Despite all of the innovations in Shinodazuma Tsurigitsune Tsuketari Abe no Seimei Shusshō, its author felt no need to provide Yasuna’s wife with a name. That wasn’t exactly unique, though it’s worth stressing once again that the first version of this character from Hoki-shō for all intents and purposes did have a name, Shinoda Myōjin.

The name Kuzunoha appears for the first time in the kabuki play Shinodazuma (信太妻) from 1699. However, its origin lies in Shinodazuma Tsurigitsune Tsuketari Abe no Seimei Shusshō. A poem in the letter Seimei receives from his mother in it ends with the line “the kudzu leaves whose backs are visible” - urami kuzunoha (うらみ葛の葉). This phrase appears fairly common in waka poems. Here it serves as a wordplay - hiragana is utilized because depending on the kanji used, urami can refer not just to the underside of a leaf (裏見) but also to bitterness or resentment (怨み or 恨み). According to Cody M. Poulton, the poem actually originates in a story unrelated to Seimei which circulated in the Izumi province. Its protagonist is a hunter who saves a wounded fox, who then takes the form of a woman and marries him; the similarities are otherwise very vague, as no onmyōdo elements are involved, and the fox commits suicide in the end, after leaving behind the poem.

Naming Kuzunoha was not the only innovation of Shinodazuma. It also makes Akuemon the central villain, eliminating Dōman altogether. His villainy reaches truly cartoony heights - before starting the fox hunt already present in the earlier play he actually tries to pressure a priest at a shrine whose kami uses these animals as messengers to procure a white specimen for him.

Some more focus is given to his wife. In the earlier play, not much is said about her other than that she is sick and Akuemon is convinced he knows how to remedy that. She doesn’t even receive a name. In Shinodazuma she is called Satsuki no Mae. Furthermore, we learn that she secretly hates her husband and is only feigning an illness to avoid him. Her real love is a certain Mitani no Zenji, a retainer of Abe no Yasuna. This character already appears in a very minor role in Shinodazuma Tsurigitsune Tsuketari Abe no Seimei Shusshō, but there he is a retainer of Yasuna’s father, not Yasuna himself.

Zenji’s relevance doesn’t end there. Kuzunoha is actually saved by him, not by Yasuna. However, the conventional romance nonetheless happens, though with a twist. Kuzunoha must reveal her true form because Yasuna has an evil younger brother, Dakaku no Suke, who shows up near the end to try to force Kuzunoha to have sex with him. To achieve that he threatens that he will kill kid Seimei. In response, his mother reveals that she is a fox, and flees. Kuzunoha returns one last time in the final scene of the play after Seimei manages to find her in the Shinoda forest with the help of another new character, a cook named Kisuke. This role was apparently added entirely to accommodate the comedic actor Yamatoya Jinbei II (大和屋甚兵衛).

Elements of Shinodazuma and its earlier partial namesake were both incorporated into yet another play, Shinoda no Mori Onna Urakata (“Female Diviner in the Shinoda Forest”), which in turn influenced the single most famous portrayal of Kuzunoha, commonly referred to simply as, nomen omen, Kuzunoha. It dates to 1734, and was originally the fourth act of a five act play, Ashiya Dōman Ōuchi Kagami (芦屋道満大内鑑; “A Courtly Mirror of Ashiya Dōman”) by Izumo Takeda (竹田出雲) II. However, the full version is rarely performed today. As you can probably guess from the title, Ashiya Dōman Ōuchi Kagami puts Dōman, here also referred to as Ashiya no Hyōe Michitaru (芦屋兵衛道満), back into the spotlight, reversing the trend of making Akuemon more prominent. The plot is essentially a succession struggle between him and Abe no Yasuna, with a variety of unexpected twists. Both of them are portrayed as students of Kamo no Yasunori (here written as 加茂保憲 instead of the expected 賀茂保憲), who passes away prematurely without designating an heir from among his disciples. This is quite troublesome, not least because the legitimate heir will gain control over the mystical tome Kin’u Gyokuto Shū (金鳥玉兎集), which originally belonged to a Chinese sage named Hakudō (this is not the last time you’ll see him in this article) before being passed down to Yasunori. Various factions in the court aim to secure control over it to effectively control the country with the mystical divinatory knowledge contained within.

Sakaki no Mae (Minneapolis Institute of Art; reproduced here for educational purposes only)

While most characters are unaware of this, Yasunori intended to have his adopted daughter Sakaki no Mae (榊の前) marry Yasuna, and to give him Kin’u Gyokuto Shū. However, as he failed to do so in time, and only provided his daughter with a key to the secret spot where the book is hidden, a plot is set in motion by his wife. She hides the book and accuses Sakaki no Mae of stealing it to give it to Yasuna against her father’s wishes. Sakaki, who is innocent and in fact refused to open the hiding spot of the book (not that it accomplished much since her stepmother illicitly prepared a copy of the key), decides to put the blame entirely on herself to protect Yasuna and then commits suicide. However, when Yasuna learns about that he is overcome by grief and disappears.

Meanwhile, the widow’s brother Jibu no Tayū (治部大輔), who is also her co-conspirator, meets with his son-in-law Michitaru to give him the stolen Kin’u Gyokuto Shū. He orders him to use the book to divine how to make sure Miyasudokoro (御息所; not the Tale of Genji character), one of crown prince Sakuragi’s (桜木親王) concubines, who belongs to the same courtly faction, will be the first to conceive an heir. Michitaru states that the best way will be the dakini no hō (荼枳尼の法) a secret ritual which requires the liver of a white fox. Jibu no Tayū’s minion Akuemon, who as far as I can tell is not a relative of Michitaru/Dōman here, is tasked with procuring it, since he comes from an area where white foxes can be easily found.

It should be noted here that Michitaru is himself not necessarily portrayed as malevolent in this scene. While he is a participant in this scheme, and even performs rituals meant to help Akuemon with killing Rokunokimi (六の君; also not the Tale of Genji character), the concubine favored by Jibu no Tayū’s rivals, he only acts under the threat of losing both Kin’u Gyokuto Shū and his wife Tsukubane (築羽根).

All of the soap opera-worthy courtly drama forms the first act of the play. Kuzunoha only appears in the second. As we learn, she is the younger sister of Sakaki no Mae, and looks exactly the same as her. Yasuna encounters her when he reaches the Shinoda forest. Due to lacking clarity of mind, he at first assumes that he got reunited with Sakaki no Mae. However, Kuzunoha manages to help him overcome his grief, and explains she is not who she assumes she is. Yasuna is nonetheless still smitten, and asks her parents (it would appear Kuzunoha was not adopted by Kamo no Yasunori unlike her sister), Shinoda no Shōji (信太庄司) and his wife Shigarami (柵), to let them get married.

Alas, it turns out this is impossible, because Kuzunoha’s parents already promised her to her cousin… Akuemon. Following the universal principle of “speak of the devil and he doth appear”, Akuemon promptly appears, chasing a white fox to complete the mission he was entrusted with earlier. He is instantly thwarted by Yasuna and his attendant Yokanbei (与勘平). The latter then leads Kuzunoha and her parents to safety, but Yasuna apparently doesn’t notice this, and for a moment he fears that she was kidnapped. However, his worries soon disappear, as she appears again out of nowhere. In the culmination of the second act, the two then decide to hide for some time in a remote village, Abeno (the same one as in Abe no Seimei Monogatari).

What follows sounds almost like a comedy of errors. Long story short, it turns out that Michitaru has in fact saved Rokunokimi from Akuemon and hid her in his house. When Jibu no Tayū learns about this, he orders her to be killed (again), which triggers a chain reaction. Michitaru by accident kills his father, who had no part in the plot, but tried to take the blame to shield his son from Jibu no Tayū’s wrath. Michitaru’s wife then kills her father, as she has learned about his nefarious intentions and about pressuring Michitaru into helping him. In the aftermath of all of that, Michitaru realizes he has had enough and should go back to honest onmyōdo practice he was supposed to engage in as a student of Kamo no Yasunori full time. He takes the new name Dōman to signify his transformation.

