Tuesday Temples - Kannushi

Last weekend I visitied Hanazno shrine in Shinjuku.  This fellow was conducting a ceremony.  Wikipedia tells me he is "A kannushi, also called shinshoku, (meaning god's employee) -the person responsible for the maintenance of a Shinto shrine as well as for leading worship of a given kami - the spirits or phenomena that are worshipped in the religion of Shinto. They can be elements of the landscape, forces of nature, as well as beings and the qualities that these beings express; they can also be the spirits of venerated dead persons. 

In Shinto, kami are not separate from nature, but are of nature, possessing positive and negative, and good and evil characteristics. 

Though the word kami is translated multiple ways into English, no one English word expresses its full meaning. The ambiguity of the meaning of kami is necessary, as it conveys the ambiguous nature of kami themselves.