What Is a Shikigami? The Meaning and Origins of the Onmyoji's Familiar Spirit

The word "shikigami" has become widely known through stories, games, and manga about onmyoji. A strange familiar that moves at its master's command — that is the image that comes to mind, yet behind it lies a long history of Japan's Onmyodo and folk belief.

This article explains what a shikigami is — from its meaning and etymology through its forms, the lore of how it was commanded, and its reception in modern culture — purely as a matter of folklore and culture, and as thoroughly as possible. At the end, we also touch on how to face feelings of resentment and the urge to curse.

What a shikigami is (the meaning)

A shikigami is an unseen spiritual being or minor spirit said to be commanded by an onmyoji through ritual craft. Following its master's orders, it was said to gather information, ward off calamity, and at times even harm people. In many tellings it was made to dwell in a paper effigy cut into human shape — a katashiro — and act as a kind of tool reflecting the caster's will. It is a being within legend and culture, not one whose existence has ever been verified.

The etymology of "shiki" — the divination board and its spirits

The "shiki" in shikigami is no mere phonetic borrowing. A leading theory traces it to the shokuban (chokuban), a divination instrument the onmyoji used. The board combined a round "heaven plate" representing the sky with a square "earth plate" representing the ground; turning it to read fortune was called shiki divination. The spirits summoned through the craft — the "shiki" — of operating that board are, on this view, the shikigami.

Another reading takes "shiki" in the sense of "to use, to employ," so that the word points to the very act of commanding spirits. Either way, against the background of Daoism and yin-yang and five-elements thought imported from China, the core of the name is the idea of mastering an unseen force through "shiki" — rule and ritual.

The forms of the shikigami — seen, unseen, and the effigy

The shikigami has no fixed shape. In the lore it is most often drawn as an unseen spiritual presence, yet it is also said to appear at times as a demon, a divine youth (goho-doji), or a bird or beast.

Indispensable to any account of the shikigami is the katashiro, a figure of paper or straw cut into human shape. It helps to think of the katashiro as the vessel — a stand-in that houses a spirit — and the shikigami as the force said to dwell in it. The onmyoji is said to have chanted the shiki, lodged the shikigami in the effigy, and moved it at will. This notion of the effigy is loosely connected to later cursing dolls and to the paper-figure and folded-paper culture of today.

Abe no Seimei and the Twelve Heavenly Generals

When it comes to shikigami, the anecdotes of the mid-Heian onmyoji Abe no Seimei are famous. Seimei is said to have freely commanded shikigami called the Twelve Heavenly Generals, and because their forms were so fearsome, to have kept them hidden beneath the Ichijo Modoribashi bridge.

These "Twelve Generals" are thought to derive ultimately from the twelve guardian deities used in the shiki divination of Onmyodo. The gods arranged on the divination board were deified, in the stories, into the shikigami that attend Seimei — which shows how closely the shikigami is bound to the art of divination. Such lore was greatly enlarged in later tales and performing arts, and the shikigami still stirs our imagination as a symbol of the onmyoji's mysterious power.

Commanding a shikigami — the lore of its use

Tale collections such as the Konjaku Monogatarishu depict Seimei using shikigami on several occasions: crushing a frog in the garden with one to prove his power, or having a shikigami open and close the gate of an empty house. The shikigami is told of as a being that handles everything from everyday chores to sorcerous deeds.

Yet the shikigami was also seen as a double-edged sword. If it could not be mastered it might turn on the caster and invite calamity, so great skill was said to be required. It should be stressed that this lore of "how to make and use a shikigami" was told only within stories and folk legend, and its effects have never been verified. This article, likewise, offers no concrete method for harming anyone.

The shikigami in modern culture

Even after the Onmyoryo was abolished in the Meiji era and the onmyoji left the stage of history, the shikigami lived on in story. In our own time especially, through novels, anime, and games, the shikigami has returned to the spotlight. Rendered as a character — a familiar or a partner — it is now one of the motifs that represent Japan's home-grown fantasy culture. Perhaps the shikigami endures because it mirrors an unchanging human wish: to keep an unseen power close, on one's own side.

Let negative feelings out in words, not in curses

Shikigami stories still fascinate us perhaps because people have always wished to borrow an unseen force to move a reality that will not go their way. Yet you need no such force to calm the resentment and unease that build up inside. Even a feeling fierce enough to make you want to curse someone becomes far lighter once you put it into words and get it out of yourself first. Just as the onmyoji entrusted a feeling to an effigy and cut it away outside himself, the act of writing has the power to set an emotion outside you and look at it anew.

Noroi Nikki is a private app for gently writing out, and letting go of, exactly those "negative feelings you can tell no one." What you write is seen by no one, and no one else is dragged into it. Set the thoughts swirling in your chest down into a journal, little by little.

For the making of magic itself, see also what juju (Japanese sorcery) is.