Shinto

Long before anyone thought to write it down, the people of the Japanese islands lived inside a world they understood to be alive. Every mountain, every river, every ancient cedar carried a presence --- a kami --- that deserved attention, gratitude, and right relationship. Shinto has no founder because no founding was required. It did not emerge from a revelation or a doctrine. It grew up from the ground, from the particular soil and stone and sea of the Japanese archipelago, and from the oldest spiritual impulse humanity has ever known.