Myth Recited as the Basis for Removing Impurity

This norito for the Great Exorcism shares its underlying mythic and ritual logic with the Great Purification Prayer, recounting mythic precedent for how impurity, kegare, can be identified and expelled from a community, and both texts belong to the specific genre of oharae, or great purification, ritual language preserved in the Engishiki alongside considerably more numerous norito addressed to particular deities for particular, narrower occasions.

Scholars of Shinto ritual language have noted that the Great Exorcism norito and the more commonly cited Great Purification Prayer are closely related enough in content and function that some historical and textual questions remain about their precise relationship, whether one represents a variant, an earlier or later recension, or a related but functionally distinct text used on a different occasion within the twice-yearly oharae ceremonial cycle historically conducted at the imperial court. Its preservation within the Engishiki gives scholars, as with the food goddess norito, an unusually direct textual window onto formal early Shinto ritual language concerning purification specifically, a category of religious speech otherwise known mainly through later ritual practice and commentary rather than through texts approaching this level of documented antiquity and formal completeness.