Kegare - Spiritual Impurity
The concept of ritual impurity that disrupts harmony and requires purification.
Kegare refers to spiritual pollution that arises from contact with death, blood, illness, or moral transgression. It is not sin in the moral sense but a disruption of natural spiritual harmony that requires cleansing to restore balance and enable proper worship.
Kegare is the shadow that dims the bright soul; purification restores its light.
Understanding kegare reveals the Shinto emphasis on maintaining spiritual cleanliness.
Classical Shinto texts
Written about in
- What Shinto says about starting again after a fall
Kegare is what the wrongdoing leaves behind, and here the tradition is uncomfortable: it files your bad act alongside things that were never your fault, like contact with death or illness. The same rite cleans both, so Shinto quietly asks you to stop sorting your fall into guilt and bad luck and simply wash.