Kami, Sacred Places and Dragon’s Cave in Cyprus
- carriek30
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
The concept of Kami, Sacred Places and Dragon’s Cave in Cyprus
There is a place in Pomos where I go to meditate.
It is not a place that most people would immediately describe as a sacred place. There is no shrine, no temple and no carefully constructed garden. There is simply a rocky cave opening towards the Mediterranean, stones scattered along the shore, and fresh water emerging from the rocks and running towards the sea.
I have been there many times, and gradually I have become aware of something I find difficult to explain. It isn't simply that this place, known as Dragon’s Cave, is beautiful, it is because there is something about the place itself that seems to have a presence.
Recently, I have been thinking about this through something I have learned through my Reiki practice: the Japanese concept of kami.
What does kami mean in Japanese tradition?
kami is a difficult word to translate.
It is often rendered in English as “god” or “deity”, but neither word quite captures the breadth of the concept. Japanese religious scholarship describes many different forms of kami, including kami associated with mountains, forests, rocks, rivers, the sea, natural phenomena and particular places. The idea developed over a very long period, rather than emerging as a fully formed religion at a single point in history.
One particularly interesting aspect of early Japanese religious practice is that the kami of a place was not always understood as a distant supernatural being with a separate identity.
Sometimes the place itself was central.
Japanese Shinto scholarship records that natural features such as mountains, rivers, oceans and rocks were among the objects associated with early forms of worship, and that in many cases the kami was known through the place itself.
That idea has stayed with me.
Because when I think about Dragon’s Cave I am not inventing a spirit for it. I am interested in the feeling that a particular place can become much more than simply scenery.
Sacred places and the natural world
There are several Japanese concepts that help illuminate this relationship between landscape and presence.
One is shintai, usually translated as the “body of the kami”. In Shinto, a shintai is a physical object associated with the presence of a kami. Although ritual objects such as mirrors, swords and jewels can serve this purpose, Japanese Shinto sources also describe natural features including stones, mountains and waterfalls as shintai.
Another is yorishiro.
A yorishiro can be a natural object or place that serves as a locus for the manifestation of kami. Traditional examples include trees and rocks, while older forms include sacred trees and arrangements of stones. Japanese scholarship describes these practices in connection with forests, groves and natural rock formations used as ritual sites.
The landscape acquires a relationship with the people who encounter it.
That is what interests me about sacred places, It’s not that every stone must contain a spirit, but it is the possibility that a place can become significant through the way we encounter it.
Dragon’s Cave, Pomos
Dragon’s Cave is a natural sea cave on the western coast of Cyprus, near Pomos. It lies beneath a rocky cliff, opens towards the sea and has a natural pathway where fresh water still runs from the cave.
Those simple physical details are what draw me there.
The freshwater bubbling from us died the depths of the cave is particularly striking.
The water emerges from inside the cave and makes its way towards the sea. Sitting beside it, I can follow its movement with my attention. The sound changes as it passes over the rocks. The sea is close enough to hear, but the two waters remain distinct: fresh water coming from the land and salt water stretching away towards the horizon.
The rocks around the cave have their own character. Some are enormous and immovable; others have been rounded and shaped by the sea. The stones along the beach seem almost ordinary until you sit quietly enough to notice them.
That is what mindfulness does. It changes what we notice. The place does not change, but my attention does.
A landscape with a very long human history
Pomos also carries a history that reaches far beyond the Cyprus we know today.
The famous Pomos Idol, a small cruciform figurine from the Chalcolithic period, was found in the Pomos area. The Cyprus Museum identifies the cross-shaped Chalcolithic idol among the particularly important examples of prehistoric Cypriot culture in its collections.
The archaeological record of the Pafos region extends from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods through the Bronze Age and into the later history of Cyprus, with archaeological finds from Pomos represented in the district collections.
I sometimes think about that when I sit at Dragon’s Cave.
I don't know who sat beside this particular spring thousands of years ago.
There is no evidence that the people who created the Pomos Idol came to this cave.
But I do know that this wider landscape has been part of human life for thousands of years.
