Omikuji

The omikuji is a written oracle drawn at a shrine or temple, a strip of paper that tells the drawer their fortune, and it is one of the most common small acts of divination in Japanese religious life.

Drawing the lot

The worshipper draws a lot, often by shaking a numbered stick from a box, and receives the corresponding paper slip, which declares a general level of fortune, from great blessing through to misfortune, and gives specific readings for matters such as health, business, study, travel, love and the awaited person. The omikuji is thus a compact oracle covering the ordinary concerns of life, obtained for a small offering, and reading it is a familiar part of a visit to a shrine, especially at the new year.

Tying away the bad

If the fortune is poor, or by some customs whatever it says, the slip is commonly tied to a rack, a tree or a wire in the shrine grounds, a practice widely understood as leaving the bad luck behind at the shrine so that it does not follow the drawer home, and the racks hung with knotted white slips are a characteristic sight. A good fortune may be kept. The omikuji is offered at both Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, another sign of the intertwining of the two traditions, and it belongs to the same everyday religious world as the ema and the omamori, an accessible and light-hearted yet genuinely meant approach to the unknown through the drawing of a lot.

Omikuji are pre-printed paper slips ranging across a fixed scale from great blessing down to great curse, drawn at random, either pulled directly from a box or retrieved by shaking out a numbered stick and matching it to a corresponding drawer, and shrines either print their own or order stock from specialist printers who supply many shrines at once.

Who draws, and the small fee

Any visitor may draw an omikuji for a small fee dropped into a box, with no restriction on who may participate, a genuinely open and casual practice compared to several other objects in this collection.

Leaving the bad luck behind

Custom holds that a favorable fortune may be kept and taken home, but an unfavorable one is generally tied to a designated wire rack or a pine tree branch on the shrine grounds rather than carried away, a physical act of leaving the bad luck at the shrine instead of bringing it home. Shrines periodically clear and burn the accumulated tied slips, the same respectful fire disposal given to other paper ritual objects in Shinto practice.

A fixed scale, not a free reading

Unlike a tarot draw or an open ended reading, the omikuji scale is fixed and printed, running from great blessing through blessing, small blessing and further gradations down to great curse, so the outcome is one of a limited set of standard results rather than a unique message composed for the individual drawing it.