Okay . . . that does it . . . someone went and knicked my idea of a kool religion . . . nevermind that he beat me to it by decades. Cheryl Chow expounds upon sex, spirituality, and the sacred nude sword dance . . .

Blake saw the world in a grain of sand, but one leader of a religious group sees groping female genitalia as the tactic for nothing less than the creation of a world empire. For cult leader Hakumajinkyoku, sticking his finger — as well as a tobacco pipe — into the vagina of his female followers is not debauchery, but a sacred ritual. During a recent interview with Shukan Gendai (6/11) , the 65-year-old leader — a diminutive skinhead with “penetrating eyes and kinetic aura” — pontificated for an hour on sex, spirituality, and cosmology. After all, the leader is a graduate of the prestigious Tokyo University, Japan’s equivalent of Cambridge or Harvard. Its elite alma mater includes top business and government leaders. Graduate from this university, and you can go far. Or, maybe just far out. The cult leader, whose real name is Rotan Kojima, awakened to his divine mission in 1964. He created what he dubbed “an ancient imperial army,” and began teaching his followers swordsmanship. If this evokes visions of savage samurai slashing enemies with kamikaze abandon, picture this instead: On the stage are eleven nubile women clad in ultra mini cheongsam — they’re naked below the waist. Witnessed by more than 200 men and women, the women begin their sword dance. At the end, one of the women is ordered to urinate into an open bottle of sake. This tempting concoction is then distributed to all the participants. Later, in full view of the audience, the leader pokes the stem of his tobacco pipe into the vagina of several female worshippers. Puffing on the pipe that’s just plumbed a woman’s nether region, he expounds on the vibratory frequencies she emits. “I’m breaking down thoughts that erect barriers,” Kojima explains. “Society believes that there is a wall that divides the sacred and the profane, but I disagree. As I see it, sex and sacred are synonymous.” The Japanese word “sei” is a good case in point. Depending on which Chinese character is used, the word can mean either “sacred” or “sex.” Kojima disputes society’s view of him as the leader of a licentious religious cult. Rather, he sees himself as a true revolutionary on a global scale. He argues that the group’s sacred rituals help liberate his female devotees from sexual complexes arising from a subconscious belief that the vagina is something filthy. His detractors, on the other hand, like to point out that he also “liberates” his followers from a great deal of money — tens of millions of yen — by encouraging them to buy dubious goods, such as rings, stones, and 18-karat chinaware, that ostensibly showers them with Kojima’s vibratory energy and promotes healing. (The aforementioned pipe, by the way, was auctioned off for 200,000 yen.) “You should expect to pay a price to attain such benefits,” counters Kojima, who claims that followers report being freed from long-held neuroses through the purchase of these goods. In any case, what he’s hoping to promote through the performance of erotic rituals is a fundamental change in the world’s thinking. Like awakening people to a vaginal cosmology?

I guess I’m just going to have to go back to the old plan and start a different sort of religion. Hmmmm. Time to dust off the purple robes.