Seimei and Dōman, as depicted by Hokusai (wikimedia commons)

As I already pointed out earlier, the play doesn’t follow Dōman’s usual characterization. Quite the opposite, it’s pretty much a conscious reversal - that’s where the “mirror” in the title actually comes from. Other fictional portrayals of Dōman make him a villainous counterpart of Seimei, and Edo period audiences were well aware of that. There was no shortage of works focused on their rivalry. It’s explored in detail in Abe no Seimei Monogatari, but also for example in the 1792 novel Abe no Seimei Ichidaiki (安倍晴明一代記, “Abe no Seimei’s Life Story”).

It’s worth noting that Dōman’s villainy might have a vague historical basis. It generally assumed that he was inspired by a certain, nomen omen, Dōman (道満), known from the Seiji Yōryaku (政事要略). He was reportedly employed by Takashina no Mitsuko (高階光子) in 1008. He is described as a hōshi onmyōji (法師陰陽師), literally “ priest onmyōji” - a designation for an unofficial onmyōji, basically. Such individuals were seemingly particularly commonly hired by courtiers to curse their rivals (something a regular onmyōji was legally prohibited from engaging with). A reference to a hōshi onmyōji being accused of that is preserved in Fujiwara no Sanesuki’s diary, the Shōyūki (小右記), for example. It is not entirely uncertain if the historical Dōman was involved in similar activities, it is clear that his fictional derivative is based on the curse specialists.

The connection between history and fiction should not be overestimated, though. The kinship between the historical and fictional Dōmans is ultimately quite vague, and the former didn’t really have anything to do with Seimei; their rivalry is an entirely fictitious invention. In particularly it’s worth pointing out it’s basically the standard to portray Dōman as older than Seimei, while the only references to his historical counterpart postdate Seimei’s death by three years - and considering he was unusually long-lived, it’s easier to assume they had nothing to do with each other than that Dōman was somehow even older than him.

Putting the historical Dōman aside, the third act was essentially custom tailored towards the tastes of contemporary audiences, but surprisingly failed to leave a lasting impact. It is instead the fourth act which became the most famous part of the play, and the most famous portrayal of Kuzunoha. It starts with a timeskip: as we learn, Yasuna and Kuzunoha got married and had a son, who is now five years old. However, it turns out that his mother is in fact not the real Kuzunoha. This is revealed when she appears with her parents to visit Yasuna - she’s been bedridden for years in the aftermath of the escape, and only recovered recently. Her parents decided to let her and Yasuna get married. However, they don’t find him at home, since he left to journey to a number of religious sites to pray for his family. They only encounter his wife. As you can probably guess, it turns out that the “Kuzunoha” Yasuna spent the past half a decade with is in fact the fox he saved from Akuemon. When this comes to light, she bids farewell to her son, and tells him to treat the real Kuzunoha as his mother instead from now on.

When Yasuna returns, and learns what happened from the real Kuzunoha, he decides that they need to find the fox Kuzunoha. His son and the real Kuzunoha decide to assist him. Like in every other version involving a search, they eventually manage to find the fox Kuzunoha in the Shinoda forest. She shows herself to them in her true form, that of a century old white fox, and reveals that while she has cast away her earthly attachments, she plans to nonetheless still protect her son. However, to that end she had to cast away her human disguise anyway, as a fox who falls in love with a human will eventually lose all supernatural abilities otherwise. This idea is an invention of the author (had this been an established motif earlier, Tamamizu Monogatari’s namesake protagonist would have no inner dilemmas to struggle with, arguably).

After this matter is settled, the protagonists encounter Dōman. Since they are not aware of his recent deeds, they initially assume that his visit is part of some new scheme. They also accuse him of engineering the theft of Kin’u Gyokuto Shū. However, he explains that he was a tool in an evil plot before, but had a change of heart. He admits the theft accusation is not unfounded, but also that he is not responsible for Sakaki no Mae’s suicide. To atone for his past deeds, he gives the book to Yasuna. However, he says that he is too old to use it, and Dōman should instead pass it on to his son (this is probably another intentional subversion - as you’ll see later, in another story Dōman crafts an elaborate scheme to steal this book from Seimei). When the kid receives the book, he is instantly able to interpret its title. He explains that it refers to a rabbit who lives on the moon and a crow who lives in the sun, and that the book contains knowledge necessary to understand everything on earth and in heaven. Dōman praises Yasuna for teaching his son well, but he clarifies that the boy must have inherited the talent of his biological mother, who was a white fox.

Dōman is aware of a case of a supernaturally gifted kid born to a human-fox couple in China (I’m not sure if this references a specific story, also note this is not an universal motif - in at least one Tang period tale children from a similar relationship die prematurely), and therefore to verify Yasuna's claim decides to test his son’s skills. The boy effortlessly answers all of his questions. Dōman is so impressed he bestows the name Seimei upon him - he was simply referred to as Dōji (童子, “boy” - not exactly a creative name) before. To celebrate, Yasuna and Dōman decide to visit the Shinoda shrine, leaving Kuzunoha and Seimei behind.

Nakamura Utaemon III as Yakanbei, Sawamura Kunitarō II as Kuzunoha, and Arashi Rikan II as Yokanbei (Museum of Fine Arts Boston; reproduced here for educational purposes only)

Since things are evidently going too well, Akuemon suddenly appears once again, accompanied by a group of thugs. He confronts the protagonists and tries to kidnap the real Kuzunoha, but his plan is foiled by the intervention of Yokanbei and an associate of fox Kuzunoha, another white fox, who turns into a copy of him. He calls himself Yakanbei (野干平) - a pun on Yokanbei’s name and the term yakan (射干; from Chinese yegan), which could refer either to a fox-like legendary animal, a jackal, or simply a fox. The scene is intentionally comedic, and it actually takes Yokanbei a while to realize there’s a copy of him running around. In some stage adaptations the sequence was extended further with the appearance of a female servant who is yet another fox in disguise.

After the successful rescue yet another timeskip happens. The final act shows Seimei at the age of eight. His parents decide to finally take him to Kyoto. He is already renowned for his skill, and the crown prince mentioned in passing earlier wants to meet him. However, after arriving in the capital Yasuna temporarily leaves his family, and through an unlucky twist of fate ends up killed by Akuemon, who is busy with a new scheme to curse Rokunokimi. Thankfully, when he later arrives in the court, carrying a crate which contains both a doll meant to be utilized to that end and Yasuna’s corpse, the plot is revealed through a joint effort of Seimei and Dōman. Seimei then resurrects his father, while Akuemon is executed… and that’s where the story ends (with no foxes in sight).

In the end, it might appear at first glance the play regarded as the most famous take on Kuzunoha doesn’t contain all that much Kuzunoha - not the fox Kuzunoha, at least. It’s really a play about Dōman and Yasuna in the end. Kuzunoha actually comes across as sort of expandable and forgettable in dry summaries of the play, and I don’t think mine really gives a different impression. To be fair, it’s actually a genuine theory that the apparent disposability of female characters in this case served as a criticism of the low position of women in Tokugawa society.

Regardless of whether this is true or not, it was ultimately Kuzunoha, and not Dōman, who made the play famous - and that’s why, as I briefly mentioned earlier, it’s uncommon to see the whole play on stage. It’s typically reduced just to act IV - which does actually revolve around Kuzunoha (or, to be more precise, Kuzunohas). There are two reasons behind that.

For starters, the scene of a mother parting with her child emotionally resonated with Edo period audiences to a greater degree than anything else Ashiya Dōman Ōuchi Kagami had to offer. Sure, it might be short, especially compared to the lengthy sections dealing with multi-layered courtly intrigues - but it had something they lacked: it was relatable. Making sure plays resonate with audiences, which consisted largely of commoners - often commoners who represented relatively historically recent social strata molded by changes in economy in the Edo period at that - was a common concern of playwrights. While many dealt with the distant past - especially the Heian period and the tumultuous transition into the middle ages - conscious effort was often made to incorporate contemporary elements, or to emphasize down to earth concerns, precisely to that end. The results weren’t always successful, and in some cases end up heavenly-handed and unintentionally comedic, but Takeda Izumo II evidently pulled it off. It worked so well that the rest of the play became basically unnecessary.

