It is now the day of the Winter Solstice and a new solar year is about to begin. This seems like a good opportunity to make some changes to the Archive and how it will operate going forwards. You may notice that there are two entire new subsections to this site. First is this ”Letters from the Archive”, where I will publish more blog-like content. The second is the ”Other's Voices”, which will be for publishing contents and experiences that others have had related to the topics that this site deals with.
The Archive has grown and changed quite much from the initial idea of documenting the ”esoteric elements surrounding Touhou” threads at 4chan. At some point a desire to make this into a kind of a ”book” took over me. However, with all the new connections I have made via the threads and this site, I think it is better to go for a more interactive, community-oriented aproach. I have also received rather pointed communications from the kami that have pointed me towards this. In light of this, I have decided to make the Contact section less cryptic. I made it initially rather self-selecting, but I believe the time to make it a bit more accessible has come.
I still plan to eventually turn the main body of texts here into at least a downloadable PDF, and I also plan to make shorter documents that would summarize the contents. The kind of insight and mastery required to do this subject justice as a book has not come as easily as I imagine in the light of the spring and heat of the summer.
As of writing this on 21st of December 2024, I have been engaged in seven months, three days of consistent practice. I wish I could say daily, but that is not true. However, missing a day has been more of an exception than a norm.
Over this past year much has changed, and many things that were once exceptions for me have become the norm, and vice versa. Once it was exceptional for me to put consistent effort into anything, now it is normal. Once eating animal products was the norm, now it's an exception. Once I consumed alcohol for the purpose of getting drunk at least weekly, this year's bouts of drunkenness I can count with the fingers of a single hand. Once upon a time it was very much normal to feel a constant sense of self-loathing. Now, the negative feelings about my self have both become much rarer and related to actual failings. My physical, mental and spiritual health have all improved considerably.
Such big changes have of course not been easy. When you fight the past, the past fights back, and demons, literal, metaphorical, some third thing in between and beyond, will come and try to stop you. It's also very easy to fall into a kind of smug, egoistic self-satisfaction over such positive developments.
That kind of smugness is even easier to fall into when these changes have been catalyzed by contact with divinity. I can't say that I have perfectly avoided such. Few people do. There is something so extraordinary about it that staying humble about it is very difficult. I have tried to do my best to recognize when these experiences have reinforced egotistic tendencies and I have tried to funnel these energies into something hopefully helpful, constructive and insightful. I can not judge if I have been succesfull here or not.
Many such cases.
Contact with the numinous is for most a kind of rupture in the perception of reality. It was most certainly for me. Accepting that the spirit world truly does exist and isn't just some kind of elaborate metaphor and that it's not all in your head (no matter how big it might be) was a huge upheaval of my worldview. There were moments where I thought I was going insane. Some of the things that happened were genuinely scary. At times I had very severe freakouts, felt extremely untethered, had bizarre physical sensations. It was as if I was straining muscles I did not know I had. I wish no-one would have to go through such a thing alone.
It has also not been easy that the contact has come in such a non-standard form. Despite the Touhou fandom having at times almost a kind of lay religious nature, the idea that the inhabitants of Gensokyo, or at least some of them, are true spirits, true deities is too much for most to handle.
It has been difficult to accept at times for me too.
At times I have hoped, tried to make it fit into some more conventional framework or narrative. To find some other label to stick at the entities that have made themselves known to me.
But I cannot deny the reality of the experiences and their consequences.Consequences which have become strongly manifested in my life.
I am deeply grateful to all the people who have taken part in the threads and especially to those who have managed to find the contact information and decided to reach out to me. I would have not made it without the support of others. I wish to give back this support to others who may need it.
