Money (6) * Omamori blessed by monks, Kyoto * For wallet

Omamori MONEY (economic situation, work, business, victory, etc.) for wallet

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IMAGE: Karura

The Karura (迦楼羅) is a divine creature with human torso and birdlike head in Japanese mythology.

The name is a transliteration of garuda, a race of enormously gigantic birds in Hinduism, upon which the Japanese Buddhist version is based. The same creature may go by the name of konjichō (金翅鳥, lit. "gold-winged bird").

The karura is said to be enormous, fire-breathing, and to feed on dragons/serpents, just as Garuda is the bane of Nāgas. Only a dragon who possesses a Buddhist talisman, or one who has converted to the Buddhist teaching, can escape unharmed from the Karura.

Karura is one of the proselytized and converted creatures recruited to form a guardian unit called the Hachibushū (八部衆, "Devas of the Eight Classes").

One famous example is the Karura statue at Kōfuku-ji, Nara, amongst the eight deva statues presented at the Buddhābhiṣeka dated to the year Tenpyō 6 or 734, pictured top right). This karura is depicted as wearing Tang Chinese-style armor, and thus is seen wingless.

But more conventionally, the Karura is depicted as a winged being with human torso and avian head, as in the Vajra Hall (Kongō buin (金剛部院) section of the Womb Realm mandala (Taizōkai mandara) and other iconographic books and scrolls.