Furthermore, whether adapted in the form of a puppet play (as originally intended) or kabuki, the role of Kuzunoha was considered suitable for showcasing the skills of performers. Special effects, and in particular transformations from one character into another, were incredibly popular - that’s why so many plays from the Edo period have plots involving shapeshifters, doubles, mistaken identity or a combination of some or all of those elements. Foxes naturally provide a great venue for that - and Kuzunoha isn’t even the only time Takeda Izumo II capitalized on it (you will likely get to see another famous example on this blog in a few months).

Kuzunoha writing her parting poem with a brush held in her teeth (wikimedia commons)

When it comes to puppet plays, the greatest accomplishment of Kuzunoha was arguably facilitating the invention of a complex type of puppet requiring three people to operate, utilized for the first time in the scene involving her, Yokanbei and Yakanbei. In kabuki adaptations, Kuzunoha’s shapeshifting between human and fox forms is reflected by rapid change of costumes - basically the default way to measure an actor’s skill. Sometimes this is boosted further by speech quirks also used for other fox characters in kabuki. Furthermore, the actor playing her is often expected to write the poem she leaves before abandoning her family holding a brush in his (it’s an onnagata role, ie. a female character played by a man) teeth, cradling a prop representing infant not-yet-Seimei in both hands. A Meiji innovation making the role even more challenging was to have one actor play both Kuzunohas - which, naturally, required even faster costume changes. In some cases, a hat with a fox mask hidden in it is used to make it particularly rapid. Through this combination of factors, Kuzunoha, initially a minor addition to a corpus of legends about a popular protagonist which grew so large it started to absorb unrelated stories, eventually actually managed to outshine Seimei himself. Of course, it wasn’t that straightforward; Seimei’s disappearance from public consciousness didn’t just boil down to a specific kabuki attaining unexpected levels of renown. It’s also important to bear in mind that onmyōdō as a whole largely vanished from public consciousness after the Meiji reforms - and that even before them, the term didn’t necessarily invoke the image of a Heian period court official anymore (see my previous article dealing with relevant matters for more context). Even though Seimei, an at least vaguely Heian-inspired idea of onmyōdō, and the traditional villainous Dōman all made a comeback after the classic sources were “rediscovered” by new authors starting with the 1980s, Kuzunoha remains a fairly major component of what I earlier described as an “informal Seimei canon” - to the point it’s probably not hard to find people convinced she was a part of it from the very beginning. In that capacity she is a remarkable outlier. Most of the other Edo innovations are now forgotten, and Konjaku Monogatari and other early collections once again define Seimei just as they did for late Heian and early medieval audiences. And yet, the story of the most famous onmyōji being born as the son of a fox and subsequently abandoned evidently continues to resonate with new audiences.

Nothing like Kuzunoha: an excursus about the real daughter of Kamo no Yasunori

There’s an argument to be made that Seimei isn’t the only historical figure who ended up existing in the shadow of Kuzunoha, or more broadly of Ashiya Dōman Ōuchi Kagami. While Kuzunoha and Sakaki no Mae are both fictional characters, the historical Kamo no Yasunori actually did have at least one daughter. It’s safe to say she didn’t influence the creation of any of her fictional “siblings”, though. For all intents and purposes, she went down in history only as Kamo no Yasunori no Musume (賀茂保憲女), “the daughter of Kamo no Yasunori” - her real name is unknown. I personally think that in absence of any information about her name perhaps it would be preferable to use the epithet she used to refer to herself - Kamo uji naru musume, “a woman of the Kamo clan” - but I am not going to tell you to ignore the consensus, obviously. Since referring to her as “Kamo no Yasunori no musume” would get a bit cumbersome quickly, I hope you don’t mind here I will simply refer to her as “ms. Kamo”, though.

The sum of our knowledge about ms. Kamo’s life and career comes from just a single source - but what a source it is! At some point between 993 or 998, at the age of forty or so, she compiled her own poetry collection, today referred to simply as Kamo no Yasunori no Musume no shū (賀茂保憲女集) - “Kamo no Yasunori no Musume’s poetry collection” (hardly the most creative of titles). The uncertain dating reflects the fact that the only clear evidence in the work itself are references to an illness she at some point contracted, which might have been either smallpox (an epidemic occurred in 993) or measles (an epidemic occurred in 998). A lot is up to interpretation, though the illness at least for a time negatively impacted her eyesight, which seems to point at the second option.

The collection resulting from her efforts has the form of a sequence of around 240 poems accompanied by an autobiographical prose preface. This is not unusual in itself - similar collections consisting from a hundred to three hundred poems were fairly common in the later centuries of the Heian period. They were pioneered by Sone no Yoshitada around 960 or so. Depending on the exact dating of ms. Kamo’s sequence, she was either the first or second woman to contribute to this trend, though. Her contemporary Minamoto no Shigeyuki no Musume (源重之女; as you can probably guess, the daughter of Minamoto no Shigeyuki) compiled a hundred poems long sequence around 994.

While common, the hundred (or more) poem sequences were what can be described as an example of avant garde or outsider approach to poetry. In the Heian period most poems were composed during official competitions or for commemorative purposes in the imperial court. In contrast, the long sequences were typically the work of people who didn’t have opportunities to partake in official poetic events, for example lower ranking bureaucrats. Furthermore, the topics were more personal. It was fairly common to complain about unrecognized skills and slow progression in the chosen path of career, for example. This was an universe many lower ranked courtiers, as well as provincial bureaucrats, were familiar with - the Heian court was dominated by the powerful Fujiwara clan, and few people who didn’t belong to it managed to advance to the most prestigious positions (and those who did, like Sugawa no Michizane, could still end up exiled or worse as potential threats to the Fujiwa hegemony). However, in contrast with ultimately fairly formulaic complaints about stalled professional careers, ms. Kamo’s collection is essentially an outlier among outliers. It has an even more distinctly personal character. Of course, part of it is that the experience of a woman was fundamentally different from that of a male courtier. Ms. Kamo had to become a unique author in part simply because she had no models to pattern her poems on. She acknowledged herself that it was viewed as preferable for a woman to remain silent and unseen.

The life ms. Kamo wanted to document was sad and lonely - as she remarked to herself, “there is no one whose circumstances are as unhappy as mine within these islands”. The catalyst for writing was the life-threatening illness she survived, but which pretty clearly took a heavy mental toll on her. In a self-depreciating passage she described herself as "inferior in all ways to others, but better than others in getting an illness". On top of that, she felt isolated and was apparently concerned that she has failed to attain proper maturity, possibly due to remaining single - she only makes vague references to a possible failed past relationship. She apparently blamed her parents, and in one of her poems compared herself to an egg that has already putrefied before even hatching.

While I don’t necessarily think it’s incorrect to speculate that she might have felt this way due to failing to enter a relationship or forming a lasting one, it does seem that she was generally concerned about her life being stagnant, and about being confined in the same place for its entire duration. In some of her poems, she is saddened by own inability to see various wondrous phenomena and partaking in assorted pastimes (she admits she’s not even sure what was in the vogue among other noblewomen). Interestingly, she recognized that her position gives her a degree of freedom she would lack if her poetry conformed to courtly standards, though.

A further peculiar aspect of ms. Kamo’s work is her focus on social inequalities. She devotes some space to explaining why she doesn’t see class as an indication of merit. As she outlines, a virtuous and talented person might nonetheless have an unremarkable career and fail to move up. Furthermore, a humble person won’t necessarily be valued as much as they should. It was apparently a major concern for her overall that success is determined by wealth and family connections more than skill and virtue. That’s tragically a pretty timeless issue.

