New Year's Day 2023 - A Ritual of Purification and Gratitude at the Shin Mei Spiritual Centre

 

For new year's day I attended a Oshogatsu (New Year) ceremony at a local Shinto and Buddhist shrine known as the Shin Mei Spiritual Centre which is located at Knapp Island, which is off Vancouver Island, BC.

Arriving to Knapp Island requires a 10 minute ride on a water taxi that can be boarded from the Canoe Cove Marina, north of Victoria, BC. It was a lovely ride. The ferry resembled a floating greenhouse with visibility 360 degrees around yet fully protected from wind and with comfortable seating and a warm heater on. The first thing I noticed was how beautiful and clear the blue-green ocean was this day. I live on the other side of the island and I've yet to see it get this way there.

When we arrived to the island it was a surreal sight for me to see the resident Shinto priest, Ann Evans, greet us on the dock. She was wearing a traditional Shinto priest robe known as a Kariginu, which is not a common sight where I'm from. As we walked to the shrine I was transported back to my memories of visiting Shinto sights in Japan. Yet I also noticed relics around the grounds which would be associated with entirely different types of faith. It was stated by Ann later that the Shin Mei Spiritual Centre is inclusive to people of all faiths and backgrounds.

It felt like I had just embarked on a spiritual pilgrimage, seeing many spiritual symbols along the path. We bowed when we entered and exited the grounds of the shrine and various points inside it. Miho pointed out to make sure not to walk in the middle of the pathway as that was reserved for the deities and enlightened beings. Everything played a important part of evoking a feeling of sacredness and immense spiritual power.

The ceremony included “Misogi”, which is an ancient ritual of purification through prayer, chanting, physical movement rituals and finally cold water immersion into the ocean. Ann's rites were performed powerfully and left a strong impression! I was concerned about the cold of the water and wanted to do the Wim Hoff cold water immersion breathing technique, but did not need to thanks to Ann preparation rituals and the spirit of the Kami which she invoked! The Kami are the deities, divinities, spirits, phenomena or "holy powers", that are venerated in the Shinto religion (Wikipedia).

After that we returned to the shrine, got dried up and continued with meditation and chanting. We gathered on both sides of Ann in the main space of the shrine. Facing a wall there were many traditional spiritual relics, some of which were used during the ceremony which followed. Reading from a booklet, we followed along with Ann after she explained the meanings of the prayers we were chanting. During the chanting there were moments when I felt a state of trance and the deep reverberation of the tones of the words. It reminded me of the deep belly throat singers that I have yet to learn how to emulate in real life but have on occasion experienced in a string of incredible lucid dreams that had Buddhist monks in them from a few months ago. Some of those were among my favorite dreams of 2022 and I plan to report on those in a future post!

After the meditation there was a potluck with the other attendants of the ceremony and Priest Ann. For it there was an intimate group of six of us in total and we got to bond a little more during this time!

It was such an honor to experience this ceremony and I highly recommend it to everyone! Find out more information about the Shin Mei Spiritual Centre and Shinto Priest Ann Evans here: https://www.matsuri.ca/shin-mei-spiritual-centre

Kansha! (Gratitude!)