高野山清高稲荷大明神
Up a gentle flight of tori gate lined stairs is the shrine of Koyasan's Pure and Noble Inari
On my second visit to this shrine, I received the shrine’s talisman. 御祈祷寶牘 (royal supplication, precious letter)
On the inside of the talisman, printed in red ink is a siddham character 梵字ユ followed by
奉修弘法大師御本地供 [息災延命/家內安全] 祈從 Pray to Kobo Daishi [safety at home/avoiding disasters and prolonging life]
While there are a handful of small Inari shrines around koya, from what I gather it is one of the more important ones, and certainly the most well looked after.
As an aside, did you know there was actually a big Inari shrine in west gate located near where red house is now? You can check out this blog to see some pictures: Taipei Inari Shrine
So, if you ever read people online writing about whether or not foreigners can practice Shinto, you can remind them that for a number of years that was the plan! Of course history went the way it did and those plans had to be put on hold.
Returning to the topic of this Inari talisman, Below is the machine that prints all of the talismans on Koyasan, including the talisman shown above. The machine was made in Germany many years ago
Each temple's seal is applied with red ink by a second machine:
The gentleman in charge of printing the talismans gave me one from a batch that he had printed earlier that week.
So this amulet above, which came straight from the printer into my hands, does it have any power? Can it be considered genuine?