ShintoResources

A common misconception/oversimplification in the form of an innocuous statement: "Everything is Kami."

Sadly, this is fundamentally incorrect. Kami are the agents and actions of the natural world. But mankind has introduced things that cannot house kami.

First, let me give you an example. We have a tree. It's a very old tree. It has a kami, a mitama in it. One day, lightning strikes the tree and vaporizes it. It's destroyed. Turned into ash. What happened to the kami?

My perspective

The mitama left. The vessel is gone. It's vaporized. Ash, combustion products, etc. They can't hold the kami. So the mitama becomes unbound.

Opinion 1: The ash is the kami.

This is a problem. How much ash do you need to hold a kami. If I separate the ash into two piles, is that two kami? Three? A hundred?

Opinion 2: The kami is gone, but reincarnated into a new tree.

Better. But where's your textual basis? Where is rebirth mentioned in Shinto texts you won't find it

So we've clearly established a fairly understood rule. The mitama has to have a suitable vessel. Most natural things can have kami. Hills and mountains can be kami. Rivers can be kami. Monuments can be kami. Clearly, it's not an elemental thing either. A kami isn't divisible by elements, compounds or any of that.

So what about manmade things? Well here's the trouble. Take the iPhone. It's aluminum, it's glass (a silicate), it's gold, silver, fiberglass, etc. You see the problem here? Those are all natural things that had to be modified. That means it can't inherit a mitama from those aggregates. Simpler concept. Can bread have a kami? Well, no. It's the corpse (flour) of a wheat plant, mixed with water, yeast, and baked. That fundamentally changes it.

Real life reasoning arguments

Mt. Fuji is worshiped as a kami. But it's not one mountain/volcano. It's three. This predates historical understanding. Nobody knew. It's a single kami by its token.

The Isuzu River at Ise Grand Shrine is venerated as a kami, yet the water molecules flowing through it are never the same: they're constantly being replaced. From a material standpoint, "the river" doesn't persist as a stable physical entity, yet it houses a single, continuous mitama. The kami isn't in the H₂O molecules themselves, but in the form and function of the river as a whole.

But the Kojiki talks about Kagutsuchi's death creating more kami

So let's break this down:

Then Izanagi no Mikoto unsheathed the sword ten hands long which he was wearing at his side and cut off the head of his child Kagutsuchi no Kami. [snip]

The deity who came into existence in the head of the slain Kagutsuchi no Kami was named Masakayama no Kami.

Next, the deity who came into existence in his chest was named Odo-yamatsumi no Kami. Next, the deity who came into existence in his belly was named Okuyama-tsumi no Kami. Next, the deity who came into existence in his genitals was named Kurayama-tsumi no Kami. Next, the deity who came into existence in his left hand was named Shigiyama-tsumi no Kami.

Next, the deity who came into existence in his right hand was named Hayama-tsumi no Kami. Next, the deity who came into existence in his left foot was named Harayama-tsumi no Kami. Next, the deity who came into existence in his right foot was named Toyamatsumi no Kami. From Masakayama no Kami through Toyamatsumi no Kami are altogether eight deities.

On paper, this looks like a checkmate

But it is not. Just a few chapters later:

Thereupon Takehaya Susanoo no Mikoto, who had been watching her actions, thought that she was polluting the food before offering it to him and killed Ogetsuhime no Kami.

In the corpse of the slain deity there grew things: in her head there grew silkworms; in her two eyes there grew rice seeds; in her two ears there grew millet; in her nose there grew red beans; in her genitals there grew wheat; and in her rectum there grew soy beans.

Then Kamimusubimi no Oya no Mikoto had these taken and used as seeds.

Kagutsuchi is a special case. Kagutsuchi was a primordial kami, the direct descendant of the last of the Seven Divine Generations. Of course his death is different than Ogetsuhime-no-Kami. Kami who come later? They do not have the primordial blood that the Seven Divine Generations did.

Conclusions

This isn't an orthodox rule. Belief mismatch isn't punished in Shinto. It's not strictly necessary for you to concur. But the basis I have presented is unmistakably textual in nature.

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