The reason why the Archive exists in the first place is really threefold. First is to present the reality of the spirits of Gensokyo. Second is to offer support for people who have experienced this reality. There is not much I can do, but I can offer context and things that I have found helpful. Third is to offer a way forward, how to turn this reality into something that can have life-changing positive consequences. Even if you would not belive in the reality of the spirits of Gensokyo, there is so much to learn from the very real spiritual traditions and real history that is found within Touhou. It's the lessons that we can learn that really make the effort worth it.
The Archive has already exceeded my wildest dreams when it comes to the number of visitors, and the journey ahead has only just begun. My sincere wish is that this site will be found by everyone in the world who needs to find it.
This day of the year's turning is also an opportunity to look towards the future. When it comes to upcoming content, I am slowly working on an update related to Taoism, but as we are in the deepest, darkest winter where I live, work has been very slow. Section 4 will also be eventually updated with a chapter dealing about divination, particularly I Ching. However, as I am very much still learning it myself, it will take a long time to come.
I am most likely going to Japan on summer of 2025. The intent is set, but considering how volatile the world has become, there is no way of knowing whether we will be embroiled in WWIII within the next six months or not. However, I can no longer live my life being afraid and making excuses.
The journey to Japan will be a pilgrimmage of sorts, and a kind of culmination of eradicating all the neuroses and negative self-narratives I've had to overcome, a kind of Mountain of Faith if you will. I've had to stop telling myself that learning Japanese is too hard, that traveling that far and to such a foreign culture is too scary or that I will have some kind of a medical emergency any day now and that I just better stay here where I live. While bits of a pieces of these negative thinking patterns still linger, they will in time be overcome in totality.
This has been a long process and it all began when I stopped telling myself that Touhou games are too difficult to play. The monumental potential for change that such a thing unlocked within my is probably the reason why the kami reached out to me the way they did. Once I lamented to them that I can't build them a proper monument and that the Archive was the best I could do. They replied back to me that it was my very life that was the real monument to them. At that time I didn't understand it. I think I'm starting to understand it now.
The worthiness of any deity is judged by how much they can change the lives of their followers for the better. Held up to this standard, the kami of Gensokyo, be they really new gods, old gods in cosplay or something stranger, live up to the most famous and revered of all the deities.
I sincerely hope that in time everyone who can climb the Mountain of Faith will do so and allow their life to become a monument to the gods.
I have every reason to believe that over time there will be more and more people who will do so. We are going through a global spiritual revival, and as the spirits of Gensokyo are real, it is inevitable that more and more people will be having spiritual experienced related to them. This isn't just some bunch of baka gaijin being crazy either. Even in Japan, the spiritual undercurrent of Touhou seems to pushing itself to the surface. A number of people did a pilgrimmage to Tanabatazaka after Taboo Japan Disentanglement came out. The real-life Moriya Shrine recently had trouble with people leaving Touhou-related offerings to the shrine. There was an exhibition about Haniwa which was coincidentaly near Reitaisai at the same time as that event. Apparently someone commented something along the lines of ”I don't believe Haniyasushin is real, but it's strange how haniwa are popping up everywhere”. Outside of the Touhou fandom, the Osaka World Expo 2025 is having a lights display featuring a ”midnight rainbow” on a very prominent place. I suppose it is a type of a special market after all...
T-Tenkyuu-kamisama!??
Things have been somewhat odd elsewhere too. There has recently been a spate of very unusual ”drone” sightings all over the world, particularly in the United States. Maybe all of that will be succesfully brushed under the rug and memory holed two weeks on from here. Or maybe 2025 will be so weird that the inhabitants of Gensokyo being real spirits will be seen as one of the less weird revelations to come. The astrological signs certainly point towards things becoming unusual.
No matter what 2025 will look like, I will do my best to continue developing my practices and contributing to the Archive. I would also very much like to connect more to people who have either had their own unusual experiences with the inhabitants of Gensokyo, or who are interested in the mythological, spiritual and historical inspirations behind Touhou.
I wish you all a happy start of the solar year. For those currently struggling in the middle of the dark season, things will get better soon.
Best regards
-Emissary