Some degree of opposition to the prevailing model of stratification of society was not entirely unheard of in the Heian period. Miyako no Yoshika’s uncle Miyako no Haraaka (都腹赤) famously believed that what we would by modern standards define as higher education should be available to all as opposed to hereditary nobility, for example. This was doubtlessly influenced by his own experience - his family background was unremarkable, and he managed to attain a degree of renown only thanks to a then-recent system of civil service examinations. His nephew, whose life followed a similar trajectory, purportedly opposed the encroachment of the Fujiwara clan upon educational institutions because it would limit the already not particularly plentiful opportunities people from more humbled backgrounds had. Ultimately the Chinese-style bureaucratic apparatus which enabled that collapsed, though, and even before that it obviously never managed to become the great equalizer people like Haraaka seemingly wanted it to be (it didn’t even accomplish that in China in the first place, to be fair).

Yoshishige no Yasutane (wikimedia commons) Most importantly, social inequalities are addressed in depth in the Chiteiki (池亭記), the magnum of opus of ms. Kamo’s uncle Yoshishige no Yasutane (慶滋保胤). He might have been an influence on the worldview of his niece, though unlike him she didn’t see the lack of adherence to Confucian teachings as the source of all ills. As a social critic she is ultimately without an exact parallel among her contemporaries. As cliche as that might sound, it would perhaps be most apt to say she was ahead of her times. Rather unusually for her era, she even believed romantic relationships should not be determined by social class, but rather by genuine feelings. She attributed the instability of romances among courtiers to this, even. I will refrain from speculation if this might have anything to do with the references to her own possible failed relationship.

Given the avant garde character of ms. Kamo’s works, it probably comes as no surprise to you to learn that they never had a wide circulation. She did hope for an audience - in the preface she even speculates how people in the future will imagine her based on the content of her poems. However, she never really found it.

Evidently someone had to be aware of her pursuits and kept her up to date with new trends in poetry, though. A possible candidate is, once again, her uncle Yasutane. Furthermore, some of her notes indicate she seemingly was sending at least some of her poems to someone, though whoever that was, they evidently didn’t opt to recommend her as a participant in any events focused on poetry held in the imperial court (or didn’t hold a position which would let them do so). Her poetry thus failed to captivate any larger audience, and didn’t enter the literary canon.

The only pre-modern exceptions are the inclusion of a small handful of her poems in the Shūi Wakashū (拾遺和歌集, “Collection of Gleanings”; 1006; 1 poem), Shin Kokin Wakashū (新古今和歌集, “New Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems”; 1205; 1 poem), Fūga Wakashū (風雅和歌集; “Collection of Elegant Poems”; 1348; 2 poems) and Shinshokukokin Wakashū (新続古今和歌集; “New Later Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems”; 1439; 1 poem). However, in the first two of these anthologies the author is left anonymous, presumably since she was not exactly famous and lived outside the imperial court. In the other two she is identified only as Kamo no Yasunori no musume.

Something that bugs me a lot is that there are multiple weird unsourced claims on English wikipedia severely overestimating the esteem she enjoyed in the Heian period and beyond. Kamo no Yasunori’s entry calls her an “acclaimed poet” (and similarly without a source asserts she was his second daughter; in reality she is his only female relative we know about). Her own article asserts she was renowned for her talent, despite later citing a researcher who correctly points out she was largely overlooked through history.

I would argue that in addition to being incorrect, these bizarre descriptions are disrespectful, seeing as much of her work is centered on frustrations stemming from not only not being perceived as important, but lacking any venue giving the slightest glimmer of hope for attaining that. I’m not exactly sure if the intent was to be feminist, but I personally think it would in fact be a more feminist approach to stress what motivated her to write, and to honestly report the lack of pre-modern reception. These factors are what makes ms. Kamo unique as a poet.

Sadly even the modern reception of ms. Kamo’s work is limited at best, which is part of why I decided to include her in this article. There are at least two annotated editions of her works aimed at academics in Japanese and a handful of articles, including a single one in English which you can find in the bibliography, but not much beyond that. Ultimately it is probably fair to say her fictional counterparts sadly outshine her, which arguably adds an extra layer to this tragedy. Obviously, Edo period playwrights weren’t deliberately trying to do so - odds are decent they weren’t even aware she existed - but it saddens me a bit that no attempt was made to find room for her in any modern adaptations of stories involving fictionalized portrayals of her father. An argument can even be made that ms. Kamo had some familiarity with onmyōdō. While it is not a major theme in her poetry, and she never referenced yin, yang and related concepts directly, she was evidently familiar with Chinese literature and philosophy to some degree. She references the Book of Changes and the well known (at the time, at least) story of Su Wu, for instance. It might also be worth noting that she was aware it was believed certain ascetic practices can extend the lifespan - for example consuming pine needles. It’s actually fairly likely that some of her familiarity with Chinese literature came from overhearing her brothers’ lessons - we actually know this must have been the case for some women in the Heian period. For instance, Murasaki Shikibu de facto received informal education this way. There’s even a proposal in scholarship which has gained some support that part of ms. Kamo’s bitterness might have come from perceiving herself as equally capable of learning as her brothers, but never really receiving opportunities to prove it.

Beyond Kuzunoha: other figures of note in Seimei narratives

After the largely historical excursus, let’s go back to fiction. As I mentioned earlier, many once popular recurring characters from stories about Seimei - from early legends to Edo period novels - largely languish in obscurity today, even though Seimei himself arguably regained his prominence. I figured it is only fair to discuss some examples I consider particularly interesting as well.

Rika

While Abe no Seimei Monogatari is notable for being one of the earliest works which feature (a prototype of) Kuzunoha, it also provides Seimei with a further fictional female relative, a wife named Rika (梨花). And she is, quite unexpectedly, an antagonist who aids Dōman.

The historical Seimei presumably did have a family, but as far as I am aware no source mentions anything about the identity of his spouse. He definitely had children, most notably Abe no Yoshihira (安倍吉平; 954–1026), which does indicate the existence of a ms. Abe (or at least a mistress whose child was legitimized, I suppose). I won’t dwell much Yoshihira here, as he is largely irrelevant for the matters this article focuses on, though it’s worth noting that he famously managed to enact an onmyōdō takeover of hanshi (反支; from Chinese fanzhi), formerly handled by court physicians. This procedure was supposed to determine if anything inauspicious might happen during the birth of a child.

I’m only aware of a single source predating Abe no Seimei Monogatari which would mention Seimei’s wife at all, and it is similarly a literary text rather than a historical document. However, she is left nameless in it, and her characterization differs considerably. Rather unexpectedly, it’s not strictly speaking a Seimei story, but rather the fourteenth century Genpei Jōsuiki - an extended version of the Heike Monogatari. In the passage in mention Taira no Tokiko performs hashiura (橋占), an unusual form of divination. Instead of the movement of celestial bodies, it required listening to the conversations of passersby on a bridge. She chooses the Ichijō-modoribashi (一条戻橋) in Kyoto, where she encounters a group of twelve unusual children, who all repeat the same prophecy. She quickly realizes they’re actually shikigami, and not just any shikigami at that, but rather manifestations of the Twelve Heavenly Generals (十二神, jūnishin).

Why are the Twelve Heavenly Generals there, instead of performing the Medicine Buddha and engaging in other typical Heavenly General pursuits? That’s where Seimei’s wife comes in. It is revealed that Seimei sealed the Generals under the bridge because his wife was capable of seeing supernatural beings, including them, just like he was, but was afraid of them. As a result of Seimei’s ritual, hashiura performed there was guaranteed to result in receiving prophetic messages from the Twelve Heavenly Generals, even if they used passersby to convey it. The reference to supernatural powers is certainly interesting - in other literary texts a similar ability is enough for the protagonist to be granted the right to study onmyōdō (a good example is a Konjaku Monogatari story about Kamo no Yasunori’s childhood) - but the topic is not explored further.

