Izanami

Izanami East Asia
The primeval mother of Shinto. She was the sister spouse of Izanagi, who unsuccessfully descended to the nether world after her.

At the beginning, according to ancient Japanese records, there was only an ocean of chaos. Out of the mire in the form of a reed grew Kunitokotatchi, ‘eternal land ruler’, and two subordinate deities, who seem to have symbolized the female and male principles, not unlike the interacting Yin-Yang forces of Chinese cosmology. Izanami, ‘the female who invites’, and Izanagi, ‘the male who invites’, were the descendants of these subordinate powers. Together they created the terrestrial world as well as its divine rulers, Amaterasu the sun goddess, Tsuki-yomi the moon god, and Susanowo the storm god.

Strangely, the female principle was later transformed into the genius of decay, after she had died on giving birth to fire and gone to a subterranean place where darkness prevailed. To...

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