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Concept
Omamori
Summary
御守/お守り are Japanese amulets commonly sold at Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, dedicated to particular Shinto as well as Buddhist figures, and are said to provide various forms of luck and protection.
The word 守り means 'protection', with being the (honorific) form of the word. Originally made from paper or wood, modern amulets are small items usually kept inside a brocade bag and may contain a prayer, religious inscription of invocation. are available at both Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples with few exceptions and are available for sale, regardless of one's religious affiliation.
are then made sacred through the use of ritual, and are said to contain (spiritual offshoots) in a Shinto context or (manifestations) in a Buddhist context.
While are intended for temple tourists' personal use, they are mainly viewed as a donation to the temple or shrine the person is visiting. Visitors often give as a gift to another person as a physical form of well-wishing.
are usually covered with brocaded silk and enclose paper or pieces of wood with prayers written on them, which are supposed to bring good luck to the bearer on particular occasions, tasks, or ordeals. are also used to ward off bad luck and are often spotted on bags, hung on cellphone straps, in cars, etc.
have changed over the years from being made mostly of paper and/or wood to being made out of a wide variety of materials (i.e. bumper decals, bicycle reflectors, credit cards, etc.). Modern commercialism has also taken over a small part of the production of . Usually this happens when more popular shrines and temples cannot keep up with the high demand for certain charms. They then turn to factories to manufacture the . However, priests have been known to complain about the quality and authenticity of the products made by factories.
According to Yanagita Kunio (1969):
Japanese have probably always believed in amulets of one kind or another, but the modern printed charms now given out by shrines and temples first became popular in the Tokugawa period or later, and the practice of a person wearing miniature charms is also new.
Official source
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