Ichijō-modoribashi in 2005, with the shikigami statue on the left (wikimedia commons)

It’s worth noting that the story seemingly had a degree of influence on the surroundings of Ichijō-modoribashi bridge. Today there’s a statue of a shikigami next to it. However, he’s not one of the Twelve Heavenly Generals, but rather an anonymous critter who appears in medieval portraits of Seimei as his personal shikigami. Compare the two depictions below, courtesy of wikimedia commons:

As for Abe no Seimei Monogatari, as thrilling as the summary of Rika’s character sounds, she sadly receives very little spotlight. We don’t learn how she met Seimei, where she came from, or the circumstances of their marriage. No information from the Genpei Jōsuiki episode is referenced, either, and I think it’s safe to say the two takes on Seimei’s wife are independent from each other - though it’s not hard to find people treating them as the same character online. To be fair, it’s not like these sources are impossible to reconcile with each other.

Rika and Seimei are already married when she is mentioned for the first time, when Seimei leaves to China to study under Hakudō Shōnin. In his absence Dōman, who after losing a bet had to become his disciple earlier, conspires with Rika (to be fair, Seimei for whatever reason entrusted him with taking care of her in his absence). His goal is to gain insight into two books Seimei owns: the Kin’u Gyokuto Shū, written by Hakudō Shōnin, and the Hoki Naiden, brought to Japan by Kibi no Makibi. She shows him a box in which Seimei keeps them. He wastes no time and after figuring out how to open it studies both books and copies them.

When Seimei returns, Dōman offers him a wager. He claims that the books were revealed to him in a dream by the bodhisattva Monju, and suggests that he can prove it. Seimei, who does not believe in dream visions, and remains blissfully unaware of Rika’s actions in his absence, agrees, and says that Dōman can kill him if he really does have the books - that’s how implausible this scenario is to him. To his shock, his rival-turned-apprentice reveals the copies he prepared, and in accordance with their agreement kills him. Dōman then gets rid of everyone else in Seimei’s household by turning them into pieces of straw and wood - the only exception is Rika. The two become a couple; the narrator notes this is something he has desired for a long while already, though as far as I can tell the novel doesn’t mention it at any earlier point. We don’t really learn anything about Rika’s views on the matter, sadly.

Dōman’s triumph is short-lived. Through an omen, Hakudō Shōnin learns that Seimei has died and arrives in Japan to resurrect him and let him avenge his death. He visits Dōman and, in a mirror of the trick he played on Seimei earlier, gets him to agree that he should be killed if it turns out Seimei is alive. Seimei, alive and well thanks to Hakudō Shōnin’s magical abilities, promptly appears to complete this wager. Rika attempts to hide behind a curtain to avoid a similar fate, but this proves to be unsuccessful. While she doesn’t make a similar bargain with Hakudō Shōnin, the narrator states that this is ultimately a just outcome. Both conspirators are then buried near the bank of the Gojō River, and that’s basically it for their role in the story. Neither portrayal of Seimei’s wife gained much notoriety in later works. I would assume the fact that through the Edo period ultimately it was the story of his parents that captivated the audience was a factor (it would be hard to explore his own relationships if most new stories had him as a 5-year-old), but this is entirely speculative.

As for modern authors: Yumemakura Baku, whose novels about Seimei contributed towards the development of the “onmyōdō boom” in popculture, acknowledged in an interview that the historical Seimei presumably did have a wife, but said he has no plans to explore this topic.

Makuzu (bottom left) from Okano's adaptation of Yumemakura's novels (MELODY; reproduced here for educational purposes only)

This being said, the manga adaptation of his works by Okano Reiko apparently did introduce a character loosely based on her Genpei Jōsuiki portrayal named Makuzu (真葛). The reception of this addition appears to be mixed, but as I haven't read this series I won’t pass judgment. This being said, if the Makuzu subplot really does involve Seimei learning they’re the reincarnation of a pharaoh and his wife out of blue, let’s just say I think I’d rather stick to Yumemakura’s prose version.

I was also able to find a single modern work which actually features Rika: Onmyōji Abe no Seimei - Saishū Kessen (陰陽師安倍晴明ー最終決戦; “Onmyōji Abe no Seimei - Final Battle”) a very loose stage play adaptation of Abe no Seimei Monogatari by the troupe Gesshoku Kageki Dan (月蝕華撃團). A recording from 2021 can be found on their youtube channel:

youtube

Additionally there are numerous photos of the costumes on their social media (a selection of my favorites: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Parts of the plot seem… very avant garde compared to the original, but I do like the actress portraying Seimei, Shiranaga Ayumi (白永歩美), a lot. Note that Seimei isn’t supposed to be a woman here, though (this remains an idea largely exclusive to Fromsoft’s Kuon); this troupe’s performances pretty commonly involve actresses playing male roles, as I understand. Whether intentional or not, in this case it ends up as a neat parallel to men traditionally playing Kuzunoha in the Edo period and beyond.

Hakudō Shōnin

An illustration of Hakudō Shōnin from the Abe no Seimei Monogatari

Given that I already brought up Hakudō Shōnin (伯道上人; sometimes translated as “Saint Hakudō”) multiple times, I don’t think it’s particularly shocking that I consider him another character who warrants more spotlight. At least one Edo period source, Jinrin Kinmō Zui (人倫訓蒙図彙; “Illustrated Dictionary of Different Kinds of People”) from 1690, seems to treat him as a historical figure. The entry on diviners (占師, uranaishi) states that Kamo no Yasunori brought Chinese divination methods originally invented by Fuxi to Japan, but also that Abe no Seimei was taught them by Hakudō Shōnin. In reality, not only is Hakudō entirely fictitious, he didn’t even originate in China. In theory his name would be Bodao Shangren in Chinese - but no Chinese source actually mentions him. He is essentially a representation of the Japanese idea of what a Chinese Buddhist sage slash Daoist immortal (he is described as both simultaneously) would be like. In art he is seemingly generally portrayed in the garb of a monk. I’ve seen a single more unique depiction recently, but I was unable to verify its provenance:

It’s fair to say that in literature Hakudō Shōnin is portrayed as part ascetic, part onmyōji. This might seem unusual - after all, the historical Heian period onmyōji were essentially government officials not too different from other mid-level courtiers. However, Hakudō’s portrayal is not particularly outlandish - it reflects ideas about is onmyōji widespread in medieval sources. The fact that divinatory techniques associated with onmyōdō were often transmitted by shugenja - mountain ascetics - in this period is doubtlessly related, but I won’t pursue this point further here.

As far as literature goes, the merging of onmyōdō and asceticism is evident in legends about the legendary sage Hōdō Shōnin (法道上人, Sanskrit Dharmamārga) or the historical Tendai monk Jōzō (浄蔵). In the Kojidan (古事談), compiled by Minamoto no Akikane (源顕兼) around 1212-1215, even Seimei himself is described as a hermit who gained mastery of onmyōdō by leading an ascetic life in in Kumano (a particularly favored location for such activities) for a thousand days.

Given that this image of Seimei doesn’t really reemerge in later sources, I’m admittedly curious if perhaps Hakudō wasn’t created to offer an indirect way to incorporate it into broader informal “Seimei canon” - so that instead of Seimei gaining knowledge through asceticism, he instead acquired it from an ascetic? This is entirely speculative on my part, though. Note that there might very well be older sources mentioning Hakudō than those I am aware of, which depending on date could instantly sink this proposal.

Stories involving Hakudō were already in circulation in the fourteenth century. An early example appears in the preface to Hoki Naiden. It describes him as a disciple of the bodhisattva Monju who after attaining enlightenment received the scroll Monju Sesshū Butsurekikyō (“Sutra of Buddha Calendar Assembled by Monju”) from him. He then brought it with him to China, where he came up with a new title for it, Hoki Naiden Kin’u Gyokuto Shū . Many years later Seimei learned about it from him, and made it the to-go point of reference for fellow onmyōji in Japan under its full title. It should be noted here that another tradition had Seimei himself as the author, though. In reality it was most likely only composed in the fourteenth century by a hitherto unidentified descendant of the historical Seimei (or at least someone who saw association with him as a source of own credibility), though.

