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These deities appear to have been in many cases spirits of princes or greater daimyo, formerly, ruling extensive districts; but all were not of this category. Among them were deities of elements or elemental forces, Wind, Fire, and Sea, deities also of longevity, of destiny, and of harvests, clan-gods, perhaps, originally, though their real history had been long forgotten.
This means that the ordinary ghosts obey, in the world invisible, the commands of the clan-gods or tutelar deities; that the conditions of communal worship during life continue after death.
There were, of course, various grades of these clan-gods, just as there were various grades of living rulers, lords of the soil. Above ordinary Ujigami ranked the deities worshipped in the chief Shinto temples of the various provinces, which temples were termed Ichi-no-miya, or temples of the first grade.
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