Tachikawa-ryū

In recent years, however, its reputation has begun to see something of a rehabilitation after some [citation needed] advocated a reevaluation of the sect, its actual nature, and its role and impact in medieval (and later) Japanese Buddhism.

When the emperor became seriously ill soon afterwards, suspicion immediately fell on Sukehito and his preceptor monk after an anonymous letter was found in the imperial residence accusing Ninkan of conspiring with one of Shōkaku's pages, a young man named Senjumaru (千手丸), to kill Toba by placing a curse on him.

"[11] Far from being a fringe practice, divination actually played a central role in not only the religious but also the political activity of the period: indeed, astrology dictated the daily lives and decision making of the Heian-era aristocracy.

One of the Tachikawa-ryū's critics, a monk from Mount Kōya named Yūkai (宥快, 1345-1416), writes in his Hōkyōshō (宝鏡鈔, "Compendium of the Precious Mirror," 1375): Some speak of the disciple (and natural brother) of Assistant Archbishop Shōkaku of Daigo-ji's Sanbō-in, a man called Ninkan Ajari (later known as Rennen).

[16][17][9] Hino (2012) emphasizes that the astrological and divinatory practices actually performed by Ninkan's lineage "were a medieval Japanese esoteric praxis common to the many.

[7][9] While later polemical texts such as Yūkai's tract quoted above claim that Kenren was formerly an onmyōji, and that the 'heretical' rites attributed to the sect were the result of his fusion of esoteric Buddhism and Onmyōdō, Kenryū Shibata and Nobumi Iyanaga (2018) have recently suggested based on surviving documents that Kenren was actually a monk from Kunō-ji (久能寺, now known as Tesshū-ji), a Tendai (currently Rinzai) temple located in modern Shimizu-ku, Shizuoka City, who possibly had connections with poet and nobleman (and later monk) Fujiwara no Norinaga (1109-?).

[19][20] It appears from the historical record that Tachikawa-ryu was very widely accepted and practiced and by the middle of the 13th century during the Nanboku-chō period had become a major contender with the orthodox branch of Shingon.

Tachikawa-ryu ideas and influences also appeared in cultic practices with Dual Ganesha (双身歓喜天, Sōshin Kangiten) and Aizen Myō-Ō (Ragaraja), and in the other main orthodox school of mikkyo Tendai, in their extinct Genshi Kimyōdan cult.

And also in the teachings and ideologies of Jodoshinshu (Pure Land Faith), especially the Himitsu Nembutsu (Secret Mystery of Mindfulness of Amida Buddha) developed by Kakuban and Dōhan.

For example, the practitioners of the proto-tantric Kāpālikas (Kapalikas) often carried a staff with a skull on the end of it believing it gave them sidhhi (magical powers).

[citation needed] The use of hango-ko (frankincense) to call up the dead may trace back to the folk tale of the ancient Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty.

There is also an equally apposite tantric usage to be found in the Hevajra Tantra where it describes the "mudra" (seal) as a ritual partner in a sex Rite as a girl "possessed of frankincense and camphor",[This quote needs a citation] a characterization that turns out to be an encrypted reference for blood and semen (red and white).

Regardless, the religious and magical powers of female blood and male semen (the Twin Waters, or the Red and White) is standard in the more baroque forms of Tantraism.