The Hoki Naiden preface also states that Hakudō arrived in Japan after Seimei’s death to resurrect him. To that end he collected all his bones - “12 big bones and 360 small bones altogether” - and performed a special ritual. Noriko T. Reider notes that this passage resembles a number of legends involving a historical figure either trying to create a new living being out of bones or other body parts (Minamoto no Morofusa and Saigyō in two separate tales from the Senjūshō), or encountering a person created this way (Ki no Haseo in Haseo Zōshi). The difference is obviously that Hakudō brings a specific dead person to life instead of creating a new living being, and that the deed is portrayed firmly positively. Still, given that all of these stories have been composed roughly in the same time period, it does seem fair to say we’re dealing with different takes on the same motif.

It’s worth noting that while Hakudō Shōnin is essentially absent from modern Seimei media - presumably since Seimei is, true to historical sources, usually portrayed as a disciple of Kamo no Yasunori (or, alternatively, his father Kamo no Tadayuki) - in the middle ages he was famous enough to even be referenced in at least one variant of one the most famous medieval Japanese works possible, namely in the Ōeyama Ekotoba (大江山絵詞), a Muromachi period illustrated version of the Shuten Dōji legend. It puts a peculiar twist on the connection between him and Seimei, though. It is revealed that instead of being a disciple and a master, respectively, they are two incarnations of Ryūju Bosatsu (龍樹菩薩) - the bodhisattva form of the early Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna, venerated in Japan by the Shingon school.

Hakudō encountering the bodhisattva Monju Both of the Hoki Naiden legends mentioned above were incorporated into Abe no Seimei Monogatari. An entire section of this novel is additionally dedicated to Hakudō’s early career and the origin of the Hoki Naiden. It states he was born during the reign of the Zhou dynasty (so he’s over a thousand years old - possibly nearly two thousand years old - by the time he meets Seimei), and that he initially lived in Jingshan. He tried to master yin, yang, earth and haven, but failed to do so. This prompted him to go on a journey, during which he encountered a supernatural youth - an incarnation of the bodhisattva Monju - who informed him that his approach was wrong. He let Hakudō become his disciple on Mt. Wutai (however, in the Hoki-shō his studies take place in India instead).

Under Monju’s guidance Hakudō managed to learn all of the mysteries he wanted to know, becoming a master of divination in the process. He also attained the rank of an arhat. He later returned to Jingshan, where he compiled the teachings of the bodhisattva revealed to him in 160 volumes.

Donfang Shuo (wikimedia commons)

Through the following centuries, Hakudō secretly revealed small snippets to various rulers and sages, including Jiang Ziya, Fan Li, Zhang Liang, Kong Anguo and Heshang Gong. The scrolls were eventually gifted to emperor Wu of Han, whose courtier Donfang Shuo (a veritable Han dynasty reneissance man) managed to become a great sage just by studying them (remember this detail, it will be relevant later).

As you can probably tell, the passage dealing with Seimei’s resurrection inspired the section of the story involving Rika, which I already summarized above.

Hōdō Shōnin in Abe no Seimei Monogatari As a side note, it’s worth pointing out that Abe no Seimei Monogatari also features Hōdō Shōnin in a small capacity. Somewhat confusingly, he is described both as a Daoist immortal and as a monk from India. Dōman claims to be his disciple to make himself appear greater than in reality, but in reality he merely inherited a book written by ancestor Ashiya no Suguri Kiyofuto (藍屋村主清太; as far as I know, a character invented for this novel), who encountered Hōdō Shōnin around 300 years prior to the events of the story. While this sounds like setting up further intentional parallels between him and Seimei, as far as I can tell it’s not implied that Hōdō and Hakudō were rivals, and the former otherwise appears chiefly in legends unrelated to Seimei - most commonly ones dealing with the foundation of Buddhist temples. It also needs to be noted that since this is a work following the traditional negative portrayal of Dōman, the narrator makes it clear that despite claiming to be Hōdō’s disciple and even dressing up like a monk (a possible allusion to the term for unofficial onmyōji I’ve already discussed, I assume?) he was impious and even committed unspecified crimes. Hakudō Shōnin also makes an appearance in Shinodazuma Tsurigitsune Tsuketari Abe no Seimei Shusshō. In this play Seimei meets him when he is ten years old. Hakudō gives him the Kin’u Gyokuto Shū. It is also revealed that in the past he met Seimei’s ancestor Abe no Nakamaro when the latter acted as an envoy in China. His resurrection ritual is also referenced: when in the final act of the play Dōman’s subordinates kill Seimei’s father Yasuna, he has to be resurrected using Hakudō Shōnin’s bone-gathering method. While as I already summarized earlier Yasuna’s final fate is quite similar in Ashiya Dōman Ōuchi Kagami, no reference is made to any Chinese sages - it’s just one of the many abilities young Seimei has already mastered.

Kibi no Makibi (and Abe no Nakamaro)

An Edo period portrait of Kibi no Makibi (wikimedia commons)

Unlike Rika, who you can at best call semi-historical (in that the real Seimei probably did have a wife) and Hakudō Shōnin, who is entirely fictitious, the final figure I’d like to introduce you to in this article, Kibi no Makibi (吉備真備; 695-775), was a real person. His accomplishments and postmortem career as a literary character would honestly be enough for a separate article - here I will only limit myself to a small handful of sources due to space constraints. Makibi famously traveled to China twice, first as a student and then as an ambassador, and between these two journeys spent around 20 years (around one fourth of his life!) on the mainland. He was considered unusually erudite, and was one of the foremost Japanese scholars of his era. Due to his renown he also held a number of prominent positions in the court, including the incredibly prestigious role of minister of the right (右大臣, udaijin); the only other scholar to ever attain this rank was Sugawara no Michizane.

Next to Seimei and Kamo no Yasunori, Makibi is also probably one of the most famous onmyōji in history - which is quite a feat given that he actually had next to nothing to do with onmyōdō in life. Early sources, such as Shoku Nihongi (797) and Miyoshi no Kiyoyuki’s (三善清行; 847-919) Iken Fūji Jūni Kajō (意見封事十二箇条, “Statement of Opinion on Twelve Matters”) agree that he was unusually skilled, and that in China he mastered many arts, including but not limited to Confucian classics, history, arithmetic, music, poetry, and calligraphy, but they don’t link him with onmyōdō at all.

It’s hard to tell when and why the shift in the perception of Makibi’s knowledge occurred, but he is already described as not just an onmyōji, but the founder of onmyōdō in Fujiwara no Akihira’s (藤原明衡; 989-1066) Shin Sarugōki (新猿楽記, “Account of the New Monkey Music”). Another example can be found in the Konjaku Monogatari, where Makibi is portrayed using his onmyōdō skills to pacify the vengeful spirit of Fujiwara no Hirotsugu. By the twelfth century, regarding Makibi as an onmyōji was common. This is evident in the works most relevant to this article, namely fictionalized accounts of his journey to China. The oldest of them, Kibi Nittō no Kan no Koto (吉備入唐の間の事, “Kibi’s Adventures in China”), is preserved in Ōe no Masafusa’s Gōdanshō (江談抄). A more vague account can be found in the Fusō Ryakki (扶桑略記, "Brief History of Fusang"), though it is likely a derivative of the Gōdanshō one.

Makibi (in black robes) and Chinese officials (all images from this scroll have been taken from the website of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston; reproduced here for educational purposes only)

Masafusa’s account of the journey also inspired the illustrated scroll Kibi Daijin Nittō Emaki (吉備大臣入唐絵巻, “Illustrated Adventures of Minister Kibi in China“), which was most likely commissioned by emperor Go-Shirakawa between the late 1170 and early 1180s. Like other similar contemporary works, Kibi Daijin Nittō Emaki has very little to do with historical reality. It relays that after arriving in China, Makibi was imprisoned by local officials, who feared that due to being exceptionally skilled he would make them look inept in comparison. To regain his freedom he had to overcome a series of trials.

Distinctly oni-like vengeful Nakamaro

Makibi's only ally is the vengeful spirit of Abe no Nakamaro (阿倍仲麻呂; 698-770). He is described as the previous ambassador. After a similar ordeal he died in captivity.

