[Moo] The danger from the South -- Ice Castles-cancelled

[sigrune at aol.com]

Perhaps it is time to turn to the arts of onmyo and consult the 
octo-trigrams and the sutras...

Hey it worked when the mongols invaded :)

-Takeda

Onmyo: The Japanese art of yin-yang magic, astrology, astronomy, 
mysticisim that is an amalgamation of Yin-Yang ideology from China, 
buddhist mysticisim and ritual, and a healthy smattering of the native 
Japanese mythology.

Onmyoji: A practitioner of onmyo.
During the Heian era 794-1185 the imperial court centered life that 
dominated the culture provided the opportune environment for these 
esotaric arts to flourish. Also the religions of Japan had fairly 
stabilized into a pattern (much chaos up until the mid 700's as 
buddhism clashed with the native religions) this new stable pattern 
provided the ideal environment to "cash-in" on the resulting 
superstitions.  The most famous of the Onmyoji is Abe no Seimei
(Ah-bay no say-may) the cultural equivilent of Merlin, however Seimei 
was a very documented person; the exploits attributed to him are quite 
fantastic, but the man was quite real. Seimei's estate was turned into 
a shrine in Kyoto for Onmyo, and still is to this day.

It is recorded that when the Mongols attempted to invade Japan, the 
Onmyoji instructed the emeror to go to one of the premier temples (I 
forget the name at 1:00am) and pray for divine intervention while the 
onmyoji supported him in prayer and spells...  In both invasions the 
Mongols were nailed by Typhoon...