People walked here, they knew the coastline, they knew the seasons, they handled the stones of this island and made objects whose meanings we can only partly understand today.
When I sit beside the water, I sometimes wonder who else has stopped here.
Who listened?
Who rested on these rocks?
Who looked towards the sea?
What did this landscape mean to them?
The mystery of what we cannot see
Another Japanese aesthetic idea that I find beautiful is yūgen.
It is difficult to translate directly. Its meaning has changed throughout Japanese literary and artistic history, but it came to be associated with depth, mystery and the suggestion of something beyond what can be fully expressed or seen.
I think about the cave when I think about yūgen.
There is always more than I can see.
The rock conceals the source of the water.
The cave disappears into darkness.
The sea extends beyond the opening.
The place reveals something and withholds something else.
Modern life often encourages us to explain everything. We photograph a place, name it, locate it, review it and move on. But sitting quietly somewhere can create a different relationship. You don't have to explain the place, you simply encounter it.
What makes a place sacred?
This is the question I keep returning to.
Is a sacred place sacred because a religion has declared it so?
Because a ritual has been performed there?
Because generations of people have regarded it as special?
Or can something begin much earlier, with the simple human experience of feeling that a particular place deserves our attention?
The history of Shinto is complex. Its practices developed over centuries and were shaped through interaction with Buddhism, continental thought, local traditions and changing Japanese society. The idea of an unchanged ancient “nature religion” is too simple.
Yet the Japanese concepts of kami, shintai and yorishiro offer a fascinating way of thinking about the relationship between natural forms and sacred presence.
They invite us to notice the mountain.
The tree.
The rock.
The spring.
The grove.
The landscape itself.
And maybe to approach it differently.
Sitting with the landscape
So I return to Dragon’s Cave.
I sit on the rocks beside the freshwater spring bubbling from somewhere deep inside and I watch it make its way towards the sea.
I feel the cool rock beneath me.
I notice the smooth stones scattered along the shore.
I listen to the water, the sea and the silence between them.
And sometimes I think about the people who lived in this landscape thousands of years ago. I remember that they were here, that their lives passed through this ancient landscape, and that we are only the latest people to experience it.
So maybe that is what a sacred place can offer us - not an escape from the world, but a deeper sense of belonging to it.
The Japanese word kami has given me one way of thinking about that sense of presence.
I still don't know exactly what it is that I feel at Dragon’s Cave.
I only know that when I sit there long enough, the place stops being scenery and becomes something much deeper.
A note on interpretation
The Japanese concepts explored in this article are offered as a lens through which I have been thinking about my own experience of Dragon’s Cave. They are not intended to suggest that Dragon’s Cave is a Shinto site or that prehistoric Cypriot beliefs were equivalent to Japanese religious traditions.
What fascinates me is the shared human question: how do we experience a particular place when we stop treating it simply as scenery and begin to give it our full attention?
That is the question that brought me back, again and again, to the rocks, water and silence of Dragon’s Cave.
© 2026 | OneSong Healing Arts. All rights reserved
Please do not reproduce or republish this article without written permission. Short quotations with a link back to the original article are welcome.
Sources and further reading
Japanese religious traditions and sacred places
Kokugakuin University, Encyclopedia of Shinto — an academic reference work produced by the Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics at Kokugakuin University.
These sources were particularly useful in exploring the Japanese understanding of kami, natural objects associated with sacred presence, and the historical relationship between place and worship. The Saijin entry is especially relevant because it describes how early objects of worship could be features of the natural environment — mountains, rivers, ocean and rocks — with the kami often identified through the locality itself.
Cyprus and Dragon’s Cave
These sources provide the geographical and archaeological context for Dragon’s Cave and the wider Pafos region.
About the author: Carrie King is a traditional Japanese Reiki practitioner and teacher, sound and vibration therapist, and founder of OneSong Healing Arts - Reiki & Resonance in Cyprus. Her writing explores sound, consciousness and our relationship with the natural world, bringing together lived practice, careful research and a deep curiosity about the ways we experience presence and place.
Comments