In reality, Nakamaro traveled to China alongside Makibi in 716. However, he was not an envoy, but merely a student who was allowed to join an official delegation. What is true is that he never returned to Japan. This was not the result of any nefarious plot, let alone premature death, though. He successfully completed the Chinese civil service exam and became an official. He did try to return to Japan in 735, but a storm left him shipwrecked at the coast of Annam (a part of modern Vietnam which at the time was a Chinese protectorate), and he opted to return to his career. He also attained some renown as a poet, and was on friendly terms with the poetic superstars of his times, Li Bai and Wang Wei. All around his real life was most likely happier than the story would indicate - though based on his surviving poetry it is safe to assume he did feel homesick in some capacity.

Nakamaro longing for home in Abe no Seimei Monogatari

Obviously, Kibi Daijin Nittō Emaki is a particularly extreme example of reinterpretation of Nakamaro’s life in literature postdating him. However, portrayals focused on his longing for a return home are quite common, and appear as early as in the Tosa Nikki (土佐日記, “Tosa Diary”) by Ki no Tsurayuki, completed around 935. It should be noted that by the tenth century or so, even venturing beyond the capital was commonly described as a daunting task, and dying in exile was one of the greatest fears for courtiers. Based on these developments, it can also be argued that the fictionalized portrayal of Nakamaro is an example of a phenomenon derived from these fears - the belief that people who died far away from home would return as vengeful ghosts. He could thus be considered a peer of the likes of Sugawara no Michizane or prince Sawara. The possibility that someone would move to a far off land voluntarily, and die there peacefully of natural causes, would probably be hard to grasp for late Heian audiences.

Pacified Nakamaro (right) talking to Makibi (left)

Anyway, back to the story. Makibi’s captors are actually convinced that Nakamaro, who became a vengeful spirit and haunts the tower where the new envoy ends up imprisoned, will kill him. However, even though Nakamaro appears to Makibi in a fierce oni-like form, he ends up pacified through what might be an unusual ritual. Makibi informs him that he is in the presence of an official envoy, and as such needs to take a suitable form. This evidently works - through the rest of the scroll Nakamaro, now a staunch ally of Makibi, is depicted in the attire of a Japanese official, just with an unconventional distinctly orange skin tone. Makibi also learns that Nakamaro is concerned about his relatives, and reassures him that his entire clan is doing well.

Makibi and Nakamaro flying After surviving the encounter with Nakamaro, Makibi is informed that his trials are set to begin. The first of them involves learning the Wen Xuan (文選, “Selections of Refined Literature”). He is not familiar with this anthology, but using a secret art enabling him to fly he manages to secretly reach the imperial palace to listen to scholars reading it. In the illustrated version he masters flight himself, which is presumably meant to show he is in full control of the situation, and there is no genuine threat in his temporary captivity. However, in Masafusa’s forerunner it is Nakamaro who can fly, and Makibi relies on his help. Either way, the aerial journey is successful, and when a Chinese official appears to question Makibi, he reveals a copy of Wen Xuan he prepared in secret based on what he heard, thus completing the first challenge.

Makibi playing go The next day, Makibi is set to face a master of go. This might seem random, but playing it was a fairly standard part of diplomatic visits, and in fact in at least some cases envoys were selected based on their go skills. Makibi is unfamiliar with it, though, and has to learn the rules from Nakamaro. He quickly comes up with an ingenious, if unconventional, strategy. Initially neither side gains an advantage, but eventually Makibi notices an opportunity to use his secret gambit arises He swallows one of his opponent’s pieces, which lets him attain victory. A diviner informs the Chinese officials about this, and they tell Makibi to take a purgative to prove he was cheating, but he manages to counter its effects with his esoteric knowledge.

Makibi’s success infuriates the officials, and they decide that to hinder him they’ll try to starve him. He manages to overcome this hardship with the help of Nakamaro, who secretly brings him food every night. This continues for months, but eventually the time of another challenge comes.

A statue from Saiō-ji depicting Baozhi revealing his nature as an incarnation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (Kyoto National Museum; reproduced here for educational purposes only)

As it turns out, the officials decided to seek the help of a virtuous Buddhist monk, the Chan master Baozhi (宝志禅师; he actually lived during the reign of Wu of Liang, some 250 years before Makibi’s journey), who prepared a barrier meant to prevent supernatural beings from entering the palace where Makibi will be tested. This means that for the first time he will have to manage without any help from Nakamaro. His new task to interpret a complex poem, Yabatai (邪馬台). Its contents aren’t discussed in the story; it was a purported prophecy according to which Japan will undergo division and ultimately perish after the reign of the hundredth emperor. Needless to say, following the traditional order which includes mythical and legendary emperors, the prophecy evidently didn’t come to pass - Go-Komatsu was #100, Naruhito is #126. Makibi initially cannot even decipher a single sign. In despair, he prays to Sumiyoshi and Kannon of Hasedera. A spider miraculously appears, and moves across the text to help him read it properly. The gathered officials, as well as the Chinese emperor, are in awe. However, they don’t let Makibi return home, and once again lock him in the tower.

Shortly afterwards, Makibi is reunited with his ally Nakamaro, and enlists his help once more. He asks him to find a century old set of sugoroku paraphernalia. With the help of these tools, he causes an eclipse. The emperor learns about its cause from his diviners, and has his officials question Kibi. He claims that the only way to end the eclipse is to let him return to Japan. This time, they oblige, and the story ends. The forerunner preserved by Masafusa indicates that Makibi was also credited with bringing the Wen Xuan, the Yabatai and the game of go to Japan. In reality, go and Wen Xuan were already known in Japan before his journey. Meanwhile, according to the Edo period philosopher Hayashi Gahō Yabatai was most likely a hoax composed in Japan in the Heian period, even though it was held to be the work of Baozhi.

It is commonly assumed in scholarship that the story was meant to reflect somewhat xenophobic attitudes towards China or more broadly towards foreign lands prevalent at the time of its composition. While in Makibi’s and Nakamaro’s times sending envoys to China was relatively common, and Japanese emperors actively sought contact with their Chinese counterparts (though occasionally diplomatic correspondence could end up awkward as both sides aimed to present themselves as superior), with time similar journeys became less frequent, and started to be perceived as increasingly dangerous (to be fair - the risk of getting shipwrecked was genuinely fairly high). It might be significant that formal diplomacy resumed during the reign of Go-Shirakawa, though. It is distinctly possible that he saw this success as a parallel to Makibi’s legendary deeds, and commissioned an illustrated edition to basically congratulate himself.

An alternate proposal is that Kibi Daijin Nittō Emaki arose as a part of an onmyōdō feud between the Kamo and Abe clans. For what it’s worth, it does seem that despite earlier successful arrangements meant to guarantee a division of positions in the court both the Abe and the Kamo would be satisfied with, tensions arose between them during reigns of emperors Toba and Go-Shirakawa, so roughly at the time of its composition. However, the interpretation of the story as a product of this conflict rests on the argument that Makibi is portrayed as more clever and skilled than Nakamaro. This sort of power level discussion is not entirely rooted in the primary sources, where the two clearly work as a team. There are further problems with this interpretation, too.

An obvious issue is that while the link between Abe no Nakamaro and the Abe clan is self-explanatory, it is not exactly evident in which way Makibi would be a representation of the Kamo. It is sometimes claimed in scholarship that the Kamo clan claimed descent from him, but this appears to be an Edo period misconception. It’s most likely a result of confusion between Kamo no Kibimaro (鴨吉備麻呂), a member of the Kamo clan who also traveled to China (his journey occurred earlier, during the final years of the reign of Wu Zetian), and Makibi. No reference to a relation between Makibi and the Kamo can be found in the fourteenth century genealogical treatise Sonpi Bunmyaku (尊卑分脈; “Genealogical Branches of the High and the Low”), though. Kamo no Yasunori is essentially treated as the founder of this lineage. A further problem is that there’s no good reason to doubt that the scroll was prepared for emperor Go-Shirakawa - who himself favored the Abe clan, as evidenced by the esteem Abe no Yasuchika (安倍泰親) enjoyed in his court.

