Norito for the Great Exorcism

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.

Like the Great Purification Prayer, this norito addresses impurity affecting the wider community or realm rather than the private moral failing of a single individual, reflecting Shinto's characteristic treatment of kegare as a kind of accumulated ritual pollution requiring periodic communal removal regardless of individual intention or specific wrongdoing, a concept scholars of comparative religion routinely contrast with confession-based penitential prayer traditions built around personal moral guilt requiring individual acknowledgment and forgiveness. The historical oharae ceremonies at which texts of this kind were recited were performed by court ritual specialists on behalf of the realm as a whole, a communal and institutional rather than individual and voluntary religious act, distinguishing this norito's original context sharply from prayers of personal petition or confession found in traditions organized around individual devotional practice.

Contemporary Shinto shrines continue purification rituals, harae, drawing on this broader ritual tradition, performed for individuals, families, businesses and communities seeking removal of accumulated impurity or bad fortune, though the specific ancient court norito preserved in the Engishiki is now primarily of historical and scholarly interest rather than in regular verbatim liturgical use, with contemporary shrine purification rites typically employing related but not identical modern norito composed by shrine priests for the specific occasion at hand.