Omoikane Today: Prayers for Wisdom at Chichibu Shrine

Omoikane carries a same-figure-other-register edge to Deity 2911, whose own record states him actively venerated in a living tradition, and the concrete present-day form of that standing centers on Chichibu Shrine in Saitama Prefecture, which enshrines him under his fuller title, Yagokoro Omoikane, alongside the region's other tutelary deities. Documented contemporary practice at shrines enshrining Omoikane, including Chichibu, directs prayer specifically toward academic and examination success, a narrowing of his mythic domain of wisdom and counsel into the single most common occasion a modern visitor actually seeks him out for, students praying before school entrance examinations rather than petitioners seeking counsel on a matter of state the way the Kojiki's own gods once did. Helen Hardacre's history of Shinto documents this kind of narrowing, a kami's broad mythic domain surviving into modern practice as one specific, popularly understood specialty, as a general and well attested pattern in how historical Shinto veneration has continued into the present rather than lapsing. Chichibu Shrine's own continued operation as an active site of worship, rather than a preserved historical monument, is itself the plainest evidence that Omoikane's actively venerated status, already attested on his deity-register entry, describes an ongoing present-day practice and not only a documented historical one.