Kibi Daijin Nittō Emaki wasn’t commonly copied in the Kamakura and Muromachi periods, but portraying Makibi as an onmyōji only became more entrenched in literature over the middle ages. He was supposedly responsible for transmitting rituals focused on Tenkeisei (天刑星, “Star of Heavenly Punishment“; this deity was held to be a master of all shikigami, for more info see my previous article) alongside Kamo no Yasunori. In a local tradition from Mount Hiromine, he was credited with enabling the enshrinement of Gozu Tennō by making a pact with him during his journeys to China.

While the examples cited above were essentially new, the specific story illustrated in Kibi Daijin Nittō Emaki evidently wasn’t forgotten either. It regained popularity in the Edo period, as evidenced by its various new adaptations. These include works from various genres, such as Koikawa Harumachi’s novel Kibi no Nihon Jie (吉備能日本知恵, “Japanese Kibi’s Ingenuity”) or the kabuki play Kibi Daijin Shina Tan (吉備大臣支那譚, “Story of Minister Kibi in China”). However, from the perspective of this article what matters the most is that it was incorporated into Abe no Seimei Monogatari, thus firmly becoming a part of Seimei’s origin story.

A personification of Mars, as depicted in Sōkan’s Iconographic Drawings of the Secrets of the Nine Luminaries (public domain; via Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The novel introduces Abe no Nakamaro first, and reveals that he was the reincarnation of Dongfang Shuo (remember him?) and by extension of the planet Mars (sic). Since Dongfang Shuo was incredibly loyal to his country, it was only natural the same was true for his reincarnation. However, as Nakamaro was born in Japan, and not China, this was less than optimal in the specific situation he found himself in. After arriving in China as an envoy, he was imprisoned - as described in earlier works - because his actions were perceived as disrespectful. He dies in prison shortly after.

A year after Nakamaro’s ill fated journey, Kibi no Makibi arrives in China as the next envoy. The Chinese emperor, Xuanzong, is infuriated that the tribute he presented was inadequate, and considers executing him, but decides to give him a way out. If he can complete a series of trials, he will be allowed to return to Japan instead (inadequate tribute be damned). These overlap with the earlier versions, though the order is changed.

Makibi playing go in Abe no Seimei Monogatari

The first of the trials involves go. Makibi is set to face a master of this game, a certain Xiandang (玄東; Gentō in Japanese) in it. His opponent actually doesn’t have a name in any of the early accounts of his adventures in China; it seems this was an innovation of an abbreviated version from the Hoki-shō.

The fateful go match, as imagined by Kunisuda Utagawa; note the inclusion of Xiandang's wife (Egenolf Gallery; reproduced here for educational purposes only) The name evidently caught on, though, since in addition to Abe no Seimei Monogatari it also pops up in other Edo period works, such as the 1852 kabuki play Kin’u Gyokuto Wakoku no Irifune (金烏玉兎倭国入船, “The Golden Crow, the Jade Rabbit, and the Ship that Arrived from Japan”). The resolution also differs somewhat: Makibi learns go by secretly observing Xiandang, who plays it regularly with his wife at home. He wins two matches against him fair and square, without the need to eat any of the pieces.

A spider helps Makibi

The Wenxuan trial is next; it essentially goes the same as in Kibi Daijin Nittō Emaki. The Yabatai trial is altered slightly, though. For starters, Bao Zhi is not physically present - he is only referenced as the poem’s supposed author. The emperor selects it specifically because it’s uniquely difficult, and he can’t read it himself. Nakamaro learns about this, and tells Makibi the best solution might be to pray, which he promptly does. No reference is made to Sumiyoshi, but Kannon of Hasadera gets a more prominent role. Makibi’s devotion to this figure is stressed over and over again. The spider whose help lets him read Yabatai is explicitly identified as a manifestation of this bodhisattva, as well. Reading Yabatai is presented as a grand feat. The entire court cheers (a far cry from the excessively villainous portrayal of courtly officials in Kibi Daijin Niitō Emaki). Even the emperor is deeply moved by Makibi’s skill, and instead of simply letting him go back home as he initially intended he tells him that he can stay as long as he wants in China in order to study. This seems like an attempt at reconciling fictional portrayals of Makibi’s journey with historical reality - I must say I think it works pretty well.

In any case, Makibi accepts the offer, and spends a long time studying various arts in China, much like he did in real life. When he finally decides to return to Japan, Xuanzong bestows various gifts on him, including a variety of literary texts, musical instruments, relics of the Buddha, a robe made from the hide of a “fire-rat” (火鼠, huoshu in Chinese, kaso in Japanese; Makibi could thus complete at least one of the trials of princess Kaguya if he only met her) and, most importantly, the Hoki Naiden (presumably passed down from emperor to emperor, though the story doesn’t state it explicitly). He also ordered a thousand monks to pray to guarantee his voyage back home would be safe.

The Abe no Seimei Monogatari account of Makibi deeds doesn’t end here, in contrast with Kibi Daijin Nittō Emaki. He safely returns to Japan, and the emperor bestows prestigious positions upon him as a reward for his accomplishments in China. Many years later, as an elderly man, he starts feeling like he essentially ended up with a life that should’ve been Nakamaro’s, though (somewhat confusingly, Nakamaro makes no physical appearance after the trials), and decides to find his family. He is unsuccessful, and ultimately writes in his will that he wants his own descendants to seek Nakamaro’s to give them the Hoki Naiden. As it later turns out, they have fallen into poverty, and have no real use for this tome. It ends up hidden until the birth of Abe no Seimei many years later.

The same events are described differently in the Hoki-shō. Makibi acquires the Hoki Naiden basically through the same means as in Abe no Seimei Monogatari, but after returning from China he gives it to young Seimei, who is introduced as a descendant of Nakamaro. In reality, despite sharing the same family name Nakamaro and Seimei were not directly related, though (Abe no Seimei Monogatari approaches this issue slightly differently, by having Seimei be a reincarnation of Nakamaro,as revealed by Hakudō). Furthermore, comparing the dates of Makibi’s journey and Seimei’s birth makes any encounter between them chronologically awkward.

It seems in at least some other works Makibi had one more role to play in setting up Seimei’s career: supposedly Kuzunoha (or, at the very least, Shinoda Myōjin) could be portrayed as his reincarnation. The problem is, while I have no reason to doubt the authenticity of this tradition, I can’t pinpoint its original source for now - this is in part why this article took so long to release.

More than once I’ve seen an assertion that it comes from a sekkyobushi, but as I outlined earlier, it seems no actual evidence for the existence of such an adaptation is available. Furthermore, the most prominent online source of this claim is seemingly a blog on which I also found posts uncritically discussing Hotsuma Tsutae and JJCAT - which doesn’t exactly fill me with optimism. In the article Kitsunenyōbō Ni Miru Ikai ― Futari no Kuzunoha Ga Deau Koto ― Atsuko Katō states that the notion of Shinoda Myōjin being a reincarnation of Kibi no Makibi comes from Abe no Seimei Monogatari, but either this is a mistake, or for some strange reason a scene was omitted in Nana Miyata’s recent German translation (Die Erzählungen vom Leben und Wirken des Divinationsmeisters Abe no Seimei); unless the reference is actually to be found in the supplement to Abe no Seimei Monogatari which had the form of a divination manual, which is left out of the translation. Finally, the Kuzunoha article from Japanese Wikipedia gives the source as Shinodazuma Tsurigitsune Tsuketari Abe no Seimei Shusshō, relying on an anthology of Edo period puppet plays from 1965, edited by Shigeru Yokoyama. Sadly, I can’t consult the full text of this work to verify. I’ll update this article if I ever manage to solve this conundrum. Until then, though, it must end on a slightly unsatisfying note. Bibliography Tumblr for some unfathomable reason didn't let me include a bibliography here, so sadly you have to visit a google doc to access it. I'm sorry.

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