|
I'm pretty sure you are thinking of Shide. The Omikuji are contained in numbered drawers (you draw a stick with a number on it from a box and then go to the drawer with that number to get your Omikuji) so they wouldn't be visible to the casual observer.
The Shide is one type of haiku, formed by attaching flowing strips of paper or cloth (particularly you, rough cloth made from the bast fibers of paper mulberry) to a sprig of Sakai, a staff, or a sacred border rope (Shimenawa). Although you was formerly used, most shied today are made of paper. A variety of methods are used to fold and cut the strips, including those with 2, 4, and 8 folds. Shide are likewise found in a variety of specific styles, the best known of which would include those of Ise, Shirakawa, and Yoshida.
Nowadays shide are most frequently found as one component of implements of purification where they absorb the impure elements, but they are also suspended from sacred border ropes demarcating sacred or ritual space, in which case they serve to symbolize a sacred border. A Grand Champion (yokozuna) of sum? wrestling wears a decorative shimenawa festooned with shide around his ornamental belt during the ring-entrance ceremonies of a sum? tournament.
|
What is the name of the paper strips found at Shinto shrines? i assume they are some
